Got a link to this webpage from a magazine publisher: Magazine Vertical Search:
“Business-to-Business magazines drive more readers to their own website than any other medium. … The reader goes direct from the print page to an advertiser’s website to continue to search a product or service or new technology.”
The webpage is actually an attempt at a pitch for a vertical-search software, although it reads more like a manifesto about the value of B2B trade pubs, with half-a-dozen links to articles proving his case.
My opinion? Anyone can drive more traffic to their site via magazines and advertising than search can. It just takes a lot of money. One of the articles linked to references automobile website traffic being driven by advertising, which is not relevant to the B2B print ad discussion, although is a good example of what money can do to site traffic.
Yes, if trade advertising were measurable (which I have no idea how this guy’s software does this), it could make the case. The problem is that for many of us niche industrial marketers, the low-hanging fruit of search is so bountiful, and measurable, that trade advertising is no longer worth it.
A B2B marketing blog by an honest-to-goodness marketing manager for an industrial manufacturer.