The Blind Pursuit of the Brand
If there is a universal marketing truth, it's that when budgets increase, so too does our affinity for advertising. It's standard procedure for business-to-business marketing plans to include some kind of trade magazine and Internet presence coupled with radio and television time for the largest of organizations with the most discretionary income. We expand when times are good, and contract when they're bad (a counterintuitive strategy, if there ever was one).
Before You Create That Ad…
History is littered with companies who have blown their marketing budgets on a single splashy advertising campaign, many of which should never have considered such a strategy in the first place. SiriusDecisions believes there are three key filters to pass your organization through before you make the decision to spend even the first dollar on traditional advertising:
- Company lifecycle. There are four key lifecycle stages that all organizations go through: Emerging, early growth, growth and innovation. Not until the third stage, growth, is the market firmly established with a robust competitive environment, where branding becomes more critical. In the early stages when survival is what matters most, the organization should be strongly focused on sales, with marketing dollars predominately geared toward field marketing (sales support) and demand creation.
- Nice to have vs. need to have. There are two basic kinds of companies; those who sell products and services that are required (either through a perception that the product or service is needed to do business in general or by some sort of regulation), and those that are optional. When you must sell people on the idea of buying any offering like yours before you can even start differentiating your organization, you must communicate multiple, often complex messages, which mass advertising doesn't exactly excel at.
- Buying base analysis. Are you one of the dwindling number of companies where the people who buy and influence the purchase of your product or service cite advertising as significant factor in considering one solution versus another? Most b-to-b organizations have seen an overall decrease in traditional marketing effectiveness, as a result of cautious buyers who are basing their purchasing decisions on references, consensus and executive-level influence.
Advertising Alternatives
If only a limited amount of organizations should be using traditional advertising as a portion of their marketing strategy, what activities should be taking its place? The answers lie in the fundamental reason we tend to like advertising so much: Because it is a consistent way to keep our name and brand image in front of our buying public. And as we've found, for many organizations, there are far more cost-effective ways to keep your company top of mind while adding the significant value and expertise that today's b-to-b buyers are demanding, including:
- Issue-driven newsletters. Buyers aren't just looking for products, they are looking for specific industry expertise, and a sensitivity to the issues that they are trying to manage. Publish a high-quality, well-researched monthly newsletter that provides significant insights into these issues, and you position yourself as an authority while providing a regular reminder of who you are. You may want to publish multiple newsletters for your key verticals - if you sell into more than one - to keep the content as relevant as possible.
- Webinars. Quarterly, bimonthly or even monthly online events lasting 45 to 60 minutes have become popular for even the highest-level of executives, and provide a fantastic opportunity for you to again position yourself as a knowledgeable advisor to a vertical industry or group of them. Make sure to provide as much original data and best practices as you can, and leave the hard sell out; your logo on each slide and a repeated, consistent effort will do its job over time.
- Regional seminars/user groups. High-quality, face-to-face meetings that bring buyers together are particularly valuable branding tools. Pair yourself up with a well-respected industry publication or association to co-sponsor a series of events that again provide insights into working through particularly difficult issues that your product or service can play a role in. One more tip: Don't fall into the habit of believing that executives only want best practices from those within their industry; many are tired of attending the same old user groups, and would love to hear from those in industries who are farther down the learning curve in a particular area than they are.
If you choose to use advertising here are some tips on making it more effective.
- 1. Do it right, or not at all. Building a brand through advertising is extremely costly, and extremely time-consuming. Programs that are run in fits and starts, and are of limited scope will have almost no effect; in fact, they can have a negative effect when you look like a here today, gone tomorrow organization.
- 2. Hone in on your target. Make absolutely certain that you have completed an exhaustive market definition exercise prior to embarking on any advertising campaign. Understand not only your buyer, but who influences them, and develop a campaign that includes everyone who plays a role within the full decision cycle.
- 3. Think about advertising a market perspective, not a product. Most products or services are trying to advance the way people do business; otherwise, there wouldn't be much of a reason to buy them. Rather than making the predominant message your name and offering, "sell" the new market perspective. Salesforce.com is a perfect example; the company has built its key message around debunking the need for traditional enterprise software, and being the company that merely sits and waits for business when they've opened buyers' eyes to a necessary change in the status quo.
- 4. Talk to your audience. Gone are the days of being able to create single campaigns across multiple properties. Build an audience map that clearly lays out all the influencers you're trying to reach, and what characteristics beyond your core products and services drive their interest. Communicate these unique characteristics to your unique audiences, and you have a far better chance of hitting the mark.
A well-known marketing textbook provides the following definition of advertising: "Impersonal, one-way mass communication about a product or organization that is paid for by a marketer." Even if you work with the best creative agency and put yourself in the best publications or on the best sites, this is by and large what you'll get; limited, pushed communication that often is ineffective. With b-to-b buyers wanting so much more these days, most organizations simply have to find more creative, higher value-add ways to make themselves household names with their buyer base.
