Think Like A Business To Consumer Marketer - Part II

B2B marketers have a rich, complex and high-pressure job to do in a very dynamic and noisy world. Those that do it well are rewarded with real growth and shareholder value gains. 

But how do you think like a business to consumer marketer -- but with a twist?

First, you must understand that building a memorable brand perception is critical, but also to understand:

Exactly who the prospect is and who or what influences that buyer.

The key elements of a purchase decision and how to create messaging that addresses those elements.

The content, best-practices and case studies necessary to remove the risk of the decision.

How to distribute messages and content to targeted decision makers, influencers and peers with enough frequency to move the needle.

What tips can B2B marketers follow to start thinking more like their B2C colleagues?  Five strategies follow that can be implemented right away.

Create great brand recall. The first step in any B2B marketing campaign is to create brand messages and campaigns that will "stick with" potential buyers long after they see the ads or marketing messages. Get creative and try new messages and slogans to make your brand stand out from the crowd and target them specifically to your audiences.  Finally, always be branding! Creating brand recall isn't a single campaign -- it's an always on tactic.

Know your audience. Thinking like a B2C marketer doesn't mean treating your audience like general consumers. Your audience is made up of business professionals looking to make the most economical, risk-adverse, and high-value purchases for their companies. Always keep their needs and risks in mind when considering marketing strategies.

Use visuals to sell your product. People remember images long after they remember words. Make sure your campaigns are splashy, memorable and interactive. 

Maintain creative consistency. Trying new creative ideas is fine, but make sure they're consistent across your marketing campaigns, including paid ads, social media, sales sheets, webinars, white papers and your website.

Be human. Your audience may be businesspeople, but that doesn't mean they are robots who don't enjoy a laugh or a personal touch. Make sure your marketing materials speak to the human side of the business world. In a world where most B2B campaigns are boring, a more human touch will make your campaign stand out.

Think Like A Business To Consumer Marketer

I've been delinquent with my blog posts recently, but now return to action.

Business-to-business marketers have one of the most difficult and underappreciated jobs on the planet.  Your mission is to create memorable brands out of downright "unsexy" products. B2B marketers must educate extremely smart potential buyers, ensure that influencers are knowledgeable about their products, and ultimately convince people they should bet their jobs on choosing products over those of competitors. Moreover, even while sticking to a limited marketing budget, B2B marketers must provide a hungry sales team with enough qualified leads to keep their pipelines full.

How do B2B marketers do it? 

The best B2B marketers are successful because they start with building a brand.  In other words, the best B2B marketers think like business-to-consumer (B2C) marketers.

The first step toward thinking like a B2C marketer is to create great brand recall.  Let's say you're thirsty and you walk into a store that carries Coke and ABC-Cola.  You immediately reach for the Coke because you know exactly how it will taste...it is the safe choice.  However, if earlier in the day you'd seen an ad that said "ABC-Cola, Tastes Like Coke, but 100% Organic!" you may well have tried the ABC-Cola.  The ABC marketer who bought that ad had a simple goal -- not to drive someone to make an immediate purchase but, rather, to create brand recall that would influence decisions in the future.

Of course, applying this method to B2B marketing is more challenging, but it can work.  First, to illustrate how much more complex the B2B marketer's challenge, let's use this same example but in a B2B context. Your boss asked you to buy a soda for a company party, so you go to the store and spot
Coke and ABC-Cola. Even if you had seen the ad marketing ABC-Cola, you'd still choose the Coke. Why? Simply because Coke is the less risky decision, and many purchase decisions in a business environment are made with the goal of minimizing risk. Nobody ever ruined a party by buying Coke, but if you showed up with the ABC-Cola and your co-workers didn't like it, you'd take the blame for making a poor decision that had a negative impact on the company party.

So, what would the ABC-Cola marketer have to do to convince you, as the business buyer, to choose ABC-Cola instead of Coke?

Tune into my next blog for answers.

Let's Define Branding

Branding is an elusive term but can be defined as your company's most prized possession. As technologies change and competition grows, the one quality that endures is your brand. It lives much longer than any founder.

 

So, just what is a brand?  Is it your logo, your tag line, packaging or the look and feel of your ads and your website? While each helps deliver your branding message, none alone is your brand. Your brand is a result of constant reinforcement of distinctive core benefit that your company and product delivers to your customers.

 

What seperates great brands from the rest? Strong and impressive consistency over time.  The best brands exhibit consistency in their promise and consistency in their core brand message. They also demonstrate consistency in delivering on that promise -- at every touch point and with every customer encounter.

 

Branding Defined

 

Your brand resides within the hearts (feelings) and minds (intellect) of your customers and prospects. It is the sum total of the product and experience and perceptions, some of which you can influence, and some you cannot.

 

A successful brand separates you from your competitors, in a unique way, that is relevant and motivating to your customers, prospects and channels. It gives you value and makes you special!

 

A successful brand enhances your perceived value, thereby supporting premium pricing, sheltering you from low price competition. 

 

Remember, brands happen, with or without you. It is up to you to be pro-active in shaping the identity and strength of your brand image.

 

 

 

 



It Starts Here - With A Magazine

You can find this Derek Korn, Senior Editor, commentary in the September issue of Modern Machine Shop, but I think exerpts are worth repeating to highlight the value of a print magazine to deliver fresh ideas to your customers and prospects.

Pete Zelinski's own column conveys how video is becoming an increasingly valuable tool for presenting new machining concepts. That’s true, but our magazine, with its monthly batch of original articles, remains the best medium for introducing fresh ideas for shop owners and managers to consider. In short, the magazine is a mechanism for discovery that helps you refine subsequent online research. Besides, you can’t Google for something you don’t know exists.

Our continued focus on developing a good deal of (what we hope is) compelling content for the magazine and delivering it to loyal subscribers each month is reflected in the fact that this issue contains five feature articles profiling 13 shops. Plus, the timely topics we address this month examine key issues facing many of today’s shops as well as emerging technologies that can make shops more effective and efficient.

Our efforts in developing articles such as the features in the September issue feed our various electronic channels—there isn’t a Modern Machine Shop website, video collection, e-newsletter or blog without the work that goes into this magazine. Our various communication channels complement each other, but it all starts with the magazine.

Brand Building - Part II

Can small to medium-size companies build their brands?

The answer is yes, but it takes time and a real, long term commitment. The key is to develop an integrated marketing communications program. You need to understand your customers, your markets, your strengths and weaknesses, your competition, your distribution channels, your awareness level and current perceptions. The more intellence gathered, the greater the odds of being on target with strategies and positioning. Without this information, it's like shooting in the dark.

Long haul is the key.

A "start and stop" program doesn't work and is a waste of time and money. Creating a branding program involves more than advertising with a tagline. It is only a part of a total marketing program integrated with everything produced including advertising, email marketing, website, brochures, data sheets and PR. Everything needs to have the same "look and feel" to project the personality of the company.

Too many B2B companies view marketing expenditures as discretionary, to be cut immediately if sales soften. Some CEO's expect immediate results and kill programs after only a few months if they don't get them. This is unrealistic. Brand building is a long-term process.

Next time: Let's define branding.

Brand Building - Part I

Brand building is not new but it's a consumer marketing strategy more recently discovered in the business-to-business world.

So what's the big deal and why has the time come for branding in B2B and technology marketing? Partly, it's the natural evolution of an industry, initially being internally-driven by engineering, then becoming externally-driven by marketing, because of margin pressures and more competitors. The "window of advantage" had become smaller and smaller. By aggressively competing on features and price, it's been difficult for companies to create meaningful and lasting differences from their competitors. The customer is in effect buying a commoditiy and has no sense of brand loyalty because little is known about the company making the product or about service after the sale.

Many B2B companies have been slow to recognize the importance of marketing, but they are now becoming more receptive to brand building programs because of increased technology parity and fierce global competition. As competitive advantages disappear, brand building becomes a necessity rather than a luxury. So the need to differentiate companies by pesonality or image is rapidly increasing.

Next time: Can small to medium-sized companies build their brands?

The Price Of Chasing The Next New Marketing Channel - Part II

I'm not suggesting you stop chasing the next new marketing channel. But before you do, you should understand the strategic marketing implications of doing so. Perhaps before you leap, you need to master the channels already in use. Competitors may start using the next channel first, but the misuse of a new channel can be damaging.

Here are few things to consider before taking the plunge that will, at least, help you appear more strategic in deployment of a new channel.

1. Have the prospects you want to connect with and engage adopted the new channel, or are you getting ahead of them? Being first may be irrelevant if the markets you serve aren't ready.

2. Does your marketing staff have the skills to successfully implement a new channel? If a successful implementation requires complex new skills, and if it is too time-consuming or costly to acquire that level of competence, it may be too soon to tackle the new channel.

3. New channels have a steep learning curve and are costly. The adoption of a new channel may require configuring systems, upgrading technology, or even adding new systems or training employees. Before you embrace a new channel, develop a business plan to insure the investment pays off.

4. Have you established stable goals for the new channel? Otherwise, you may be in for a lot of rework... and that means lots of time and money.

The Price of Chasing The Next New Marketing Channel - Part I

Why is it that many marketers become so quickly enamored with the next new marketing channel? And at what cost?

What do I mean by the next marketing channel? For many marketers, the first new channel came in the mid-'90s with the creation of websites. And even though email started its humble beginnings in 1969, it wasn't until the '90s that it became a pervasive marketing channel.

In addition to email, marketers chased another channel: Internet marketing. In 1994, zero dollars were spent on Internet advertising. By 1996, US companies had invested $301 million dollars in Internet marketing primarily in the form of banner ads. By 2011, Internet ad spending was $32 billion. Yet we weren't content, and before we figured out how to strategically use our new channels, we charged off into new territory. In less than three decades, marketers had led heir companies into new channels -- many not mastering any of them. Our appetites for the new stuff seem insatiable.

Next time: Some things to consider before taking the plunge with your next new marketing channel.

In The Rush To Digital, Leave Room For Those Who Still Like Print

In an era where much of media mix is going digital, what is the best way to build brand awareness? I bring this up because many have been shifting more media dollars online. And, I believe it's a mistake to assume those who buy B2B products get all their information online. Just because it's a trendy thing to do, does it necessarily work?

Many B2B advertisers tend to think click-through rates mean something, and that a higher click-through rate means a better online site and a better ad. It's the measurement fallacy: people tend to think that what they can measure is what they want, just because they can measure it. And it's endemic in the online advertising industry.

Why would an advertiser risk missing so many prospects by going mostly or exclusively online? It is a strategy that can lead to lower brand awareness, a result from a few factors: pressure to be modern in a media buy; wrong assumptions that prospects have stopped reading magazines; and the belief that brand awareness can be achieved online.

While there are many magazines serving the manufacturing sector, most prospects read just a handful. Conversely, there are millions of Internet sites to visit. Most prospects visit dozens but don't stay long.

I have yet to see a more effective medium that magazines for telling a story and introducing a new product or brand. Online ads should play a key role in a brand's media plan. But not mostly or exclusively.

One Size Doesn't Fit All

About the only similarity between different media channels is the fact that people interact with them. Who interacts with each channel, how they interact, how long they interact, where they interact, and how long the information stays with them varies greatly between print, web, social media and so on.

Your challenge is to get your message out there in the most effective way possible, which means altering your message for each channel.

Here's an example: Traditional print advertising is a great place for brand awareness. Large imagery, basic inspirational messaging, and a strong brand presence are important here. A magazine is not the place to include a price list or provide much detail. Your website, however, is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Prospects come to your site for information. They want to know what you do, how much your products will cost, and why they should buy from you. It's important to have brand awareness throughout, but it has to go deeper than that.

Despite the differences between each channel, your prospects need to know they are dealing with the same company. To do this, you need to identify who you are. Whatever you are, identify it and carry that feeling throughout. Once you've done that, look at each channel and identify who interacts with it and how.

Marketing Dilemma: What's Your Niche?

Every company has to maintain a unique value proposition to own a share of customers' minds for their brand. For a brand to be number one or two, it has to occupy one of the following positions in customers' minds:

Be the best in its class.

Have a unique set of attributes.

Be the cheapest.

If a brand does not "fit" one of these perceptions, then it has a "fuzzy" value proposition for most customers. Brands exist in the mind and represent a collection of experiences over time. The mind is like a dripping sponge of brand value perceptions. The only way anything new can get in is to replace what already exists with a newer brand value perception.

Typically, brands lose positions as the result of the introduction of faster, better or cheaper solutions.

Every marketer must compare their company's unique resources with specific customer's changing requirements and select those that the company can satisfy better than competitors. When this is done well, and promoted effectively, a brand will "own" a position in the mind of a certain set of customers and prospects.

Every market consists of customers with strong and weak perceptions of competitor's levels of satisfying their specific requirements. Marketing in its simplest form is analyzing customer requirements in depth and then modifying product offerings and related value propositions so that they "fit" better with the requirements of a certain segment of the market than their competitors.

Evolving Your Marketing Model

With increased attention on our customers and markets, traditional models of product marketing become less relevant. In fact, if we continue to operate according to the older models, we risk turning our marketing approach into a repetitive process that offers little capacity to differentiate in an evolving marketplace.

Market studies show that based on both anecdotal and measured outcomes, a significant and positive correlation can be achieved when a firm organizes its marketing model to be more market- and solutions-focused. This positive correlation exists regardless of market conditions. Recognizing the promise of a market-driven, solutions-oriented model, companies have begun to shift away from the long-recognized “4 P’s” marketing approach, which is focused on product,
promotion, price and place to organize the elements of marketing. The new model focuses on the solution, the customer needs and the market environment.

Reprinted from July 2012 Metalworking Marketer, Eduardo Conrado, Motorola Solutions

Lead Generation Techniques

New research about the web shows that only nine percent of prospects fill out a form required to access additional information.  Instead, letting prospects download without filling out a form, but then thanking them while asking more about their needs results in a a 45% form completion rate.

People hate filling out forms.  They hate giving personal information.  However, if you do something useful for them first, they are more likely to give you that information.

Web marketing and communication is about helping prospects along their way rather than getting in their way. Once they're on your website, don't try to get attention.  Rather, pay attention to what the prospect wants to do.  Make decisions based on evidence of actual behavior on your site.  Use facts, not opinions.

Marketing on the web is more about being found when prospects are searching for solutions or products or services like yours.  Prospects are in control when they visit your website.  You simply need to figure out how to help them buy, matching your marketing/selling process to their buying process, not just try to sell them or make them fit into your sales process.  

Try asking only a few key questions (name, title, email) with an offer for additional information thus capturing the lead when they hit submit.  Then, ask additional questions on a second page.  According to this new research, this approach doubles the number of captured leads -- and nearly 45% of them answer the second set of questions as well.

Magazines Boost Impact

Based on independent research from The Association of Magazine Media, advertisers need to maintain magazine spending even as they add online and social media activity.  The reasons include:

• Magazines are the most consistent medium in driving results across the purchase funnel.
• Magazine advertising beats online advertising in boosting purchase intent.
• Magazines out-perform other media to influence prospects to start an online search.
• Print ads rank as the #1 offline source in driving "actionable" web traffic.
• Video on magazine websites lead all other media in driving visits to a company's website.
• More 18-34 year-olds read magazines and they read more issues on average than ten years ago.

Effective Lead Generation

 If you're like a lot of other B2B marketing people, lead generation remains a top objective.  Everybody wants their web site to keep their sales funnel full of engaged prospects. 

But what about the best offer strategies to garner the attention of prospective customers and entice them to inquire?  What will make them raise their hand and open the door for future communication and personal follow-up?  Here are a few lead generation offers that are effective:

Webcasts continue to be one of the best lead generation offers in the arsenal.  Whether developed internally or with 3rd party organization, a well-produced webcast is a great way to engage customers and begin an active dialogue with them -- generating strong lead response while positioning your company as a thought leader.

White papers are one of the top lead generators being used today. The key to a successful white paper is making the material editorial in nature rather than promotional.  Create a piece that resonates with your target audience and people will come and get it.

Everyone loves case studies.  Prospective customers like them because they provide a sense of security that the product they are buying will actually work in their application.  If customers like them, your salespeople will love them too.  An finally, editors love to use them as contributed stories for their publications and web sites.

Product samples aren't an option for everybody, but where economically and logistically feasible, product samples are one of the best lead generation offers available.  What better way for a customer to evaluate your product than with an actual sample?

If a physical sample isn't available, a video demonstration may be the next best option to show your product in action. Exhibiting at a trade show?  Live reports from the show floor are interesting and integrate nicely into your social media efforts.

Interactive calculators and online tools are another good way to demonstrate and differentiate your product from the competition.  

Sell More

How do top performing companies achieve their results? For starters,they sell more.

Seems like a no brainer, doesn't it?

But when I say they "sell more," I don't mean they "sell more products" (although they do). What I mean is that they "spend more of their time selling." In fact, at top performing companies, sales reps spend 72% of their time selling, compared to 59% for average companies, and 47% for the least mature companies.

Why is this? Simple: Top performers maximize revenue by ensuring that only the most qualified sales leads are passed from the marketing department to the sales department. When this happens, sales spends more time following up leads from marketing. When it doesn't happen - that is, when marketing delivers unqualified leads to sales - the sales reps quickly grow frustrated and decide to generate their own sales leads. So, instead of spending their time selling, they spend their time prospecting on their own. Often, this means crawling through databases, creating their own marketing materials, and basically duplicating the work that's already being done by the marketing department. In short, sales reps spend their time marketing instead of selling and companies generate less revenue. On the other hand, when the sales team focuses on selling to the high quality leads the marketing delivers, revenue goes up.

The key here is that the marketing department must deliver qualified leads. Without that, the trust between the departments breaks down. This requires the marketing department to adopt lead scoring tactics to ensure they are qualified, and to work with sales to come up with a mutually agreed upon definition of what constitutes a qualified lead. Leads with low scores that don't meet the criteria of that definition get recycled back into the marketing database for more nurturing, while leads that do get passed to sales. This allows the sales team to spend more time selling.

Your Expert May Be Killing Your Website Content - Part II

The best players usually don't make the best coaches.

The point guard on the Portland Trailblazers NBA basketball team recently hired a shooting coach to help him with his shot. The guy he hired never played pro basketball and he didn't do much in college. However, he's a good shooting coach, partly because he knows what it's like to lack the natural ability and gifts of the best players.

The same idea applies to content creation. Contrary to what you'd expect, the "people who know" in your company may not be he best sources for content. Despite being so good and knowledgeable, the experts nevertheless likely lack the ability to teach what they know. And, because great content often involves explaining to people who aren't as knowledgeable, your experts could be the main obstacle that keeps you from creating a steady stream of content.

An obvious solution to that problem is to ask people who are new to your company to write content, which would also help them learn more about your products. You'd certainly want to edit what they write, but at least you'd get some good content churned out.

Your Expert May Be Killing Your Website Content

I've wondered why so many companies have such a hard time embracing content marketing, and why so many fail to successfully implement marketing automation.

I recently discovered some answers, by accident, from two sources that couldn't be more different.

The first source was a client who has achieved tremendous success with her marketing efforts, but she was lamenting her inability to reach the next level by producing greater amounts of content (particularly articles and white papers). The reason? Their CEO is the expert, and since he doesn't have the time to meet with her...she can't create the content.

The second source was an article about a company failing at marketing automation. The article essentially sites the same issue as my client: insufficient bandwidth to create content. And because the company serves a high niche market, it couldn't rely on an outside agency to write content.

Next time: First of three steps you can take to reap all the benefits of content marketing.

Does Your Company Exhibit By Hope or By Objectives?

There are basically two ways to exhibit: Exhibit by Objectives or Exhibit by Hope. Renting floor space, sending your booth, equipment, products, literature and staff and hoping things work out is Exhibiting by Hope. This is one of the primary reasons many companies don't reap maximum benefits from trade shows.

Exhibiting by Objectives is the process of identifying your best reasons for exhibiting, converting those reasons to goals, developing plans for execution and measuring results. To begin the Exhibiting by Objectives process, you should start at least six months before show time by asking yourself and other key people "Why are we exhibiting?"

Here is the list of top reasons why companies exhibit. Review this list carefully and select the top three or five reasons your company exhibits at trade shows:

• Capture leads
• Introduce new products
• Create visibility
• Branding
• Meet with key customers
• Generate public relations/press coverage
• Test market an idea
• Gain distribution
• Gain access to "No See" buyers
• Write orders
• Demonstrate product capabilities
• Maintain visibility
• Image
• Competitive research
• Customer/industry research
• Get customer feedback
• Meet with distributors/partners

Identifying your reasons is a good start, but to provide the necessary focus, your reasons need to be converted to goals (i.e. specific, measurable, achievable, realistic). Objectives take effort, but the rewards are well worth it. It's the difference between "making expensive appearances" and "making profits."