B2B sales
B2B customers: 50 things they wish you knew
Fifty things customers wish you knew about them:
about how they see you, and about your relationship.
Sonia Simone of Remarkable Communication recently posted this list on her blog. Thanks to B2B Social Media for highlighting it.Â
Sadly, the concept of customer focus or of being customer-centric has become badly tarnished.
A lot of the blame for this lies [...]
A B2B message from The Man in the Chair
It might be hard to believe, but the print ad below is 50 years old.
Promoting the business, professional and technical magazines published by McGraw Hill, the message is as fresh and relevant today as it was fifty years ago: sales start before your salesman calls.
In July this year, the Business Marketing Association staged a ‘live’ version [...]
B2B marcoms: using funnels to create relevance and accurate positioning
Developing marketing communications for relevance throughout the buying cycle
The graphic below is from a whitepaper by Tippit Inc and it illustrates the phased nature of the B2B buying process. It’s such an important graphic for marketers because it provides a roadmap for developing and positioning marcoms that are relevant for each phase in the buying process - ranging from initial awareness through [...]
Re-positioning B2B brands: a quick case study
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The leopard cannot change its spots
In other words, basic characteristics cannot be altered.
Oh, yes they can…
The spots on these ‘leopards’ were changed to fingerprints as part of brand re-positioning for clients demonstrating biometric-based access control solutions at Europe’s biggest corporate security show in 2006.
This was just part of a campaign to influence market perceptions [...]
Market reflections: managing B2B brand perceptions
What are ‘market reflections’ and why do they matter?
Think of the brand as a reflection of your company in a mirror. You hold the brand up to this mirror and it reflects everything the company represents in the market. You don’t see the brand staring back at you, you see what the market sees.
When an end-user [...]
The Long Hello: building brand-relationships in B2B
People come and go. Brands endure.
One reason why marketing doesn’t always pull its weight in B2B is that there is often such a strong emphasis on relationships with customers. Developing and sustaining these relationships can shift attention from managing the brand’s relationship with the overall market. And this can undermine the potential to strengthen sales, margins and [...]
