This information comes from the Buyershpere report which I believe shows great insight into the platforms neccessary to create business to business sales leads from the internet.

A Summary: How important is your company website?

When looking at buying business services there are three stages of the purchase that have been identified:

1. Identifying and defining the need
2. Indentifying potential suppliers
3. Final selection of the supplier

In all three stages a company’s website was the primary channel used to gather information, even more than web searches. In stage one industry press, word of mouth and events were next in line as channels used to identify and define the need for the purchase.

The company website in this case has the opportunity to establish brand, share product details and specifications and add value to the different purchase stages. the interesting fact that rose oot of the study though was that the company website had very little influence on the conclusion of each stage.

The effect of social media on business to business purchasing decisions

It’s all about influence!

Every stage of the purchase cycle revealed that  social media channels and word of mouth were the primary influential channels that influenced the decisions made.

Stage one indicated blogs and word of mouth as the primary influencer, whilst stage two and three showed a preference towards twitter, blogs and Facebook.

Consumer 2.0

Touch Durban saw the opportunity to leverage the Currie Cup by doing something that can only work on a social media platform. They supported another Twitter profile!!

@touchdurban put all their effort into getting as many people as possible to follow @just_sharks. This helped the @just_sharks claim the number three position on the SA Twitter Trends and take @touchdurban into the Top 10.

The Royal Hotel, who runs the @touchdurban profile, gave a weekend away to a sharks supporter for showing their support to the Sharks rugby team. This helped drive the interest towards the @just_sharks profile and promote the hotel and their twitter profile.

There are a few things to take away from this:

1) When promoting yourself in social media circles it can be very beneficial to run joint promotions rather than trying to “go it alone”

2) Competitions are a great way to generate excitement on social networks. When running your competitions make sure you in,clued a way for people to follow your profiles

3) Join the passion – people promote what they are passionate about.  Aligning @touchdurban to the Currie Cup Final bought the Durban events profile to the awareness of rugby fans during one of the most passionate times for the sport in South Africa. As people promoted their love for the sport @touchdurban was taken along for the ride.

Well done to the team at Touch Durban for doing such a great job.

Join Touch Durban on Facebook of Twitter

Bearing in mind alot of the content here is just my opinion but we looked some case studies, why social media is important, how I launched my consultancy, the most important asset to social media and B2B marketing online.

You can download/listen the podcast here

Marketing Research

Marketing research needs to take place before the campaign begins and continuously thoughout the campaign activation process. If the correct metrics are not in place you are in danger of creating the wrong kind of return. Even worse, you may not generate any return on your campaign.

Facebook has done a very good job in providing its Facebook Insights on pages created in Facebook. These metrics can provide valuable information to the campaign and its return.

A Willingness to Change

All this research is available all the time. Some of it is even available in real-time. My suggestion when building your marketing strategy would be to identify your marketing decision maker and make sure that they are integrally involved in the strategy. You can make changes to your internet marketing campaign almost instantly, why not take advantage of this flexibility and make sure that your team is ready and willing to make quick decisions to activate intuitive marketing ideas as soon as possible.

Clear Project Management

There is nothing worse than a strategy activation where the team involved in carrying out the campaign are unsure of their responsibilities. Put someone in charge of making sure that all the task happen at the right time and make sure that everyone is clear about their responsibilities. Internet maketing campaigns often have alot of small but vitally important tasks that need to take place and these can easily fall through the cracks if not properly managed.

Good project management will also put the accountability in the hands of those responsible.

Content Creation

Differrent people use the internet in different ways. Some watch video’s, some read and other may prefer looking at images. A good internet marketing strategy will incorporate a combination of internet media to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Make sure that you have the resources in place to create blog articles, video and photo galleries. A well created content campaign that is engaging and that covers all your online media will put you in good stead to drive interested traffic to your website. Just remember to keep your content original

Keep It Simple

My favourite quote when it comes to internet marketing strategy is

“The role of the marketer is to remove choice”

I have no idea who said it first but it doesn’t really matter. The principle is made of gold. If you clutter you campaign with too many options you may destroy any chance of generating leads.

According to the report your top users of Twitter are:

• Designers
• Students
• Engineers
• Entrepreneurs
• Artists
• Writers
• Photographers
• DJ’s
• Managers
• Journalists
• Consultants

It would seem then that if you are looking for intelligent, young and creative individuals then Twitter may be where you can find them. Makes me wonder why recruitment agencies are not on Twitter in force.

You can download the entire report here: http://www.fuseware.net/reports/sa-twitter-2010/

Well done to Mike and the guys at Fuseware for putting this report together

Warwick Junction lies on the edge of the Durban’s inner-city and is the primary public transport interchange in the city. On an average day the area accommodates 460 000 commuters, and at least 6000 street vendors. Given the confluence of rail, taxi and bus transport, this area has always been a natural market for street vendors. The Markets of Warwick includes between 5000 and 8000 vendors trading in 9 distinct markets. Currently this is the only informally structured market in a public space of this magnitude, and thus establishes itself as the single most authentic African market that South Africa has to offer.

I was intrigued by the business and enjoyed working on this project because they seem to have found a niche in tourism that I have not seen yet. The tourism element is only a small part af a great vision for the founding company Asiye Etafuleni. I would encourage you to check this out and learn a bit more about the project. Even book a tour around the market (for a mere 50 bucks!).

A note on strategy

On a strategy side, due to time constraints, a full internet marketing campaign will be put into affect at a later stage. So the initial efforts were best spent in creating a simple, easy to use website that drove people to booking tours. The website also shows additional information for those looking to find out more about what the tours entail.

What has become more interesting is that in South Africa 82% of the online population are on Facebook and 74% of the population are actively involved in social networking.  In March we also saw the launch of Google real-time search in South Africa, which brings social media updates into Google. There are also develoments, made by google, that mean you have better search potential in Google if more people are following you on twitter.

What is taking place is a fundamental shift in the way people use the internet. People are choosing to network, search, discuss, aggregate and understand the internet through social networks, of which Facebook is the largest. This has meant that Google has had to go to the social networks to get the information that people are intesteted in.

So the question: Is Facebook getting bigger than Google? What about in a South African context?

What do you think?

LIV provides holistic residential care for vulnerable children with the core vision to

rescue a child – restore a life – raise a leader – release a star

We got involved to leverage social media and the internet to raise awareness of the project, create an online marketing strategy, coach the founder in social media and drive sales of banquet table to their event and the ICC on the 7th April 2010

The online portifolio created for the promotion included a presence in Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, You Tube, the development of the Official LIV Website and a complete blog strategy that included both text and video elements.

In the short time the project has been live we have already expreienced the following successes:

1. Tables sales are being generated directly off the website
2. The facebook community are backing the project completely offering their personal and professional services to help the project
3. Tich Smith, Founder of LIV, is already very active on Facebook promoting the vision that he has. (He didn’t even have a facebook account a month ago)

Feel free to contact me if you would like to implement an internet marketing strategy with your organisation

Too much time spent on social media could mean less return on investment

Frank has stumbled accross a very important element of social media that is often under-rated. Social media is addictive and time consuming. Especially if you are marketing through social media. This only gives us a better reason to be ‘wasting or time‘ on our favourite network.

If you want to make sure you optimise your time on networks like Facebook and Twitter here are a few tips that may help:

1. Give yourself a time frame to spend in social media and stick to it. After your time is up – Close the web browser/programme.
2. Use a Twitter Client. This helps because twitter clients are designed in such a way that you can tailor the information you recieve from twitter. This means you get less distracted. Twitter clients are now starting to offer Facebook, Linkedin and Ping.fm integration.
3. Have a social media free day – Every now and then, spend a day away from social media. This helps in many ways, but the most important one for me is clarity. When I leave social media for a day, I start thinking about the marketing exercises that really work.
4. Don’t flog a dead horse – If your new social media campaign is not giving you the RIO you need, stop!! Rather spend your time focusing on what works.
5. Automate – Automate everything you can without damaging you campaign. Be careful here because some automation could provide less return than if you did the marketing personally.