Over the past 3 months I’ve talked to over 25 companies primarily in the Business-to-Business (B2B) space and mostly technology companies (software and hardware).

 Specifically, I was asking questions including:

• What types of traditional marketing activities are you maintaining (webinars, website development, paper-based sales and marketing collateral, seminars, etc.)?
• What types of digital marketing activities are you engaged in (blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn lead generation, Facebook, partner driven digital marketing, SEO/SEM, etc.)?
• Are you combining the two disciplines and in what ways?

 The types of responses were a little surprising as I thought there would be more push toward exercising these emerging techniques around digital marketing.

 What I found was the following in regards to digital marketing:

1. Most companies were taking a wait-and-see strategy. That is they were waiting to see what their partners or competitors were doing before they invested a lot of time and effort.
2. They were unclear about the ROI from digital marketing activities. Some said that they didn’t see any early returns from looking at how their market was engaged in these activities.
3. They were indeed monitoring digital trends and activities – usually informally – until the time they thought would be appropriate for them to take the plunge.
4. In general, they didn’t see the value in Twitter but did see some value in LinkedIn – as this was a professional community – one that they could have meaningful discussions through. However, even with LinkedIn, almost none of them had anything truly formal going on.
5. There seemed to be an executive gap. Mid-level managers and rank and file employees were more apt to use informal social media communication than senior management. Security and trust were important issues at the senior level.

There were some clear trends that I plan on illustrating in some follow-up blogs and reports, but this is a quick readout of what I found.  Keep in touch or sign up for my future reports.

And please add your comments as I’d appreciate what you’ve found.

Note to above: About 15 of these discussions were formal – that is they followed a prescribed set of questions that lasted approximately one hour. Discussions with the remaining 10 companies were more informal although in general the same types of questions were asked.

And there are always more than a few good articles at B2B Magazine for which I used their logo as an illustration above.

Of course, I thought this was pretty cool.  As I learned more about what they were doing and why, I became intrigued and enlightened. I was not expecting this kind of behavior especially from a bank with the word Royal in it. I guess it seemed like an oxymoron at the time. I was used to hearing this level of modern thinking coming out of the likes of Wells Fargo, who at the time and over the years has been equated with one of the most progressive technological banks in the world. Indeed, Wells Fargo initially had the most Internet banking users and of course one of the best online experiences as the Internet was incorporated into financial services in the 90’s.

As a result of something I’m working on, I had occasion to re-enlighten myself on what RBC was doing. Their latest contest features a “Do-Over” video challenge for the best advice on starting school over again. There were 3 student winners in Canada, each receiving $10,000. OK, the Royal Bank of Canada is quite profitable and managed to escape relatively unscathed from the financial debacle. I believe their total losses were less than $10 billion. So $10,000 is not a lot of cash to give away.

But really, what’s more interesting is the fact that RBC took an active role in using web 2.0 to connect with young people and to get their input into their system. RBC started when the use of these social internet mediums was still in its quite early stages. And they began when there were mixed concerns about how to manage and monitor it in the event of negative backlash or comments directed at or to the bank.

They’ve made it a success. I can’t say that RBC is the de-facto standard when it comes to the use of social media technology, but they’ve come a long way while there has been such negativism and adversity in the banking world. I’ve been equally impressed with their commitment to green and the environment, community service, and a recent revamping of their entire online experience. They now service 3 million online customers. All pretty heady doings from a bank with such a stuffy name.

RBC does operate in the U.S. as Centura Bank and RBC Bank USA and I cannot speak to that aspect of things. I certainly would be interested in hearing your comments on social media in financial services.

I attended the Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York City and there was usually something interesting to hear or learn about from many of the panelists and presenters.

After so many years in the business and after working with companies like Endeca and Open Text who have search engines, social media and content programs for the enterprise, it was well worth the time to hear so many good presenters on timely and relevant topics of interest.

But enough said. If you have an interest and time, try attending one of these Search Engine Strategies events in one of your local cities. There are a number of them scheduled in the upcoming months.

Just go to http://www.searchenginestrategies.com for further information.

For those more enterprise (business side) focused around search and Web 2.0, there is another conference in NY, also at the Hilton, upcoming in May. This is also reasonably worthwhile to attend, although not nearly as comprehensive as the one put on by Search Engine Strategies.

For more information on this conference, go to
http://www.enterprisesearchsummit.com

Lastly, there is quite a lot going on around social media and the enterprise this week at the AIIM Expo this week (March 31 – April 2) in Philadelphia.

As a marketing and sales person, as well as technologist, it’s a pleasure to see so much effort being put into incorporating new ways of communicating and how to deliver this as a business.

Mind this though…there are a lot of simultaneous moving parts in this field, so keeping on top of everything is no easy task. More to come on this.