I spent yesterday afternoon speaking at and attending the The Software & Information Industry Association’s (SIIA) ROI of Organic Search event in New York. It was a great few hours—not only was the crowd interested and involved in the content, but the other presenters were fantastic. Byron White, Chief Idea Officer for ideaLaunch; Alex Bennert, chief search strategist for The Wall Street Journal; and Michael Dub, partner at Raspberry Red Marketing—great jobs all around.
Alex, in particular, did a phenomenal job of demystifying SEO and offering practical tips that people can get started with immediately. If you have a chance to hear her speak—do. She was telling us how even her 11-year-old son is getting a handle on SEO—if he can do it, no doubt we all can. Keep an eye on Subscription Site Insider in August for loads of practical information on how to implement a successful SEO strategy.
You can also take a look at the presentation I gave on the “Marketing Tactics” page at www.subscriptionsiteinsider.com.
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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