In the first post in this two-part series, we discussed the general trends that are developing in online marketing. Now, in this post, we will discuss how these trends might apply specifically to B2B companies including the high-tech, life-science, and bio-tech industries as well as management consulting, law, and online-marketing firms.

First, let’s review the general trends from the first part:

SEO, PPC, and contextual marketing are overtaking past forms of online marketing like banner advertising and e-mail marketing;
Successful companies will need to increase Internet-marketing efforts in a recession, especially if competitors do the opposite out of a fear of doing anything risky in an unstable economic environment; and

Smaller, more-agile companies will overtake large corporations, which are slow to react and respond in a hyper-fast, globalized world in which everything can change in a week — not only in a quarter or year.

Now, how do these factors involve the sector of your company? Well, let’s start with the big picture and work our way down.

The Internet has accelerated the pace at which the world is becoming both increasingly globalized and individualized. One of the first things that business schools teach these days is that the market is becoming more and more segmented. There is no longer a mass audience; there are thousands of small audiences, and each has its own demographics, interests, and characteristics. (After all, how many different brands of cereal are available in supermarkets?) Although this is greatly important to marketers, it is also relevant to your business in general because those who are successful are those who target and dominate a specific niche. This is true in all industries, even bio-tech and law — just to name a few examples.

Say that you are the CEO of a large, international, bio-tech firm that is currently one of the top players in the world. In the world we just described, you will be at a disadvantage in the near future — if not already. You have one unit developing a drug to fight cancer, another working on one to fight impotence, yet another combating heart disease, and so on. You are working on thirty medicines at any given time. And each drug has its own marketing plan, its own research team, its own FDA-approval track, its own sales team, and so on. You are allocating so many different resources in so many directions that it is no longer possible to be efficient. (For the economics-majors among you, the term is economies of scale.) You probably have a hundred paper-pushing middle managers whose sole function is to try and track this chaos mess across the entire company. And just imagine if you decide to make a major policy change! (Perhaps you want to pour more resources towards the cancer-fighting drug and fewer towards the impotence one.) It will take forever to turn such a large ship towards a new direction.

Now, compare this to a smaller, start-up, bio-tech company whose sole reason for existence is to develop its new anti-impotence drug. Everyone from the investors on Wall Street to the CEO in the board room to the receptionist at the front door lives and breathes impotence. (Well, you know what we mean.) Now, which of these two companies are going to be more successful in developing, marketing, and selling an anti-impotence drug? The second, smaller one — precisely because it is more agile and can react to the market more quickly. If a hospital discovers something new about the disease, if bio-tech financial news breaks, or if a test subject reveals something crucial, the smaller company will be able to respond first. But the most-important aspect is in marketing.

Online-marketing strategy can change in days, if not hours. Your search-result in Google for the relevant keywords can fall from number three to twenty. The keywords you need to target (“fighting impotence,” for example) in Google AdWords can change — as can the price to secure those searches — instantly. Your competitors might devote more time to SEM and social-media marketing under your nose. The number of variables is almost unlimited. And the smaller company with a nimble, tech-savvy marketing department will be able to react within hours. The large, multinational firm will probably hold meetings to discuss the issue and then need to get bureaucratic approval from various middle managers. Moreover, the biggest pharmaceutical companies have longstanding relationships and contracts with television networks to run expensive advertisements even though television advertising is rapidly become obsolete and online-marketing is the future. After all, older Americans — the target demographic for drug companies — are the fastest-growing demographic on the Internet. The large companies also tend to be stuck in the Internet past by focusing on banner advertising even though that, too, is become obsolete.

In the bio-tech and life-science industries, the future realities of online-marketing will necessitate that companies operate as quickly and nimbly as possible. Moreover, it will be important to focus on a specific niche in both deciding what drugs to produce and how to market them. There is no more mass audience — even among senior citizens. As more people — especially older Americans — spend more time on the Internet, it will be necessary to focus on online-advertising methods that work; SEO, PPC, and social media work whereas banner advertising and e-mail campaigns do not. Current and potential users of your drug are already discussing it on the Internet — how will you find and influence them?

But this is not true only in the pharmaceutical industry. Remove “drug company” from the earlier paragraphs in this post and replace the phrase with “law firm” or “high-tech firm” or “management-consulting firm.” The principles remain the same even though the name and type of company may change. If you are a law firm, do not try to be number one in your local area for every specialization. Focus on what you know and do best — your core competency and unique product-quality, so to speak. If you are consulting firm, focus on what know and do best. Be the best consultants on start-up finance in Massachusetts, for example. Do not branch out into organizational behavior if you are not the best in that field. And when you market yourself online, focus on promoting that quality. Do it quickly. No, better yet — do it now.