Summit on Customer Engagement 2011, Day Two

March 2, 2011 — Laura Ramos

What is “customer engagement”, exactly? I don’t think the term is one most business people would recognize as a common marketing function like PR, Marcom, field marketing, or product marketing. The best definition I’ve heard here at the Summit on Customer Engagement is:

“Customer Engagement includes the role, responsibilities, and activities around all the non-revenue value a company/organization receives from its clients and buyers.”

The concept continues to expand beyond customer reference management to include advisory councils, communities (non-developer), events (in particular virtual), and testimonial (written, digital, video, and in person.) You could argue other points, but this list encompasses about 90% of the content shared during this conference.

More generally, marketing should be all about customer engagement. The definition reminds us that: 1) Marketing’s job is to scale the opportunities our firms have too engage with prospects and customers and 2) it’s a two-way street and customers should benefit as much (if not more) than our companies do when customers engage with us.

My view today on customer engagement focused on how Xerox Services uses video to engage our customers.  The examples I shared in my presentation — available here on Slideshare – are by no means ground-breaking or completely innovative.  But the examples demonstrate how Xerox uses video to create a persistent, engaging experience centered on our customers and about how we serve them best.  Key take-aways about the connection between video and customer engagement are:

1) B2B marketers underuse video. In earlier studies I did at Forrester, just under 50% of B2B marketers said that they used online video in their marketing mix - a percentage far less than email and search marketing, but also trailing behind emerging tactics like social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn), Twitter and other Web 2.0 tools.

2) Of those who use it, 1 in 5 say video is effective in building awareness and about 1 in 10 say it works for generating demand.  Wow, that’s terrible — but why?

3) Because about 2/3 of those surveyed said they use video to demonstrate products or (worse) they don’t use it at all.

4) This is a shame because B2B marketers need to be reminded that we sell to other people, not just businesses. And, like us, those people are influenced by experiences that engage their needs, desires and emotions.  And video is one of the best ways to create that kind of experience.

5) New digital cameras, smart phones, and YouTube make video production MUCH LESS expensive than it was just 10 years ago. Production quality matters, but you can get creative on a small budget.

Luckily for me, Xerox Services marketing is overcoming these hurdles and using video to tell our customer stories. We do this by:

Most importantly, with the need to rebrand the company around our ACS acquisition, Xerox Corporate built an interactive environment called “Real Business Live” that includes both customer-centric and full production (affinity advertising that tells a customer story in a co-branded fashion) video to take interactions beyond building the “awareness” that Xerox offers more than copiers and printers to exploration of what those capabilities mean to the clients who partner with us for those services.  Of all the examples share, this one created the most interest.

This brings me back to my first point, engaging prospects and customers today needs to go beyond the purchase process. Regardless of the medium (which is video in this post today), centering on the customer, telling their story, and making sure the story presented is authentic and specific is what makes marketing more engaging.

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2010 B2B Marketing Mix Effectiveness and Budget Trends

March 23, 2010 — Laura Ramos

I recently published two new reports on B2B marketing mix effectiveness — Rethinking The B2B Marketing Mix In The Digital Age – and B2B budget trends — B2B Marketers’ 2010 Budget Trends.

Great information here on what 249 B2B marketers say works for building brand and generating leads. Also where they expect to spend 2010 program budgets. Check it out further on my Forrester analyst blog (until April 1).

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Inside Sales And Telemarketing Help Boost B2B Brands: Really?

February 1, 2010 — Laura Ramos

First of all, I’d like to extend a big “Thank You” to my readers and followers who responded to an invitation last month to participate in the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix survey that Forrester fielded together with MarketingProfs.  Without your responses, the research would not be as broad or relevant — so thank you again! 

After closing the survey and digesting some of the results, I was really surprised by one finding. After reviewing our process and validating the data, my researcher, Zack Reiss-Davis, and I believe that the result is not a technical problem with the survey instrument nor its execution. I decided to share what we found and get your thoughts on why B2B marketers may have answered the question as they did. 

In January 2010, we found that 65% of the 249 B2B marketers we surveyed at firms with 50 or more employees use inside sales/telesales as part of the marketing mix. This percentage is slightly greater, but not dissimilar, to what we found in early 2009 (62% said they use inside sales).

Of the 65% who use inside sales, 34% said they found it “highly effective” for driving brand awareness.   Brand awareness?   Really?!?  That’s on par with webcasts/webinars and the company Web site for effectively building brand, according to the same survey respondents.

I act incredulous because in prior years, many fewer marketers rated inside sales as highly effective for building brand.  In 2009, for example, only 21% (of the 62% who said they use inside sales) rated it highly effective for building brand.  They did rate it very effective for generating leads — which makes sense since inside sales is one of the “moments of truth” when buyers and sellers engage person to person. And personal selling is essential in B2B marketing.

But for building brand?  How does that work?

So I decided I should run this mystery by my readers/followers and hear what you think.  Which of the following possibilities would you pick as the most likely explanation for this result?:

1) It’s an anomaly. Either the respondents didn’t understand the question or interpreted it in some unexpected way and their answers are not consistent with actual practice.

2) It’s the economy.  Many firms slashed marketing program budgets last year.  To try to compensate, firms turned their inside sales teams into outbound, cold-calling machines tasked with reaching out to buyers to chat about products and services. Remarkably some buyers paid attention.

3) Inside sales begins to play a bigger role in lead incubation.  Respondents are starting to see inside sales/telemarketing play a larger role in educating, building relationships, and “keeping in touch” with prospects than simply just dialing for dollars.  New sales enablement tools help telesales see what “leads” look at when visiting the site, and can better inform subsequent conversations when used properly. Personally, I would call this “lead generation” but — because the activity may not produce qualified leads this quarter — marketers may see telesales helping to create a positive brand experience beyond building pipeline.

As I ponder this result, I have to admit that I’m favoring explanation #3 right now.  However, what I really wonder is “Am I missing something?”  Is there some new way — that I have yet to run across — where companies use inside sales to create awareness, answer buyer questions, or do something other than advance deals to close this quarter?

Let me know what you think.  Best answers get credit in my upcoming report.

If you would like to preview the results of our B2B marketing mix and budgets survey– and see where your B2B peers are heading in 2010 — please join me Tuesday, February 9, 2010 (11 am Eastern, 8 am Pacific) for my Forrester Teleconference where I will talk about our findings prior to the report publication.  Hope you can join me then!

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B2B Marketing Mix and Budget Trends Survey: Please Participate!

January 13, 2010 — Laura Ramos

For the third year, MarketingProfs and Forrester teamed up to author and field a survey that looks at business-to-business marketing mix and budget trends. With many parts of North America and Europe (my home state of California for one) still feeling the effects of last year’s economic downturn, I believe that this year’s survey will show some marked changes on which tactics marketers choose to spend their limited budget dollars.

Would you like to help me find out?  If so, please click here to take the survey.  The survey should take you approximately 15 minutes to complete, and I will share a copy of the report — due sometime in March — with those of you who complete the survey.

Taking a closer look at B2B marketing budgets in our 2008/2009 survey, we found:

1) Digital spending moved ahead but failed to shake up the status quo. While B2B marketers wrestle with a more complex marketing mix, digital channels have finally gained much needed mindshare. Web sites and email topped the list of the most popular marketing tactics, and search marketing moved up six percentage points since our last report. However, conventional approaches like trade shows, PR, direct mail, print advertising, sponsorships, and executive events still dominated the marketing mix in 2008. Will 2009 show even more dramatic changes? Tell us in the survey and find out.

2) Traditional tactics commanded the lion’s share of B2B budgets. Conventional marketing tactics continued to capture big chunks of B2B marketer budgets. In fact, traditional tactics had a tight grip on the five top spots in our list of the most expensive B2B tactics. Coming in sixth, the company Web site was the only digital tactic to scrape together a double-digit percentage of the budget.

3) Social media managed to make only a few budget inroads in 2008/early 09. Virtual trade shows, community sites, rich media (video, podcasts, etc.), blogs, and other Web 2.0 tools like RSS subscriptions, mashups, and widgets got the B2B budget scraps. Yet, while marketers try to work out social media’s place in the marketing mix, we were pleased to see, when taken together, these tactics accrued more than 10% of the marketing budget. I expect this year’s survey may show some surprising changes in this category.

I can hypothesize on my blog all day about how marketing tactic choices and budgets changed in 2009 relative to 2008 — and where B2B marketers expect them to go in 2010 — but the survey results will provide the real facts, not conjecture.  Please join me and take 15 minutes now to let me, and your B2B marketing colleagues, how your 2010 budget plans are shaping up.

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Making Your B2B Marketing Work — Better!

September 1, 2009 — Laura Ramos

A worldwide recession and social media have swept up B2B marketers in a perfect storm, tossed between tighter budgets and the demand to do more online without guideposts or established benefits. Opportunities and challenges abound for marketers targeting other businesses through a direct sales force or channel partners. Before 2010 planning — and the push to pump up the pipeline to make year-end revenue goals — hit full stride, now is an excellent time to step outside your daily routine, tune up B2B marketing strategy, and learn new best practices.

Sound intriguing? If so, have I got a deal for you!  (Oh, c’mon, you suspected a pitch was coming, now didn’t you?)

On September 17, 2009 (Thursday) I am leading a full-day workshop in Cambridge, MA on “Making B2B Marketing Work”. This workshop brings B2B marketing peers together to explore and discuss how marketing has changed in light of the digital/social media shift and the pressures imposed by the current economy. It will help you think through a number of issues — how to stretch budget dollars by better integrating digital and physical tactics, tap into social media, drive healthier pipelines, target and qualify your best customers, and create a marketing technology infrastructure that increases efficiency through automation – just to name a few of the top takeaways. You will also gain hands-on experience assessing your integrated marketing accumen and lead management maturity while hearing “tricks of the trade” from our expert panel (who join us at the end of the day.)

You may want to check out Forrester’s site for further workshop details if you need answers to the following questions:

  • How do I optimize my marketing mix in 2010?
  • What are the best practices for generating, and managing, demand?
  • How do I better integrate digital and social media into my campaigns?
  • How do I improve marketing’s working relationship with sales?
  • How do I make my Web site generate better leads?
  • What are the best social media tactics to use?
  • What technology investments should I make in 2010?

In my rather “un-humble” opinion, I’ve found participants feel that the two best features of this workshop are:

1) Networking and interpersonal interaction. The workshop is intimate (typically between 7 adn 15 participants) which gives you the opportunity to spend time with peers (and the analyst, of course!) talking about what matters to you and how you have been making B2B marketing work. Participants from Tech and non-Tech industries share experiences and learn from each others’ successes and mistakes.

2) Talking with the panel of experts.  Plan to stick around to enjoy the wine/cheese reception for further networking and to meet with our expert panel. I’m gathering the invitees now, but past participants included experts in search marketing, community development, demand generation, and marketing automation. The discussion is lively and really gets to the heart of “what should you do in practice to make B2B marketing work?”

Will you join me?  Hope to see you there!

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MOCCA & MarketingProfs: B2B Marketers Focus On Social Media and Metrics

June 9, 2009 — Laura Ramos

During the past week I’ve had the privilege of presenting to two different organizations that I think B2B marketers would benefit from exploring further.

MOCCA Quarterly Meeting

Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance

Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance

June 3, 2009 I spoke at the MOCCA quarterly meeting, held at Adobe’s facilities in downtown San Jose. The Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance (MOCCA) is a community for sharing practical experience between Marketing Operations professionals in technology companies. Attendees worry about customer data quality, measuring marketing results against sales pipeline, and demonstrating that marketing investment pays dividends. What we call “Left Brain” marketers here at Forrester.

I talked about the impact of social media on the marketing mix and how social activity requires marketers to focus more on outcomes – how marketing activity engages prospects and customers in building relationship – than on marketing activity that we have become comfortable and accustomed to measuring (view, clicks, impressions, market share, cost per lead, etc.). The presentation was well received judging by the thoughtful questions. Feel free to visit MOCCA’s site and access a copy of it.

MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2009

June 9, 2009 I joined Roy Young, President of MarketingProfs, LLC, and Sandy Carter, IBM’s Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels, at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, MA, to discuss the impact of the current economy on marketing mix and budget trends. MarketingProfs recently published their report about the joint research we conducted in Dec 2008/Jan 2009. While MarketingProfs included responses from companies under 100 employees (and Forrester did not), the results were strikingly similar. Broad dependence on traditional tactics will shift more toward digital and social “tactics” in 2009 and beyond, driven mainly by the economy (which has forced marketing budget cuts) and the interest/hype around social media.

Sandy brings fantastic, credible perspective about the challenge, and rewards, of integrating social media into the marketing mix. Three key points we firmly agree upon:

1) Social strategy and execution should not reside solely in marketing. A cross-functional team that includes sales, development, support, and marketing – among others as your firm’s needs dictate – is essential to setting strategy, managing community, helping all your social participants communicate consistently, and keeping out of “social trouble”.

2) Social is part of an integrated approach that combines traditional and digital tactics. Social media helps to turn the brand, lead generation, and loyalty (measured by cross sell, upsell and retention) dials when combined and managed as part of a larger marketing dashboard of options.

3) Social media’s biggest impact in B2B will be in creating and sustaining gated, invited communities. Tech is already leading the way since developers have used forums and discussion threads for years – social tools just makes this self-support more appealing. Sandy and the audience offered interesting examples of private communities from the medical field that show “gated” community potential outside of high tech.

Check out Forrester’s report on B2B marketing trends from the joint research with MarketingProfs. I look forward to hearing your questions and observations; how is the current economy impacting your marketing mix and tactic choices?

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B2B Marketing Mix: Will Online, Social Tactics Lead?

April 30, 2009 — Laura Ramos
Email, Search, and Direct Mail Deliver Results Over Time

Email, Search, and Direct Mail Deliver Results Over Time

I am very appreciative to Roy Young and Ann Handley at MarketingProfs for partnering with Forrester and me on the B2B marketing budget trends and effectiveness survey. This is our second joint endeavor on this topic. The sister report, also published April 24, looks at which tactics B2B marketers use and how well it all works for building brand and generating leads.

I’ve been following marketing mix effectiveness for over three years the results are strikingly consistent, if not surprising:

1) B2B marketers use a lot of tactics that they admit don’t work as well as they should. Leaning on the same old things year after year — PR and TV for awareness, and executive events and inside sales for leads — locks marketing execs in an endless loop of fighting off budget cuts and justifying marketing spending plans.

2) PR and TV are popular for building brand but trade shows and email raise awareness best. Email and e-newsletters use now equals tradeshows in popular use. While the economy has put the brakes on corporate travel, trade shows still managed to gain ground, as sales like to press the flesh in these venues and buyers circle exhibit halls gauging product buzz.

3) Telesales and executive events create demand but email and search produce better results over time. Look at how the trend line for email and search marketing tactics moves up and to the right over time while telesales bounces around and executive events take a tumble. What’s making a comeback? Direct mail as lead management automation now makes it easier to use email, direct mail, Webinars, and telesmarketing to displace first sales calls and continue nurturing a dialogue with prospects.

4) Social tactics emerge, but marketers have yet to see it make a big impact on prospective audiences. Social media produce mediocre results when marketers jump into the technology without understanding their audience or selecting business outcomes first programs.

This is the first year we asked about the role of the corporate Web site. Not surprising that Web sites dominate marketing mix popularity, but most lack basic building blocks needed to build customer relationships. 94% of respondents consider corporate Web sites a key element in the marketing toolbox and 84% of buyers say Web sites matter in purchase decision making.  So I’m recommending that — in 2009 — marketers focus more on using Web sites to cut sales interaction costs. 

Compared with online interactions, person-to-person sales calls and meetings cost much more to execute. It’s time to make those Web sites generate and capture demand since 73% of marketers believe that corporate sites play a bigger role in 2009 marketing plans. With telesales and executive events producing less traction with buyers, Web sites become the main source of online information in the product selection, purchase, and implementation process. To capitalize on this trend, B2B marketers must shift online Web experiences from an inside-out perspective that talks incessantly about features and functions to an outside-in one that focuses on helping prospects and customers accomplish buying and adoption goals.

Want to hear more? Join me May 18th for my teleconference at 8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern.

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Digital Marketing Gets A Boost In 2009 B2B Budgets

April 27, 2009 — Laura Ramos

While I was hanging out at the Forrester Marketing Forum last week, I missed a milestone. The report I mentioned in my blog about the impact the economy is having on B2B budgets popped out of the editing queue and made it onto the Web site.

Maybe not so surprising to many of you – but reassuring perhaps? – is the finding that digital marketing tactics are gaining B2B marketing budget share because of the rocky economy. Over 40% of the 317 marketers surveyed said they would allot more marketing dollars to online channels like the corporate Web site, search marketing, video, Webinars, and email.

B2B Marketers Turn To Digital Tactics In 2009

B2B Marketers Turn To Digital Tactics In 2009

 

But here’s the thing.  B2B marketers have said this for the past three years. Since August 2006, when I published my first report on the state of B2B marketing called “B2B Marketing Needs A Makeover – Now,” marketers say they plan to funnel budget dollars online and away from traditional broadcast channels. But the evidence shows they continue to spend the lion’s share on trade shows and direct mail.

Most B2B marketers cling to traditional channels because 1) executives like them, 2) sales complain if marketing tries to stop using them, and 3) measuring the impact of various marketing tactics – over long B2B selling cycles – is difficult. The lesson here? Tuning the marketing mix is an ongoing challenge. Everyone struggles with it, so get more systematic about how you measure marketing mix results. Making those precious budget dollars pay off requires focusing on programs, not campaigns.

Conventional Tactics Get The Lion's Share of Budgets

Conventional Tactics Get The Lion's Share of Budgets

To make an integrated, programmatic approach to marketing work, you should:

1) Lay a solid foundation online. Your Web site, email, and search marketing provide the base to build digital marketing programs on. Use personas and scenarios to help buyers achieve goals online.  Use email to continue conversations, not start them. And profile buyers’ information-seeking behavior and motivations to master keyword advertising and organic rankings.  Only when search, email, and Web marketing churn out qualified and more measurable leads do you get to experiment with other, emerging media.

2) Peel of a little of that field marketing spending.  Cutting out a trade show or two can counter steep budget cuts. But don’t make these decisions without involving field marketing and sales. Use a financial model – not conjecture — to decide what gets the ax.  Show field and sales skeptics how blending in digital tactics can drive interest and excitement for little additional spend. This also helps them get behind the cuts if they think they are getting better in return.

3) Structure budgets to drive community interaction and returns. Instead of building budgets around campaigns and launches, focus on business outcomes like “build thought leadership with IT managers virtualizing the data center” to align digital and conventional spending programs. Showing that marketing spend shortens sales cycles, produces better qualified leads, and reduces costs will help you preserve marketing budgets.

Want to know more?  Join me Monday, May 18, 2009, 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Eastern time (16:00-17:00 UK time) for my Forrester Teleconference where I will talk about this research in some more detail.

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The Social Technographics Of B2B Buyers

February 23, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Last Friday (Feb. 20, 2009), Forrester published a new report that Oliver Young and I authored about how business buyers participate socially — in general and on the job — called “The Social Technographics of Business Buyers“.  Today, Forrester marketing put out a press release on this research announcing it to the world.

Social Technographics is the term coined at Forrester to describe how we benchmark consumers by their level of participation in Social Computing behaviors.  We describe the model as a ladder consisting of six increasing levels of a participation in social technologies. Participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels, and consumers may move up and down the ladder over time or for different purposes.

How Technology Buyers Engage in Social Media

How Technology Buyers Engage in Social Media

Social Technographics models the propensity of buyers to engage in social activity.  Josh Bernoff talks about the Social Technographics of consumers often on the Groundswell blog. There is a tool published in the upper right corner of the main blog page that you can use to explore how social behavior changes with age, gender, or country of origin.

So why the press release?  Because this is the first research available that profiles the social behavior of business buyers.  Specifically, IT and business decision makers involved in technology purchase decision making. Sure, the research is fairly specific.  If you are buying industrial equipment, office furniture, employee health plans, 401K investment options, or a myriad of other business-related acquisitions, then this data is not exactly what you need.  But if you sell any type of IT hardware, software, services, or telecom/networking products, you’ll want to take a look at the data and/or the report.

Why should B2B marketers care about this? For three main reasons:

1) Social Technographics helps you set social media strategy. Social media is a broad term, but generally refers to new interactive marketing tactics used to engage with prospect, and communities of customers and prospects, and draw value from social interaction. To set a social media strategy that is successful, Forrester developed an acronym to help marketers focus on the important part of the strategy first: POST.  POST stands for “People”, “Objectives”, ”Strategy” and ”Tactics/Tools”.  Social Technographics helps B2B marketers who sell technology products and services get a handle on the P=People part of the POST methodology.

2) Social media has a place in the marketing mix. Knowing how buyers participate in social activity while working — and which behaviors are more common — helps you understand how to blend social media into your 2009 marketing plans. It also helps you to align which of the primary business objectives for social media — listening, talking, energizing, supporting, spreading, or embracing — will best engage (and entice) buyers at different levels of the Social Technographics ladder. It will also tell you whether or not you can rule out a particular behavior as relevant to your intended audience and how to go about using social media to change the nature of the relationship your firm has with these buyers.

3) Social Technographics describes business behavior. This research makes it definitively clear — people engage socially when on the job. They behave socially for a lot of reasons, but informing or making purchase decisions is one of the main ones. There are many attributes to this data worth exploring: we looked at age, tenure, gender, geography/country, business role, function, specific type of technology purchased, and role played in the decision making process. Looking at the data from any of these perspectives can help B2B marketers understand with whom, how, how often, and where to engage buyers socially to achieve the best results — engagement and greater dialogue.

I am hoping you will take a closer look and let us know what you think.  Oliver and I are very excited about this research and look forward to sharing more insights — in blogs, additional research, and ongoing conversation — with you.  Here are the slides from the exclusive February 12 preview webinar we presented a couple of weeks ago:

The Social Technographics® Of Business Buyers
View more presentations from oliveryng. (tags: social media)

If you would like to download these slides, please visit our Web site where you can find the Powerpoint or MP3 version of the presentation.

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B2B Marketing Budgets Trend Downward in 2009

February 12, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Ok, given the current economy, it’s no surprise that we found B2B marketers expect to have less budget to work with in 2009. I teamed up with MarketingProfs to field the 2009 marketing budgets and mix effectiveness survey. I’ll write about the results soon — now that I’ve got the social media research behind me for now — but wanted to share a few tidbits with you ahead of time. We found:

75% of respondents said their budgets increased or stayed the same (vs 2007) last year. Avg. increase was about 20%.

However, 58% feel the same way in 2008. 42% expect budgets to decrease by 23% on average (with a wide deviation.)

I talked a bit about this when I teamed up with a number of other analysts here to write our 2009 predictions document for technology/B2B marketers. Here’s what I said about it on our blog for Interactive Marketers:

How Are 2009 Marketing Budgets Shaping Up? — January 8,  2009

Happy New Year, Everyone! Looking over my holiday and Christmas greetings this year, I was struck by the change in tone from 2007 and how everyone’s wishes for a “happy” new year seemed more sincere and profound in light of the current economy.

In our Predictions 2009 research, published December 23, Forrester analysts who cover B2B and technology marketing predict that marketing budgets will take big hits early in 2009, with typical decreases in the 15% to 25% range. To investigate whether this prediction is tracking current experience and to look at the impact of the economy on this year’s B2B marketing spending, Forrester teamed up with MarketingProfs to field a survey that explores 2009 budget plans and looks back at 2008 effectiveness.  Interactive marketers who work at firms who sell primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) to businesses will find participating in this research relevant because we explore a number of online and social tactics along with the conventional.

<Deleted solicitation to participate in the survey.>

Here’s wishing you a more prosperous new year.

Tags: , , :: Add to del.icio.us

—————————

I found it interesting that my “thumb in the wind” prediction proved out in this particular survey. I am concerned, however, that the second half of 2009 may actually get worse before things get better.

I also looked at which tactics — conventional, online, and social — marketers use and find effective for building brand and generating demand. Not surprisingly, traditional approaches like trade shows, PR, print and direct mail still figure highly on the marketing tactic popularity list. 2/3 or more of respondents said they used these tactics — along with the corporate Web site, email, and search marketing — in their 2008 marketing programs.

I expect this to change in 2009 as the budget crunch tightens. Respondents said they expect their Web sites, inside sales, email and Web-based events to become more important in their overall marketing mix.  Among social media, 30%+ of respondents said online demos, discussion forums, blogs, open social networks, and podcasts would become more important — which is not that far behind the other, more popular channels. 

Will 2009 become the year that B2B marketers finally wake up to the power of online, inbound, pull-oriented marketing?  Let’s hope so. The data points in that direction, but let me know what you are seeing as well.

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