BtoB Media Business - November 2011 - (Page 7)

COVER STORY Marketers make their needs known Media companies are rapidly evolving to ensure they remain a vital link between buyers and sellers BY SEAN CALLAHAN hese days, Tellabs, a marketer of telecommunications equipment, runs a minimal amount of print advertising in the trade press. Instead, it publishes a custom print magazine called Insight, which George Stenitzer, Tellabs VP-marketing and corporate communications, likens to a 16-page print ad that he sends out quarterly. T Tellabs produces the publication with editorial help from Penton Media’s ConnectedPlanet website. In addition to relying on Penton for production help, Tellabs wants access to the media company’s audience. The publication is mailed to ConnectedPlanet’s audience as well as the circulation lists of some other telecom brands. Stenitzer wants to reach this broad audience, but he is also concerned about circulation. He craves granular, immediate access to decision-makers who are in the market right now for new products. He believes b-to-b media websites can identify these buyers through analytics. “I can’t figure that out, but you can,” Stenitzer said while addressing a room full of b-to-b publishers at the American Business Media Executive Forum last month in Chicago. “I wish you’d sell it to me. It’s extremely valuable to me.” It’s nothing new for b-to-b marketers to want access to a targeted audience from their media partners. In a survey conducted this spring by BtoB, three of the top four reasons marketers gave for using marketing services from b-to-b media companies involved audience: audience reach, audience knowledge and audience composition. What’s different is that the Internet and analytics have enabled even more precise targeting, and now marketers are demanding access to even narrower audiences. Tom Nightingale, VP-communications and CMO of Con-way, a trucking and logistics company, wants more efficient targeting from b-to-b media companies. “I want to work with trade publications that have a disciplined and rigorous focus on specific target markets,” he said. Nightingale complained that he’s seen too many trucking and logistics media brands expand their audiences rather than home in on a particular slice. “Content is king,” he said. “I have no argument with that whatsoever. It’s when you’re taking that good content and applying it to a bad audience that content becomes irrelevant.” Zurich North America, which sells insurance to businesses, is addressing this issue by building its own audience of customers and prospects. To develop this database, the company has relied heavily on the trade press. Zurich uses b-to-b media brands such as Business Insurance (published by Crain Communications Inc., the parent company of Media Business), Harvard Business Review and Risk Management for generating leads through such techniques as webinars and white papers. “It’s far and away the most cost-efficient thing we did,” Jeremy J. Ahto, Zurich’s head of brand marketing-North America, said of the company’s webinar program. It’s a straightforward lead-generation program. What’s changed in b-to-b marketing, though, is how a company such as Dell,TechTargetcreateapptopowerinteractiveads nicate with peers in real time. The tool carries the same conversaell Inc. has partnered with TechTarget to customize a mar- tion across Dell white papers and rich media ads, as well as on the keting platform that couples interactive content with the TechTarget-developed microsite www.dellempowers.com. media company’s established social network of technoloThe model provides a contextual framework for audience intergy buyers. The move is one of the latest developments in CASE actions, facilitating the kind of conversation that has become Dell’s “The Power to Do More” corporate brand campaign, STUDY a vital touch point for any technology marketing campaign, developed by Dell agency WPP’s Y&R, which underscores the said Adam Potashnick, global media director at MediaCom, the company’s evolution from hardware provider to services partner. global media planning and buying agency for Dell. An embedded application, dubbed the Social Reader, accom“There are experts in the social [media] universe who have panies Dell marketing content on TechTarget sites, allowing the power to become the most authoritative sources,” he said. readers to ask and answer questions on the established IT Knowl- “Peers and colleagues are the No. 1 resource when looking at Continued on page 9 edge Exchange forum, read conversational threads and commuBY CHARLOTTE WOOLARD D mediabusinessonline.com | November 2011 | Media Business | 7 http://www.dellempowers.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - November 2011

BtoB Media Business - November 2011
Contents
Upfront
Cover Story
Resource Guide
Sales & Marketing
M&A
Audience Development
Events
Production
People
Benchmarks
Endnote

BtoB Media Business - November 2011