B2B Marketing Tips

Business-to-business marketing is growing at a rapid pace, but B2B marketers have many challenges to face. What are these challenges? The answer comes from the Marketing Sherpa 2012 B2B Marketing Benchmark Report, which surveyed B2B marketers about marketing barriers and top challenges to success. Facing these challenges in today’s market makes it more important than ever for wholesalers and manufacturers to identify these obstacles within their own organizations and develop solutions that will keep them competitive.

While many people think local search optimization is only for B2C sites, recent research suggests it should also be a part of B2B marketers’ search efforts. Marketing Sherpa found only 35 percent of B2B marketers claimed a local business listing, and only 23 percent optimized for local search terms in organic SEO efforts. On the other hand, 43 percent of B2C marketers claimed local listings, and 36 percent optimized for local search. This article will explain how B2B marketers can benefit from local search optimization.

The IBM Coremetrics Online Retail Holiday Readiness Report is just out and is chock full of online shopping trends, as well as statistics and analyses. The report also includes best practices to help maximize your holiday returns. A partial summary of the report is shown below. Feel free to download your free copy for additional details. As you know, the 2010 holiday season was huge for online retailers. The Coremetrics …

While wholesalers, manufacturers and other general merchandise suppliers rely more on search marketing to generate traffic and new business, many times they overlook another great tool – blogging. There are many benefits of having a company blog: it makes you a subject-matter expert, gives you more exposure to search bots, helps you connect with customers, helps brand your company and products, provides your customers with product information and creates new ways for users to find your business. So what’s the downside?

B2B merchants often find it challenging to select the best online marketing tactics, especially when working with a limited marketing budget. There are many to choose from: website design, email campaigns, search marketing, display, social media, etc. The 2011 MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Advanced Practices Handbook indicates search engine optimization and email marketing are among the top tactics for B2B merchants.

Our article about Mobile Marketing got a lot of interest from wholesalers and general merchandise vendors last month. While integrating social, mobile and email campaigns can yield great results, we know many merchants are not yet using integrated online marketing campaigns. Therefore, we’d like to provide information about social, mobile email integrated campaigns for your online marketing strategy as these media are used daily by consumers and marketers alike.

A new report by Borrell Associates states that “Main Street is embracing mobile marketing at a stunning rate.” Adoption of mobile advertising by small businesses was faster than any media adoption rates of the past, including cable in the ‘80s and the Internet in the ‘90s. There is no doubt that wholesalers, general merchandise vendors and retailers can also benefit from mobile advertising, but B2B marketers have been slow to adopt mobile.

LinkedIn currently has 119 million members, having increased its membership over 60 percent since last year. The popular business-related social networking site had a very successful IPO in May and presents an excellent opportunity for wholesalers and general merchandise vendors to engage customers.

Listen up, all you wholesale buyers and suppliers in cyberspace. What I’m about to tell you is nothing short of awesome. I’m talking about the newly re-launched TopTenWholesale.com website that went live less than 24 hours ago. This new B2B wholesale trade platform extraordinaire now offers Supplier Pass® in addition to many new professional services and sourcing tools.

Wholesalers and general merchandise vendors looking to improve customer service might want to consider the benefits social networking communities can have on their business. Social media communities are full of like-minded people who want to share, discuss, and learn more about industry issues. There can be common interests in the goods and services sold online, as well as many other topics such as returned goods, online fraud and promotions that work. Given the opportunity, wholesalers can capitalize on the ability to communicate with their current and prospective customers.

According to the latest Pew Research Center Report on Social Networking, 13 percent of online adults use Twitter, representing a significant increase from the 8 percent of adult Twitter users in November 2010. The number of people using Twitter in the 25-34 and 55-64 age groups more than doubled since then. Many wholesalers and general merchandise vendors are using Twitter for marketing and branding as shown in the Tweet below by USA Wholesalers.

Online retailers and general merchandise vendors are adding video to their websites because they know video can boosts sales and conversion rates. Well scripted videos can also reduce shopping cart abandonment and product returns. However, it’s not enough to simply post a video on your website. Merchants must know how to optimize their videos for better user engagement, know what metrics to monitor, and then further optimize the videos to improve performance. Below are five tips for optimizing your videos for better engagement, maximizing video performance and increasing product sales on ecommerce sites.

Retailers lose a significant amount of income online due to fraudulent credit card orders and other deceptive activities resulting in merchant loss. As consumers increasingly spend more online from ecommerce merchants, fraudulent activity will likely continue to increase. The 2010 LexisNexis Risks Solutions Study found retail merchants and consumers experienced $139 billion in annual fraud losses in 2010. This article tells retailers how to check their online orders for fraudulent activity.

A business blog is an important part a wholesaler’s online marketing strategy that can help general merchandise suppliers get found and generate more business. Granted, it takes effort and resources to build a corporate blog, but despite the investment, there are ten good reasons to consider a business blog.

Many wholesale suppliers and general merchandise vendors are not yet taking advantage of mobile marketing because they think SMS messaging and mobile ads work better for B2C merchants. However, there is one area of mobile can be very effective for B2B marketers – mobile email marketing.