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 [...]
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 [...]
Preventing price pressure
As one of the two objectives in B2B marketing, the task of preventing price pressure has a lot to do with communication.
In terms of the Five Factors of Value, Price is ranked as the least influential of the five B2B buying motivators. It’s also the component of Value with the most straightforward definitions: Competitive, Rational [...]
B2B marketing is about buying: What? How? Who?
Marketing is not about selling. Marketing is all about buying:
What are customers buying?
How does buying contribute to their success?
Who is buying?
These are the must-knows that determine tactics in B2B marketing. Cultivating consistent customers and preventing price pressure – CCC & PPP - provide the strategic direction, but What-How-Who drives implementation.
1. WHAT are customers buying?
Customers [...]
So what is Value? The five B2B buying motivators
Here’s a couple of definitions of ‘value’ from the Encarta Dictionary:
To rate something according to its perceived worth, importance, or usefulness
An amount expressed in money or another medium of exchange that is thought to be a fair exchange for something
In these definitions, two phrases stand out for me: ‘perceived worth’ and ‘thought to be’. So, [...]
Is your marketing doing its job? Is it achieving its two objectives?
There are only two objectives in B2B marketing:
Cultivating consistent customers
Preventing price pressure
These are the objectives that should motivate all B2B marketing activities – the two goals that have to be achieved: CCC and PPP.
If your marketing activities are not delivering bottom-line results in terms of CCC and PPP, then two things are probably happening:
The activities are not [...]
Brands are now more important than ever. Brands are dead.
So which one is it?
Brands are about relationships. Relationships that are centred around ownership: who owns what and what it is they own. They are a visible mark that tells a story.
With a symbol, a few words and perhaps some music, brands have the ability to create powerful meanings. They can be intensely evocative, conjuring the strongest [...]
Making B2B marketing work
The PQRS&T in B2B marketing
Price, Quality, Response, Service and Time.
These are the Five Factors of Value. That may not sound very significant, so let me put it another way:
They are the five reasons that make customers buy, the reasons that deals get done. The five buying motivators. The Big Five.
This Big Five are particularly important [...]
