Business-to-Business Internet Marketing, Fourth Edition - Lifecycle ...

242 BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
Paid sponsorships of site features, such as job banks and events,
Paid listings in directories and buyers’ guides (some communities
provide different levels of participation so your products can be
highlighted or you can be a featured supplier),
Fees/commissions for products sold,
Banner advertising on the home page or specific pages,
Paid sponsorship/advertising in a community e-mail newsletter, and
Rental of e-mail subscriber lists.
As with any business decision, weigh all the positives and negatives
before you get involved in a community, even if participation is free. If your
objective is to use the community for marketing purposes, you will have to
invest time as well as money. It takes time to make use of a community’s
resources and build relationships with community members.
Often, the highest value you get from a community is the networking
value. View the community as a giant virtual meeting room. The
networking possibilities are limitless. If you look at the community as a
place where unlimited networking potential can result in unlimited business
opportunities, you will probably get more out of one than you ever
thought possible.
Building Your Own Sponsored Community
A much larger decision than participating in an existing community is
whether or not to build one of your own. As a b-to-b marketer, why
should you consider building a community in the first place? One reason
is to establish a peremptory leadership position in a particular field. Another
is to influence a target audience without heavy-handed promotion.
A good example of the sponsored community in action comes from
BMC Software (www.bmcsoftware.com), as reported in the e-newsletter,
B2B Marketing Biz (www.b2bmarketingbiz.com). In order to educate
different corporate audiences, particularly in large companies, BMC
launched four different individually branded sponsored communities.