- James Farmer, publishing director of B2B Marketing and chair of the
Interactive Advertising Bureau UK Ltd-IAB's B2B Council

What you should know:

Branding is crucial...
for products and services sold in huge consumer markets. It’s also important in B2B because it helps you stand out from your competition. It brings your competitive position and value proposition to life; it positions you as a certain “something” in the mind of your prospects and customers. Your brand consistently and repeatedly tells your prospects and customers why they should buy from you

Combining channels spells site success!
Most industry experts agree a great campaign is one that carefully integrates offline and online into a single response strategy? can prove successful if the brand is consistently represented across all the channels being used (online and print ads, mailers, trade shows).

Frequency and Exposure
In b2b marketing, as in consumer advertising, good old-fashioned reach & frequency still holds sway.

Banner ads
are great for brand-building, but they excel as a direct response tool. Click on one and you could be taken to a dedicated microsite or deep into a company's site, or you might be given the chance to win something. It's not just this flexibility that makes banners so appealing, but also their targeting potential. By placing a banner in an area a company knows attracts similar traffic to its customer profile, responses are likely to be of higher value and there is less wastage.

Videos
According to BtoB Magazine, "Online video has become the killer application of the Internet as B-to-B marketers embrace it as an integral part of their marketing programs.." While this may be true in some quarters, the fact is, many B2B marketers aren't quite sure how to leverage video because they tend to look at it as an advertising vehicle (which it can be), rather than a tool that can serve a number of mission critical purposes (of which advertising can be one).

Directory listings are effective
Why leaf through a heavy, cumbersome directory for a plumber when an online directory can simplify the process? The online environment offers features that cannot be replicated offline, says Eddie Cheng, eBusiness director at Yell.com. Combine directory listings with search advertising. Both offer the chance to convert people identified as prospects into customers.

TravelMole's aim is to make its directories as accessible and easy to use as possible.

How to reduce 'ad blindness'
Websites or blogs can use ads rotation to reduce or control the effect of ad blindness. The ad blindness is the common term that describes regular or repeat visitors to a blog or website, or readers of a newsletter, that start to ignore the very same display advertisements on the website/newsletter. Ad blindness will inevitably lead to lower CTR(click-through rate) due to no longer interested on the ads or become a behavior to ignore the ads, and subsequently decrease the ads revenue or affiliate income.

One effective way to counter ad blindness is by rotating the ads display on the blog or website, distributing the ads impressions between various providers and thus providing variety to users.


How to measure ad effectiveness
For direct marketing measure the number of leads you generate, customers you convert. For brand advertising it's easy to measure how a customer changes their perception of your brand by asking them simple questions before and after they've seen the ad.

TraveMole offers advertisers click-through reporting and be able to send follow-up message to those who click-through. Branding surveys available.

AD TIPS
√ remember users are looking to find something, rather than be persuaded. Advertisers have to show they can provide that information. Develop several ads to use to determine which is more effective.
√ link to pages deep in a site rather than homepages.