B2B

2011 Reputation Management Trends

Smart b-to-b organizations start planning and budgeting well in advance of a new fiscal year. Part of the process requires evaluating strategies and tactics that have been employed during the past year, then deciding which to keep and which to replace. SiriusDecisions has identified key trends that will impact the b-to-b communications function in 2011.

1. Waterfall-Long Social Media: Many b-to-b organizations have experience using social media to monitor their brand, customer perception and sentiment; some are even trying to use it to seed demand creation. This isn’t enough; communications executives now must take a waterfall-length social media perspective. Recently, we outlined five waterfall-related task families that marketing can impact: seed, create, enable, accelerate and nurture. Adding social media into the tactic and offer delivery mix can help create new demand. On the enablement side, leveraging a social platform to build an internal community to facilitate collaboration and best practices sharing within direct and indirect sales channels can help drive incremental sales productivity. Finally, understanding the social preferences of prospects provides the knowledge to apply appropriate social efforts to the nurturing process.

2. The Communications Center: Similar to the value a demand center can provide, a communications center can pay significant dividends if created. Particularly when it comes to global communications, a centralized function can create leveraged programs for retaining key branding and messaging elements while enabling local customization based on defined guidelines. In addition, the approach allows companies to harness key expertise distributed throughout the communications organization and dynamically allocate it as needed, depending on the corporate initiative (e.g. new product launch or merger/acquisition).

3. Link to Demand: While we would like nothing more than not having this as a key issue for 2011, the reality remains that too few organizations – not even 40 percent according to our most recent surveying – tightly link their communications and demand creation efforts. We’ve written extensively on the topic that linking to demand is much more desirable that trying to link to revenue, and that the most effective measurements of this linkage should be results-oriented rather than activity-driven. More traditional communications roles (e.g. public relations, analyst relations) often have the perception that seeding or supporting demand creation is not their job; until the objectives that these roles are judged are changed, there is little reason for behavior to change.

A key theme for communications functions in 2011 will be the ability to deliver impact across the demand waterfall, rather than just at its top. However, this can be a thorny topic for professionals in more traditional roles who have become accustomed to only having to demonstrate activity levels. In addition, the ubiquitous nature of social media means it’s no longer a luxury, but rather an invaluable tool that every marketer can leverage. Those who embrace these two realities will be better positioned to not only build the proper linkages within their organizations; they will have a much better chance to prove their contribution.

Ally Motz

Marketing Touches: Knowing When to Say When

Establishing rules concerning contact frequency should be managed by marketing operations; you will certainly want to include field marketing in the policy definition mix. Policy compliance must involve any data management function responsible for access to contacts, as well as managing name acquisition and data quality. Touch policy development tends to be a work in progress, with many organizations putting in place basic rules to manage contact frequency and building toward more complex guidelines. We have generally observed four phases in this development, including:

1. Legal obligation only. Even an organization that puts no restrictions on how prospect and customer data is used must, by law, adhere to opt-out requests, and thus build a process to ensure opt-outs are processed quickly and correctly. These organizations should also be tracking opt-out levels over time against an initial benchmark (e.g. total percentage of database opted out, opt-out rates by month and quarter) as a way to heighten the need for more well-defined policies.

2. One-size, rules-based, honor system. The initial foray into formal marketing touch policy tends to be defined by both its simplicity as well as its faith in the (general) honesty of people. To reduce the amount of pounding of the database, the organization sets a blanket guideline for contact frequency by email (one per week seems to be a common rule) as well as by telephone and direct mail. Without any formal gatekeeper in place, marketers are relied on to police themselves. Such policies are often accompanied by efforts to educate marketers on why “overfishing” of the database can be harmful to their success in the long term; this at least helps to build awareness about the problem and encourage compliance. Similar to a no-policy scenario, opt-out levels must be benchmarked and tracked over time to help indicate whether marketers are staying true to the policies put in place.

3. One-size, rules-based, safeguarded. Our third phase sees similar types of blanket policies to those adopted in the second phase, but adds a dimension of protection in the form of an individual or team that manages access to contacts in the database, or technology that does so in an automated way. Some organizations have created a formal role (e.g. a data steward) to do the job, while others have appended the duty onto an existing marketing operations resource. This resource will receive list requests from individual marketers, then pull the list to ensure that all names comply with regulations.

4. Multi-dimensional, rules-based, safeguarded. Our fourth – and most complex – phase sees the evolution toward a more complex, rules-based policy that includes buyer preferences, roles and even account type to define the frequency of contacts. This level of sophistication tends to eliminate the human element, simply due to the fact there are way too many moving parts to manage. Companies without marketing automation platforms (MAPs) and/or contact data management capabilities will struggle to get to this stage, especially in distributed marketing organizations with limited visibility into what gets sent to whom.

Marketers are naturally drawn to think that more is more, meaning increasing frequency of communications can only improve results. The fallacy here is that those messages, whether delivered via email, phone or direct mail, are welcome in the first place. If communications are not sought by contacts, and/or if many are not relevant to their specific role and needs, increasing their frequency can drive blanket opt-outs. On the other hand, communicating too little with a contact can also hurt a marketer’s cause, as messages are so infrequent and unpredictable that the company is neither top of mind nor trusted. It also means bad contacts are kept longer, which gets expensive. Once a marketing touch policy is in place, tracking and measurement must then be established to understand the impact of message frequency both on results and the database. This is easiest for email communication: Look at both response measures (was an action taken) and deliverability metrics (did the message get to the recipient, and did the contact opt out). Looking at how these measures change by type of message and frequency of messages overall will show what the threshold is and when it has been crossed. Don’t forget to look at metrics by role to determine if different types of contacts show they prefer different frequency (or types of messages) by opting out at higher rates.

A marketer’s most valuable asset is his or her organization’s database, but it is a fragile ecosystem that decays quickly if not properly managed. Setting rules for the frequency of contact is a good first step toward making sure this decay isn’t an inevitable fact. The next step is to understand what prospects and customers need at various points in the buying process, so relevant options are offered and expectations set. The third – and most important – step is to encourage contacts to define their preferences so your messages are expected and more likely to be relevant. With both permission and preferences in place, your database will grow to become a competitive advantage rather than a detriment.

Ally Motz

The Habits of Highly Effective Reference Programs

Truth. It’s in short supply these days, with sources from politicians to athletes stretching it, hiding it and in some cases absolutely mangling it. As a result, the search for the truth is often a difficult one, particularly for b-to-b buyers looking for honest perspectives about what to expect if they buy a specific product or service. It’s common knowledge that prospects see current customers – especially when they are unscripted and unpaid – as a solid source to rely on during their truth- gathering process. Reference teams, however, often struggle to gain access to their organization’s customers, and then get them to tell their story freely and effectively.

In this post, I will describe three difference makers we see in the customer reference efforts (refers to a set of practices adopted by an organization to enhance customer advocacy around its product or services, e.g., word of mouth) that far outpace those of their peers.

One: Focus and Dedication
Children in schoolrooms more than a century ago read from a primer that included a cautionary statement: “Things done by halves are not done right.” This sentiment applies perfectly to customer reference management, as best-in-class organizations do not treat it as a part-time role. For organizations generating more than $500 million in revenue, we believe a dedicated team is required to deliver high-quality reference results; average organizations tend to tack reference management onto the responsibilities of existing roles such as corporate communications or field marketing. While assigning a specific individual to reference-related tasks may seem sufficient, if it is not a sole focus, superior results will likely never be achieved. This principle extends to the measurement of reference teams as well: If output is not monitored or is held to arbitrary measures of activity, those responsible will routinely fail to deliver because they have other jobs to do.

Two: Division of Labor
Customer reference teams have multiple goals that expand as an organization grows and the demands for information become more complex. First, they must support the sales organization by providing access to customers willing to speak on the company’s behalf. Next, they must document and share the experiences of customers in various ways, including marketing collateral, social media, event participation and much more. Finally, these teams must be equipped to cultivate relationships with customers and with sales in order to better identify willing participants, and develop and manage their participation. While they may be seen as overlapping jobs at the outset, successful reference groups eventually deploy personnel and technology to fulfill different requirements. Automating access to routine requests frees up resources to focus on higher-value activities such as reference recruitment and content development. In contrast, average teams tend to be highly reactive to sales requests and fulfill them in a manual way, meaning they aren’t at all scalable. The more time that is spent in fire-drill mode means it will be challenging to find windows of opportunity to evolve the reference program as a whole.

Three: Direct Access to Customers
Gaining the trust of the organization – particularly sales – is essential to building a proactive, streamlined reference team. Whether or not this trust exists is displayed in the team’s access to customers. Run-of-the-mill teams must ask permission to reach out to a contact; more often than not, they are met with resistance from a sales team fearful of threatening a relationship or jeopardizing a deal in progress. While well-intentioned, over time an abundance of caution leads to a shortage of contacts, which in turn hinders sales’ ability to close other deals. Best-in-class reference teams collaborate with sales not only to identify contacts but to also build relationships on their own. They become a driver of loyalty by protecting customers’ valuable time from overuse and inappropriate application.

A company’s words about itself will never carry the weight of those from a customer, meaning that building a top-notch reference program shouldn’t be looked at as a luxury. With the ways that customer evidence can potentially be used taking on more forms than ever before, marketing has more to manage, and more at risk if it fails. What may seem like an internal inefficiency around helping sales close deals is often emblematic of a much bigger problem: misunderstanding the importance of reputation, and the value of sharing it in a systematic way.

Ally Motz

The Emergence of Influencer Relations in B-to-B

With the rapid rise of social media, buyers are placing growing trust in the opinions of new sources that use blogs, online forums, and sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to spread their message; by doing so, they have morphed AR into a broader category we call influencer relations (IR). Today’s influencers come in all shapes and sizes; they live both outside of an organization’s walls as well as within them, when evaluated as a whole, they fall into four categories, including:

1. Traditional. Just because buyers are placing weight on new groups of influencers doesn’t mean they are ignoring analysts, journalists and associations, particularly when it comes to their most important purchases. The well-respected analyst firms typically carry more weight than individual analysts that have set out on their own; rosters within both categories must be tightly maintained. Gathering feedback from sales will help in understanding when in their processes that buyers are relying on traditional influencers, as well as tracking any changes in behavior. Understanding how traditional sources of influence are using social media means to expand their reach will help ensure your organization is properly monitoring all of the ways that these influencers are talking about your organization and its offerings.

2. Social media pundits. From influential bloggers to Twitter personalities, new groups of pundits regularly come and go, and exert different degrees of influence over buyers that must be monitored. Create a list of criteria that will help set the level of engagement that particular influencers require, using the quality of content, their relevance to your business, search engine ranking data and buyer surveys to understand the degree of influence they exert. It’s not enough to look at quantitative measures to rank influencers; there may be bloggers that gain notoriety simply by being negative all the time; thus, no amount of engagement is likely to change their opinions. When your list is complete, consider how this group wishes to engage; some may only want to be dealt with electronically, while others may be willing to attend live events. Work with local representatives and communications agencies to identify any regional social media influencers under your online radar, as well as how these influencers prefer to be engaged.

3. Customers. Existing customers can have a significant effect on shaping the opinions of prospects in the late stages of the buying process. While traditional case studies and other reference components are certainly valuable, nothing will have as much weight as a happy customer who goes public in forums such as live events, online events and social media vehicles from blogs to communities. The rise of social media means that buyers can now have a network to leverage throughout the buying process to ask specific questions about a vendor. Pay attention to the sentiment and tone of customer postings, and don’t neglect the value of a customer community. Buyers want to engage with other buyers; give them platforms for discussion.

4. Employees. Particularly from a support standpoint, employees who are engaged and forthright have the opportunity to promote positive interactions with a wide range of customers and influencers through social media. Organizations should promote employee use of social media to encourage their potential impact on other influencers. By having a centralized policy to govern the use of social media, organizations can support employee involvement with customers while maintaining policies and procedures on the types of information and content that can be shared publicly. Not only does this strategy act as an early warning system for identifying potential issues, it also heightens the possibility that a company can impact influencer views by engaging quickly and leaving positive impressions in the public space.

While it may be easier to maintain a simple checklist of the usual analysts and journalists to interact with, having a wider influencer universe can help get your message out to a larger range of prospects. The evolution from AR to IR, however, means that communications executives must be more proactive in identifying and engaging new categories of influencers on their turf, and on their terms. Due to the nature of social media, the credibility and influence of individuals can change rapidly; the better you understand your customers’ habits and requirements, the more you’ll know who to engage with and how.

The B-to-B Communications Organization of the Future

The trends we've identified from client interactions, surveys and research studies have formed the basis for our vision of the b-to-b communications structure of tomorrow. While the core contributions of legacy roles from branding and advertising to public relations will remain, the way tactics are delivered as well as how specific roles respond to the evolving needs of various constituent groups must transform. In some cases, these roles will expand and require new skills; in others, they will be subsumed by new functions that provide greater leverage. At the heart of the communications transformation is the creation of what we call the communications center.

Although many organizations currently have an integrated communications function, few extend the linkages to other functions such as field and product marketing. The communications center gathers and distributes communications best practices, policies and skills, including developing and enforcing companywide social media policies; creating and monitoring global branding and content guidelines; and managing the allocation of creative resources. Most important, it also drives the interlock of communications activities within a broader campaign strategy, thus ensuring greater leverage and impact of reputation-focused functions.

Not only will the creation of the communications center streamline the delivery of messages to external and internal constituents, it allows communication functions to pinpoint activities that are isolated and potentially wasteful. The staffing of a communications center is often achieved with existing staff based on skills, and implemented in a shared service structure where appropriate roles can align to different communication functions based on need. The communications center also can act as operations arm, aggregating and packaging measurements to be shared with other parts of the organization.

It is wishful thinking to assume that all communication roles can merely realign their responsibilities to the goals of the company and the new realities of the market. In many cases, existing roles will need to transform radically to maintain relevance and truly impact; to this end, we have identified three key functional pillars on which the communications organization must be built, including:

1. Influencer relations. The era of industry analysts as the single voice of opinion has ended, as vocal bloggers, pundits and community dwellers rapidly gain the respect once reserved for traditional voices alone. This digital group of influencers tend to communicate more frequently and quickly, and thus have the best chance of flying under your radar without a monitoring tool in place. Interacting with influencers within the social media universe requires specific skills, as well as time and resources. Dedicated roles that specifically deal with driving reputation and awareness through social media channels will be necessary for a while, but will eventually go away, most likely absorbed by the communications center. This new structure recognizes that social media must become another tool within every marketer’s toolbox and integrated into the overall workflow.

2. Reputation management. In the b-to-b world, reputation is the sum of experiences and impressions that customers and prospects have by interacting with your organization, while brand is a subset that encompasses the image you project. Public relations (PR) is typically used by organizations to broadcast one-way messages to both target audiences and the market at large. Evolved PR functions cultivate a sense of back-and-forth community with their audiences, enabling them to not only drive awareness and support demand creation programs on a regular basis, but to also become a more credible source of information in the face of negative issues that can blossom into reputation-damaging events. Community management is a fairly new role; for many organizations, it merely acts as the operations and project manager for the online community. What it should be doing is ensuring that content flows into the community, driving adoption and ensuring subject matter experts are engaged.

3. Communication services. At first blush, our third pillar may seem like the only part of the communications organization that isn’t changing. However, instead of merely just serving as the repository for roles with little contact with (and direct impact on) customers, corporate communications must transform to become a well-integrated, widely used service bureau. For corporate advertisers, this means becoming more of an expert in online advertising and search engine optimization; for events, it means focusing on smaller, more targeted and less expensive events rather than large industry affairs. Both roles must expand their skill sets, particularly in regard to social media. In addition, your Website is no longer sufficient as a marketing front door; instead, it’s an interactive way to reach buyers regardless of their stage within a buying cycle. Staff that can assist in Website optimization will find their roles becoming increasingly more relevant, particularly in the area of dynamic content as the more you can align content to the exact needs of a buyer, the more likely he or she is to continue to engage.

Finally, the transition taking place from internal communications to internal marketing is important to note. Whether you are communicating organizational change, market dynamics, human resource issues or public affairs information, internal communications must move beyond the view that creating and sending their messages is a checkbox item vs. ensuring that the message is not only received, but read and understood by employees.

Building and protecting the reputation of a b-to-b organization has become more decentralized, particularly with the rise of social media from both an inbound and outbound nature. A critical success factor is creating a centralized communications center to set policies and procedures, as well as to collect and propagate proven processes and skills where needed. The motivation is the realization that buyers’ habits are changing, the influencers that impact their decisions are different, and every interaction employees have with customers and prospects can have a long-lasting effect. Those who recognize and embrace these new realities and evolve their structure accordingly to meet these demands will emerge as the organizations that best leverage the entire communications function not just today but for years to come.

Ally Motz

More on B2B Advertising-- Whatever Happened to The Man in The Chair?

The Man In The Chair was voted the best business ad of the decade (1950’s, that is) by Business Week Magazine and the best (#1) business ad of the entire 20th Century by B2B Magazine and Crain Communications.

The Man In The Chair is iconic – and even beat Intel which was voted the second best ad campaign of the last century.

This ad was sponsored by McGraw-Hill Magazine Division and is a classic from that era – featuring a very stern-looking executive sitting in his chair with both feet planted firmly on the ground, a scowl on his face, hands folded together in front of him with elbows resting on the armrest.

Leaning slightly forward he says: “I don’t know your company...I don’t know your company’s product...I don’t know what your company stands for...I don’t know your customers...I don’t know your company’s reputation. NOW – what was it you wanted to tell me?” Across the bottom is the simple selling proposition: sales start before your salesman calls – with business publication advertising. The great David Ogilvy considered this to be “the single best definition of advertising ever given”.

The origins of The Man In The Chair – the ad originated with Fuller, Smith and Ross advertising. It was written by a 31-year-old copywriter. A professional model was hired for the job but an account supervisor (Gil Morris) sat for a Polaroid shot (a rehearsal) – but his grouchy look was sufficiently stern that he wound up being used in the final shot.

The Man In The Chair re-visited – McGraw-Hill has made several attempts to update its iconic ad: in one version an Asian was used to reflect changes in business customers and the general population. But these tweaks were not enough for a B2B conference organizers last year. A complete re-make of The Man In The Chair was acted and staged for conference participants – to portray how new media paired with technology could be incorporated into an updated version of this ad which can be found on Youtube:

• The re-make features a harried man (a prospect) running around and talking to a salesperson on his cell phone – while checking his email and looking at LinkedIn.

• He confirms he received the sales proposal but “don’t know who you are”.

• The prospective customer checks with his online community and reports: “I don’t know your company" – either. The website is thin; they have no presence on LinkedIn and a former employee is blogging (negatively) about the company.

• NEW environment; SAME message.

So why has The Man In The Chair been given so much prominence for over 50 years?

• Mainly because it offers an ageless and focussed message – landing worthwhile new business takes repeated and concerted efforts. (Research at Harvard University established that a prospect must see an advertising campaign nine (9) times to take them from apathy to purchasing readiness.)

• The basic message is still considered to be valid – 50+ years later and even in the electronic age.

Ruth Lukaweski

Marketing’s Value: More Than Just a Lead

While the volume and quality of leads generated have been at the forefront of marketing’s budget and headcount justification for several years now, there are a number of functions producing several more categories of output behind the scenes. Often, however, this output is forgotten on dashboards and in executive reviews, reducing its value in the eyes of management to next to nothing. In this post, we explore key components of marketing influence, as well as how to monitor and use these components to heighten overall marketing value.

One: Response
Flavors of response can range from clickthroughs on an email or Web link to accepting a call to action, as well as generating a new database contact or completing a form. The latter two measures of response directly influence database growth, which serves as a leading indicator of marketing’s continued ability to seed demand and target highly relevant contacts. Avoiding the temptation to always connect a tactical response to a lead demonstrates that response has value, even if a lead isn’t immediately created. It also drives an understanding both within and outside marketing that attempting to tie the consumption of a single tactic to leads generated tends to mislead in a complex, multi-touch buying cycle, and wrongly attributes success or failure to single tactics. It also promotes an affinity for “one-and-done” marketing, which we have identified over and over again as a worst practice. Response rates by tactic can be benchmarked internally and sometimes externally to provide diagnosis of improvement and best practice areas for marketing influence at the building block stage. By following the breadcrumbs to which tactics attract various types of new contacts in the database, it’s possible to understand preferences for different roles and segments within the tactics used.

Two: Buying Cycle Presence
The second category of influence entails an examination and tracking of where in customer buying processes the consumption of marketing touches occurs. Start by measuring marketing touches in active opportunities, or those that have become sales qualified leads (SQLs). A “touch” can be counted as whether or not a marketing program was delivered to a given contact in the pipeline, and then on whether the contact responded. Another key area to examine as it relates to the buying cycle is the cadence of touch, or when in the cycle the response will typically occur. Marketing functions that are tracking this usually start by examining closed deals to limit the scope and make their findings most relevant. The KPI of overall marketing influence is usually defined as the percentage of sales pipeline – including leads sourced by sales – touched by a marketing effort. It can be accompanied by understanding the total number of touches typically required to close a deal, which can be benchmarked and tracked over time; if the number is reduced and is accompanied by an increase in sales velocity, it can indicate an increase in marketing efficiency and hopefully a decrease in cost per sale. Knowing what tactics are consumed in what phases also makes it easier to map the right content and resources to meet buyer needs. It also highlights content and tactics that may not show up as lead sources but are widely leveraged for other requirements deeper into the buying process; if lead source was all that was tracked, these types of tactics would almost certainly disappear from the mix. As with understanding what attracts new contacts, this tracking shows what keeps prospects coming back for more, and what doesn’t resonate at all.

Three: Results
Even if marketing does not deliver specific pipeline acceleration activities, prospects often continue to interact with marketing either on a self-serve basis through the Web site or via direct marketing outreach. The first results metrics build on the previous category by taking the presence of activities at different buying stages to the next step: Measuring the difference between deals where marketing touched the deals and where they progressed on their own. This shows up in the length of the overall selling process, and then in the speed of movement from phase to phase. The second set of results measures shows a relationship between marketing investment and sales revenue. By tracking the difference in average selling price or deal size (and perhaps product or service mix), marketing can demonstrate its influence on expanding customer interest and consideration. While marketing should not attempt to take credit (or accept blame) for the final outcome of a deal when so many other factors are at play, it can show linkages between the presence of its activities and differences in results. Especially as marketing programs expand their focus to later stages of the buying process, metrics must be put in place that can monitor changes. Measuring marketing influenced revenue – not just marketing sourced revenue – broadens the organization’s understanding of how much the pipeline marketing supports so that resources continue to be applied where they have an impact, and redirected when they don’t. It also debunks many myths about which tactics source contacts and leads and which ones support buyers later in their journey so content can be developed more effectively.

The influence of marketing’s activities is far-reaching and valuable, yet there’s a disconnect between reporting activity and tracking positive outcomes for sales that underrates the function’s contribution. That’s where adding a new set of measures comes to marketing’s defense, especially in organizations where only what gets measured matters.

Ally Motz

The Increasing Complexity of B2B Products

And the hidden Challenges of B2B Branding.

The first time I ever noticed Little Giant ladders was in a series of Billy-Mays-type television ads the campaign featured a serious looking ladder that could be adjusted into 24 different configurations: the traditional A-frame look; the scaffold for uneven terrains; the extension to reach tree tops...and so on. You wouldn’t even consider taking this ladder out of the box without reviewing a demo video. Nobody in my household will climb a ladder higher than 4 feet – but I didn’t care. I just thought it would make a wonderful house accessory regardless of practicality.

A few years later a research project on industrial ladders warranted a closer look at this market: industrial ladders are a very serious business on both sides of the U.S./Canada border:
• Serious buyers (such as contractors) rely on serious (and complicated) looking comparison charts – detailing three or four basic ladder categories grouped by key factors (such as weight and height limits). In Canada these are based on CSA ratings and classifications.
• Ladder companies don’t sell ladders – they sell ladder systems. Even the 24-in-1 is available in three different models.
• And don’t forget key features – like tip and glide wheels and triple locking hinges and Light Wave Technology.

Little Giant is not much of a competitor in Canada’s industrial market but the company has developed a unique marketing (and branding) approach:
• It leverages its corporate brand name especially with the 24-in-1 ladder (which is targeted at consumers).
• On the industrial side the company has developed some sub-brands – the Synergy; the Big Trex; the Skyscraper.
• Little Giant also markets a whole series of ladder accessories: leg levellers; wing spans (for uneven surfaces); ladder racks.
• And there’s an info centre: with instructional and demonstration videos focussing on ladder configurations, ladder safety and ladder maintenance???
• Major players in the Canadian market adopt similar approaches – but not to the same extent.

There are many industrial product categories that have become more complex – the residential basement insulation market in the U.S. is dominated by three types of products: tar; membrane sprays; the much more complicated air gap drainage systems. Air gap products are fairly new to this market and are much harder to market.

There are several implications for the marketing of more complex business products. There has to be more of an emphasis on:
• Communication strategy - making sure target audiences understand all aspects of the product category (think about the home insulation company that realized its sales staff did not understand how its product worked).
• Target audience priorities - what messages to articulate and emphasize (think the marketer of construction materials emphasizing a 40-year warranty to homeowners who move every five years).
• Differing priorities among various groups – for ladders this could mean owners versus purchasers versus users.
• Understanding the difference between purchase requirements versus brand differentiators.
• The role and importance of the various distribution channels in the purchase process, as a source of product information; as a source of influence (think about research where we underestimated the role of retailers like Home Depot in the distribution chain).

Social Media in B-to-B Survey

Our most recent b-to-b social media survey examined a wide range of issues, including strategy, budget, tactics and measurement. While social media appears to have moved past the “shiny new toy” phase, clear goals are still evolving. Companies must understand opportunities and limitations as they move beyond trials to integrate social media with more established marketing functions

During the past 24 months, SiriusDecisions has collected data and insight about the evolution of social media in b-to-b as related to awareness, adoption, measurement and much more. In this post, we review a few findings from our 2009 Social Media in Business survey.

A cross-section of b-to-b organizations that sell complex, enterprise b-to-b products and services participated in the quantitative portion of the survey, which was co-sponsored by social media vendor Visible Technologies. Appropriate data and insight from SiriusDecisions benchmarking activities, consulting engagements and client inquiries were added to the sample as appropriate. As observed in prior surveys, all phases of marketing – including reputation initiatives – are now being more closely evaluated to determine return on investment. While there is a general understanding that social media is not necessarily the most efficient direct demand creation engine (especially in the short term), leading-edge organizations are increasingly testing new ways of integrating social media initiatives with other key marketing activities. Once organizations have gained working knowledge of how various social media activities can impact their prospects and customers at which particular points in the buying cycle, they can better align social media content to demand creation and sales enablement.

Our survey tracked the behaviors of b-to-b organizations around a number of social media activities. Specific observations in two areas include:

One: Usage and Objectives. We asked organizations to rank order how they are using social media, with the most important objectives listed first. While there was no dominant consensus, generating awareness ranked highest (26% of respondents) followed by engaging with customers to promote loyalty and retention (18%), and interfacing with analysts and other influencers (16%). Marketing specific products finished fourth in the rankings (15%). Each of the top four responses points to active, information-to-the-market type activities; monitoring and responding to customer support issues finished immediately behind the group. Perhaps this information feedback use is assumed to be part of all social media initiatives; however, the value of social media to constantly take the pulse of the market and its perception of your organization’s reputation should not be underestimated. Without a formal process or dedicated resources to monitor market perception, a company can be easily overwhelmed by misunderstandings or misinformation, hindering its ability to make any headway in the social media space at all.

Two: Demand Generation Support and Alignment. Studies by SiriusDecisions of broader reputation activities during the past 24 months have revealed a growing trend toward integrating reputation and demand creation. In our last survey, 33% of organizations reported that more than half the time, they linked their reputation with demand creation activities. In our social media survey, only 15% of respondents reported that more than half the time, they use social media to support their demand creation efforts. More than two-thirds of respondents reported that 25% of the time or less, they align social media with their demand creation activities. Clearly, organizations are still in need of a strategy to best leverage social media within the demand creation process. Organizations must begin to consider the ways that social media tactics can be applied beyond the top of the demand waterfall, such as for pipeline acceleration efforts and more comprehensive, just-in-time sales readiness.

Slowly but surely, social media technologies and systems are emerging from their initial perception as just a shiny new toy to be played with, then discarded. As organizations identify and recognize the risks and rewards of social media, they have begun to clarify best usages and objectives for specific initiatives, as well as to learn both the nuances and positioning of various social media properties such as Twitter and Facebook. Knowing which watering holes are frequented by which audiences – and what types of content can best influence them – can help marketing and sales organizations better customize messages. All of this guidance and information helps organizations understand the optimal role of social media for supporting broader demand creation and sales initiatives.

Sales and Marketing - Allies?

In many organizations, the reality is that sales and marketing relationships can be strained. In contrast, research shows that organizations that have embraced an integrated approach vastly outperform those that have not.

In conjucntion with the Canadian Professional Sales Association (CPSA), and SiriusDecisions, we (CMA) are examing what successful integration looks like through an online survey with the B2B community.

If you role is sales or marketing, weigh in and provide your persepctive -- take the survey now!

Survey closes on Friday - Feb. 5th.

Elizabeth Harvey

B2B Branding: Internal Branding a Key Factor to Success

Much has been written in the past few years on the topic of B2B branding. I find it the most rewarding aspect of branding and marketing planning, when it is done right.

Last week, I had the opportunity to moderate a panel on the topic of B2B branding; what does it take to win. I have to say that the quality of the panelists' discussion was top notch in terms or insight and expertise. The discussion lasted over 2 hours and easily could have gone on for several more…

A couple of first-hand observations that I took away from the panel include: 1) the agency turnout was stronger than client. This likely reflects the newness of the topic and the desire for greater expertise. 2.) The importance of internal branding was cited over and over again by the panelists (using a range of terminology) as the key factor for success in B2B branding. Considerations with internal branding and the connection to B2B branding success or failure included:(i) building trust with and through your employees in their one-to-one relationship with customers; (ii) the power of developing one voice through consistent internal and external communication; (iii) the absolute necessity to consistently delivering on the brand promise (key benefit) that you make through your people; and (iv) the importance of gaining buy-in from your CEO as you develop and refine your organization's B2B brand. Employee communication and education as well as connection to performance management systems were discussed in detail.

Several examples were provided by the panel and the audience of B2B brands failing to keep their promises and the tremendous opportunities presented when you get it right.

Has your organization had experience recently with B2B branding success or failure that relates to your internal brand?

By Patricia McQuillan, Brand Matters

Product Marketing Trends for 2010

While your mechanic might want you to believe that your car needs an oil change every 6,000 kilometers, automobile and oil technology has progressed to the point where recommended service intervals are now 15,000 kilometers or more. While this saves money and time, the downside is that minor problems often go undetected and become major issues; thus, it probably makes sense to have someone pop the hood every once in a while. In much the same way, product marketing should conduct periodic checks to ensure things are running smoothly. A perfect time to do this is during the yearly planning and budgeting cycle. In this post, I will reveal three key trends that should be on the radar of every b-to-b product marketing executive in 2010.

One: A Role in Sales Readiness
Many organizations have a dedicated sales readiness function that resides in sales and owns coordinating, synchronizing and integrating field, inside and channel sales with a variety of marketing functions. Product marketing must work with this function to define a common lifecycle management process across product lines/business units and to develop field requirements for sales tools, which will help sales reps understand what will be available when a new product or service is introduced. Product marketing will also need to work collaboratively with field marketing and communications to build the tools and collateral necessary for sales to more effectively facilitate buying/selling cycles. Product marketing can also play a key role in the evolution of the sales and marketing portal still prevalent in many organizations. Newer sales enablement platforms give reps the ability to intelligently search a content database for opportunity-specific content and customize it. These platforms also encourage collaboration across sales and marketing functions through community features and support for embedded social tools.

Two: The Rise of Hypersegmentation
Effective b-to-b organizations target at a sub-vertical level rather than stop at macro verticals, as buying triggers, trends, regulations and propensity to buy often vary wildly. This calls for increasingly defined target-level segmentation, or hypersegmentation, then choosing the strongest targets relative to one another. As product marketing tends to serve as the go-to source for information on an organization’s target markets, it will primarily fall to these marketers to educate the rest of the organization about deeper industry segmentation possibilities and how they can help provide a competitive advantage. Tighter targeting helps product marketing deliver better intelligence in such key areas as markets and roles, competitive threats and opportunities, win/loss analysis and pricing. Product marketing should help develop processes to take advantage of a hypersegmentation model without having to continually recreate individual programs to target.

Three: Program Interlock
One common theme for every marketing role is program interlock, or the process of marketing counterparts building integrated programs that align reputation, demand creation, sales enablement and market intelligence goals under a common campaign framework. Besides streamlining activities, this level of integration supports the reuse of content and best practices across marketing programs. Working together to align campaigns will also help raise the visibility of product marketing within an organization. Product marketing can provide field marketing input on product/solution positioning and messaging to ensure consistency, but also share its customer knowledge with field marketing to take advantage of hypersegmentation, which should improve the performance of demand creation programs. On the reputation side, product marketing can contribute to communications programs with unique value propositions for various audiences, then work collaboratively to define the mix of tactics that deliver them.

Product marketing is a hub of marketing, providing a foundation of intelligence and content that can be leveraged by the entire marketing function. While its capabilities and value to sales and marketing processes are often overlooked, product marketing can take concrete steps to integrate its expertise across a wide range of marketing programs.

More on What's Right (and wrong ) with B2B Advertising

“We find it truly surprising that businesses full of smart people produce so much advertising that isn’t...Why then is good business-to-business advertising so hard to come by?” DAVE AND ALEX.

Dave and Alex are a pair of advertising executives who evaluated 79% of a set of 200 B2B print ads as “poor”. They followed up this assessment with a 12-page (highly entertaining) supplement called: “Why do so many business-to-business ads suck?"

1.The misunderstood business customer: some ads would have you believing that business buyers are “soulless automatons with parallel processors for brains”.

MY OPINION: the individual making an organizational purchase is weighing unique parameters – the B2B and B2C purchase processes are not equivalent. Emotions do play a part in B2B decision-making but it is qualitatively different from consumer decisions. The B2B campaign should focus on the feelings generated about the product or the company – the B2C campaign focuses on how the customer feels about himself.

2. The sales guy culture: B2B marketers are more likely to be drawn from sales and engineering backgrounds, and sales guy advertising tends to resemble product brochures.

MY OPINION: somewhat true. B2B marketing efforts are often reactive rather than proactive (i.e. prompted by a specific turn of events). There is a lack of strong training programs focusing on the business marketing, branding and advertising processes.

3.Lazy agency syndromes. According to Dave and Alex, agencies creating B2B ads tend to resort too easily to business terms and clichés such as handshakes and globes and mountain climbers. An internet search (by Dave and Alex) turned up thousands of clichés: “Why we mean business...When we say internet we mean business...We mean business in space”.

MY OPINION: again, a lot of this reflects a lack of understanding of the business marketing and advertising processes including: the role of emotion in business marketing and advertising; the uniqueness of business products and services.

4.Corpo-babble: the inability to speak clearly and directly to the target audience such as the following example: “Anticipating millions of connections your network will support, we deliver a business optimized infrastructure that provides scalability”.

MY OPINION: business marketing has become better than ever at communicating a single meaningful message and utilizing effective creative. Note the following headline for an IBM ad: “Stop thinking like a bank. Start thinking like a customer”. This is an ad informing bankers how IBM can ensure that their customers can open a new account in minutes rather than hours! It effectively uses copy and visuals to back up benefits suggested in the headline.

5. Marketing schizophrenia: Dave and Alex say the typical B2B marketer knows how he has to “differentiate” his product but when push comes to shove tends to back away from creative opportunities and seeks “credibility” and “security”.

MY OPINION: a fading problem – as evidenced by the many good examples of focused B2B marketing and advertising out there but some may be going too far (but that happens in the B2C world).

6.Trying to hard: when they do go out on a limb, B2B marketers will try to be unique and draw attention to themselves in almost a “frantic and hyperactive” fashion”.

MY OPINION: this is still very true – sometimes it is very hard to tell who some business ads are targeting. Fortunately it’s not all bad news. Many more B2B companies are investing in business marketing and there is a noticeable increase in the variety and number of business advertising campaigns. BtoB Magazine, for example, in its monthly evaluation of business advertising campaigns (Chasers) has no trouble digging up examples of both well and poorly executed B2B campaigns. This suggests we’ve come a long way as an industry but there remains lots of opportunity for improvements.

Inbound Marketing Automation: 5 Steps to Harnessing its Power

The last of a three-part series:

post one - introduced the idea that Outbound Marketing techniques are no longer cost-effective in reaching B2B buyers, and suggested that we use Inbound Marketing Automation to replace it.

post two - provided a brief overview of what Inbound Marketing Automation is, and then outlined the software techniques used to automate it.

And here, post three details the 5 steps to harness Inbound Marketing Automation's power.

STEP 1: Shift your Marketing from Outbound to Inbound

Turn your website into a prospect magnet, and stop interrupting people with Outbound messages.

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Start by developing your online brand identity: Your keyword strategy. Find those keyword phrases that you can compete on, and which will minimize “bounce” and maximize conversion. Optimize the content and structure of your website around those keyword phrases. And then, create meaningful external backlinks to your site, to boost your site’s credibility and its importance to search engines. Successful SEO is a marketing exercise and a technical one; so before the techies begin, make sure you have the marketing strategy defined well.
• PPC: If needed, use this same “keyword identity” to compliment your SEO strategy with PPC ads.
• Free Content: Show off your company’s knowledge leadership in your industry by creating the great content which inbound prospects want. Publish this content as whitepapers, videos, and webinars. Make it free and downloadable, provided prospects identify themselves and give you permission to communication with them 1:1. Map your content to your sales cycle, so that you can feed prospects with valuable information at each stage of the sales cycle.
• Integrate Outbound Campaigns with Inbound Marketing Automation: Some outbound campaigns – like tradeshows and direct contact programs – may still be delivering ROMI. (Return on Marketing Investment). By using customized landing pages on your website, you can bring those traditional outbound campaigns into the efficient inbound world of integrated analytics, CRM integration, and automated sales lead management.

STEP 2: Automate to cope with the volume and need for speed

Use Inbound Marketing Automation technology to manage the routine repeatable tasks, like the generation and management of inbound sales leads, and data analysis. Free up marketing and sales for value-added, strategic activities and the closing of deals. Two important elements of Inbound Marketing Automation are:

• Reputation Management Analytics: New tools allow you to Join in and influence the online conversation, with minimal investments in time. See Step 4, below, for more.
• Sales Lead Management Automation: Employ a Demand Generation software solution to automate the generation and management of inbound sales leads. Working with Sales, automate best practices and set business rules to automatically grade, score, and nurture prospects. Together, have Marketing and Sales define the stage a prospect is ready to be handed to sales, (by setting Grade and Score targets). And when you have a hot lead, seamlessly feed the new prospect’s profile and “digital footprint” data into your CRM system.

STEP 3: Get Analytics on your side

Transform marketing from art to a science. Inbound Marketing Automation captures and processes massive amounts of information, enabling you to close the feedback loop from your market and individual prospects. Now you can get this all in real time.

• For a macro view of your market, you can use Google Analytics, a free program. This yields macro insight, but does not “put faces” on individual visitors.
• The real power of Inbound Marketing Automation analytics is in the ways it captures the profile and digital footprint of every prospect visiting your website. By implementing a Demand Generation solution integrated directly into your CRM system, you can obtain a 1:1 insight into your prospect’s preferences and needs.
• Multivariate testing allows the effectiveness of different marketing messages, landing pages, and campaigns to be compared in real time.

STEP 4: Participate in the Online Discussion

Another opportunity to accomplish McKenna’s closing the loop; is to join the conversation in relevant social media.

• Join-in on the Conversation: Find the key forums, communities, and, especially, the blogs in your industry. Listen to industry issues, trends, and concerns. You have a unique perspective - you are after all the expert - so give it a “Voice” and point others back to your valuable content and website. This allows you to build backlinks, boosting your site’s credibility with search engines.
• Create your own blog. But beware of the time commitment: the effort required to keep it meaningful is high. But blogging is also a great way to increase your SEO effectiveness by creating effective backlinks to your site.
• Give your market a way to express itself: Empower your prospects and customers by giving them a forum to discuss issues of relevance. Give them the tools to build their own content. Create a portal that functions as a “water cooler” for customers and prospects. To marketers schooled in Outbound techniques, this is a risky proposition, but to Inbound Marketers it’s an opportunity to show leadership, add value to the industry, and strengthen connections with your market.
• Hidden in the last point is a tremendous potential benefit to your company. You can use the feedback you get from the community to help you design and develop your next products!

STEP 5: Make it easy for your visitors and customers

This step may seem low-tech, but at the core, this is really what Inbound Marketing is all about.

• Consider the entire prospect and customer online experience. Trace it through the complete interaction lifecycle – from first contact, to training and after-sales support. Now remove any barriers or impediments to this cycle.
• Think Buying, not selling. Empower the Buyer by giving him or her all the information needed to make the decision. Make the purchase process itself as easy as it can be. Watch people interacting with your site and its software and fix any place where the person halts in confusion or goes back to try again.
• Remember, as a B2B marketer, your customers must buy. Many B2C purchases are discretionary, but B2B customers need your products and services to keep their own businesses running. It’s not just a want; it’s also a need. Often what determines whether they buy or not, is how easy you make it for them to do so.

In other words, make it easy for prospects to become customers, and then easy for them to remain one, and you’ll have a customer for life.

By implementing an Inbound Marketing Automation system, you, too, should see large increases in the volume and quality of sales leads, and triple digit increases in their sales conversion rates.

Please visit our website for more details, or to download white papers or tools to help you assess the opportunity.

B-to-B Reputation Trends for 2010

While time spent enjoying the cool days of fall is flying by all too quickly, so too is the time allotted to meet those inescapable work deadlines. For b-to-b communications professionals, this means before you blink, it will already be time to reflect on the current year’s accomplishments and submit budgets and plans for the next year. Part of this process requires evaluating strategies and tactics that have been employed during the past year, retaining some and replacing others. In this post, I will share three key trends that will impact b-to-b communications in 2010.

One: Program Interlock
Is working with your marketing counterparts to build integrated programs an uncommon occurrence? How many times have you created a press release or secured a customer or analyst quote, only to use it in just one piece of outbound collateral? Unfortunately for many organizations, communications programs are developed and run in isolation, leading to not only disjointed efforts and duplicate offers, but also to a fatigued prospect and customer base bombarded with messages through multiple channels. To derive the most impact from reputation programs, these programs must be interlocked with major marketing initiatives that align with the company’s overall goals and objectives. Best practice organizations operate from an overall campaign perspective, aligning reputation programs with those from demand creation, sales enablement and market intelligence functions.

Two: Social Media Grows Up
For too long, marketing has considered social media as a set of tactics executed outside of usual workflow. Social media tools should be considered part of the overall portfolio of tactics that marketing leverages to optimize their true reputation, demand creation and sales enablement value. We advise positioning social media in two key ways, including as an additional channel to engage your existing target market and as a way to target segments that prefer to communicate in an entirely different way. While the second approach demands a consistent application of time and resources to become accepted as a trusted member of a community, the first one can be tackled immediately. Instead of simply posting a new white paper, parse its content into a series of short (five-to-seven minute) podcasts where you interview the subject matter expert on certain key points. This not only offers users a choice in the way they can access the content but also significant incremental leverage. Add the ability to subscribe to the podcast series and you have a higher level of qualification in the form of an individual that wants to be notified of new content proactively.

Three: Measure Results, Not Activity
Many communications functions have an extremely difficult time proving their value, as they only collect activity-focused data. In a sense, this is no different than filling out a time sheet; it means you’ve had a busy day, but it won’t demonstrate the impact of what’s been done. Instead, communications should track these activities as drivers of both original demand and the facilitation of sales/buying cycles by benchmarking the performance of demand creation programs with and without reputation support. A mix of quantitative and qualitative metrics will demonstrate the true impact of reputation efforts, particularly when applied to interlocking marketing programs I discussed above. Collecting the appropriate metrics will require not only a monitoring technology or agency to track your reputation-specific efforts (both in traditional and social media channels) but also gaining a level of visibility into your organization’s demand creation reporting. In the end, demonstrating that a well-organized, well-executed reputation strategy that fits tightly into demand creation efforts drives response and qualified lead rates is the key to long-term viability of b-to-b communications.

A key theme for the communications organization in 2010 is leverage, as the ability of other marketing functions to leverage your activities and insights will do much to break the insular perceptions often directed at communications. While more organizations are integrating their reputation and demand creation efforts, these are often more opportunistic in nature and don’t reflect an integrated strategy across the marketing organization. Without this level of integration – not only from a program perspective, but also from standpoint of systems and processes – the impact of communications impact will never be fully realized.