Not much potential for Digital Marketing in B2B?

We are currently working on a digital marketing plan for an e-mail service provider. The company is trying to target the Decision Making Units at their potential clients (mainly CMOs). So far, this company has relied on referrals to get new clients. This company also has a great product all their clients have never left them. Although they have been growing, it is a challenge to get new clients in industries outside what they are already serving (due to the referral process).

What can they do in digital marketing to get to their corporate clients?

Search does not look very promising. SEO appears to be irrelevant, ranking higher in organic searches has a limited potential in attracting CMOs to this e-mail service provider. The same happens with paid search. Basically CMOs do not make decisions based on their Google searches.

Display makes more sense. We are working with this company to understand what their target Decision Making Units are consuming on-line (e.g. which blogs they read, what industry publications they follow, what industry events they are interested in, etc.) So we can then place Display Ads in those sources. Although better than search, display is also very limited in its effectiveness, many users other than the CMOs that we are trying to target are shown the display generating a cost that will never generate revenue.

Social Media might be the channel that makes more sense for this B2B company. Trying to find those CMOs through their subscriptions to professional networks, or job information in social networks is a lot more promising.

In conclusion, I believe that Digital Marketing channels are much more effective for B2C companies that need to get to a large number of consumers that follow a buying decision process that differs greatly from that of the few corporate buyers who are the clients of B2B.
I understand that Digital Marketing can help B2B companies to build their brand. When Andersen Consulting changed its name to Accenture, it spent almost $200 million to publicize its new name, including $10 million for the Super Bowl to try to reach a very small subgroup of viewers (top managements) the rest of viewers did not understand what the company was about and thought it was one the least interesting ads (according to the USA Today rankings). If you are willing to spend that much money on brand building then it makes sense to complement the effort with a presence in all the on-line channels. But if you are a B2B start-up, your marketing budget might be better spent somewhere else (e.g. attending industry events and networking with potential clients)