A new article on eMarketer shows there are some interesting differences between online marketing tactics being implemented in the business-to-business segment versus the business-to-consumer segment. According to a study conducted by Guideline and sponsored by the Association of National Advertisers and BtoB magazine, companies are testing a variety of new media marketing strategies and tactics in an attempt to find the best overall mix to drive results.
Alternatively, a worldwide poll by McKinsey in July 2007 showed that companies are testing Web 2.0 marketing tactics but many don't know why or what they're trying to gain from those experiments. The image to the right shows the various types of online marketing that respondents to the McKinsey poll indicated they were using and why. Notice that 11% overall did not know what they were trying to achieve from the online marketing tactics they implemented.
The chart to the left shows the difference between online marketing tactics implemented in business-to-business versus business-to-consumer companies from the aforementioned Guideline study in terms of the effectiveness of each tactic according to the respondents. I think it's interesting to see that webinars are more effective for business-to-business companies while online ads are more effective for business-to-consumer companies. This is what I would expect.
However, I'm surprised that the viral and social media marketing tactics included on the chart were rated as significantly more effective in some areas for the business-to-consumer companies and in other areas for business-to-business companies. While I would certainly expect social web marketing tactics to be effective for the BtoC market, I'm surprised there is such a big gap between BtoC and BtoB for viral video and social networks. Conversely, I'm very surprised to see BtoB companies rated podcasts and blogs more effective than BtoC companies rated those two tactics.
Of course, Web 2.0 marketing is still in its infancy and companies are still testing the waters to try to learn what works, but these studies provide interesting insight into what online marketing tactics companies are testing and the results they're seeing so far.
What do you think? Do any of the results on these charts surprise you?
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