Originally posted by Channel Marketing Insights, written by Anna Johnson.

Experienced marketers spend years honing their skills to identify ways to differentiate their product from the competition. And as traditional differentiators like price, quality, and features become more uniform across the competition, the marketing differentiating tool becomes obsolete. The mistake that’s often made, however, is the idea that commodities don’t require marketing. In fact, the opposite is true.

Channel Management Insights sat down with Eaton Electrical’s Channel Operations Manager, Tamie Janocsko, to learn what marketing techniques the company uses to help grow its business. While other companies fear the risk of their product becoming a commodity, Eaton Electrical embraces it. There’s a certain freedom when you abandon the rules you learned in Marketing 101. Once released from the dogma of product marketing, you can start to see new opportunities in parts of the business that you never saw before. Do you think that Eaton’s best practices don’t apply to your business because you happen to be the clear market leader based on traditional differentiators? Think again. The following insights, while especially useful for marketing commodities, are not entirely novel. All companies can reap the benefits.

Uncovering the Opportunities

So how does marketing make an impact when selling a commodity? “Determine the areas during the selling and buying process that are invaluable to your customer. Chances are you will uncover a new opportunity for differentiating your business,” says Janocsko. For Eaton, they discovered a long time ago that customers were loyal to their distributors. If Eaton could win distributors’ business over the competition, then Eaton’s revenue would grow. “Changing the focus of our marketing efforts to making meaningful connections with over 2,200 partners helped us to differentiate our company in a new way.” Janocsko continued, “So we set out to design a selective partner program where Eaton was instrumental in every partner’s success.” Here are three ways that Eaton Electrical’s partner program helps them to differentiate themselves from the rest of the competition.

Exclusivity is Rewarded, Not A Requirement

At first glance, Eaton’s partner program levels of gold, silver, and platinum are seemingly generic…in name only. But take a peek at the benefits for each level and discover an impressive and cohesive program strategy that enables partners to be successful. At each level there is training, certification, price discounts, rebates, and marketing and sales support that is perfectly configured and packaged based on the level of commitment from each partner. In addition to these benefits, Eaton carefully selects partners that exclusively sell their products. Exclusivity is rewarded, but not a requirement to participate in the partner program. The partner’s level of commitment determines the  level of benefits. For example, “The prestigious platinum Eaton Electrical partner level is very selective and offers preferred pricing among other program benefits that gives them a competitive edge over other distributors in their local market,” says Janocsko.

Solution Selling

Eaton has invested a lot of time, training, and materials to support solution-based selling. Their distributors almost always bundle other materials and services with Eaton products. So Eaton has taken the initiative to create marketing and selling materials to support different solutions ranging from alternative energy, industrial, residential, and smart grid. By preparing the solution materials so they can be easily customizable, partners can focus on finding and closing new business instead of figuring out ways to market their services. “The solution materials are carefully designed with compelling and relevant content.” Janocsko continued, “The distributors would have to work really hard and spend a lot of money to create their own materials of the same high quality.” This benefit alone helps their partners to impress new clients.

In addition to the solution marketing materials, Eaton has created an impressive virtual city and home so that distributors and their clients can learn for themselves how Eaton’s must-have products fit into the overall construction scheme. “The virtual house and Eaton City are beautifully designed, and easy to access and explore online,” says Janocsko. “These virtual experiences help the contractors convey to their prospective clients how important their work is to the overall construction project. By establishing themselves as the best expert in their field, this impression helps them to win new business.”

Advice For Newbies

We asked Tamie, “What advice would you offer someone who finds themselves working for a company with commoditized products and at risk for little or no growth?” She offered the following suggestions:

1. Get to know the market. Ask yourself, what are the trends in the market and how do your commodities fit in with the trend? For example, optimizing energy and energy conservation are key drivers in the market right now and Eaton has answers as to how their products tie into energy conservation solutions.
2. Get to know your channel partners. Find out why they like working with you. Ask what problems they are facing and what they need to be successful.
3. Write the strategy based on the information collected in items 1 and 2. Find out what important initiatives your partners are taking and ask yourself, do they address what the market is demanding? And then create the market strategy and programs that help tie your partners’ initiatives to what the market is demanding.
4. There will be prospective partners whose business initiatives are not compatible with your market strategy. That’s OK. Not every prospective partner will be a good fit. Being selective has its benefits and the partners lucky enough to participate will appreciate the exceptional experience your program has to offer.

Conclusion

Marketing commodities isn’t as scary as most people make it out to be. In fact, businesses like Eaton Electrical that see opportunities when others see limitations are successful and resilient. This year, Eaton celebrates 100 years of providing the world power management solutions. This is a testament to their ability to find creative and impactful ways to differentiate themselves so their business continues to grow. And with prospective partners competing to take part in Eaton’s program, these lessons are not only wise but ripe for the taking.

FUSION b2b announces a survey of business-to-business (B2B) marketers that will identify marketing budget outlook, top marketing priorities, and tactical marketing plans for the upcoming 2012 fiscal year.

The quick and anonymous survey will be conducted via SurveyMonkey, a web-based tool, and will pose four (4) questions:

1. For the coming fiscal year, do you intend to increase or decrease marketing activities and budgets?
2. What is your most important marketing priority for 2012?
3. Which marketing tactics will increase or decrease in 2012?
4. Which category best describes your company?

To take the anonymous survey, click here!

“In this difficult economy, effective marketing planning and budgeting is more important than ever. A survey of this sort can certainly help you understand marketing trends or where you might plan marketing initiatives for the coming year,” states Neil Brown.

In addition, the results of this 2012 Marketing Outlook Survey will be announced in an upcoming webcast entitled Marketing Planning Best Practices for BtoB. The free webcast is scheduled for Thursday, November 10, 2011 at 1 pm CST. To register, click here!

This blog is an excerpt from Neil Brown’s book: Branding Best Practices: A Guide to Effective Business and Product Naming.

What’s in a name? That which we call a facial tissue or gelatin dessert or adhesive bandage by any other name would still be the same Kleenex or Jell-O or Band-Aid. Yet, for fear of infringing on the more common “trademarks” of these products, you have to admit that there is a definite power behind these brand names. Creating the ideal name for your company, product or service will have great influence on its successful launch and staying power in the marketplace.

How important is a name? First, there is great power behind successful company or product naming. While not even the best name can save a bad product or idea, the ideal name can have tremendous impact on its success. A truly great name is an advertisement in itself. It is the foundation on which the brand can grow and thrive.

Brand name development is certainly one of the first, and very likely, most important steps in marketing, and can dictate success or failure. Consider that many marketing experts estimate new product failure rates averaging 90%. And while campaigns change often, naming is likely the most permanent element in the marketing mix, if not the most costly to change.

And the importance of naming is growing. Why? Many of the best names are already taken, if not trademarked. In some categories, trademark conflicts during a name development exercise can approach 80-90%. Consider that in 2007, 33 million domain names were registered, with total domains now over 153 million. Also in 2007, a record 298,796 trademarks were filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and another record 39,945 international trademark applications were received by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Yet despite these trends, too often naming is subjective or poorly executed, without the disciplined processes that are applied in other business areas. While other departments employ statistical process control and black-belt initiatives, marketing may coordinate a naming contest in which the “favorite” name is voted on by employees. Or the CEO’s secretary weighs in. Or the top marketer campaigns his or her pet name. You know how ugly this can get.

Given the trends in brand failures and name saturation, a more thorough and disciplined process should be used. But how? An internal task force? A contest? Certainly you can hire a boutique branding consultancy, or the branding agency division of a major advertising holding company.

Internal committees are more often than not, not effective, while hiring naming consultants is most often very expensive. Typical fees will start at $10,000 for a boutique to develop a brand name, and rise to millions for a corporate name from a branding division of a large advertising network.

With the high cost of product development, market launch, or corporate name change, not to mention a name’s impact on image and reputation, the stakes are high—and the probability of failure high.

For more information on the book: Branding Best Practices: A Guide to Effective Business and Product Naming, link here.

FUSION sister agency, IDeas BIG (brand identity group) creates names for brands and companies, as well as brand identities. For more information regarding IDeas BIG, link here.

Business-to-business marketing is changing rapidly. The marketing mix is evolving, in a good way. There are many reasons for this metamorphosis. First, business-to-business buyers (like consumers) increasingly use the Internet for sourcing and selecting products and services. Therefore search optimization becomes more important than ever. Internet search engine optimization (SEO) and social media both improve search results.

Second, traditional marketing tactics like advertising and trade shows are expensive, and are being cut back and often replaced with less expensive Internet and social media. To prove this, in a recent study we identified downward trends in advertising, printing and tradeshows. Yes, there are exceptions.

Third, Internet-based marketing (including social media) can be more measurable than traditional marketing. Fourth, a focus on lead generation can be facilitated by website registration pages, and communicated via social media and integrated with traditional marketing.

The new marketing mix still requires a strategic marketing foundation to ensure all downstream marketing supports brand strategy and positioning. But the new marketing mix buckets many traditional marketing tactics as Outbound Marketing, and many Internet and social media activities as Inbound Marketing. Marketing measurement is integrated with both Inbound and Outbound and feeds back to planning and budgeting via reporting as a closed-loop system. See the modern marketing mix diagram below.

Free Grading Service Now Available!

A new marketing grading service is available that measures company or brand marketing performance on a 4.0 grade point average scale similar to education, and then issues a Marketing Report Card.

The free Marketing GPA™/Marketing Report Card™ service grades five (5) categories including:  brand execution, marketing programs, Internet marketing, social media integration, and marketing results measurement. The service is available to qualified brand owners from FUSION b2b, a Chicago-region marketing agency.

A brief, web-based form must be completed and submitted to FUSION b2b. The “student” or brand owner will receive a Marketing Report Card report with both category (above) grades, and a composite grade. In addition FUSION provides three (3) “Big Ideas” or recommendations for improving your marketing GPA.

“A number of diagnostics are available that measure Internet and social media effectiveness. To our knowledge, there are no free, public services that measure both traditional and Internet marketing,” states Neil Brown, FUSION b2b Chief Marketing Officer. “Obviously, this customized evaluation and recommendation cannot be executed real-time. Our goal is to respond to requests for the Marketing Report Card within 48 hours. We hope this service will be fun and assist marketers in driving change within their organizations.”

To access the Marketing GPA™/Marketing Report Card™ form , Click HERE.

A  webcast entitled LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter Best Practices for Business-to-Business Markets is now open for  registration on the FUSION b2b website.  The free webcast is scheduled for Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 12 pm CST.

FUSION b2b  Social Media Manager Brian Reuhl and Chief Marketing Officer Neil Brown share  tips and tricks, new business-friendly features and real B2B examples for  these important new media platforms. The Powerpoint presentation deck will be  available to registrants following the webcast.

“Social  media is the fastest growing marketing medium in business-to-business, with a  growing body of success stories that measure lead generation, awareness  building, improved search results and more. But an effective social media  program is much more than managing social profiles. We intend to share more  advanced features of these important platforms”, explains Neil Brown.

To register for the free LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter Best Practices Webcast Click Here!

The Right Foundation Can Make or Break your Marketing Automation Initiative

Credit to Josh Stailey of the Pursuit Group, Inc. and The Business Marketing Institute

To say that marketing automation is a key initiative for many companies this year is an understatement. “Not implementing a marketing automation solution may be the ultimate career limiting move for today’s marketers,” suggests global technology research company IDC.

Companies are acquiring marketing automation capabilities to maximize their ability to move prospects through extended sales cycles, and optimize their marketing and sales resources.

Unfortunately, many of those companies will focus on the technology and overlook the steps necessary to successfully launch and sustain a marketing automation program. A recent study showed that only a quarter of respondents get full value from their investment in marketing automation, results that parallel the early days of CRM implementations.

And that’s not good enough. Particularly when you consider that doing just a few things right will virtually guarantee a multiple of your investment in higher sales and more cost-effective marketing.

The Four Pillars of Marketing Automation Success

Getting marketing automation right starts with a wider definition than simply an investment in new technology. In fact, technology is just one leg of a four-pillar foundation: Technology, process, content and connectivity. Here’s an overview of the other three pillars:

• Process is an efficient routine for every step and stage in the marketing/sales cycle; technology schedules and oversees the actions and reactions in a pre-designed workflow;

• Content is the substance of every outbound and inbound communications between you and your prospects; technology houses and deploys the right communications at the right time;

• Connectivity ensures that all possible touchpoints—e-mail, landing pages, each page on a Web site—are wired together; technology provides that complex, real-time interlink

Neglect just one of these and your marketing automation system cannot deliver full value. Neglect more than one and your implementation is likely to fail.

Pre-Automation—Preparing for Technology

Prior to buying a marketing automation solution, or even looking for one, review your marketing/sales assets. Determine which of your assets can be integrated and which need to be created or replaced. Here’s a beginning checklist:

1.) Lists – You probably have more lists than you think. That’s par for the course in marketing and sales, where efforts are often dispersed, disjointed, or even dysfunctional. How are the lists you have in each of these categories?

• Leads - Most organizations get leads from a variety of sources: trade media, the company website, tradeshows, sales people, etc. Are yours organized with separate fields for first name, last name, phone, address? Do you have email addresses for your leads? What qualifying information do you have about them and is each information element in an individual field?

• Prospects - Also known as qualified leads. Because most companies don’t have a nurture cycle for qualified-but-not-ready-to-buy prospects, these tend to be neglected, if not abandoned outright. What do you know about your interaction with them? These may be your greatest source for future sales;

• Customers - Because they often disappear from the marketing radar once they come on board, these will also be a major source of new marketing opportunity. What information do you have about them (revenue, purchase cycles, types of products, services, etc.) and their people? Is it organized effectively?

Don’t worry about what to do with these lists just yet. At this point, you need to know they’re there, and how to get them organized properly.

2.) Links - Identify every place your company maintains a digital presence, as each will be a link that needs to be captured and poured into your marketing automation system. This is far more than the “contact us” page on your Web site:

• Every single page on your Web site should be able to capture visitor activity, especially if you want to track individual online behavior and use that to automatically customize the next step in the process (e.g., send a particular type of content or alert a sales rep);

• Landing pages from various campaigns should be trackable, as well as the web browsing done after;

• Web forms, where visitors register to download white papers or other information. These are perfect tools for automated data capture;

• E-mails, including corporate campaigns and the ones your sales reps run on their own

Chances are, your company has dozens, if not hundreds, of links to identify and move into the marketing automation system.

3.) Content - Thanks to the Web and Google, buyers today want at least part of their connection to you to be electronic, web-based and self serve. Which makes content the fuel that keeps the marketing automation engine running.

Most companies have a ton of content that can be sliced up, repurposed and repackaged in a way that prospects want to absorb throughout their buying cycle. So expect to assemble lots of articles, reviews, independent tests, white papers, configurators, technical sheets and the like. And that’s just for your website for reading or downloading.

Then add in:

• E-mails and attachments for long-term nurture campaigns (think one contact every two weeks for a buying cycle that extends over 18 months and branches by segmentation);

• Landing pages;

• Videos and presentations;

• Social media posts, including company and individual blogs

So inventory your content. In our experience, more companies underestimate the content they will need than any other of the marketing automation “pillars.” This sales-nurture content will be the hardest to acquire or create…and the most valuable in your future nurture cycles.

4.) Workflow - This is the sharp edge of process, the way you get marketing automation to integrate links, lists and content into a coherent selling cycle. Leading vendors have built robust workflow creation tools into their software, and good workflow strategists can leverage internal resources twenty-fold with automated—instead of manual—steps in the cycle.

Your pre-technology challenge is to audit your current workflows (if you have them), or, if not, to document how marketing goes about landing, qualifying and nurturing leads, and what criteria they use to determine when a lead is ready to buy. A good way to do that is by using flowcharting and process mapping to show how a lead moves through your funnel and becomes a customer (or not).

Here’s a high-level workflow sample:

The boxes represent activities you take in marketing to leads and prospects: sending e-mails, creating landing pages and webforms, loading and making content available via links. The diamonds represent the options that a targeted lead or prospect has…opening an e-mail (or not), visiting a landing page (or not), completing and submitting a webform (or not), etc. Each of those yes/no decisions yields new boxes in the workflow, which yields new decisions. And so on, until the target buys, opts out, or you decide that enough is enough. For your salespeople, the most important boxes in a workflow are the notifications or alerts, when the prospect is ready to buy and needs person-to-person contact.

The marketing automation system you select will integrate this seething mass of people, process and content into a unified, effective nurture marketing flow. But only if you tell it to. And in order to do that, you need to go through all of this.

This is not meant to be discouraging. But it’s easy to underestimate what it takes to design, provision and implement an effective automated nurture process. And while marketing automation can yield enormous return on investment, there’s no magic potion that makes it easy.

Credit to Josh Stailey and The Business Marketing Institute

The Secret Engine Behind Effective Lead Generation, Nurturing and Management

Credit to Josh Stailey of The Pursuit Group, Inc. and The Business Marketing Institute

For several good reasons, marketing automation is among the most significant initiatives in the marketing profession today. Yet, there remains considerable confusion about what marketing automation is and how to make it work.

In its original incarnation a few ago, marketing automation was seen as a way to make enterprise marketing departments more efficient. The toolset usually included a database for managing digital assets (content, art, logos, etc.), a system for managing asset production and approvals, collaboration tools, a campaign calendar application and some e-mail and web content management software.

But since then, buyers of almost everything—from consumer products to business-to-business equipment and services—have participated in a revolution that has forced marketers to address things like:

• The fact that a growing number of potential buyers no longer reveal themselves or invite personal interaction with vendors until they have researched and determined a solution, then settled on a short list;

• The need to understand and respond to “digital body language” –the online behavior of customers and prospects;

• The rise of social media as a tool for prospects to learn about solutions and customers to grade their own vendor experiences

Now—especially for SMB (small- and medium-sized businesses) and B2B companies – the term “marketing automation” revolves around what Industry analyst Ian Michiels calls “marketing engagement automation,” which focuses on how prospects and customers interact with the array of online and offline communications channels. In his own words, new marketing automation “might include setting up an email campaign, sending it out, and tracking performance; or creating a new landing page with a form capture element; or more importantly, managing communication with a prospect across multiple channels (email, the Web site, microsites), and tracking their behavior to identify the relative propensity to purchase.”

That’s close enough to ease the confusion. Now, the most important issue…

Why Your Company Needs Marketing Automation

Almost every BtoB company out there has a leaky sales funnel. In many, only the hottest prospects and the clearly unqualified leads get the proper treatment; the rest of the funnel leaks like a sieve. The qualified—but not yet sales-ready—leads are routinely deferred, forgotten or ignored until they fade away. Yet, it is this last class of prospects that often defines whether your company is just getting by or going to the next level. For example, in high technology, several studies have shown that over half of the people who demonstrated initial interest actually purchased a product in that category within two years. But in many cases the initial supplier they reached out to didn’t nurture them, so they ended up buying from another vendor.

The new marketing automation tools enable your company to accomplish two major goals:

1. Stop the leaky funnel by nurturing qualified prospects until they are ready to buy, and do it without involving valuable sales talent in the process;

2. Recognize the new “stealth” buyers by their online behavior, track their interactions, provide necessary information, then respond quickly when their behavior signals they are ready to buy

Even if this was all an automated marketing/sales funnel could do, it would be valuable to most companies. But that’s just the start; the role of marketing automation is to not only prevent prospects from falling through the cracks, but to:

• Increase success ratios by tailoring and managing outbound interactions and content to each prospect’s specific situation and need;

• Use inbound marketing to generate and nurture potential buyers not reached by outbound lead generation efforts;

• Score leads and prospects based on both their “fit” (e.g., industry, size, etc.) and behavior (e.g., online and offline activities);

• Develop, then maintain, a seamless flow of information between marketing and sales;

• Provide in-depth, real-time reporting on all leads, prospects, activities and communications between you and potential buyers;

Sound like a silver bullet for marketers? Could be…but it doesn’t come easily.

Marketing Automation Is Not A Set-and-Forget Tool

Even though marketing automation is a popular and fast-growing concept, some industry observers have already issued warnings about the “CRM effect.” That’s the old (at least in Internet years) problem in which companies rushed to embrace CRM as the “silver bullet” for sales automation without having appropriate processes in place throughout their sales force. The result: some two-thirds of all CRM initiatives “failed” to reach stated goals. And some multi-million dollar investments in CRM were abandoned altogether.

CRM has proven to be a valuable tool, however, when launched and sustained with appropriate sales processes, training and motivation. But memories are short and the same risk holds for marketing automation. Four ingredients must be in place for marketing automation to succeed:

1. Marketing processes defined and tested;

2. The ability to comprehensively capture prospect interactions on your website (and with every other form of digital interaction—e-mail landing pages, etc.—as well);

3. A library of content that can be applied to every possible interaction. This includes content customized by product, geography, buying cycle stage, or other relevant filters;

4. The ability to hand sales-ready prospects over to your sales force at the right time (and get them back for further nurturing if they do not buy)

That’s a handful. But we think it’s worth the effort. Consider the research from Aberdeen Group that shows companies with the highest performance in annual revenue and return on marketing investment were four times more likely than peers to automate customer engagement with a marketing automation solution.

Marketing automation helps marketers increase the number of leads and prospects moved through the funnel, manage both outbound and inbound marketing efforts simultaneously, and deliver only sales-ready leads to your sales pros. In addition, real-time visibility into the pipeline enables marketers to focus on channels that drive the highest conversion rates, calculate customer acquisition rates/costs by marketing channel, and identify when campaigns or initiatives drive above average close rates.

And the results extend far beyond marketing metrics; marketing automation can shorten the time for prospects to convert to revenue, reduce bottlenecks in the sales cycle, and help forecast sales growth more accurately by identifying realistic and achievable targets.

On the unlikely chance that you haven’t heard of marketing funnel automation until now, you will in 2011. The concept is no longer a novelty, but a proven boost to marketing effectiveness and a rational and accountable way to—finally —close the gap between marketing and sales.

Credit to Josh Stailey of The Pursuit Group, Inc. and The Business Marketing Institute

If you frequently visit pages on Facebook you are in for a change of scenery. As of March 1st, 2011 all Facebook pages will be switched to a new page layout. This layout gives page administrators several new capabilities that they did not have previously. This page layout will now mimic the changes that were recently made to all personal Facebook pages. Instead of Company pages having the tabs across the top of the page, they will have their tabs on the left hand column.

Perhaps the coolest featured being released to Facebook company pages is the ability to interact as the company. The ability to write on another page’s wall, as well as ‘like’ that page is now possible. This opens a world of possibilities when you want to connect with other companies, or build B2B relationships on Facebook. This will now give Facebook users the ability to segment their personal interactions, and business interactions without the fear of using their personal Facebook profile for professional uses. Facebook has put a lot of effort into these new features and will continue to roll out new features in the future. Keep your eye out for whats next!

Credit to Michael Brenner and B2B Marketing Insider

Mobile is one of the hottest topics in B2B Marketing in 2011. More businesses are embracing smart-phones and tablets as part of their support and operations. And more people are moving their search and content interaction activities to their mobile devices.

To meet this change in media habits, Marketers will spend upwards of $13 or $14 Billion dollars on Mobile Marketing in 2011 according to the Mobile Marketing Association as we discussed in Mobile Marketing In 2011 – Are You Ready? With all this excitement, B2B Marketers are looking to build mobile into their marketing plans but are facing challenges  in how to get started.

SMS, MMS, WAP…There are a ton of acronyms and terms that can seem confusing. And there is not much experience in B2B Marketing with successful mobile campaigns. So here are some things to keep in mind when considering concrete Mobile Marketing activities:

• Presence. You need to be present where your customers are searching for information.
• Relevance. The content needs to meet a specific need and be delivered in the proper context for mobile.
• Keep It Simple. The mobile platform demands simplicity so users aren’t frustrated.
• Real-time. It’s gotta be fast or don’t do it.

What kind of tactics should you consider in order to get started in Mobile Marketing:

1. Mobile Search.With the increases in adoption of 3G and 4G mobile smart-phones, the volume of searches happening on mobile phones is going to continue to increase. According to TechCrunch, Mobile Search is expected to grow to 20% of all searches by 2012. The  article suggests two main areas to focus on in mobile search. First, the display area is much smaller. This means each search yields far fewer results and thus higher click-through rates. The other focus should be Local Search, Search marketers need to consider geo-targeting their ads where appropriate.
2. Mobile Display.There are so many different phones and Operating System (OS) configurations that the number of formats can be overwhelming. Marketers need to plan for this in their budgets. There is also a myriad of exchange, network and service providers to chose from including Burstly, InMobi, Apple iAd plus the traditional players like Google’s AdMob, Yahoo and Bing.
3. Text and Video.Both of these content approaches has its unique challenges. For text, permission is a huge concern. And you want to make sure the medium is used in the right context. Updates at trade shows is one good example of how to use SMS and MMS messages. In video, formats is an issue with the Apple OS  and any video size and length needs to be throught through very carefully.
4. Games and Apps. Last year it seemed like everyone wanted to develop a game or an ”app.” For B2B, I have already questioned the role of Augmented Reality For B2B Marketing in 2011? While I do believe B2B Marketers need to be testing new ad formats, I’m not sure this will see wide adoption in 2011. However, if B2B marketers want to create a truly unique and highly interactive experience, then this may be an area to explore.

I continue to be very interested in the latest news and tips on Mobile  for B2B Marketing . I hope this helps you to start thinking about how to get started. Let me know if I missed anything. This is a compicated and highly evolving space so would love to hear your feedback.

Photo Source: Dru Bloomfield on Flickr

About the Author

Michael Brenner is the author of B2B Marketing Insider and serves as Sr. Director of Integrated Marketing for SAP. Michael’s blog is dedicated to sharing the ideas, topics and marketing strategies that drive real results like sales, leads, and higher customer loyalty. Follow online at http://www.B2BMarketingInsider.com Follow on Twitter: @brennermichael @B2BMktgInsider