Marketing to other businesses? Here’s where your digital priorities should lie

Marketing budgets the world over have been squashed and marginalized, forcing people to focus their efforts on those areas which are going to give them the greatest return on their investments. So what should you be focusing on in 2013 — and more specifically and how does this filter down to you if you’re talking to other businesses?

The first amazing thing to note is that email marketing is, according to a recent eMarketer survey, a higher spending priority than social media and search marketing. This is however not an indication that the social media bubble is bursting – what it is an indication of is that the return from email marketing is still perceived as being a lot higher than social.

I say “perceived” as many organisations struggle to find a common denominator by which to measure the ROI on their social marketing efforts.

Seventy percent of respondents said that they were focusing their efforts on further developing their websites and web presence. Email marketing is falling into second place with social lagging slightly in third place.

This web development focus can be largely attributed to the B2B swing towards being focused on content development. Content has become the new buzzword in the digital marketing space; and with good reason. Content is the life blood of any digital marketing strategy. The content of the site does everything from explain your product or service – all the way through to convincing your target customer that you are more capable than your competitors at achieving their business goals.

The above graph does show that there is a lot of content creation in social media; but way more content is developed for websites. What this means is that people are making the effort to ensure that they place the content in front of their most receptive audiences.

Personally I feel that this is quite key. It is not suggesting that the audience is not on a social media platform — but rather than the social media channels do not directly influence sales and content consumption.

Social media is a great way to spread your message — or at least the fact that you have a message worth spreading. Ultimately though the message itself is not contained within a social platform — the social platform points you to a website which is then responsible for converting your prospect into a lead.

That is the singular reason why website development is going to get the bulk of the marketing spend –– and that is to ensure the conversion of visitors to clients.

The site itself – including design, usability and content is the digital vehicle which will ultimately ensure success of digital strategies in 2013.

This is great news for consumers as the people in charge of marketing are forced to communicate with you when are where you need it as opposed to when and where they want to.