Scott Albro of Focus: the Dortch on Marketing Three-Q Interview

Scott Albro is founder and CEO of Focus, where business decision makers can get complimentary research, market analysis and community that helps them to make better purchase decisions. (In the interests of full disclosure, it's also where I'm director of research, but I'd be fan anyway, for reasons you can read here.) Scott describes himself as "Builder, Leader, Knifefighter." I figured he might have some interesting opinions about the current state and imminent future of business-to-business (B-to-B) marketing -- and I was right.

Q1: What is the greatest challenge facing modern B-to-B advertising/marketing/media companies today?
A1: How to use the Internet. Right now the Internet is good at delivering quantity, as opposed to quality. That works in consumer markets but amounts to an epic FAIL in most B-to-B markets.

Q2: What is the greatest challenge facing the clients of modern B-to-B advertising/marketing/media companies today?
A2: How to deliver something that the sales organization actually cares about. [Editorial comment: Oh, Snap!]

Q3: What is poised to be "the next big thing" In modern b-to-B advertising, marketing and/or media -- technological, cultural, financial or otherwise?
A3: We're working on it and it's a secret.

Dortch's Recommendations:

Focus.com is innovative, interesting and gaining traction. It is establishing a leading presence in an area many marketers know little to nothing useful about: cyberspace. Scott and his team are not the only smart people who realize this and are taking steps to address it. But they are some of the first, they're really smart, they work really hard, and they have a good head start.

If you're an advertiser or marketer trying to reach business decision makers, you should probably already be talking to Focus. If you are a business decision maker, you should be making use of the research, analysis and community at Focus.com. And if you're involved or interested in the evolution of business-to-business marketing and sales, you should definitely be watching Scott and the Focus team.