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This year will see increased budgets, significant growth in online marketing and the launch of new ad campaigns in the world of b2b marketing, according to a survey by BtoB online. The report, 2006 Marketing Priorities and Plans surveyed 366 senior marketing executives at the end of November and beginning of December last year and found that 60.7 per cent will be working with bigger budgets in 2006, compared to 49.7 per cent in last year’s survey. In 2006, 72 per cent of marketers intend to increase their online budgets. The survey found that these budgets will be distributed between websites, email, search and sponsorships. Over half of the survey’s respondents said they plan to increase direct mail in 2006, 40 per cent intend to increase event marketing and 33 per cent propose an increase print advertising. The survey also found that 81 per cent of marketers do not plan any changes in their broadcast spending, 80 per cent will not change outdoor spending and 46 per cent will not make...

How to Impress Conservative Fortune 100 Business Prospects by Allying With Academia SUMMARY: Are you in charge of demand generation campaigns targeting top execs at very big companies? This Case Study is for you. Learn how a previously little-known software company became a trusted and admired brand in a couple of short years. The trick? Alliances with nuts-and-bolts professors in America's heartland. Includes creative samples, and tips on partnering with academics: CHALLENGE Executives at giant manufacturing companies in the Fortune 100 are exceptionally careful when they pick new enterprise software. Part of it's due to the industry having been burned during the gung-ho days of the not too distant past. "People were a little embarrassed stuff didn't live up to hype," explains Glen Margolis, who founded Steelwedge Software five years ago to provide more reliable alternatives. His problem -- how do you gain the trust of conservative prospects in huge companies, es...

Advertisers spent $5.75 billion on search engine marketing in 2005, a 44% increase compared with 2004, according to a report from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. The nonprofit group projects search marketing spending in North America will increase to $7.19 billion this year and reach $11.0 billion in 2010. The findings in SEMPO's report, "The State of Search Engine Marketing 2005," are based on a survey of advertisers, agencies and affiliate marketing firms conducted by Radar Research and Intellisurvey. The global survey generated 553 responses, 70% of them from North America. According to the report, the majority of search funding is poached from other marketing channels. SEMPO said the biggest shares of budgets for SEM are being shifted from affiliate marketing, Web site development, print Yellow Pages advertising, e-mail marketing and direct mail. "Marketers are taking a closer look at media consumption patterns," said Kevin L...

More and more, the trend towards open source applications and software is receiving encouragement from certain governments. The eThekwini municipality is now basing its intranet and website entirely on open source tools. The technical development of the portal was done by Cape Town-based, Jam Warehouse, working with Bytes Systems Integration as strategy partner, and Durban small business, AdaptIT. "This was an exceptionally complex project with multiple objectives," says Jam Warehouse's Denham Trollip. "Apart from improving service delivery and creating a solid technical platform for future growth, the eThekwini council wanted to demonstrate that open source software and standards can work for enterprise-grade applications, and grow small business capacity at the same time." Using the Zope Application Server and the Plone content management system, Jam Warehouse has created a stable, highly scalable portal infrastructure that provides a strong platform for futur...

The fifth international FIPP business magazine and professional media conference, the business media world summit, takes place on 1-3 May 2006. Delegates who book to attend before the ‘early booker’ deadline of 31 March will receive up to a 17 per cent discount. The conference features keynote addresses from David Levin, chief executive of United Business Media and Lord Heseltine, chairman of Haymarket Group. Other confirmed speakers include: Helen Alexander, chief executive of The Economist Group; Ruud Bakker, chairman and CEO of VNU Business Media Europe; Tim Weller, CEO of Incisive Media; Keith Jones, chief executive of Reed Business Information; Dan Bagan, vice president and group publisher of Fairchild Publications; David Hill, president of publishing services, IDG; Andreas Haas, general manager, CPL Group, Ukraine; and Erwin Reisch, chief executive of Gentner Verlag in Germany. Delegates from professional media publishers across the globe are expected to attend the event which h...

by Justin Hitt, Strategic Relations Consultant, http://justinhitt.com/ In an excellent article presented by Forbes magazine called Some Billionaires Choose School of Hard Knocks by Matthew Herper he presents interesting statistics about the some 234 US billionaires today. Mr. Herper presents the fact that 18% of these billionaires never received a college degree ; many of them never finished the degree programs they started – a statistic that might make you want to quit school and run off on your latest ideas. I would ask you first to look at the other statistic he is indirectly presenting – a statistic that says roughly 80% of the 234 US billionaires have completed a college education . Billionaires have attended the School of Hard Knocks to build their fortunes, but it is not hard work alone that produces their greatness, many times college enhances their opportunities for earning their billions. First hand I learned that hard work alone will not get you greatness, my small busines...

y Scott Gingrich, The CRM Coach, http://thecrmcoach.com/ Having a project come in On-Budget is the holy-grail of project management, especially when it comes to CRM projects. With their 70% failure rate, CRM projects represent a significant risk to a small business' financial health and warrants more 'measure twice, cut once' consideration before beginning. Coming in On-Budget does not mean you managed to squeeze your project into whatever arbitrary budget you came up with when you first started. It also doesn’t mean that you started with an overly generous budget. It does mean that you develop a budget that takes into account an analysis of 4 critical areas: Payoff . You need to know exactly how your CRM system is going to generate ROI. This will help you focus your project on the right areas. By knowing how you expect payoff to be achieved, you can plan to achieve it. Risk . You need to figure out where the risk is in your project because 'risk=expense'. By figu...