These slides formed part of a webinar session led by Rachael Ball, Digital Project Manager at BDB, where she previews some of the important digital tools, techniques and approaches that progressive b2b marketers should be considering as part of their 2015 marketing communciations programmes.
8. Death of the homepage?
@bdbmarketing www.bdb.co.uk December 2014
9. Death of the homepage?
Source: European domain centre 2014
@bdbmarketing www.bdb.co.uk December 2014
10. Death of the homepage?
http://support.microsoft.com/
http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/
http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/
http://careers.microsoft.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-gb/
https://partner.microsoft.com/
Hello everybody and thanks for joining me at the home of international B2B marketing.
My name is Rachael Ball, I’m a digital project manager at BDB and my role is to make sure that our clients are using best practice and taking advantage of the latest thinking in
Today I’m going to talk about the top b2b digital marketing trends for 2015
In terms of approach while I’ve compiled a selection of some of the latest digital techniquea, where appropriate I’ve tailored the content to B2B and focused on practical takeaways rather than big sweeping topics e.g. programmatic marketing and big data.
Please also rate the presentation when you leave. It’s really important for our channel moving forward and it will impact future webinars. Ok so we’ll get started...
A quick overview of todays objectives
Firstly I’ll recap on the current marketing landscape and discuss IBM research into results of a global CMO study.
Then go over what we at BDB think are going to be some of the big b2b trends to watch in 2015 and beyond.
And to round-off I’ll give you some top tools to consider for your New Year resolutions to help make marketing more manageable.
As the buyer journey is evolving, digital marketing spend is entering new territories
According to a recent Gartner report organisations are set to increase their digital marketing spend next year with more than half (51 per cent) of the companies surveyed said they were planning to increase their digital marketing budgets by 17 per cent with customer experience technology at the forefront.
These figures are also set against the broader marketing landscape where customer experience is becoming central to successful marketing.
Though it’s worth caveating that measuring digital marketing spend is rather challenging due to different companies categorizing digital differently.
The chart on this slide is from a global IBM CMO study which looked at the top 6 factors impacting marketing.
Here we can see how empowered customers are taking control of the business relationship and where marketing is having to adapt.
Delivering customer value is paramount - and an organisation's behaviour is as important as the products and services it provides which is reflected in the rise in social media.
And the top priority on customer collaboration and influence.
So what’s on the horizon for B2B marketing in 2015?
One of the characteristics of the modern marketer outlined in E-Consultancys recent Modern Marketing Manifesto is agility.
The ability to be responsive and adaptive. To be flexible and embrace change.
The concept of agile marketing has grown from the need to try and deal with a more fluid marketing environment, driven largely by digital, and has borrowed from the principles of agile software development. Agile marketing is increasingly being used and discussed in B2C circles but less so in B2B.
As the goals of Agile Marketing are to improve the speed, predictability, transparency, and adaptability to change of the marketing function.
Responding to change over following a plan – Oreo, Waterstones Rapid iterations over Big-Bang campaignsTesting and data over opinions and conventionsNumerous small experiments over a few large betsIndividuals and interactions over target marketsCollaboration over silos and hierarchy
We’ve worked in an agile-esqe approach with a client on a product campaign with existing customers.
Agreeing to carry out 4 waves of activity over 12 months but after each activity reviewing the stats seeing what’s worked and what hasn’t and then adjust accordingly.
Worked very well as combination of eshots, webinars and social media.
In essence you can breakdown marketing into stories like tasks and then work through them in a kanban style.
Like agile project management
could 2015 spell the end of the homepage?
In a multi-device world the gTLD architecture opens up further opportunities to engage with digital content.
as you can see at the very end of this URL example traditional top level domains are those such as .com .net and . Org
Though since 2013 the global body for managing domains Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has drawn up a new list of more than 600 variations of the traditional TLDs.
As over the last 12 months a new raft of Global Top Level Domains were released and more will be launched into 2015.
Up coming releases in 2015 includes .store / .tech / .corp and also locations such as .London .berlin .Africa and Chinese and Arabic character specific variations are now available.
The gTLDs create new hubs for campaigns and can be used in advertising making the promotion of URLS even easier.
http://The launch of a new top level domain is divided into three parts:1) The Sunrise phase (60 days) : Trademark holders who have listed their trademark in the Trademark Clearinghouse can apply for the matching domain name.2) Landrush (30 days) : Special period where more entities can apply and auctions will decide who gets the domain name3) General launch : will be open for all without requirements.
Many global brands have already applied for as many trademarked domains as possible.
And finally there is also the use of sub domains to alter traditional website page structures.
In this example from Microsoft you can see how each of the subdomains creates a specific hub where content to be housed.
This again shows how the pages can be more campaign-able and creates dedicated areas that customers can revisit.
In a multi-device world the use of subdomains and the gTLD architecture to focus on customer experience.
In some circles this has sparked discussions around the death of the homepage – as in theory the right selection of domains could negate customers and prospects ever having to visit your homepage.
Ok so mobile isn’t new but thinking around B2B there are still very few mobile optimised websites or emails.
We find a large proportion of our clients customers are increasingly using mobile, especially those who travel a lot or more field based. This is reflected in the email browser stats, so one thing to look at next time you’re reading an email report is to see how many of your emails are opened on mobiles and tablets.
As we’ve all deleted emails on our mobiles that we simply cant be bothered to try and read as it’s not fit for mobile.
In B2C its becoming common place for emails to be designed responsively to scale to the size of your mobile device. In B2B less so,
We’ve recently developed a responsive newsletter template for one of our clients which has been well received.
Mobile doesn't just extend to email but thinking around International clientele we work with there are now also a wealth of opportunities with mobile to use geo-targeting which can support advertising opportunities and be very powerful in businesses that are orientated around locations.
And of course it wouldn’t be right to talk about mobile and not discuss apps!
Though apps don’t just have to be for mobile, we can now get desktop, tablet and even TV specific apps!
2015 is said to be the year of apps (so said a friend of a friend who met someone at Google!).
Trellaborg – is a good b2b example in that they work across a broad range of industrial sectors.
The end users will typically be working in the field whether that is on an oil rig or on a construction site and therefore rely on mobile technology
So Trellaborg have created a suite of apps such as helpful calculators and installation instructions to help their customers get the job done.
However in 2015 I think we’ll see better integrated apps that connect with internal systems such as CRM. As in the last few years many businesses have been burned by developing apps for the sake of having an app. The most successful apps are those that fulfil a genuine customer or business need.
And then once you have developed your app there are great channels to encourage those all important downloads to build engagement.
You can now run dedicated PPC campaigns and Twitter/LinkedIn promoted tweets for app downloads
Social is central to any successful content marketing strategy and the top platforms for B2B continue to be LinkedIn and Twitter.
Though not forgetting YouTube which again in B2B can a really powerful way to
And to round off todays webinar I not only wanted to look at the trends but also some great tools to help you keep on top in 2015
If you want to look at working in an agile/Kanban style or foster greater transparency in projects then Trello is a must.
We used it this year to manage our responsive website redesign and it was great for logging bugs and also moving tickets along from:
To do
Doing
Done
You can assign tasks to team members, add attachments, comments and labels/colour coding.
There are no limits with Trello so you can have as many boards as you need for various projects.
A very simple and visual way to be able to track progress on a project.
If you are more of a planner and need to work to some form of a gnat chart then this tops my list for 2015. Smatrsheet
It’s a brilliant cloud based, dynamic project management tool which I’m using on a daily basis. We’re trialling it out on a number of client campaigns Think Excel but on a high dose of caffeine!
They have a range of templates including content calendars, PR activity trackers and even SEO checklists.
Best of all are the collaboration options, sharing with colleagues and a team is simple and you can set levels from viewer to editor.
You can also attach files, comments and set reminders.
For those B2B marketers who love a good spreadsheet this tool could be your new best friend!
Finally to help you keep on top of all things marketing sign up to Feedly if you haven't already.
It’s similar to Google reader/RSS feed, but works across mobile and tablet. Get all the sites you love in one place.
You can find and follow the sources of information that matter to you e.g. Marketing Week, E-Consultancy, the Drum etc.
No longer do you have to flick from website to website, it’s a single place to read, share and save content.
For me I skim read through the content, and then save it to pocket for reading later when I’m travelling, or have a break.
Pocket is basically a browser extension and app that allows you to essentially bookmark content to read later. The bonus with pocket is that it syncs all the pages locally so when you are on a plane, train or anywhere for that matter without any form of wifi/connection you can still read your articles.
Thank you very much for listening and I hope you have found it interesting – I have a few minutes to take any questions
Please don’t forget to rate the webinar as you leave, or to subscribe to our channel for our upcoming events and On Demand content.
Keep an eye on out on Twitter for a blog covering our top trends for 2015 and you can also visit out BrightTalk channel to watch the other webinars from 2014 such as media relations, content marketing and watch out for new topics coming in 2015.
Ok, thanks again for your time and I hope you have a good rest of the day.