Portal Power
According to Alan Factor, Chief Strategy Officer at Agency.com, "The portal can become a valuable asset to your Sales & Marketing organization, providing considerable productivity and direct cost savings, as well as help to increase your company's revenue."
What are business to business portals?
A portal acts as a doorway to the Internet by providing various entry points to the World Wide Web as well as giving employees, clients, and prospects a way to stay informed of important company information.
Three common portal types include:
- General Purpose portals – Portals that give consumers access to a variety of products and services.
- Corporate portals – Portal infrastructures within a company to keep in touch with employees, partners, and clients.
- Vertical Portals – Portals targeted towards specific industries. An interesting industry specific portal like E-Timberhub.com a portal for the Timber trade industry is a prime example.
Why are Portals Important?
B2B portals offer a wide variety of solutions for companies who are seeking to expand their advertising and prospect acquisition efforts using the Internet.
More importantly, portals have become easier to use, more secure, and allow greater flexibility to businesses engaging clients through a targeted B2B portal marketing campaign.
Effective B2B Lead Generation through B2B Portals
Business to Business portals offer a variety of lead generation opportunities.
Among them are:
- Trade Leads – buyers and sellers place a listing within the trade leads section specifically looking for contacts.
- Paid Listings – companies can place advertisements in specific categories of the portal. For example, an ad would bring the contact to a registration form that would then be used to gather important prospect data.
- Paid Survey services – some portals offer the ability to send survey's to their members. This allows companies to gather prospect data and tailor their follow up approaches based on the data collected.
Portal Fees
Most commonly used are:
- Pay-Per-Click. Business.com uses this advertising solution.
- Pay per listing. A flat fee for an area of the web page. Much like an ad in a trade publication.
- Sponsorship. Usually costs are based on how many impressions (page loads or image loads) an ad receives.
Whether a company decides to use pay-per-click or sponsoring a specific category or page of the site will depend on the goals of the campaign.
Concept
The portal concept can be compared to auto dealers lining up in one area of town. Have you ever wondered why car dealers are located directly across or beside one another?
Car dealers know that while they are competing for the same sale a majority of customers will not find what they are looking for at their competitors and end up on their lot instead.
B2B portals are similar. While companies who are competing for the same sale (or lead) are sitting on the same page, savvy marketing and sales directors know some customers will find their way to their company's website, contact form, or email address. Activity breeds more activity for everyone.
Portal Benefits
Here are two great examples of industry specific portals:
- http://www.smtnet.com/ - The Electronics Industry hub. This portal is geared toward bringing together providers and users of the products, services and information related to electronics manufacturing.
- http://www.Telezoo.com – Telezoo.com allows you to find and compare telecom and networking solutions across supplier lines and get quotes
From trade leads to offering survey's to collect important prospect data B2B portals offer companies a variety of lead generation opportunities.
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