B2B and B2C marketing is used to differentiate the internet commerce business. There are companies that sell primarily to businesses while others sell primarily to end customer. Marketing programs are the same for each type of business but they differ in executions and the outcomes of the marketing activities.

B2C (Business to Consumer) marketing campaigns are concerned with the transaction. They are usually shorter because they need to capture the customer’s attention immediately. These campaigns usually offer special deals such as discounts and vouchers that can be used both online and in the store. Their goal is to get their customers to buy immediately. B2B (Business-to-Business) marketing process is longer and is more involved. Although its goal is to turn prospects into customers, a B2B company needs to focus on building long-term relationships with their clients. They use marketing to educate their customers about their products. In an email campaign, you usually see contact information for offline transactions and contain more information on the features of the product, benefits and the prices. This marketing strategy is usually the first step, and it usually includes direct mail, telemarketing, and newsletters and follows up by a sales representative who will discuss the business’ requirement in more detail and walk the prospect through the sales cycle.

The main difference between the B2B and B2C marketing comes down to the buyer’s emotional perspective about the purchase. Consumers buying decisions are based on status, security, comfort and quality. On the other hand, business buyers base their decisions on increasing profitability, reducing costs and enhancing productivity.

In online marketing, if you are offering products and services to businesses, it is wise to invest on a marketing budget that focuses on marketing programs and materials that offer your target market what they need in order for them to make a rational business decision. Help them determine the value of your products and services through quality materials, testimonials and other activities that builds your credibility. If you are offering your products and services to end consumers, understand the motivation of your buyer and the emotional aspect of the decision. It is best to create compelling materials that build awareness of your brand and project the quality service and best price. Always remember what is important to your target audience and create an online marketing program that will reach out to them and convince them to buy your products and services.

At Generate UK we can help advise you to optimise your Online Marketing Strategy to reach your desired target audience. Our consultants are specialists in online marketing and can help focus you campaign on either B2B Marketing of B2C marketing. If you would like to discuss your Online Marketing further please do not hesitate to get in contact with us, we’d love to talk with you.

Marketing online is a cost effective way to market efficiently and effectively. Some of these benefits can be seen right away while some tend to happen further down the line - benefits that build upon those that are already in place. Listed below are some of the benefits of online marketing;

1. One advantage of marketing online versus the traditional marketing such as placing advertisements on the television, radios, magazines and newspapers is that you can change them anytime. By keeping track of your ads’ progress, if it is effective or not, you can decide to change a part of the ad, any wording or graphic, or the whole ad altogether, without any problems.

2.  Marketing online gives you real time figures and statistics. This can help you in determining your marketing campaign’s performance to help you in making key decisions that could mean the success or failure of your business. Although there are ways to track performance of traditional marketing efforts, results could not be delivered real-time.

3. The internet is available 24/7. Your ads can be seen anytime, anywhere compared to the limited airtime available in televisions and radios and limited space in newspapers and other prints.

4. On the internet, there is a variety of methods to advertise. You can use email, audio, blog, video, social media and newsletters. You have so many options in just one venue – the internet. If you opt to use these methods in traditional marketing, you would have to select several different media outlets, which can be tedious and very costly.

5. Marketing online allows you to target specific demographics – gender, age, location. You can even target would-be customers from specific income levels, education levels and occupation. This can also be done in traditional marketing but it often requires more effort.

Increasing traffic in your website is essential for marketing online. The more that you are able to get those interested in your products and services to go to your website, the better your leads are to make sales. You will get to see additional benefits of internet marketing when your website stands out from the rest. If your customers find the information they need from your website and the website is easy for them to navigate.

If you have a website and are looking for advice on how to market it effectively then why not get in contact with one of our consultants. Generate UK are a commercially thinking online marketing agency. We advise our clients on the best online options to suit their business processes, resource and available budget.

If you would like to further discuss how Social media can help you and your business please email us.
We also have a white paper on Social Media which is available to download for free here.

 I am now on a mission to make Sitekit the coolest CMS out there…. especially the latest version 9.

Ok, the title suggests 10 reasons why I like Sitekit, so here goes:

1. As a project manager, it’s nice to know that my back is covered when it comes to support. With the best will in the world, it is impossible to know everything about a piece of software. So it is reassuring that you’re only ever a step or two away from the chaps responsible for building and maintaining the software.

2. The audit trail functionality is very powerful. It is one of those features that appeals to larger organisations with extensive publishing processes. However, the ability to roll back to previous versions of content is a great feature for medium sized organisations too. Also, it’s always nice to know who made that fatal change!

3. We’ve built Sitekit websites with version 8 and version 9 and it is no surprise to know that version 9 is an improvement on version 8. What is surprising is how much of an improvement it is. The back end console and usability is a lot stronger and the time to make changes has been reduced. The objective was to go for a more Microsoft style backend that users are familiar with, which comes across really well.

4. Sitekit won’t mind me saying that their system is not for all customers. It has a price point that frankly can put smaller businesses off considering it as a tool, however larger customers with mature online strategies can do a lot with Sitekit. One area that helps to lower the total cost of ownership is the ability to manage multiple sites through Sitekit. With the right license you can manage your sites via one console, reducing your complexity and reliance on multiple systems. It also means you can train your staff on just one system.

5. The flexibility of Sitekit is very good, there are one or two quirks like the hosting and certain APIs, however in the main you can do pretty much what you need to do with the out of the box Sitekit license. I would advise you to check your requirements off with one of the Sitekit staff if you have a lot of bespoke work to do though. The other great thing about Sitekit is that you can create or migrate your existing Intranet onto the Sitekit platform and manage the pages through the system securely.

6. We were able to roll out a new website for an NHS customer within 8 weeks. This site involved nearly 200 pages, different templates for each area and unique imagery. The site was also set up for an Intranet.

7. So far, all of our customers with Sitekit have really liked it. Each customer is different and experience different reasons for considering an enterprise class content management system. Usually, the pain you’re experiencing with non-content managed website can be alleviated with Sitekit, we’d love to have a conversation with you about this.

8. Search engine optimisation is critical to the success of your website; Sitekit really helps you to set up your site in a way that is truly optimised for the search engines. Taking care of your unique page titles, search engine friendly URLs, keywords and meta. As well as integrating directly with your Google Analytics account.

9. One of the less sexy features is the file and image library. You would expect a file and image library in all content management systems, yet the way it is set up with Sitekit really makes sense once you understand the concept. The latest version extends the file and image library to an asset library, which is even easier to use.

10. The last and most important reason we use Sitekit is that is makes us look good. As a digital marketing agency, we’re keen to work with best of breed technology partners. This enables us to focus on our customer’s business objectives and really work closely with them to deliver a website aligned to their goals.

I’ve worked with many content management systems, from open source to big time expensive and most things in between. The criteria I use to gauge how good a system is, is how easy it is for the customer to manage their site and how flexible the site is once built. Sitekit does really well on both points, yes it has its quirks and you’ll need to do a bit of leg work to understand some of the Sitekit specific commands, but this is the same for any new piece of software.

If you’d like to learn more about Sitekit and how it might fit within your organisation, please do feel free to contact us. Depending on your business needs, there are some really compelling reasons for Sitekit both financially and technically. We’d be happy to discuss these with you in more detail.

Name: Ian Fergusson
Position: Marketing Executive
Campaign of choice: McDonalds Billboard (2008)
McDonalds does not have a good reputation in the fast food world as being ‘healthy’! In fact it has been sued a number of times for its advertising targeted at kids and for promoting un-healthy living. During the ‘noughties’ we saw a massive boom in healthy living and keeping fit, in my opinion borderline obsessive with fitness videos and new diets advertised wherever we looked. McDonalds clearly felt that if they didn’t alter their reputation soon, profits could ‘dip’. They left it up to the wonderful Leo Burnett to get across to the public that McDonald’s salads really are fresh!

Leo Burnett created a Billboard that over time grew lettuce, to form the words ‘Fresh Salads’. Creatively I feel this is ingenius. In a sense we see here the first ever living billboard. This wasn’t the fastest campaign ever launched, the sign took 3 weeks to grow, but the message delivered is clear and strong, If McDonalds can get fresh lettuce on a sign, surely that leaf in my double cheese burger is just as fresh and healthy.  Creativity is the driving force behind a message; this innovative idea generated top class media coverage that lasted several months after the campaign had finished.  However, I’m not a big fan of McDonalds as a brand, so I felt the need to criticise at least one aspect of this campaign. I do not like the Green on a grey background. I feel this is a slip up on the art direction and I’m sure many creative’s were confused over that decision.  I hope you found this interesting and please post any opinions you have about this campaign. After all it is you McDonalds are trying to impress, has it worked?

Next week it’s Mike Robinsons’ turn to share his Marketing Highlight of the past decade.

Generate UK are an online marketing agency focused on finding the right environments to deliver targeted communications, using the best technologies to achieve maximum results. 

Why do we believe in online marketing?

• It’s measurable
• It’s quick
• It’s costs effective

The Top 20 Chart has been made up from our own commercial experiences, through our customers and partners’ knowing what has proven to be successful and what hasn’t.  We hope that our Top 20 Chart provides you with a number of useful ideas to put into practice and helps you strive towards an online strategy, which will take your online communication and website’s digital presence to that next level!  

We’re keen to hear from our readers, so please feel free to add your comments and own ideas below.

When brainstorming for that ‘perfect marketing idea’ what is more important, strategy or imagination? In most cases, the answer depends on the personality type of the responder. In our world of digital marketing, we get different responses depending on whether the individual is a design type or a technical type.
  
There’s no real right or wrong answer, they both co-exist very well together. Imagination without strategy means that your ideas aren’t targeted. These ideas are usually very pure and very exciting. They can sometimes be recognised as more ‘art’ than ‘design’. 

Strategy and knowledge without any imagination doesn’t get you very far. It makes thinking of new ideas almost impossible, when the brainstorming process happens, you have to fall back on experiences you or somebody else has already had. You end up just recycling ideas that have already worked in the past. 
 
It’s at these times when strategy will get in the way of anything new.
Looking closely though, I believe there is a third facet, without which both imagination and strategy are useless - it’s the ability to translate ideas into action. That is, making an idea become reality.
 
Yesterday we looked at a top London design agency’s quarterly newsletter. The design is OK and the strategy easy to understand - it’s a collection of stories written by different members of the business.  

The difference is that the ideas are realised without any compromises - raw ideas. Reading the newsletter, it made us laugh out loud, some of their ideas that stood out are some of the best and most original I have seen. The funny thing was that that these were creative ideas that were not accepted by their customers. 

There are probably hundreds of design agencies that produce ideas of the same quality, but because their ability to translate ideas into action isn’t good enough they may never have that sort of impact. 
 
My younger brother is a Graphic Designer, he gets annoyed when he shows me his portfolio and so many of the original ideas are no longer visible because the client or account manager demanded so many changes. His ideas start as fresh and raw but then become increasingly strategy led as the evaluation process goes on. 

As a designer myself, I hate seeing my original ideas become watered down. That’s why it is important to have a well balanced team where everyone understands their strengths and roles in the ideas process. 

I do not think that there are many marketers or designers who have the perfect balance of imagination and strategy but the difference will always be the in the ability to translate ideas into reality. 

Generate UK can help you find original ideas that communicate exactly what you want to your customers. We draw on experience from our knowledge of marketing strategy and our tuned imaginations. Additionally, we can show you how to take your internet marketing to the next level, making it more targeted.  Call us now on 01635 550431 involve us in your next marketing campaign.