2009 is here. And so is our new blog.

We wanted to share what we see as best practices to help contribute to the B2B marketing community. Much has changed (for the better I might add) as online marketing and  advertising, email and search engine marketing has made selling to their customers more effective and efficient. Businesses everywhere can now reach their market instantly, globally and at a fraction of the cost.

Of course, our ActiveConversion SaaS product has helped lead this charge, especially for SMBs, tech companies, and B2B services companies. But it’s a combination of tools, content, and tactics such as online marketing that make this strategy work. And that’s why we started this blog – to give you quick tips and techniques to make your B2B marketing REALLY work.

If you haven’t already, to understand what we mean for this first post, read a synopsis of  Seth Godin’s ‘Meatball Sundae’. Essentially, Seth’s thesis is that you can’t just mix something you want (like ice cream), to something you still like (like meatballs), and expect a good result. The book postulates that new marketing (like social marketing) won’t work well when just added haphazardly to existing marketing. As a result, it then gets dropped, with the familiar ‘we tried it, and it didn’t work for us’ excuse.

A simple example we’ve seen are websites. Most websites are still being built by companies used to creating brochures. So what you get is an electronic brochure  that (usually) look great, but aren’t measured, have no calls to action, aren’t search engine optimized and generally fail. We’ve even seen websites without a single form on the site – which make sense in a Meatball Sundae – brochures don’t have forms!

In any case, we hope to help usher in a new generation of B2B marketing, that will make your business or company more successful in the year(s) to come. We hope you’ll follow it and profit!

Happy New Year!