A survey carried out with over 700 Business-to-Business marketers by MarketingSherpa found that E-mail marketing to an in-house list (45%), Public Relations (36%) and Postal mail to an in-house list (28%) were the most successful marketing tactics in their current programs.
Respondents were also asked where they would be increasing spend in the second half of 2003 with E-mail (37%), Search Engine Marketing (28%) and PR (27%) the top gainers.
The Internet has created an environment where information flows freely and anyone can quickly and easily research most topics. That has inherent risks for organizations. Your ability to control information has been significantly reduced.
We are also seeing new phenomena such as the Educated Consumer. Your customers are now able to research your product or service from every angle. They know what you’re saying, what the media are saying and even what your competitiors and customers are saying.
We are reaching a point where consumers may even know your product better than you. That’s a huge challenge for any organization.
However, there is an upside. Research has never been easier or more cost-effective. You can reach customers and partners online and conduct detailed desk research in a fraction of the time. Harnessing the tools of the trade is a step in the right direction and iMedia has an article by Underscore Marketing on the Future of Online Research.
The promise of videoconferencing in the 90’s and online conferences since then has fallen well short of expectations.
The simple fact is that face-to-face communication is the single most effective means of communicating. A former client of mine had a situation a couple of years ago where they had two phone briefings with a prominent analyst. The calls went extremely well but when they met with him face-to-face a month later, he wanted to know what they did!
Where online events do hold the upper hand is in cost-effectively reaching a larger number of people and of course reaching people unable to make a physical event.
Of course online events require a lot of preparation and a lot of promotion. Channel Seven have an excellent article looking at online events and what makes them successful.
MarketingProfs has an article on adapting weblogs for corporate e-newsletters. It’s an interesting take and has some good links to more blog-related articles. They also have a piece on “Everything you need to know about Search Engine Optimization”. Have a read of it. I believe SEO will become an important service for PR companies to offer to their clients. If search engines are the window to the web, then getting high rankings is key to reputation management. [Thanks to MarketingFix for the link]
Know thine enemy, Ben Edeleman a Ph.D student at Harvard has written a paper investigating The Gator Corporation. You know them, they are the company that proliferate many of those horrendously annoying pop-up ads that crowd our online experience. Urrggg. Have a read.
Our advertising brethren have their own issues from the online world. The terrible twins of accountability and ROI.
Finally, CNET reports that newspapers are increasingly posting recruitment listings online in an effort to stave off online competition, now if only they’d put their archives online. “..newspapers have watched their listings businesses decline over the past few years also because of online competition and economic factors.” 
Murphy's Law 