The minibook addresses key issues that anyone working in marketing may face with B2B brands. It’s easy to understand and uses clear examples of the challenges and solutions in a logical order. 

B2B Marketing for Dummies ends with Ten Top Tips for success in B2B marketing:

Be patient. Remember that people in business don’t buy on impulse – they carefully consider purchases and consult multiple stakeholders. 

Consider your Web of Influence. Always create a map of your market to help you make the best B2B marketing decisions. 

Be thoroughly strategic. Establish how your brand distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack with a brand planning process that leaves no question unanswered. 

Be focused. Create a strategic proposition that makes your brand irresistible over the competition. 

Prioritise your market. Use the Web of Influence to pinpoint the decision makers who’ll give you the best return for your marketing investment. 

Be choosy. Don’t waste time and money on marketing placed in the wrong channels. 

Be positively different. Show people their working world in a way they’ve never seen, and they’ll want to know more. 

Have multi-dimensional ideas. Remember that you need to satisfy many different stakeholders, so you need creative ideas that are flexible. 

Make the most of your website. Ensure that your site caters for all of your customers and tracks their activity so you can use that information for constant improvement. 

Tap into social media. Don’t get left behind – use social media networks to influence your markets! 

B2B Marketing for Dummies was produced by IAS b2b Marketing and John Wiley & Sons, publishers of the ‘For Dummies’ guides. Download a copy at http://www.b2bfordummies.com/

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

During the past 18 months or so, this demand has risen to painfully loud levels and has been accompanied by huge cuts in marketing-spend.

At a time when margins and market share need to be heavily protected – let alone increased – many organisations are actively reducing their ability to do so.

 Cutting marketing-spend now is like having your head removed because you want to lose weight…

Marketers need to end this absurdity by demonstrating that the B2B marketing function is a profit-generator, not a cost-centre. And they need to be wary of trying to squeeze more from less by using alternative channels for their marcoms – particularly in the ‘cheaper’ world of online. 

If it wasn’t working offline, why will it somehow work better online?

Because it’s cheaper. Ok. That will certainly produce results in terms of cutting costs, but will it get any other results? Will it serve B2B marketing’s two objectives: to cultivate consistent customers and prevent price pressure?

SEO, website optimisation, lead-generation, lead-nurturing and Social Media all received massively-heightened attention throughout 2009. They also received a lot more of the world’s marketing budget as ‘traditional’ comms media experienced big cut-backs:

 “Facebook, at 350 million users worldwide, is the premier (social media) destination for marketers in the US and many worldwide markets. It will surpass its former rival, MySpace, in ad revenues in 2010. In total, marketers will spend $2.2 billion to advertise on social networks worldwide in 2009, with $1.2 billion in spending in the US. In 2010, Facebook will account for nearly one-quarter of all social network ad spending worldwide, up from 20% in 2009.” 

That’s from e-Marketer and is endorsed by similar reports appearing across the marketing media: a mass-migration from offline to online that is being prompted by cuts in marketing budgets: 

In a recent NY Times article, TNS Media Intelligence, part of WPP, reckoned that US ad-spend fell 15.3 percent in the third quarter of 2009 compared with the same period a year ago, and for the first three quarters ad spending declined 14.7 percent compared with the same period in 2008.

Having closed it’s print version, SA’s Maverick magazine resurfaced online as The Daily Maverick and reported recently that 2009 was a truly dreadful year for US magazines:

“A total of 428 titles closed, and almost 60,000 less advertising pages were sold against 2008… advertising revenue for full-year 2009 closed at $19,450,949,762 — posting a 18.1% decline against the previous year…”

Locally, SA lost publications ranging from stalwarts like Computing, to ‘quality’ newcomers like The Weekender.

So, forget the ‘trad ad’ because online is obviously the way to go – it’s clearly a panacea for all marketing’s ills. I think not.

The pie has certainly got smaller. So, compete harder and smarter.

Marketers recognise the power of the web as a communications tool. But do we use it to encourage and maintain dialogue with the market? Of all the B2B websites that were out there in the middle of 2008, what percentage were, say, optimising the site for visitor feedback; tracking activity from page-to-page and monitoring keyword usage? Were the sites at all interactive, or had they just become dusty shop windows with so-called news pieces being at least a year old? And was anyone doing any research into what each of the audiences in the market thought of the site and how it helped them? 

Rather than rushing to embrace new ‘cure-all’ channels – Facebook and Twitter for example – shouldn’t we be making sure that we are leveraging the best possible results from the stuff that’s tried-and-tested?

Going live, five-by-five 

For example, live events like trade exhibitions, conferences, focus-days and roadshows are the surest way for everyone involved in customer management to connect personally with the full spectrum of an overall B2B market. They can be used to guarantee that your messages are being received five-by-five amongst distributors and wholesalers; solution-providers; specialist consultancies or professions; support and service providers; user-groups; financial analysts; industry associations; commentators in the media and the general public – as well as end-users. 

Sure, live events cost a lot more than tweeting – and require much greater effort in planning and successful execution – but they certainly do generate accurately-qualified leads and accelerate sales-cycles. And they do this particularly well if the competition isn’t doing these things because it’s too busy removing its own head… 

But, they do not work if they lack the innovation that’s essential to differentiate your brand and sustain that difference in the market’s eyes. 

I experienced a shocking example of this lack of differentiation at the biggest trade-show I visited last year. Combined with an almost universal disregard for how customers benefit from what they buy, it was essentially one enormous features-list, a sort of zombie version of the dull mediocrity that characterises so much B2B advertising: zero appeal to the market’s buying motivators. 

As the saying goes: keep on doing what you keep on doing and you’ll keep on getting what you keep on getting… 

Better-managed traditional media 

Marketers might also need to rejuvenate how they work with the media. Is the right message being delivered to the right people at the right time? Are we leveraging all the comms opportunities these suppliers offer – online and offline? Perhaps more importantly, are we looking to work in partnership with them – not merely as buyers – but as innovators looking to break some new ground together. 

It’s not always instinctive for media sales people to be motivated by how they can contribute to your continued success and they might need to be actively encouraged to do so. And the same goes for those people who determine and produce content: their objectives are not the same as yours. This means it’s important to find some common ground where both sets of objectives are being served. 

And the only way to do this is by talking to these people: take the initiative, start innovating, kick some ideas around, get the ball rolling in terms of building partnerships. 

The right stuff: getting back to basics 

Several posts on the Long Hello have looked at the fact that, in B2B marketing, fundamentals don’t change:

cultivate consistent customers and prevent price pressure by delivering the right message to the right people at the right time. 

So, junk the begging bowl and demonstrate to the market that, in comparison to the competition, your business is clearly more capable of making a positive contribution to customers’ success. 

And to do that, marketers need to harness all the support they can. What they don’t need is to have it removed – either by others within the business, or by diluting the impact of their messages in an attempt to cut the costs of delivering them. 

Related posts: 

Cultivate consistent customers, prevent price pressure - CCC & PPP: B2B’s two objectives 

Don’t trample the rules - the importance of fundamentals in B2B marketing

Relevance and accuracy - creating the right messages for the right people at the right time

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

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 2008, the John Deere ‘Smackdown’ microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and over 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have attracted 100,000+ views on YouTube.

By Christoph Becker, Chief Creative Officer, GyroHSR

Contrary to what some may think, direct marketing is not just a tactical tool, it is a strategic approach.

It can build brands and it can create an intimacy that no other approach can. Believe it, because if you don’t, you can’t sell it. And if you can’t sell it, you might be left to turn the lights out as everyone else embraces a new era somewhere in the future.

This is an approach we had to adopt when launching a US campaign for agricultural and construction equipment giants John Deere.

The challenge was clear: John Deere wanted to enter a new digger category

The audience was contractors, landscapers, farmers and dealers. So a simple offline DM piece, targeted and tracked, might have done the job.

It might have done. But then, it might have gone down as another classic example of the real potential of direct marketing going well and truly unexploited. Instead, we created a campaign that incorporated the stalwarts of direct marketing and used them to create something much, much bigger.

“Smackdown” involved staging a series of head-to-head battles featuring the top machines in a ‘robot wars’- style duel. The events – the hill climb, visibility test, power lift and serviceability – were based on real-world situations that drivers experience and were staged in front of a live audience.

Initially, the audience was engaged via offline mailers, but that was only the beginning. At the heart of the programme was the ‘SkidSteerSmackdown.com’ microsite, featuring videos of digger battles. The site was fully interactive, enabling visitors to engage in a number of ways. For example, fans could create e-postcards which could be customized and distributed to friends and co-workers. This simple tool converted dealers and operators into the campaign’s strongest advocates.

A series of eDMs were distributed to alert both dealer and prospects when new content was available on the site, and finally – traditional elements such as print ads were also incorporated.

And through this activity, John Deere gained a cult following

Since the site launch in April 2008, the microsite has had more than 150,000 visitors with 125,000 unique views and more than 350,000 page views.  Smackdown videos have garnered more than 100,000 views on YouTube.

Offline, the Smackdown-themed lead generators yielded a 4 percent response rate, outpacing many other similar mailers during the year. Drive-to-site banner advertising had click-through-rates of approximately 3 percent, and eBlasts promoting the site had response rates of more than 7 percent.

This was a campaign that had direct marketing at the heart – there was an identifiable audience, a clear proposition and a measurable response. But to encapsulate it in this way does no justice to the true reach of the activity. We could have sent out the mailers and waited to track the sales. But we didn’t. We took the brand to a new marketplace and created a following populated by genuine advocates. We drove awareness, created buzz and instigated WOM.

More on Social Media:

The WOMsta monsta -  a new dimension in Word-of-Mouth

PR & B2B. The perfect couple – the importance of PR in B2B

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Referring to social media in a post on PR & B2B, I used the example of John Deere’s ‘Ultimate SkidSteer Smackdown’ and the comments it’s attracting on YouTube – people are swapping product-opinions based on their experiences of using earthmovers.

But will this positively influence John Deere’s sales or bolster customer loyalty? Given the impact that Word-of-Mouth can have on a brand, then surely the answer must be ‘yes’.

The big WOM buzz.

If you read the marketing press, then you’ll know that social media is attracting massive attention. Most of the focus is on its applications in B2C (no surprise there), but a recurring question is how social media might develop as an interactive communications tool in B2B. (Social Media B2B has plenty of useful insights.)

The keyword here has to be ‘interactive’ because WOM has become so much more accessible. Who is talking and what they are saying is being made increasingly public. Market reflections – what is being said about a brand and the response this generates – are now being widely shared through the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

So, interact. Start talking.

A blog on a B2B website really changes the way people can use the site. It increases opportunities for interactions within the market by changing the site from a read-only, ’shop-window’ into a two-way channel – it’s a shift from information to communication.

And that shift certainly creates some new challenges in terms of how B2B websites are used as commercial tools. Does a blog replace newsletters and the trad ‘News’ section? How will it be kept active, attract and encourage participants and who will monitor and respond to their comments? How would a blog affect the rest of the site? Critically, what would its role be in terms of building sales, margins and customer loyalty? Thought provoking stuff for those tasked with market communications.

The WOMsta is here. Is it staying?

Well, it would certainly seem to be: 45m+ Twitter users, 250m+ on Facebook and 40m+ on LinkedIn. Last week, YouTube reported they were getting more than a billion views a day.

Even if the numbers themselves don’t mean much, what is significant is the fact that these channels for interactive communication are well-established. The providers themselves may change or be eclipsed by others (MySpace?) but the monsta is among us and getting bigger every day.

More on PR and social media in B2B:

PR & B2B: the perfect couple

Getting results: John Deere ‘Smackdown’ - outstanding B2B marketing

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line

Cultivating communications is no job a public-relations agency can do for a company.

This emphatic little gem comes from Regis McKenna in his book ‘Relationship Marketing’. Published in ’92, it’s about how to ‘Own the market through strategic customer relationships’ and is still seen as one of the books on the ‘customer-is-king’ topic.

Well, I think he’s wrong.

Surely, ‘cultivating communications’ defines the very purpose of a PR agency. Particularly in B2B.

A recent post dipped into why brands are such powerful commercial tools and how market reflections are having an increasing influence on B2B sales, margins and customer loyalty. To save you looking for it, here’s the relevant bit:

Very often in B2B, the market may well include distributors and wholesalers, overall solution-providers, specialist consultancies or professions, and support and service providers - as well as direct customers or end users.

In addition, there may be user-groups, financial analysts, shareholders, commentators in the media, standards boards and statutory regulators, industry associations and the general public.

Each of these represents a market reflection – the way the brand is seen by each individual component of the market.

Markets become confused and uncertain if the image reflected by the brand is unclear and inconsistent. So people draw their own conclusions. They create their own associations, set their own expectations and decide for themselves how much they trust the brand. Consequence? Ownership of the brand is lost.

Are they talking about us?

More than ever, market reflections - that diversity of associations being made with the brand by the market – are what influences a B2B company’s ability to increase sales, retain customers and protect margins. And this influence is increasing rather than decreasing.

For example, there is growing B2B interest in the significance of social media as a way for people to share their experiences about suppliers and products. And this goes both ways, companies are joining and encouraging the discussions in order to present their brand-messages.

It’s now probably more important then ever for B2B companies to ensure delivery of an honest, balanced and relevant reflection of their brand to each component of the market.

Sorry, Regis. This is the work of a PR agency.

Managing this delivery is surely the work of a PR agency? As is co-operating on defining the different audiences and working towards creating and broadcasting consistently relevant messages. 

Unless a company has the right resources internally, it makes perfect sense to engage an external specialist.

What’s interesting here is the notion of the ‘right resources.’ It’s not limited to having the internal resources to, say, produce and distribute press releases or set-up an interview with a journalist.

In B2B, the ‘right resources’ must include the internal ability to appreciate the significance of market reflections and their impact on sales, margins and customer loyalty. Senior management may already appreciate this but perhaps lack the tools or experience to do anything about it. Welcome, agency.

I’d say this is one area that warrants serious discussion within B2B companies and within PR agencies themselves: what must be done, specifically, to manage market reflections?

Get a plan and get going.

Planning is in a PR agency’s blood so that won’t create any challenges. Populating the plan can be a little trickier in terms of defining the outcomes required. That becomes easier if the outcomes are related to marketing’s two objectives: cultivating consistent customers and preventing price pressure.

But populating the plan – defining what’s to be done, who’s doing it and by when – demands some serious thought and time in terms of pinpointing how market reflections are affecting the company’s sales and margins.

Brief?

If ever there was a misnomer in PR, it has to be the word ‘brief’.

‘Just nip round there and take the brief. Oh, and pleeease don’t forget to pick-up lunch on the way back.’

Sales, margins and customer loyalty are critical business issues. Building related communications is a complex process that requires a detailed knowledge of the market and a company’s position within it.

How a company sees itself may differ wildy from how the market sees it. To put it facetiously, I’ll let Donald Rumsfeld explain: “…there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”  A company may know what it knows about itself, but does it know what the market knows?

Developing that knowledge doesn’t require a ‘brief’. It’s a continual, interactive process between the company, the agency and each market reflection. Driving that process – in order to ‘cultivate communications’ - must surely be an agency priority.

Social media in B2B. You’re kidding, right?

You might like to look at how John Deere is promoting its earthmovers in the US. When you have a few minutes, (er, quite a few minutes actually, ‘cos it does take a while to load) check the Ultimate Skid Steer Smackdown to watch JD’s machines competing with their rivals.

But also check the comments. Users and owners are swapping opinions. The people who buy and use earthmovers are talking to one another.

Social media and earthmovers? Wow. Way to go JD and GyroHSR!

GyroHSR: ‘Smackdown’ for John Deere

Related posts:

The WOMsta Monsta - Social media and B2B      The Long Hello: building brand relationships

Getting results: John Deere ‘Smackdown’ - outstanding B2B marketing

Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line