Using Print Advertising to Build and Expand Client Relationships

It is important for technology vendors and solutions providers to remember that every single customer touch point presents a valuable opportunity to create affinity. And, print advertising is no exception. By structuring your campaigns and strategies with the customer in mind, your organization can leverage your investment in print advertising to build affinity. This, in turn, will lead to the kind of strong, long-lasting relationships that result in optimum client satisfaction and retention, as well as sustained profitability and growth. Download the complete UBM white paper "Print: Building The Bridge To Customer Affinity.

Research Outlines Marketing Best Practices Based on Consumption Patterns of Blogs, Video, RSS and Online Networks

The study, The Rise of B2B Applications-Based Media, reveals that the usage of emerging media among IT decision-makers has increased considerably over the past year, with video and blogs experiencing the most increased usage for work-related information. This latest study is part of TechWeb's ongoing Business Technology Media Engagement Research series.

Key study highlights include:

-- Increased Usage of Emerging Media Applications: business technology decision makers are utilizing emerging media applications more frequently to obtain work-related information, as compared to last year.

-- More Growth Expected: business technology decision makers currently using emerging media intend to consume even more in the coming year - even those who are not currently using emerging media applications.

-- Engagement with Emerging Media Leads to Action: when business technology decision makers interact with emerging media, they continue to look for related information.

For more information on this research, email Scott Vaughan.

Using Trade Shows, Conferences, and Other Meetings to Create Profitable and Long-Lasting Client Relationships

It is important for technology vendors and solutions providers to remember that every single customer touch point presents a valuable opportunity to create affinity. And, events are no exception. By organizing your presence at trade shows, conferences, and other types of face-to-face gatherings with the customer in mind, your organization can leverage your investment in events to build affinity. This, in turn, will lead to the kind of strong, long-lasting relationships that result in optimumclient satisfaction and retention, as well as sustained profitability and growth. Download the complete UBM white paper "Events: Building The Bridge To Customer Affinity.

Chief Marketing Officer Council Encourages Adding Customer Affinity Index To The Mix

Customer centric metrics are taking center stage this year as b-to-b marketers pursue new ways to measure customer engagement, satisfaction and, ultimately, loyalty to a brand.

Measuring customer satisfaction is not a new idea, but as technology puts more control in the hands of users, marketers are seeking out the optimal ways to measure how successful they are with their marketing messages, products and services.

Marketers are divided on how best to achieve this. Some are using an array of metrics and other processes to come up with a view of how they're doing with customers, while others are trying to simplify the process by using a single metric, such as the Net Promoter Score.

The NPS, developed by loyalty expert Fred Reichheld, is a score of customer loyalty based on a single question: "How likely are you to recommend our company to colleagues?"

Marketing organizations are also coming up with new metrics to gauge the customer experience.

Last month [December 2007], the Chief Marketing Officer Council released a study on customer measurement... Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Register to download the free Executive Summary or purchase the full report from the CMO Council's Customer Affinity Website.

[Note: CMP was an underwriter for this CMO Council study.]

Budget forecasters are predicting that spending on large events will be down this year. But that's not an umbrella forecast for all types of events. Instead, marketers intend to increase financing for smaller, more targeted meetings such as executive breakfasts and roundtables.

According to a recent study, "B2B Marketers' 2008 Budget Trends," by Forrester Research, which surveyed 369 marketing professionals online during September and October 2007, almost 50% of those surveyed said they would increase spending on executive seminars and events. That represents the largest projected increase among all marketing and advertising budget categories, including public relations, print advertising, direct mail and sponsorships.

Assessing intangibles

"These marketers understand that business decision-makers rely on peer testimonial, face-to-face gatherings and outside authorities to help them assess intangibles like legitimacy, credibility and trustworthiness—factors difficult to convey in both online and traditional activities," according to the report.

Although 27% said they would increase spending on trade shows while 22% said they would decrease trade show spending, survey respondents did admit to spending more on large, trade-sponsored events then any other budget category.

However, according to the study, "Client conversations and other anecdotal stories show that b-to-b marketers waste money when they scurry around last minute to staff the booth and expect show-related traffic, or a favorable booth placement, to produce leads. B-to-b marketers who fail to build interactive campaigns that preview show-specific offers, invite attendees to on-site executive briefings and continue booth conversations via e-mail should look to spend their money elsewhere."

Analyst Laura Ramos, a VP at Forrester and the principal author of the report, explained that marketers are moving away from large events, but added, "they told us that one-to-one contact is still very important in the negotiated sales process that [is going on] in b-to-b marketing and selling." Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

The customer is very much on the minds of leading marketing executives these days. Across numerous research initiatives undertaken by the CMO Council, marketers collectively indicate they are spending more time and resources than ever before on understanding and engaging with their customers, including increased investments in customer communities, CRM systems and processes, and customer intelligence and analytics. The CMO Council has been a champion of these efforts, advocating a more disciplined, measurable and integrated approach to marketing, anchored by greater knowledge and more meaningful interaction with customers and customer markets. Now we believe it is time for a new measure of marketing performance – called customer affinity – that looks beyond old brand metrics to support marketing in its critical role of building customer-centric businesses. Register to download the free Executive Summary or purchase the full report from the CMO Council's Customer Affinity Website.

[Note: CMP was an underwriter for this CMO Council study.]

The focus of IT decision-makers next year will gradually shift to software rollouts and virtualization, among other areas, from the current challenges of security, business continuity and compliance, according to a new study by technology publisher CMP.

The study, “Media Engagement & Activation,” is based on Web interviews conducted during August and September with 800 business technology executives. It was designed to provide a deeper understanding of which emerging media are being used by decision-makers and what they are doing as a result of engaging with the various media sources. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline. For more information on this research, email Scott Vaughan.

How do companies innovate successfully?

They can spend the most money, hire the best engineers, develop the best technology, and conduct the best market research. But unless their research and development efforts are driven by a thorough understanding of what their customers want, their performance may well fall short — at least compared to that of their more customer- driven competitors. John Schiech, president of the DeWalt division of Black & Decker (the division that makes power tools used by professional contractors), put it simply. When asked what made his com - pany so successful, he responded, “It’s engineers and marketing product managers spending hours and hours on job sites talking to the guys who are trying to make their living with these tools.”

This insight represents a further amplification of our ongoing research into the costs and value of corporate innovation. In 2006, as in the two previous years of our annual study of the Booz Allen Hamilton Global Innovation 1000 — the 1,000 publicly held companies around the world that spent the most on research and development — overall corporate revenues among these companies increased 10 percent. Once again, their overall spending on research and development also rose, to US$447 billion this year. And as in years past, we found no statistically significant connection between the amount of money a company spent on innovation and its financial performance. This document presents only a summary of the available research. Download this Booz Allan Hamilton report...

With audience engagement and activation essential topics for B2B technology marketers, CMP presents the study "Media Engagement & Activation." This in-depth study of nearly 1000 Business Technology decision makers (CIOs, IT Managers and Corporate and LOB Management) will help senior marketing, marketing program and media professionals:

• Gain a deeper understanding of where, when, and why IT and corporate professionals engage with various types of content and media sources
• Build an "engagement blueprint" that maps your message and marketing plan by Corp and IT pros' consumption of specific technology information -- Security, Infrastructure & Networking Hardware, Software Infrastructure, Business Applications Software, Mobile & Wireless, and Business & IT Services
• Understand usage and the roles Websites, magazines, events, search, virtual learning tools, and user controlled platforms such as blogs, wikis and RSS, and the path business technology decision makers take as they move through their personal information journey.

View this webcast featuring Scott Vaughan, VP of Marketing for InformationWeek & the TechWeb Network; Dan Yetso, Director, Global Branding & Advertising, VeriSign; and Scott Anderson, Vice President, Customer Communications Technology Solutions Group, Hewlett Packard for an engaging and insightful look behind the numbers. Moderated by Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB Magazine and Media Business. View the webcast archive....

This webcast presents only a summary of the available research. For complete details, email Scott Vaughan.

CMP Channel 's exclusive research identifies a shift in the Channel marketplace. According to this research, for the first time Vendor/Solution Provider loyalty has moved from the vendor to the customer. It also highlights the characteristics of the Channel's partners and how each is responsible for growth. The research notes that vendors prioritizing their efforts around the top 20-30 percent of partners will not necessarily help them achieve their growth objectives.

Key research findings include:

• Fifty percent of Solution Providers rate current level of vendor relationships as 'less than positive'
• Solution Providers have been proactively changing their vendors at an accelerated pace over the past two years. Fifty percent are targeting new markets and 50 percent are expanding new product lines.
• The top three most important program elements Solution Providers evaluate when considering a vendor for a strategic partnership include: product quality/reliability; technology relevance to customer base; and relative profit potential.
• The top three reasons Solution Providers add products and vendors include: technology offering/customer requirements; aligns with business goals; and offers a clear business opportunity.
• The top three reasons Solution Providers drop or de-emphasize products and vendors include: non competitive pricing; bad service; and adding other vendors.

This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please email Kate Spellman for complete details. Download this document...

This year's "EE Times Salary Survey," answered by almost 1,600 respondents, reveals that the median salary for EEs in the United States has increased slightly, to $108,800, from last year's $104,300. That compares with European respondents' median of just over $61,000, and that of Japanese engineers, coming in at $65,400. American engineers, with annual compensation nearly 40 percent higher than their closest competitors, have reason to be satisfied with their current lot monetarily, but they have reservations about foreign competition. In the first installment of "The State of the Engineer," back in August, we explored these very immigration issues affecting foreign engineers in the United States.

Here, Part II discusses how salary disparities, competition and globalization weigh on the engineer's mind. It also includes an "online exclusive" that explores further, more intricate aspects of the immigration issue. Read the complete article on EE Times online.

The IT vertical encompasses multiple subcategories—networking, security, storage, application development and wireless, to name a few—but companies successfully marketing to the professionals in this space have found there are some strategies and tactics that have universal appeal. Read the complete article on BtoBOnline.

Rapid transformation marks CIOs' careers and their impact on companies, according to InformationWeek's 2007 Defining the CIO research survey of 575 senior business and technology professionals. CIOs are in overdrive and are finally earning recognition as indispensable business visionaries. Their role in shaping business strategy marks a notable shift in responsibilities that's literally redefining what a CIO is and counters the critics who question the value of IT.

For complete details on this 6th annual research survey, email Scott Vaughan.

The vendor and solution provider communities are jointly responsible for creating a strong and viable channel which is mutually beneficial for both parties. Vendors and partners do, however, often have
contrasting view on what they currently derive from the channel and where they would like to see improvements in the future.

In this exclusive whitepaper Monty Cornell, Senior Analyst/Group Director of Channel Group at CMP Technologies and Rod Baptie, Managing Director of Baptie & Company, presents fresh research into vendor and partner attitudes on key channel issues. Download this document…

Summary results of nearly 600 business-to-business technology marketing executives. Highlights the lead-generation challenges that marketers across the board experience and delves into the strategies employed to improve lead-gen results. This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please contact us for complete details. Download this document…

Are IT professionals happy with their jobs? Are they still worried about outsourcing? What technologies are "hot" (and therefore paying the most)? And what new technologies are IT people looking to learn more about, so they can move ahead?

Find out the answers to these and many more questions in the 2007 InformationWeek National IT Salary Survey, which is now FREE (instead of $299, as it was last year), thanks to IBM's sponsorship of the IT Salaries Briefing Center. Visit the Briefing Center now to download the full PDF report or view the interactive slideshow to see the top IT jobs and salaries of 2007.

CMP shares the results of its 8th wave of its purchase process research — A decade into the digital economy, we are shifting away from the era of "e-Business," in which the internet first became part of fabric of our society, culture and business, to what we are calling the "me-Business" in which your customers are part of your network. This shift to the customer has significant implications for those who professionally buy technology for their organizations, and how you as a marketer will need to message and sell to them.

This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please contact Amy Doherty, Research Director for complete details. Download this document…

Behind the $1.5 trillion global electronics industry is a set of engineers, technical managers and executives responsible for major architecture and design decisions. The goal of this study is to explore what information channels engineers use in looking for the answers to their questions, where they go to learn about new products and technologies. Conversely, the study also reveals some channels that may be underutilized.This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please contact us for complete details. Download this document…

Up to $112 billion in advertising spending in the U.S. alone is wasted each year, cutting deeply into company profits. In this webinar Rex Briggs - author of What Sticks: Why Most Advertising Fails and How to Guarantee Yours Succeeds discusses the findings presented in his new book, and how they relate to B2B marketing, including: Why 47% of the campaigns studied failed and what you can do to succeed, How to get your boss to eagerly increase your marketing & advertising budget, how to forecast next year's advertising budget, and how to spend the same advertising budget, but get better results. View the webcast archive...

In this comprehensive study of the Technology Channel, CMP examines Solution Provider information consumption including: individual and company demographics, the reasons Solution Providers gather information, and the platforms used based on information requirements. This information is presented to help marketers develop the optimal communications strategy. This document presents only a summary of the available research. Please contact us for complete details. Download this document...

Using technology to create true business innovation is tricky. Not only do you need the right strategy, the right technology, and the right people, you also need a supportive IT culture and corporate culture. How does your company evaluate technology investments and adopt new technology? Are your IT professionals encouraged to experiment with new technology? This report, CIO Agenda: Culture, marks the first in a series of CIO Agenda projects focused on management-related issues. The purpose of this study is to supply insight into the impact that corporate and IT culture has on technology investment and adoption. $ Purchase and download this document...