The good news is Outsell Inc’s 2008 B2B Trade Publishing Market Size Report, published in April 2009, showed 2008 wasn’t as bad a year as expected. B2B trade publications have seen a steady loss of ad dollars to Google for the past six years, and recessions are infamous for crushing trade show revenues. Yet, overall the market held steady. In this universe, holding steady might be counted as a major win.
I have a pet peeve about the way most “media analysts” cover b2b. For example, if you look at some online ad data from Price Waterhouse, you’ll see a small section called “b2b”. It’s not. Usually it’s personal finance and investing publications — with a mass consumer bent.
The $26 billion B2B trade publishing world includes trade shows, print magazines, online magazines, online directories and subscription offerings. That’s not including market research, reports and services — much of which is sold these days via online subscription to a database — which is in total an additional $33.1 billion market according to Outsell.
Look, I know consumer content and advertising is sexier. Almost every college marketing class in the country discusses Nike’s famous swoosh. They hardly ever mention b2b. That’s too bad. It’s worthy.
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The comments about b2b being neglected in business courses are very true. At a mixer event from my ivy-league b-school I spoke to a women I’d never met. She asked me where I worked. I told her in general what our business was about. She asked the name. I told her that she wouldn’t know us if she wasn’t in our specific b2b niche (I had already established she wasn’t). She said, “Do you do marketing? You should really hire a VP of marketing,” and then walked away. I’ve laughed about that with b2b friends more than a few times. “Wow, we really should do some marketing. We had never thought of that before!”
Evidently if the entire world doesn’t know about you, your marketing clearly isn’t working and you’re not worth talking to. I guess I should go buy that super bowl ad.