B2B Marcom Mind

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?

Tags: IDC, know, like, Michael Gerard, relationship selling, Sales, trust

Marketers today are spending a lot of energy trying to do more with less. We’re running around, trying to keep the sales staff happy, trying to create content that stands above the crowd, trying to measure title effectiveness with split testing, trying to prove our ROI to our executive team, all with less money and headcount. If we’re not working on a corporate marketing team, we’re trying to find and convince prospects to use our services, trying to stay up with the latest social media trends, and competing with thousands of other independent marketers or agency marketing teams. Needless to say, these are stressful times.

A few weeks ago, I asked Can B2B Marketing Be Fun? and now the “fun” mirror has been turned back at ourselves. That’s why when I saw this video, I thought, “I just have to share this! My marketing friends need a good belly laugh.”

I found several things I could personally relate to, especially in a corporate setting. I’ve seen people (not just marketers) do what they could to look both smart and busy. I’ve seen them hustling around the office with an heir of importance. I’ve heard them claim to be double and triple booked with appointments. I’ve seen them excuse themselves from meetings to take a phone call (from their friends, no doubt). I’ve seen them use buzzwords du jour to sound like they fit in. I’ve worked with these people – they really do exist.

On a similar note, one of my favorite TV shows is The Office. I can pretty much identify someone I know in every character. I’ve seen every one of them in some capacity during my career. I think the producers of The Office should hire the marketing guy in this video – he’d fit right in and they need a marketing person.

Anyway, all of this is just for fun. It’s a chance to laugh at ourselves. I’ll bet you found something you can relate to like I did. Perhaps you even saw a bit of yourself in the video. I’ll leave you with this last thought, “Are we more alike than dare to admit?”

Tags: buzzwords, fun, humor, laugh, marketers, The Office

Is it just me or is most marketing content for B2B pretty dry? So much of our content says, “This is our software. It enables you to do this, so that you can do that.”

I’ve been thinking about the “dry and boring” problem for a long time. Longer than I’ve been a marcom writer and even going way back to the days when I was a marcom consumer, as an IT Director. I just keep thinking there has to be a better way.

The emergence of social media has helped changed the face of B2B marketing, an improvement in my opinion. It has a way of personalizing the relationship between vendor and customer. But something still seems to be missing. So, what if we could market using more storytelling?

Don’t you love a good story? Isn’t it more fun to listen to someone tell of an event and make the story come to life? Case studies are the closest we come to incorporating stories into our marketing content and I think even these could be improved. What I’m talking about is taking case studies and other marketing content to higher levels of storytelling. I’m talking more about creative non-fiction.

Creative non-fiction takes something that is true and writes it in a way that touches our senses. It creates a visual image and stirs up emotions using dramatic openings, realistic details, and expressive dialogue. These are just three ways to make a dry story compelling.

Dramatic openings – Capture your readers from the start. Use visual and exciting openings to compel them to read further.

Old: “Company ABC was spending 8 hours backing up their servers and when backups were running, everyone else had to be off the system.”

New: “The ringing phone interrupted the silence in the data room. On the other end was the CEO, hot that he was locked out of the system as he tried to get some last minute information for the board meeting in 30 minutes.”

Realistic details - Help the story come alive by providing details that touch the one or more of the five senses with detailed descriptions of the scene.

Old: “The vendor held a kickoff meeting to get everyone familiar with the project plan.”

New: “The blue dry marker squeaked across the white board as Joe, the project manager, highlighted the details of the project plan to the VP of Marketing, IT Director, and the project team.”

Expressive dialogue - I find customer quotes within case studies to be quite helpful. They offer a change in voice from the writer to the customer. However, most quotes end with the words “says” or states” such as “states Mr. Smith” which are really expressionless. What if we used more expressive dialogue tags?

Old: “We achieved a 50% improvement on our processing time,” says Mr. Smith, Operations Manager.

New: “We achieved a 50% improvement in our processing time,” the Operations Manager Mr. Smith boasted with a smile.

These are just a few tricks taken from the creative non-fiction world and I’m no fiction author. I’m sure every one of you could come up with even better examples.

It still may be a stretch to incorporate this style into our traditional marketing content and I’m probably treading on new ground here, but I throw it out there as a new, more personal direction for B2B marketing.  What do you think?

Tags: case studies, Content, stories, storytelling, success stories, Writing

I still remember my first Earth Day, which was also THE first Earth Day in 1970. I was in 4^th grade (go ahead, do the math… I’ll wait). Preventing littering was about as much as I understood about being environmentally responsible and its relation to Earth Day.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of progress, though not near enough, in the almost 40 years since Earth Day started. The term “green” used to primarily represent recycle and reuse, but has expanded in scope to include Corporate Sustainability, also known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR uses a triple bottom line that measures success based on financial, environmental, and social metrics.

Many companies are embarking on sustainability programs and mostly for the right reasons, treating people and the environment with care and respect, and not just for PR. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate your company’s CSR efforts.

Whether your company is involved in a formal CSR program or just embarking on various green initiatives, make sure your efforts are being communicated to your stakeholders who include customers, employees, partners, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and local communities.

CSR Communication Benefits

In addition to increased revenues and decreased costs, CSR programs offer a number of benefits. Many of these benefits are enhanced by communication including:

·         Improved reputation - easier to hire good employees, build customer loyalty, and create shareholder value

·         Improved community relations – local involvement builds community support and makes doing business with local authorities easier

·         Improved compliance – public officials are inclined to work together with companies making efforts to meet regulations

With CSR, there are many ways to provide information and exposure regarding your company’s efforts, and all should be considered. The CSR stakeholder community is pretty diverse, so it’s to your benefit to get information out using a variety of media. Media should include all of the usual suspects such as press releases, newspaper articles, television news casts, radio public interest stories. Online mediums should also be used such as company and industry blogs, company Facebook pages, Twitter announcements, and posted podcasts.

In addition to news-type information, success stories and thought leadership from company executives can be used to create an interesting and powerful image to stakeholders.

Beware of Greenwashing

Lastly, be careful how you present your content. Information must be honest and accurate to avoid what is now being called “greenwashing” which is the act of making your company sound greener than it really is.  Don’t highlight your environmental or social improvements in one area to cover up for negative activities in another area. Companies that try and create a perception of sustainability to gain customer and stakeholder favor without backing up their claims will actually do more damage to their reputation than good.

Build up CSR Knowledge in Marketing

One way to help ensure you communicate accurately is to make sure you are knowledgeable about CSR. With recent changes in the government and an increased focus on sustainability, more and more companies will be embarking or expanding on CSR programs. Now is a great time to educate yourself on corporate sustainability, aka corporate social responsibility, so you will be ready to frame your company’s efforts in their best light. Aquinas College does a good job of explaining sustainability in layman’s terms.

Business Link says it best: “A successfully implemented corporate sustainability strategy positively impacts a company’s reputation and brand image by demonstrating that the company is taking responsibility for its actions and embracing change for the greater good.  In fact, an essential part of a company’s success is the engagement and development of strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders based on trust, respect, and cooperation.”

Another Earth Day has come and gone this year. I am grateful that it is no longer just about recycling or being green, but that it takes a larger stance, one that compels companies to take a good hard look at their impact on the earth and make the changes needed to ensure our children will enjoy the natural assets we have today.

What do you think about the role of companies as it relates to CSR?

Tags: communication, corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, CSR, green, PR

I was reading an interview with Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere on SmartData Collective the other day and what I read and saw was “FUN!”

Improv Everywhere says they create chaos and joy in public places. First they get your attention and then they make you smile. When is the last time you did something silly? Yahoo sponsored this Improv Everywhere event where hundreds of people listened to the same MP3 on their headphones and followed the goofy instructions. How about the largest game of Twister?

On a more deliberate marketing note, watch as my alma-matter T-Mobile, takes over the Liverpool Street Station. Initially, you see the typical moving crowds. As the music begins to play, a few of them start dancing, and then as it progresses, what looked like on-lookers are now joining the dance.

No doubt it was all choreographed, but to the hundreds of people watching at the LS Station and the millions who have now seen it on YouTube, it was captivating. You could see several people using their cell phones to video what they were seeing, which was exactly what T-Mobile wanted. The viral exposure has been phenomenal. It’s been viewed over 10 million times around the world!

So my question is can B2B marketing be fun? What can we do to be more viral? What good examples have you already seen?

Tags: B2B, fun, Improv Everywhere, marketing, T-Mobile, viral

A few weeks ago, I told of my college daughter’s tale of woe. After 17 years of schooling, she’s about to be thrust into the real world and doesn’t feel ready. Since that post, she scored a marketing internship at a new pet insurance company called Trupanion.

As I try and help her learn more about online marketing, it occurred to me recently that we’re transitioning in a big way. We’re traveling through a wormhole, soon to be spit out on the other side—changed forever. Marketing as we know it is over and we are about to enter a whole new universe I call social media marketing.

Gone are the easy days of clever commercials, full-page printed ads, and one-way conversations. Gone are the days of addressing faceless, powerless customers from behind the creative desk. No more “build it and they will come” websites. Check your rearview mirror-these things fading fast.

As an aside, I find it interesting that there are so many other things changing at the same time. The way we manage our environment is changing, globalization has opened the doors for anyone to sell anywhere in the world, people are finding more and more ways to connect to each other, and our economy will force us to think and act differently. What I can say with relative certainty is that we will come through the wormhole soon and things will suddenly be a lot different. Are you ready?

Whereas my daughter and her generation are learning and experiencing this new world for the first time, most of us bring the baggage and resistance to change what used to work before. The “known” is so comfortable and the unknown is so scary. But, the trip through the wormhole is happening now and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so get on board!

Social media marketing is still young and still only a small percentage of companies are giving it a try. Most are sitting back, waiting to see how it all shakes out. In these early days, there are prices to be paid but there are also dollars to be made.

There’s great payback for getting it right- Take Dell Computers. They understood that adding social media to their marketing was not as simple as it sounds. There are technologies to set up, branding to be done, and policies to put in place. But instead of dipping just one toe in the water, Dell put themselves “all in” creating a Dell community site, a number of blogs, multiple Twitter IDs, and an active Facebook account. They have been so successful that they’ve publicly claimed they’ve made $1M in revenue from social media marketing.

There can be consequences for getting it wrong - Let’s hope it’s not on the scale of Motrin and the “Motrin Moms” fiasco. In the fall of 2008, Motrin launched an ad that depicted baby slings as fashion accessories for moms. The surprising negative backlash instantly went viral on sites like YouTube, Twitter, and several blogs. That’s enough to cause full-body paralysis in any marketer. It took a few days, but eventually Motrin put up an apology on their website. To release you from your potential paralysis, just note that even “bad” buzz can be better than no buzz. Google and Twitter activity for Motrin increased significantly for a few weeks.

Social media marketing is so fluid, you can quickly right yourself - The beauty (and the beast) in the new marketing world is its dynamic nature. Mistakes can be addressed as quickly as they were made. The Ford Motor Company was able to quickly recover from a potential PR disaster where their legal department sent cease and desist letters to forum owners using Ford trademarks. As you can imagine, these forum owners were outraged and the story became even more twisted as the news spread.

Ford was able to use social media to find out what happened, who was impacted, tell the community what happened, and inform the community about the steps they took along the way to crafting a compromise.

Poking your head out of the wormhole can be frightening. The good news is many companies are in the same boat and the winners will be those who dare to step out into the brave new world.

Tags: blogs, Dell, facebook, Ford, Motrin, social media marketing, Twitter

So much buzz about social media marketing (Facebook, Ning, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn), it’s almost tough to separate practical information from the hype.

In reading dozens of blogposts on the topic, I recently came across a post by Mac MacIntosh who writes the Sales Lead Insights blog that made me go “hmmm….” His post looked at the study done by Forrester that was in response to the question, Which of the following sources of information impact your decision making process?”

And here are the answers:

• Peers and colleagues – 84%
• Vendor, industry and trade Web sites - 69%
• Your direct vendor salesperson – 69%
• Technology or business magazines – 66%
• Consultants, VARs and SIs – 65%
• Industry trade shows or conferences (in person) – 59%
• Forums, online communities and social networks – 45%
• Industry analyst firms – 45%
• E-mail or electronic newsletters – 41%
• Web events or virtual trade shows – 40%
• Interactive media: podcasts, video, online demos – 30%
• Blogs – 24%

From that, he says a story in eWeek about this research states, “…while business buyers may be using social networks and other tools in their enterprise and personal lives, Web 2.0 social technology isn’t affecting their decisions when it comes to purchasing business solutions.”

Mac doesn’t offer his own conclusion, but instead asks if we agree, so here’s my take—

People do business with those they know, like, and trust. I know, it’s an old, overused statement, but it still holds true. I believe this is the major reason why social media for B2B (or even B2C) has so much value. It started with relationship selling and has now been expanded into “relationship marketing” through social media. And, given nearly half those asked said their decisions were impacted by social media, really the newest entrant on the list, how can that be ignored?

Using a B2C example, the Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, Twitters constantly about his customers, vendors, and employees.  One of his latest tweets said, “Busy busy day! Didn’t notice any @Zappos employees doing the robot dance at the office today - http://bit.ly/zrobot.” That got me curious, so I checked out the link. Pretty funny and I got to see some of the employees and their reactions. Looks like a fun place to work and fun to do business with.

For a B2B example, look to Lucidera, a software company specializing in business intelligence. They leverage LinkedIn, Ning, YouTube, and Twitter. Lucidera takes the opportunity to share information and product examples, and also maintains a BI community forum. Look these guys up and see how broadly they’ve used social media.

I’ll bet you’re seeing some good B2B examples as well. If the same survey is taken again in the next couple years, I think you’ll see social media rise, possibly to as high as second place. It’s hard to top those we already know, like, and trust!

Tags: facebook, LinkedIn, ning, relationship marketing, social media, Twitter, youtube

I never planned to be a content marketer. In fact, due to some criticism from my high school English teacher, I didn’t read or write much for the next 20 years. Instead, I focused on technical work, figuring I’m “just a math and science girl.”

So now that I am writing marketing content for a living (I’ll save that life story for another post!), I get asked all the time how I find new clients.

The answer lies in both finding and being found. Here are the four basic steps to increasing your visibility. There is so much more that can be said about each one of these, so you may see them pop up in more detail in a future post. Anyway, here goes:

1. Establish your niche – Most all of us have had multiple jobs. This gives us a variety of experience, though many of us tend to stay in a particular industry. Whether that is healthcare, manufacturing, telecom, retail or something else, it’s what you know best. Let me just say, it is so much easier to create marketing deliverables in an area that is your comfort zone! Once you have narrowed it down, find out where your prospects go. Are there industry groups you can join? Conferences you can attend? Trade publications they read?

2. Create your platform – These days, you must have a website. It’s like your home base. It serves as your online brochure and helps people get to know you. It’s a must that you post samples of work you have done in your online portfolio. So, once that’s done, it’s time to be a little more creative and show people what you are all about. One of the easiest is to start your own blog, related to your niche. You might also choose to produce a regular newsletter. There are some great (and free) tools out there to get started. Check out Wordpress to get your blog started.

3. Leverage LinkedIn – It is also imperative that you have a fully developed LinkedIn profile. It’s the ultimate online resume. Once you’re comfortable there, search for and join groups in your niche. That allows you to submit articles (even ones you wrote!), start discussions, and learn what others in your group are doing. As for finding and being found, I had two prospects cold call me because they found me on LinkedIn. I also use the advanced search to look up people with “marketing” in their title, and who work for a specific company I want to reach.

4. Twitter with your “Tweeple” – The whole Twitter thing still amazes me. I was one of those nay-sayers who couldn’t see the value. Well, I’m a complete convert now! I found and followed people in my niche area, business intelligence. I was fortunate in that these techie, fairly early adopters, organized a group and collected Twitter handles on a Google docs spreadsheet. Barring that, you can search for people in your niche (try Twello), and not only follow them, but follow who they follow. Start your own collection of niche Tweeple and advertise the list. Now get out there and tweet. Check out TwiTips for more help with Twitter.

If you’re doing these things, you are well on your way and can consider yourself an “advanced social networker.” This won’t guarantee you’ll get new work, but I can just about guarantee you’ll meet new prospects! The rest is up to you.

I’d love to hear your story about how you’ve been able to find new clients.

Tags: LinkedIn, networking, new clients, prospects, Twitter

My daughter, a college senior, dropped me a text message the other day that said, “I don’t know what to do with my life. Why didn’t I major in business?” 

Just so you know, she’s majoring in psychology but has always said she has no interest in becoming a psychologist. Of course, being the good parent, I supported and reassured her that she’d still be able to find a job.

Then today, while reading Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert, I came across a section that explained how she felt. Stumbling on Happiness explores the psychology behind the emotions of happiness.

In particular, chapter seven speaks to the impact of time on happiness. What struck me was what Gilbert said about how we predict our future feelings based on how we feel in the present. 

The concept is that our predictions of the future are influenced by the present. Gilbert says, “Because time is such a slippery concept, we tend to imagine the future as the present with a twist, thus our imagined tomorrows inevitably look like slightly twisted versions of today.”

In its physical form, it’s the equivalent of going grocery shopping on an empty stomach. We’re hungry so in planning for future meals, everything sounds good! Conversely, if someone asks us what we want for dinner tomorrow, just after we’ve eaten a full meal, we can’t imagine being hungry anytime soon and are hard-pressed to come up with a suggestion.

He also makes the point that our future selves won’t see the world the way we see it now, in addition to our present selves not seeing the future accurately. So, in my daughter’s case, she can’t accurately imagine a career in business that would draw on her psychology knowledge because she only sees the world with what she knows today.

Now, think about this in a business setting. Your business customer is always looking and working toward the future. Guess what? They’re doing so within the framework of what they know today. You, as a marketer or vendor, have a different and likely broader image of what the future can be with your product, and it’s your job to shape your customer’s view.

One of the best ways to do that is with case studies, sometimes called success stories. Pay particular attention to the “story” part. Stories have a way of shaping what we think and case studies are especially helpful in this way. They remove the boundaries of our limited imagination and show us what is actually possible. They can replace preconceived notions about how your customer thinks the future may be, with what it really can be.

By the way, if you want a really good book on writing case studies, and really the ONLY book on writing case studies, get yourself a copy of Casey Hibbard’s Stories That Sell: Turn Satisfied Customers into Your Most Powerful Sales & Marketing Asset.

Tags: case studies, Content, future, vision, Writing

In my former role as Director of Business Intelligence, a hybrid business/IT role, I read many white papers. Business Intelligence is a fairly technology-driven area and we were in growth (purchase) mode.

Arguably, some of the white papers I read were better than others. As a customer, I was reading for a number of reasons, including:  

·         I wanted to learn about potential solutions

·         I wanted assurance the vendor understood my problem

·         I needed information to support my business case

·         I wanted to be fully-educated on the bigger picture

·         I wanted to know if there were anything else I hadn’t considered

Having said that, I can’t tell you how many white papers missed the mark and left me hanging.

If the objective of your white paper is to move a prospect through the sales funnel, then there are some areas you should be addressing.

Problem Section - Aside from a possible short intro paragraph, this should be the first section of your paper. It should articulate the business or technical problem in detail and include the impacts of the problem, such as increased costs, lost revenue opportunity, difficulty meeting regulations, and poor quality. What will help your prospect greatly is to include quantitative measures of the impacts like dollars, number of customers affected, lost time due to rework. The problem statement is even stronger if you can back it up with fact-based statistics that cite credible sources.

History – Typically, this follows the problem section and helps educate the reader about the bigger picture. What led up to this problem? Did this problem always exist or has something changed? You may even be able to show that your competition is behind the times. You can also use this as an opportunity to show what’s been tried in the past and why it hasn’t worked or isn’t working now.

Market Trends – These kinds of trends shape the way we experience the future. Market trends include new technology or inventions, policy changes such as Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA, social changes like social networking or telecommuting, and economic changes including global markets, interest rates, and the economic climate. Your market trends should relate to your industry and not to your solution specifically. Again, use facts and statistics, and quote credible sources such as field experts and industry analysts.

Overall Solution – Now that you’ve set the stage, it’s time to educate your reader about the solution or range of solutions. Talk about the solution at a high level providing the big picture. By starting at this high level, you make the solution easy to understand and can start to guide the reader down the path towards your company’s solution. Be sure to define any common acronyms and add any helpful diagrams. Do not introduce your product here. Wait until the overall solution is thoroughly described.

So many white papers I see are more like glorified brochures. They start and end by touting the product. Nothing turns off a reader more than listening to a bunch of hype. They want real-world answers to the problems they face every day.

Tags: Content, marcom, white papers