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 [...]
Mapping audiences in B2B markets: building a marcoms strategy
B2B markets are complex structures consisting of different audiences that influence customers’ buying decisions. Marketers need to understand who these audiences are, how they influence one another and the significance of their influence on buying decisions.
Mapping audiences and their connectivity within a ‘sphere of influence’ is the first step in creating a marcoms strategy that [...]
Getting B2B results: John Deere, DM & WOM
The Ultimate Skid Steer Smackdown: a DM campaign for John Deere by GyroHSR
When John Deere wanted to move into a new category of earth-movers, GyroHSR conceived a campaign centred around head-to-head contests between JD and the competition. The following article looks at how the campaign evolved and the results it delivered.
Since its launch in April [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
The role of ‘Value’ in B2B marketing
In B2B, Value comprises Five Factors: Response, Service, Time, Quality and Price.
These are the criteria that influence and motivate B2B buying decisions. This extract from an ealier post looks at analysing how products, services and processes create Value in relation to each of the Five Factors.
It is a simple approach, but it produces bottom [...]
Measuring B2B marketing performance
Performance is easier to assess when it’s measured against the two objectives of B2B marketing:
Cultivating consistent customers – CCC
Preventing price pressure – PPP
CCC is about keeping your customers loyal and finding more like them: sales and volumes. PPP deals with building and maintaining margins: delivering the right Value to the right people.Â
Are we asking the right questions?
Data, [...]
Getting real in B2B markets
Getting back to fundamentals in B2B marketing: what do you represent?
Brandchannel recently ran a piece about Tagline Guru, and their analysis of 150+ corporate taglines to discover: “the most frequently used words in this year’s taglines, and whether they reveal how companies are strategically re-casting their brand message to forge a closer connection with their customers.” And here, alphabetically, are [...]
Leveraging B2B buying motivators
Developing B2B marketing communications for bottom line results.
All marketers understand the need for getting the right messages to the right people. What’s not so straightforward is defining the messages and who should be getting them.
Marketers need to be looking at what their market is buying, because B2B marketing is not about selling, it’s about buying.
An incisive approach [...]
