Business to Business - News and Blog

British firms will spend a quarter more on search advertising this year than last, a new report released by E-consultancy predicts.

The online marketing maestros have published their Search Engine Marketing Buyer's Guide, which forecasts search marketing spending will increase by 24% this year.

This week, we speak to Ben Heald, chief executive of Sift Media, about the challenges of B2B online publishing, including the economy, how to monetise international traffic and tackle participation inequality in social media.

We ask him about trends from audiences and advertisers, how the sector is moving forward in terms of best practices, and why his journalists are now paid on a performance basis.

This weekend, Google celebrated its 10th birthday.

In September 1998, armed with $100,000 in seed money, Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page began a journey that a decade later has seen the development of a $150bn company that employs more than 20,000 people.

In the world of business, image counts for a lot. It may not be everything, but sometimes it's pretty darn close.

Sure, you always have to deliver, but sometimes getting a new client or closing a big deal is as dependent upon how you look to the client as it is upon how qualified you are.

If your business needs to accept credit card payments online, chances are you may have started out with a service like PayPal because of the low costs and the ease of integration.

But when you "outgrow" such a service, it's time to step up to a merchant account.

There are a number of key services that are hot in the industry at the moment (and no, we aren’t talking Twitter or social media services here), but online reputation management must be one of the hottest.

While it is enjoying somewhat of a boom in popularity, it is something that has been talked about within the industry for quite a while. However, it is one of those unfortunate services that sits as a hybrid.

With economic slowdown in the news everyday, you could be forgiven for thinking that knowing your customer – the foundation of good marketing — is keeping marketers awake at night.

That doesn’t seem to be the case. 

If you run a business that provides information to prospective customers through a website, you may want to consider offering downloadable white papers or case studies.

Tim Weller is the group chief executive of Incisive Media and talks to us about his successful approach to B2B publishing.

Better search results, higher clickthrough rates, more targeted traffic, improved usability… why every web writer should embrace standfirsts.