5th Annual Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008–09

Practical Data and Analysis of the Business Technology Market That You Can Apply To Your Business
MarketingSherpa’s 5th annual Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide is our largest ever, designed to be one–half yardstick with benchmarks and standards for success and one–half inspiration with explorations of what’s working, what’s not and what’s on the horizon.

New Research Findings
Business Technology Marketing Benchmark Guide 2008–09 features all new primary research gathered from more than 10,000 business technology buyers and nearly 1,000 marketers.
Find out:

While finance departments think that marketing is the first place to cut budget, think about counter arguments like:

In the 2008-09 Business Technology Marketing Guide, you get the facts on how your competition is spending their marketing dollars. Here are 5 budget questions that are answered:

1. What's the best place to put your media buys - online, direct?
2. How much outsourcing is there for tactical marketing functions?
3. What are the average salaries in your region of the country?
4. What are the closure rates for inhouse vs. channel partners?
5. What's the effect of the U.S. downturn on business metrics such as customers per month or length of sales cycle?

6 New Special Reports

Based on date from an extensive survey fielded to CMP TechWeb’s readership, this special report looks at changes and standards in how tech buyers use webinars and white papers — the ‘big two’ content types in marketing business technology.

3,000 technology buyers (and CNET readers) helped us to validate that open pricing is becoming a true differentiator among technology companies. This special report looks at buyers’ expectations for pricing, the reluctance to share pricing by marketers, and how buyers ultimately get the answers they want.

3. Marketing to Engineers
This special report looks at the industrial engineers — people who design products, build infrastructures and create processes. Learn about their media consumption and how they use online and offline information sources throughout their buying process. The survey was fielded to newsletter readers of GlobalSpec, a search engine targeting the industrial sector.

4. Openness in Pricing — Control in the Internet Age
There’s evidence that keeping pricing close to the vest may cut companies off from new prospects, hot prospects and may not even have its intended purpose — giving sales flexibility in pricing. This special report looks at how online pricing information is changing the way potential buyers view your offerings.

5. Direct Mail Revisited
This special report, provided by direct mail veterans Lapis Business Solutions, explores tactics for success, case studies in direct mail testing and benchmarks to help you gauge your internal efforts.

6. Build a Powerful Landing Page Step by Step
This study uses eyetracking research, best practices and research data to break the registration landing page into its component parts and provide a roadmap for optimization. You’ll learn things about the ad, copywriting, design and forms that will have an immediate impact on how you create and test your landing pages.

Key Highlights:

• 90% of business people read their email with a client that blocks HTML images by default (e.g., Outlook). If images are blocked, opens can’t be counted, which may explain why email open rates have been declining.. Clickthrough rates may be a better metric to judge the effectiveness of emails.
• Interactive sources of information (online user communities, events, webcasts, sales reps etc.) generally count heavily toward the ultimate technology purchase and should be weighed accordingly when considering marketing efforts.
• You’ll be surprised at how quickly (or slowly) suppliers respond to engineer emails. Only 17% respond to email inquiries within 24 hours. Past studies show that delay loses white–hot opportunities.
• Viral videos pack a punch. For established brands, viral can be a uniquely effective way to change brand perception at a corporate or product level. For emerging companies, there’s the potential for big brand building on a small budget.
• While list quality accounts for up to 75% of a direct mail campaign’s success, offer testing and creative are the difference between “good” and “great” success.