Archive for Strategy and Planning
April 13 th
Will Social Media Replace Traditional Marketing?
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Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. They’re wondering which activities they should be participating in. “Should we be blogging and tweeting?” “Should we have a Facebook page?” “What about LinkedIn? Should we be there too?” These are typical of the types of questions that are heard whenever new techniques are introduced.
Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. The study looks both at marketing activities and how the marketing spend is split amongst those activities. Of course, it’s no surprise that Forrester finds social media to be the hot new marketing tool.
Looking at B2B social media efforts in 2009, the study shows:
- 68% have set up group pages on social networking sites
- 55% use Twitter for marketing
- 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008)
While these statistics are interesting, even surprising in some cases, she cautions that they represent what marketers are doing—not necessarily what is working. In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. What isn’t defined is the term “highly effective.” But I think the point made is that social media tactics still have a ways to go before they produce the returns of more traditional marketing tactics such as e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales.
Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. She states pretty strongly that marketers must get these right before adding social media to the mix.
As for marketing spend, most marketers cut spending across all activities, and their 2009 budgets looked the same as 2008. Not a huge surprise given the sting of the recession. She mentions that while trade show activities are down, these types of events still take up an average of 20% of the marketing spend. This is followed by traditional tactics like print ads, executive events, direct mail, and PR, which consumed between 10% and 13% of the budget.
Boiling this all down, she advises marketers to rethink their marketing mix and take bigger risks when allocating marketing budget for online efforts. She says that even though digital and social media efforts will not overtake traditional outbound communications anytime soon, marketers can no longer ignore the shift as customers move more into the social media space.
Personally, I expect to see even more of this marketing shift as 2010 sees a lift out of the recession and business returns to a (new) normal. Also contributing to this shift will be the increased ability to measure and see positive results. Something that has been slow to come.
What does your company think about social media marketing? Have they dipped a toe in the water? Have they seen positive results? Love to hear from you!
June 30 th
Product Selling is Dead
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Read a great post by IDC’s Michael Gerard about solution selling. I was fortunate to experience that for the first time several years ago by a very successful vendor rep who has since become a good friend. I thought by now, every sales organization practiced solution selling-but I was wrong.
Michael’s post says, “For nearly 10 years, sales organizations have emphasized the desire to become “trusted partners” with their B2B customers. However, only one in five buyers will tell you that he/she is generally approached by sales reps prepared to discuss solutions.” He goes on to say that most sales engagements are still product led.
Given the stiff competition in the marketplace and all we know about the psychology of selling, why is this still the case and what can we do about it?
It’s been around for a long time. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. To me, anything else is either luck or desperation. With B2B’s extended sales cycle, relationship building becomes even more important. IDC finds that buyers are saying the pre-purchase experience is becoming a more important indicator of post-purchase value. They also say buyers are increasingly considering “relationship ROI” while considering product ROI.
So, what are we marketers doing to help facilitate relationship building? What are we doing to help build trust and likeability?
I’m working with a client and made a suggestion to him that I think was a completely foreign concept: offer some valuable content or tool that has absolutely no mention of your product. In this case, I suggested an e-book on competitive analysis best practices, since they provide a service that consolidates competitive and market information.
As marketers, what research can we provide our sales team? Have we read the latest news and annual reports to find out what is happening now or where they want to go in the future? Have we researched both the decision makers and influencers to find out what roles they have had in the past and any accomplishments they’ve had? By the way, LinkedIn is great for that type of research.
Michael goes on to say, “Buyers will tell you that, in this economy, they no longer have tolerance for uninformed vendor representatives who come through their doors.” Heck, I never did!
Prospects don’t want your products; they want solutions to their problems. They want to find those solutions with people they know, like, and trust. Does your marketing plan support that?
February 3 rd
Time to SWOT Your Competitor!
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Have you or your company performed a SWOT analysis lately? If not, now is a great time to use a SWOT analysis to build a big-picture view of your company.
A SWOT analysis looks at an area from a few directions, specifically:
Strengths – characteristics that are helpful in achieving your goals
Weaknesses – characteristics that are harmful to achieving your goals
Opportunities – external conditions that are helpful in achieving your goals
Threats – external conditions that may reduce the chance of achieving your goals
A SWOT analysis helps you understand the “lay of the land.” It’s a chance to put everything on the table and understand the environment you are working in. It helps identify both the internal and external factors that influence the ability to reach your goals. As part of any annual planning, your SWOT analysis should be updated and goals appropriately adjusted.
Looking specifically at each area of the SWOT analysis, here are just some of the suggested characteristics to review:
Strengths – Customer satisfaction and loyalty metrics, brand recognition, intellectual property and patents, exclusive or advantageous contracts with highly desired suppliers or products, first-mover advantage, and high barrier to entry.
Weaknesses – Essentially, weaknesses will be the opposite of strengths. Low customer satisfaction, low brand recognition, low barrier to entry, little IP, high costs, lack of any advantageous supplier agreements.
Opportunities – New technologies, unfulfilled customer need or demand, loosening of external policies and laws, increased access to international markets.
Threats – Products that are out of favor or end of life, increase in copy-cat products across the market, introduction of new regulations, unfavorable economic conditions.
The goal of most companies is to sustain a competitive advantage. Michael Porter describes competitive advantage as two types: cost advantage and differentiation advantage.
Competitive advantage is achieved by using your company’s resources (capital, human, brand equity, IP, etc.) and your company’s ability to create efficiencies, quality, and innovation. These are the areas that should be included in your SWOT.
Marketing is often the owner of the SWOT task, using SWOTs to build detailed profiles of competitors in the market. Areas of analysis include your competitor’s cost structure, profit margin, resources (including capital and human), expertise, brand positioning, product differentiation, and market penetration (rates and trends).
Collecting this information is no easy task! It is time-consuming and requires a bit of sleuthing, especially if your competitor is a privately-held company. Be sure to perform your own SWOT in the same manner so you have an aligned comparison.
Putting it all together, your SWOT analysis is the key to identifying areas that currently support and currently threaten your competitive advantage. This works whether you are performing a SWOT analysis for a large corporation or your own small business. You can even create your own personal SWOT – great for those New Year’s resolutions!
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