In B2B, online is still just one cog in the wheel
According to a recent Australian study, “The Australian online advertising market grew nearly 50% in 2005 with $605m in revenues and this is expected to increase significantly to more than $1.5bn by 2009.”
Frost & Sullivan also predicts that Australian online advertising revenues will exceed magazine advertising (which accounts for around 7% or $700m of the total advertising market) in 2006 and radio advertising in 2007.
That’s significant of course, but the reality is that these dollars are spent by the big consumer brands.Business to Business SME’s have never been big advertisers; referral business, direct marketing and personal selling is where it’s at.
Most SME’s already struggle with the plethora of choices to spend their promotional dollar. More often than not they end up doing whatever is sold to them most effectively. And not very often as part of a more structured campaign or strategy.
Yellow Pages is still a big favourite, even if the results they get are doubtful at best. Why? Because customers get something tangible, in a format they understand.
Unless we, as marketing professionals can make it easier to create effective, multi-channel strategies I think that it will remain like that for quite a while to come.