A b2b directory is a global marketplace for international buyers and sellers. It is an online platform where you can find new products and business partners. Let’s say you are an apparel manufacturer and want buyers to find you from all around the world. The best way to make your company known to the global world is to register with a b2b directory and start promoting apparels there. It is like yellow pages for traders where all business information can be found easily.

Advantages of using a B2B directory

Getting a chance to introduce your company to global buyers: Introducing yourself is one of the most important part of selling products online. It is always required that your company is always known to others. Buyers should know about your company profile which depicts your credibility. All information about your company, your products and services should be presented in a professional manner in a directory.

Display more products means more buyers and more business: You can give all the complete details about your products on b2b directories. It is a fact that the more products you display, the more buyers you attract. One thing should always be remembered that a potential buyer uses keywords to find your products. For example, if Supplier X displays 1 product and Supplier Y displays 10 products then obviously Supplier Y will attract 10 times more buyers than Supplier X. Similarly as a supplier, you post 1 product and your direct competitor posts 5 products. If you are attracting 100 buyers through your 1 product then your competitor will be attracting 500 buyers. There is huge difference in it, isn’t it?
Post your latest deals or offers: Whenever there is a new product or deal, you can post it online on a directory. These “Sell Offers” are a great way of attracting buyers. So, post as many offers as you can. You can also edit your offers when the promotion expires or create more offers if you run more campaigns.

Keep track of new offers and services: Another advantage of using a b2b directory is to keep up with the latest market trends through trade alerts. You as a supplier can easily monitor who is the latest entrant in your industry. You can simply subscribe to “Trade Alerts” and keep an eye on your competitors and their products.

The bottom line is when you register in a b2b directory; you are climbing the ladder to success. Whether you are a buyer or supplier, an online directory is indispensable for all traders interested in growing their business at a rapid pace. A business to business directory must be used effectively to ensure that buyers manage to find you and contact you instead of your rivals.

JAZ’D! operates multiple on-line B2B markets under the brands: www.jazdchemicals.com, www.jazdtech.com, www.jazdlifesciences.com, www.jazdhotels.com where buyers can easily find and the right product/service.
For more information visit JAZD Markets at www.jazd.net .

Working with JAZD markets, Inc. a comprehensive MaaS Platform company, as a SEO analyst I have tried a lot of ways to improve the page rank (PR) for the 17 web properties owned by JAZD. But after going through many trial & error methods I can say that back linking/solicitations is one of the most effective ways to improve and bring up the page rank of a domain.

Back linking helps in direct increase of Page Rank of a site. Back Linking is more effective if a domain gets a back link from a domain with a higher page ranked domain.

Back linking is a very famous and valuable term in the SEO world. Back linking at its very basic means having incoming links to one’s domain from other domains. There are a couple ways of back linking as far as I know namely two-way back linking and three-way back linking.
A domain’s PR is calculated by a formula applied by Google that takes into account all the back links a particular domain has.
The PR is calculated by a formula that says
PR (Domain Name) = PR(Incoming link 1) + PR(Incoming link 2) + PR(Incoming link 3)+…….
•    Where the sum of all the PR’s is 1.
This formula is easy if the domain doesn’t have any outbound links. But if there are solicitations or link exchanges then the formula changes as follows.
PR (Domain Name) = PR(Incoming link 1)/X1 + PR(Incoming link 2)/X2 + PR(Incoming link 3)/X3+…….
•    Where X_ is number of outbound links for that particular domain.
Thus according to me back linking is one of the most effective page rank improvement methods.

I while working at JAZD Markets, Inc. (http://www.jazd.net) have experienced it myself that link exchange with other web masters or sites helped JAZD to improve the page rank of all their 17 domains.

Solicitations can be more useful and can be long lasting if there is useful content in your web site. Content can be in any form, be it a blog or profiles of the management team of the company, or information about stuff related to the products of the company. What Google does is it looks for pages that are unique i.e. have content that has not been mirrored form any other web page. The other thing that Google looks for is mirrored pages while crawling through the domains and if you have a lot of pages that have the same layout and have a very little content then Google most probably consider those pages as spam. Thus more unique the page more chances are that it will get recognized and valued in the eyes of Google.

Thus Page Rank is directly proportional to solicitations and solicitations are directly proportional to unique and relevant content on a page.

The HIMSS 2009 conference, at the McCormick Center in Chicago, was jammed packed with over 900 exhibitors including big players like; Philips, AT&T, Hill-ROM, LG Electonics, MedQuist, intel Health and OnBase. It was obvious that the big technology companies knew that healthcare was a growing and thriving marketplace. It was evident that this industry needed a marketplace that was more interactive, static ads or just a product description in an ordinary directory could not possibly do these companies justice.

JAZD and FierceMarkets has joined forces to solve this problem. The FierceMarketplace: HealthTech directory incorporates JAZD’s industry leading directory platform, where suppliers can bring their products to life and add dimension with multi-media, product specs and images and get instant buyer interaction with ratings and reviews. FierceMarkets adds an important layer of content that provides industry critical news, that will keep buyers coming back again and again.

During the show, I wanted to get the word out to Health Technology companies and alert them that the new HealthTech directory will be open for business this summer. Most importantly, the HealthTech directory’s supplier portal will be opening on May 15^th, allowing these companies to begin to get their company listed in the directory and start to upload videos, podcast, whitepapers, product specs and fully populate their company Micro-site for free (for a limited time) before the buyers arrive this summer allowing them to start getting leads on opening day. There is nothing else quite like the HealthTech Supplier portal. It is an easy to use, self service portal where companies can take control of their company’s brand by mapping specific categories to their products and services. The HealthTech directory’s taxonomy is 3 levels deep, making sure that buyers can find specific products like, hospital information management software, quickly and easily.

We expect by HIMSS 2010 the HealthTech directory will be the hub for conducting real business in real time for both buyers and suppliers.

What was missing in the whole event were B2B end customers. You had Manufacturers meeting with Distributors galore which is proxy for the supply chain in the Industrial Supply market. What you did not have was the flood of B2B buyers that would provide a clear direction and voice for the event. This is somewhat the result of ISA membership but also a misalignment with how B2B industrial buyers are not looking for the products that they require and the distributors that they will work with. Today’s industrial supply buyers are starting to leverage the web to find suppliers at a pace that the industry has not seen before. The truth is that most companies in the sector are not prepared to meet this new flood of potential customers in a meaningful way. Traditional directories and buyers guides are either still in the “Yellow Pages” paper format or at best an online list. Manufactures and Distributors in Industrial Supply today have very few online options to distinguish themselves with the very end buyers that they lust to have a meaningful conversation with.

In looking for an answer to this dilemma I found “the book” of attendees and much like the traditional directory it was a good list and a place to start, but no more than that. I started to look to compare like companies and found it impossible to accomplish this with just the book or frankly with their sparse 10×10s either. So rather than continue searching through the book I simply started to speak with those poor sales exec’s at their 10×10’s. Not too surprisingly, they were very eager to speak with me even if they were slightly groggy from the night before. It’s Fiesta time in San Antonio; if you haven’t been it is a little like Mardi Gras, southwestern style. What these sales execs were starved for even more than a coffee and an aspirin was a real conversation with a buyer. They can only talk to the folks in the other booths about the economy for so long before they simply lose their spark and start to focus on where that evening’s Fiesta will happen.

My questions were simple although somewhat self-serving as I wanted to understand how B2B buyers make their selections on products and distributors within the Industrial Supply channel. I do have a bias that the Industrial Supply sector at large is in desperate need of the type interactive directory driven marketplace that JAZD just so happens to lead the market with. So armed with all my self-serving bias I went ahead and asked these questions:

1)    How do you interact with your B2B buyers online?
2)    How do you separate your company from the rest online?
3)    How much do you leverage online advertising and lead generation to build your business and fill your pipeline?
4)    What would you like to be able to do to distinguish yourself online?

Not surprising the answers were largely that companies are not doing very much online although they now are starting to understand that they must change and leverage the internet to reach the market much more than ever before. They all were quick to mention that they knew the end buyer was getting very savvy with how to use the web in their buying decisions and that search was playing a greater role than ever. When asked about an interactive market that was built on a world-class directory platform I got strong interest and some passive resistance after they cleared away the groggy look from their faces. The ability to interact with real buyers in meaningful sales conversations and distinguish their products and services from others was as one distributor put it the “holy grail of industrial supply.”

After attending ISA 2009 I am even more confident that the marketplace is ready, and even waiting for an integrated online directory platform. I am very excited to take the feedback from the many buyers I talked to back to the team at JAZD and continue on our mission to provide the best B2B directory platforms in the world. JAZD will deliver a state of the art industrial supply directory market to the industry in 2009. More on that hot topic in future quips.

-Jamie Bedard

To illustrate this, I’ll use a consumer analogy – let’s say you’re looking to purchase an automobile.  While the automobile manufacturers spend many millions of dollars marketing themselves, and creating compelling, useful websites, is that where you as a buyer are really going to spend your time?

I suggest not – what most of us would do (at least what I would do) is first spend significant time at a site like AutoByTel, Cars.com or ConsumerReports.com to research the types of vehicle that is of interest, set up our parameters (2WD/4WD, body style, MPG, hybrid/traditional, etc…) and create a short list of models that most closely reflect my needs.  Then we might go to the auto company websites once we’ve made a decision.

For B2B buyers, however, in most markets those ‘Consumer Reports’-esque resources simply don’t exist today.  Yes there are numerous simplistic ‘buyers’ guides’ in most industries which provide basic taxonomies and general listings of who sells what, but there are few if any tools to do any in-depth category or product research or comparisons, or allow buyers to consume relevant content, deeply research products and categories, or exchange ideas with peers on which vendors might be most appropriate.

In a nutshell, that is the JAZD value proposition – we build highly interactive, deeply meaningful and useful resources for B2B buyers across vertical markets, leveraging the domain expertise of our content and association partners – and the buyers’ themselves.  It’s a huge, highly compelling value proposition – and I’m personally thrilled to play a role in making this mission a reality.

This is also why, if you are a B2B marketer, you need to participate in our marketplaces even if you’ve done a top-notch job of SEO/PPC/web marketing yourselves.  We complement – and can turbocharge – your efforts, and we look forward to working with you to deliver new ROI to your current marketing spend.  More on that in a later post…

What does all this remind you of?: A printed, paper directory of course!

Most online directories are nothing more than an electronic version of their printed predecessors.  In the rush to get existing print directories online, implementors simply carried the bath water with the baby: bringing all the limitations of print into the online world:

• Ads were the primary way to generate money from printed directories
• The pages had to limit space per listing to keep book size and shipping costs low.
• Search in a printed directories meant thumbing through or using the index.
• Feedback could only be tracked with great effort through promotional codes, coupons or other costly and error-prone methods.

Any platform that wishes to change the business-to-business market perception of online directories must optimize to the online environment by providing industry-sensitive search functionality, deep listings that include product-level information, and constant real-time feedback on tasteful advertising and lead-generation programs.

In other words, we’d all like to see a true online directory, rather than a printed directory online.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a real buzz word right now. Are you trying to navigate your way through this confusing maze of finding the right mix of online exposure and web advertising to make your marketing dollars return a better than average ROI?  How do you measure your success? It is increased traffic? Or does get down to certain number of qualified leads to make this investment worthwhile?

Most companies in the life sciences and healthcare industries are using online product catalogs to drive traffic to their website. Some companies find this to be an insufficient way to get to the desired goal of getting real buyers to purchase product. Marketers are now tasked with providing metrics to prove the value of listing their company in an industry directory.

JAZD markets’ team of SEO professionals have spent the last year researching this problem and how it directly affects these markets. Based on their findings, they have begun to build a comprehensive program that will extend the value of the online product catalog. Using cutting edge technology, they will be able to attract qualified buyers in both the JAZD life sciences and healthcare product catalogs by fall 2009.

Life Sciences companies are frustrated with uploading their products. This leads to a non-viable, out-of-date on-line product catalog.

Many life sciences companies, like Thermo Scientific and Bio-Rad have several thousand products available to sell in their catalog. The task of transferring all those products into an on-line directory could be daunting, to say the least. The process is extremely time-consuming and at a minimum, it may take one employee a whole day, each month to keep up with this necessary evil. Is there an alternative or are they stuck with the cumbersome task of organizing their data to fit into a non-intuitive, industry-specific product catalog?

To add fuel to the fire, not only is it difficult to add or update products, but one well-known directory only recommends quarterly updates. Both of these factors quickly translate to an out-of-date product directory. The key to being successful in this space is updating and editing often to keep the offerings fresh and viable. If buyers enter the directory and take the time to search for products to purchase, and find that most of the products are no longer available or they can’t find the latest and greatest, they will go somewhere else. It only takes one bad experience to cause this potential buyer to leave and find an alternative. This could mean a lost sale for the supplier.

Is there a solution or an alternative? JAZD Markets has conducted significant research and is making great progress in developing a user -friendly tool, with the supplier’s needs in mind. Specifically designed to cut down the amount of time it takes to upload or edit products going into a product directory.

This will give the Life Sciences’ companies and their employees access to real-time product adds and updates. The ultimate goal is to give the buyer a great experience. If they are finding all the best choices and are finding the most current offerings, it makes purchasing fast and easy. The buyers will quickly come to rely on this resource and come back again and again.

One thing is likely a certainty and that is that marketing budgets will continue to shrink placing ever more importance on the few dollars left to spend. Conventional thinking tends to error on the side of eliminate every thing except those that are directly linked to leads, the pipeline and deals more specifically. Sounds like the right plan but how many marketers really measure the results with enough clarity to really know which campaigns and venues really delivered. The truth is far fewer than one would expect.

Directory marketing has traditionally been one of the first to go in down economic times largely because of the perceived lack of traffic and the inability of the advertiser to engage the prospect in any form of meaningful interaction. Is this the result of Directories being a poor lead generation and pipeline staple for advertisers or more a reflection of the current weakness of capabilities and traffic associated with them. I beleive the truth is a little bit of both and there lies the opportunity for marketers and directories alike.

If one looks at the reason that Directories exist it is to help buyers quickly find sellers. What a great place for marketing to spend lots of money and get real value in the form of qualified leads ready to make purchases? Sellers want to be there simply put becasue they want to hang out where the buyers are. So having a complete listing of all companies in a space and their complete portfolio of products well populated is essential to the value that a Directory can offer a buyer and by association the sellers. In fact, that is today one of the last things that Direcotries do. There are very few tools for buyers to narrow in on the best fit vendor and when they dig into the company roster what they find are the few companies that have some form of sponsored (paid) listing only. In markets where 100’s if not 1,000’s of companies provide valueable services and products there are sparsely few represented. It is the underlying economics of the Direcotry which cause this maldy in the first place. Directory operators, often times B2B Publishers, have put the cart before the horse and built Directories with an eye toward how can we get advertisers to spend display ad dollars on a CPM basis with us. How much space can we actively sell to the 100 or so clients that we now sell display ad space in the paper based publication to?

With all this given as the current State of the State in B2B Publishing and Directories there are emerging options that will be game changing for the buyers and the sellers. JAZD is partnering with a very select group of B2B Publishers to create the de facto vertical market Directory platforms. JAZD directories are built under one basic premise which is that you must help the buyer quickly find the right product at the right price. To accomplish this the buyer must find complete listings of companies and products and have the ability to compare them and get real ratings and reviews from other buyers that have made similar decisions. In short, the Directory must be built for the buyer. With a foundation of 1,000’s of buyers every month finding the right companies to purchase from the sellers will be able to spend marketing dollars to accomplish what they have wanted all along. The ability to represent their company in a differentiated light to qualified suspects and prospects that are actively considering making a purchase.

JAZD has engaged marquee B2B Publishing partners in Chemicals, Oil & Gas, Communications, Life Sciences, Healthcare, Hotels and Technology over the past several weeks. JAZD will launch these Directory markets during the summer of this year. Finally, a Directory business that is built to serve the ultimate client the Buyer. Sellers will love the capabilities to distinguish themselves in front of select Buyers and take advantage of the flat rate, performance based  options that put immediate and tangible results within the shrinking budget of every marketer.

B2B Advertisers stating that current on-line programs were NOT meeting their planned expectations along key dimensions:

• 88.5%  - Cost Per Action (CPA)
• 54.9%  – Cost per Impression (CPM)
• 78.2%  – Leads into the Pipeline
• 75.6%  – Top of the List Priority Display Ad Placement

One of the more interesting feedback points that came through load and clear was that as perceived value rapidly diminishes the cost for advertising was continuing to increase in all traditional venues. B2B Advertisers were very specific in their needs and recommendations for their advertising venue partners.

1. Guaranteed CPA’s and CPM’s
2. High qualified traffic volumes
3. Free listings and offerings for immediate value
4. Ability to contextually present content with our products
5. Directory functionality that highlights vendor and product value
6. Ability to directly measure the results from an investment with a traditional B2B publishers

In general, it is safe to say that little has changed in the world of on-line advertising with B2B content publishers, including improved results. Traditional B2B publishers have been reluctant to invest in developing state of the art interactive ad platforms for their clients. They have failed to embrace technology and traffic generation capabilities and have leaned on the traditional value of their “brand” as the reason for advertisers to spend their tight budget dollars with them. This is simply not working any more as books get thinner and unique visitors and relevant page views diminish. B2B Advertisers are now demanding more and they are getting it in other venues.

In a related study over 53% of the publishers readership no longer looks to them as a viable place to seek out information when they are making a considered purchase. B2B Publisers sole existence is really to bring buyers and sellers together in a trusted environment that has a direct imapct for both parties. B2B Publishing needs a new approach and a new answer for this critical problem. While B2B publishers tangle with the maladies of paper based publishing (if you need any refresher course on this one simply pick up a recent trade publication or newspaper and note how thin it really is) you wonder who if dealing with the growth potential of the future and will the incumbent management size the day or simply yield the market to Google and the industry portals. That topic is for another rant on another day.

JAZD was built simply for the expressed purpose of offering B2B content publishers another option to exceed B2B advertisers increasing expectations.

JAZD operates multiple on-line B2B markets under the brands: jazdchemicals.com, jazdenergy.com, jazdtech.com, jazdfoodandbeverage.com, jazdconstruction.com, jazdtelecom.com, jazdmanufacturing.com, jazdhospitality.com , jazdelectronics.com, jazdoilandgas.com, jazdpackaging.com where buyers can easily find and the right product/service.  JAZD establishes partnerships with B2B content publishers that allow them to focus on their brand while mutually building traffic and revenues.