Two opinions on how to spend your industrial marketing budget

Aaron Kahlow has a web-consulting business that has closely partnered with Thomas Register. I heard Aaron speak at their internet marketing seminar earlier this year and was impressed. He told the truth about what is important in a website to satisfy your customers.

This document hits some of the same points, especially making the point that you can't "ask the creative people of this world to solve your sales and marketing issues" (creative meaning artsy-types). He then suggests investing in improving your site and making is targeted toward search-optimization and user experience.

His affiliation with TR shows when we get to the suggested budget break-down for web marketing. He allows 30 to 75% (depending on four scenarios) for "guaranteed online listings". This he justifies this expense on portals and destination sites as a "constant lead source".

My real issue is that TR is now selling listing on a 'portal' type site for its ability to reach people using search engines, while Aaron is implying that users go to 'portals' separately and provide more consistant leads.

2004 Guide to Web Marketing (PDF)

And now my opinion: While web-marketing remains cheap to do, Aaron fails to make the point that the biggest investment in web-marketing will be time and effort by marketing managers to make and manage their site so that it does what it is supposed to do. Managing marketing for the industrial b2b company has become very complex now that the web is the tool of choice. Its still scary how many marketing managers don't get it!