Recently, Hodgson/Meyers’ President Gary Meyers was asked by the American Marketing Association (AMA) to share his take on what’s hot in B2B marketing for 2012. Here is what he had to say:
Safe Bets, Risks and Rewards: What 2012 Means for B2B Marketers
By Mary M. Flory
Content strategy? Social media? Mobile commerce? Lead generation? What should savvy B2B marketers bet on for 2012?
B2B Marketing polled several industry insiders to see what’s hot, what’s not and which strategies are worth their blood, sweat and tears, not to mention their time and money.
Here’s what they had to say.
Gary Meyers, Creative Director and President, Hodgson/Meyers Advertising:
In 2012, the economy will roar, relatively speaking. I’m not an economist. My observations are based on what we see in our world. Our ‘Tier One’ clients reside in the industries of telecommunications, financial services, security, industrial testing equipment, insurance and enterprise technology. And yeah, we’re in Seattle, which has a more robust economy right now, than say, Flint, Mich. But our clients represent a diverse geography, from New York to Chicago to Minneapolis to Houston to Little Rock, Ark., to Tucson, Ariz., to Seattle. For the most part, they’re bullish. So we’re bullish.
Brand positioning and brand activation are more relevant than ever in B2B. Content proliferation often translates to brand disintegration. More marketing “stuff” in the marketplace doesn’t mean more brand recognition. To the contrary––for the customer, it’s just more muck and mud and goo. The democratization of content creation hasn’t necessarily raised the quality bar. We hear from client marketing directors that their story is diluted and marginalized. We tell them: “Plant a flag in the ground. Be big at something. Own your space and rigorously, even single-mindedly at times, execute on that bigness with your marketing outreach.”
Data mining will be hot in B2B. While data mining, data aggregation and data selling are engendering intense debate regarding ethics and legalities in the consumer space (where commerce in consumer-data is a multi-billion dollar industry), I see more lenience, more leeway and more opportunity for B2B marketers. I think there is a huge, untapped potential, not so much for the trading of data, but for B2B companies to capture and analyze data from their own prospects and to market to them accordingly. I think, psychologically, we are more protective and guarded about divulging personal data that we are about divulging workplace data. For many professionals, our jobs involve research and purchase of products and services. It is more a requirement versus a choice as in the consumer psychosis. This more lenient business-to-business mindset opens the door to decision-tree content delivery and data capture on the Web, which leads to any number of re-targeting and nurturing activities. I believe, from what we see with clients, that data-based nurturing activities are still underresourced and underserved, especially considering that 90 percent of fresh B2B marketing leads, on average, are not ready for prime time.
To see what other industry leaders had to say on this topic, please visit the AMA website to view the rest of this article.
