Jen Doyle, Senior Research Manager at Marketing Sherpa, recently published an article highlighting survey results about perceived 2012 marketing challenges titled “Top barriers to overcoming B2B marketing challenges.” Marketers listed “Lack of resources in staffing, budgeting or time” as their number-one challenge—by a large margin. While it may seem like a rather encompassing challenge (who doesn’t want more money, time and people?), it may be worthwhile to analyze the factors that contribute to this challenge.

The last few years have been remarkable in several ways. In the 23 years that I have been in marketing, I have never been though a more exciting and challenging time. We are in the middle of a turbulent economic period while experiencing a fundamental shift in how we need to think about and execute marketing.

The second most common challenge listed was the “Lack of ability to stop executing and think strategically.” This challenge runs deeper than simply being too busy to stop and think. We need to make sure we’re looking at the big picture—in the right way. Marketing today requires more strategic thinking and planning than ever before for three primary reasons:

1. Most marketers have not fully mastered online channels such as search-engine marketing and social media.
2. Marketing team members are still trying to catch up or catch on, and the rest of the organization doesn’t really understand the changes that have taken place.
3. There are rapidly emerging tools and technologies to measure, analyze and integrate marketing- into sales- and service models – This is a big one, and it is complex.

The third most commonly referenced challenge is key: “Limited ability to develop content.” Branded content is a largely underutilized marketing tool, and clients and agencies need to change their marketing support models to address it. Branded content builds and reinforces company reputation and messaging and bolsters lead generation and it is only getting more important. We need content managers and producers on both sides of the client-agency relationship and we need to ensure that content development is prioritized in the marketing plan. Buyers rely on the content they find online to inform their spending decision – this will not change.

Those of us in the trenches need to stay diligent about our craft, but also realize the importance of continued learning, sharing, training and repetition. Support for marketing needs to flow from deeper within every organization, and it is our job to champion this. Customer service needs be online, technical experts need to come out of the lab, opinion leaders need to speak up, and marketing needs to align with sales. Customers expect to be able to see who we are and what we have to offer before they invite us to be considered. .

As marketing leaders, we need to stomp our feet and wave our flags to get the rest of the organization to join the party. It may feel like pushing an elephant up the stairs, but it’s critical to our success.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Once again, our friends at PracticalMachinist.com have agreed to share some data with us from their Google Analytics account. PracticalMachinist.com is a very busy forum site where machinists, engineers, business owners and others involved in metalworking and manufacturing ask questions, share ideas and exchange information. It is the leading social media property that is specific to this industrial market segment, and probably the most visited online property in the metalworking and metal fabrication market place. In the first six months of 2011, there were over 3.6 million visits and approximately 17.5 million page views. Between June 5th and July 5th, 2011 alone there were more than 643,000 visits by 390,618 unique visitors.

Mobile Users Jumping on Board

Unless you are in the metalworking industry, those numbers may have little value to you, but here is some data that you should not ignore. Traffic to the site on mobile devices has jumped 600% in the past year. About a year ago, we published an article noting a 100% increase in the year-over-year traffic from mobile users – at that time there were about 5,000 visits a month from a mobile device. The recent data shows over 34,000 visits from mobile phones in the last month alone – and they are quality visits – spending on average over 4 and-a-half  minutes on the site.

Here is a look at the traffic from the top platforms:

• iPhone  36%
• Android 33%
• iPad 25%
• iPod (Touch) 4%
• Blackberry 3%

Of these visitors, iPad users stayed longest with a 6:12 Average Time on Site. The adoption rate of the iPad is the fastest of the electronics industry. Using mobile devices to access online content and data shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.

Adoption Rates Mobilizing

The steep curve of adoption for tablets and smartphones is clearly reaching all markets. A study released by The Nielsen Company reported that at the end of 2010 nearly 1/3 of US cellular phone users were using smartphones and that 45% of new contracts were smartphones. A subsequent report published in June 2011 indicates the average amount of data consumed per month has grown by 89%.

So marketers, have you mobilized yet? If it is not in this year’s plan, mobile marketing should be on the agenda for 2012 planning.

Special thanks to our friends at PracticalMachinist.com for sharing their data.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

After spending most of last week at the Business Marketing Conference, I have yet to fully distill the information that I took in. As I sit here with 30 pages of notes and hundreds of ideas bouncing around the cluttered space above my shoulders, I find myself feeling both excited and overwhelmed – and I just figured out why. It is because we had the wrong people in the audience. The conference was filled with marketers. We are the choir – the dreamers, believers and doers. We had incredible and compelling presentations about the game changing opportunities that exist today and we wasted them on people who already “get it”.

OK, maybe it was not a total waste, but we need the C-Suite and the rest of the organization to see this stuff – finance, engineering, sales and service – should all attend those presentations. There are important ideas that can change the trajectory of a brand. We need to convince everyone who thinks marketing is still the job of the marketing department to realize we can’t get it done without their participation. And I am not talking about buy-in – we need participation.

Some of the greatest marketing successes in the next few years will come from people outside our field. This is how we unleash the value of the knowledge within our walls to help our customers and build our brands.

Spreading the Good Word

So with all of the notes and ideas I came home with for our agency and our clients, I think the single most important takeaway is a desire to hunt for marketing champions. I am an optimist and a dreamer – I know it is beyond hope to wish for the light to go on automatically; or for all of those mentioned above to attend next year’s BMA conference. So here is what I will do:

• I am going to increase the reach and frequency of our internal marketing presentations
• Hand in hand with our client counterparts, we will reach out to the various departments within their organization
• And as we explain what we in marketing are doing – over and over again, I will be looking for the single face in the room that is returning something other than a blank stare

And one by one, we will welcome them to the cause – because one person, in one meeting can start something important.

And that is exciting.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Many b-to-b organizations have an abundance of technical and practical resources that can help them connect with their customer base. Unfortunately, much of this content is often buried within technical sales presentations and internal documents that only reach customers in one-on-one meetings and trade-event presentations. This exposure is valuable, but the impact evaporates quickly, the information is difficult to share and the reach is limited.

The Shift to Sharing

A fundamental change has occurred in buyer behavior — most now conduct the majority of their product research online. This shift has forever altered b-to-b marketing leadership practices. You can achieve marketing leadership by becoming a trusted resource for strong, practical information.

Large or Small — This Opportunity Also Represents a Threat

If your company is large, with a deep pool of technical resources, you can have a significant advantage. The move from yesterday’s model, however, requires an investment of both manpower and capital. Making resource sharing a priority requires buy-in from the C-suite; they must agree to share more information, endorse the assignment of new accountabilities and approve related spending decisions. So, with the exception of companies with marketing-savvy executives, large companies are proving to be slow to react — creating opportunity for smaller companies to improve their position.

If your company is a smaller, niche player, this type of resource sharing can be equally advantageous. Specialized product and service providers often have a very compelling competitive advantage when speaking to the right prospects. Sharing content in the right way enables customers and prospects to find you more easily. If you don’t claim your space however, you will miss out on buyers searching for your products or services.

Stop Guarding Your “Secrets”

The only people you are hiding your best content from are your customers. Chances are, your competitors already have most of the information you’re afraid to share. Today, you need to leverage your valuable content—through every channel you have at your disposal. This becomes very dynamic, as you link content to and from landing pages, ads, email, websites, blogs, social sites and others. You need a staffing and marketing mechanism in place to provide constant support for information dispersal and management across the web.

PR, DR and Branding — The Walls are Melting

The big difference today, compared to years past,

is that your control is gone—until prospects experience your brand first hand, they build their perceptions based on the results of their online research—from trade magazines, peer reviews, forums, websites and any number of sources. This is why having a strategy for quality content is vital; it is also why PR, advertising, email marketing, social media, paid search and SEO are now so completely intertwined.

Some of the boldest business successes of late come from unveiling what many would regard as a competitive advantage that should be protected. In this way, companies such as Google, Apple, Lynux, WordPress, Amazon and many others have changed the game. People want to do business with approachable, transparent and resource-rich companies—and this often requires a change in the way organizations approach marketing and business. In the age of information, sharing yours is the ideal way to build trust, credibility and brand equity.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Chain Reaction

As a social media marketer, the recent spat between behemoth HP and struggling Kodak underscores how a small player can leverage this space to draw attention and possibly even draw larger competitors into a place that benefits the little guy.

Basically, HP is claiming that Kodak cannot stand behind its marketing claims – this complaint doesn’t draw a lot of ire from consumers, we are well-trained skeptics. Other than the iPod and The Clapper – there are precious few technology products that are truly as advertised.

So now the two companies are trading swipes on Twitter and getting covered on the newswire and the head of HPs social media effort is being quoted with comments such as “You have a fight you can’t possibly win. I am HP.”

The irony of all of this is that this from is the head of social media strategy for HP. This is sure to draw a lot of social media coverage, but not the kind she wants. In a fight like this, the underdog holds the advantage in public perception. To me it looks like Goliath has taken David’s bait and leaned down with one eye open.

On the marketing front this seems to have gone badly as well, it appears that the two have allowed things to spin into a price war. HP can surely weather this more easily than Kodak, but in the long run, it is not good news for either.

It is hard to know what sort of ill will sticks to a brand when it behaves like this, but one thing is for certain, it is better to stand up for your brand and speak proudly of what you do well. If you have to address a competitor directly, do it with challenges that play to your strengths and attack their weaknesses with benefits, not insults – you just look like a bitter, old bully – and bullies don’t do well in the social space.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

The first half of 2009 has been hell for just about every industry. For a lot of people it has been about damage control, cost cutting and simply figuring out how to get through this. So it has been a tough year to try anything new.

But don’t write off 2009 just yet. There is an important opportunity in all of this that you should think about.

Marketing is changing so fast right now that most marketers have not really developed their search engine marketing and online lead generation expertise.

That means that lots of companies will be doing their 2010 planning without any real experience in potentially the most productive and measurable strategy available to them.

So once again, online will be secondary to the traditional planning model. This could prove to be a HUGE missed opportunity when the economy improves.

Your buyers research their purchases online and they start with the search engines. The easiest way to capture these searchers is through search engine marketing – Pay per click and website optimization. You can respond specifically to what they are searching for and take them to targeted online content.

It is an incredibly simple idea, but behind proper execution is a strategic, methodical, science – it is not simply buying clicks to your site. And if you do it right, it works. We see it every day with programs producing results for clients in a variety of industries b2b and consumer.

There is no question that when the economy turns up, marketers that have learned how to leverage online lead generation will steal market share from those that have not. With close to 100 million searches on Google every day, how could it be any other way?

It is not too late to run a pilot program this year and gain experience that will be critical to your 2010 planning.

A simple keyword report can tell you a great deal about the opportunity and how your competitors may be gaining ground on you. Look at your core keywords, the frequency of search on each, competitive advertisers bidding on the words and a ranking of where you currently show up.

Don’t go into next year with one arm tied behind your back – get your program started now. This could be the best thing to come out of 2009.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

With several thousand advertising, marketing and PR companies in Chicago, maintaining first position in the search engines is an unrealistic objective for a tiny agency in Ravenswood – yet there we are – #1 in Yahoo! for the term “Chicago marketing agency”. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure – we are currently on page 2 in Google – down from our all time high on Google of #3. Organic search marketing can be a vexing concept. It is so much more nebulous than most forms of advertising that it often gets pushed to the back burner – or handed off to in house marketing staff person with little time or training. This is a mistake. The dynamics of marketing have changed a great deal in the past 5 years. Search marketing is the fastest growing discipline in the marketing world. And if you have not committed to a search strategy, now is the time. Most of your competitors are spending fewer dollars and will be slower to move. This gives you a time advantage that can pay dividends because organic search takes time.

About 7 months ago we were virtually invisible to the search engines. Ranking below position 100 for just about every keyword we wanted to show for. Since we were constantly pushing our clients to do a better job with their search marketing, we decided to walk the talk.

As a small shop, we maintain a lean staff, so we required lean plan for our SEO work. We redesigned our site using best practice architecture, incorporated a blog and began actively publishing highly relevant content with embedded links to our site and to other legitimate resources. We have also utilized social media such as Facebook, Linked in and Twitter to provide more traffic and visibility to our site. We have employed a few other tricks of the trade, but all has been done with a relatively modest time effort.

The key to this effort for our agency and clients is the continuous learning of our online marketing team. We have dedicated specialists for search marketing and web development. We encourage continuous development, and require that they spend time each day staying current with best practice.

The most common mistake in this part of our industry is the casual approach that many marketers take to this very important component of their marketing strategy. Search marketing is a discipline that requires distinct and separate skill sets that include web development, search engine optimization and pay per click ad management. And while it may be an anchor point, search marketing is only one component in the rapidly evolving digital marketing space.

eMarketer chart

There is great opportunity in digital marketing, but managing and executing this work is still a great challenge for many marketers and agencies. This is reflected in the active turnover of agency relationships in the digital space as recently reported by eMarketer.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

As salespeople and marketers, we often make the mistake of thinking from the inside out as opposed to outside in. We get so focused on “selling” and explaining our features that we fail to realize that we are very often off-topic from our prospects standpoint. When our prospects hear a presentation about features, they consider it a “sales pitch.” And let’s face it, nothing kills a sales call like a sales pitch.

Think carefully about your customer’s point-of-view. Business buyers purchase based on need. Your prospect has a problem that he is trying to solve. If you have the solution, you are his ally, he will not only buy from you, he will thank you. If you are targeting properly, this need goes directly back to why your products were invented in the first place. Think on that for a while before you plan your sales presentation. Speak to the engineer that developed the product. Why was it invented? Why were specific features designed in to it? This shift in perspective will give you exponentially more credibility and relevance to your prospects.

Craft your sales presentation around the challenge that your product was designed to overcome. Help your prospect understand the practical genius and ingenuity that gave birth to your product in the first place. As a sales person you will be in rare company, setting yourself apart as a valuable supplier.

What’s that you say? You are selling in a commodity market where everybody’s product does the same thing? Then it is even more critical that you focus on your customer’s problems – the alternative is to sell on price. And unless you maintain the strongest cost advantage – you will never win selling on price.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

Worldwide Partners, Inc. recently surveyed agency executives about the predicted direction of their clients’ advertising budgets for 2009.

It’s no surprise that many seem pessimistic, but digital marketing seems to be bucking the trend.

The next few years will be quite interesting for marketers. There will be a mad rush to learn how to make the web work harder, and agencies that understand direct response will win out.

A focus on measurement and marketing metrics along with an understanding of multi-variant testing and other direct marketing methods will provide a big advantage over traditional brand marketers.

Survey results show that digital marketing will grow for 62% of marketers in 2009. Given the economy, it is a critical year to do it right.
Don’t you think?

Video: Why Most Interactive Advertising Doesn’t Work

Click Here for Survey Results

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)

As we’ve moved into this protracted period of slow to negative growth, we have talked a lot about how spending allocations must change and how the web has affected the landscape of marketing.

But shifting the focus of the message is equally important.

When people are hurting, they buy differently; they need more value. As marketers, it is key to recognize that value is really all about benefit, not price. The benefits our products deliver are now more important than ever.

The pie is smaller—so fewer will grow. But this is a time when the fight for market share is critically important. The companies that learn how to strengthen their story and interactive approach in 2009 will be the greatest beneficiaries when we pull out of this mess.

This is not a simple task—it requires effort on several fronts, but it is not that complicated either. Step into your customers’ shoes and look at what they need. Align your strengths with their needs and make yourself easy to find. They will be doing more research and buying more carefully. This in itself gives you opportunity.

To find the silver lining in this economy is a real challenge—but if you make the effort to find it, it’s there.

Scott LoSasso is President of LoSasso Advertising Inc., a Chicago based interactive agency specializing in content marketing strategies and customer acquisition for leading B2B and consumer brands. (See more posts by Scott)