Publish or Perish- The New Paradigm for B2B Marketing? (Part 2 of 2)

A few weeks ago, I posted on the importance of getting your business to think like a publisher. Presuming you buy into the need for this mindset, what do you do about it?  If you are a B2B marketer, how exactly do you think like a publisher?

Here are some thoughts:

Create targeted content- It goes without saying that you need to create high quality content.   However, you could have videos produced by Steven Spielberg that generate little or no interest from your audience.  To build relevance, organizations need to build a range of content that appeals to the broad array of stakeholder interests and concerns associated with what you sell.

Here is what I mean by this.  Consider a complex technology solution sale and the number of people who can get involved in the process.  Is the content you produce and manage adequately oriented around the business owners, IT personnel, line managers, and contract/procurement teams that all have influence in the buying decision? Is it organized in a way that these influencers can easily learn about the issues that are central to their function in the buying process?

In my own practice, I have observed lots of companies who are trying to reach multiple stakeholders with the same message, through the same channels.  At best this results in a mishmash of generalized information that proves to be only marginally useful for engaging the influencers in the buying decision.  As well see in an upcoming example, segmenting the message creates an opportunity for better focus and more relevance.

Consider not only who they are but where they are in your relationship-So much of what companies do from a content perspective is oriented around prospecting and closing new business.  For businesses whose model is subscription based (e.g., SaaS models), information about how users can generate more efficiency and value from the solutions they already buy can be even more important to the long-term health of a business by further cultivating the relationships they already have.

Make full use of the channels at your disposal-Today’s content distribution mechanisms give you a wide range of options for targeting who you talk to and what you say.  Use them to segment the content that you feed to the various constituents you are trying to reach.  For example, Dario’s company (from Part I) uses a blog for driving awareness and education and the company home page for driving sales.  This   bifurcation of purpose allows his company to be extremely focused in messaging and UI design.

Give it to them in the media format that they want- There is lots of choice now on how you communicate with your audience, so don’t force white papers on customers as the only way to learn about your offerings.  Besides, have you heard about the Forrester report that states that video increases the likelihood of a front page Google search result by 96%?

Give your audience a voice- I heard a very interesting statistic from SplashMedia, that stated that only 14% of prospective customers were inclined to believe the marketing messages that came directly from the selling organization, while 78% of prospects tended to believe the opinions of other customers.  To be sure, giving your customers a voice is a big risk, and may not be such a great idea for companies who are not highly responsive to customer needs and complaints. Then again if you can harness the enthusiasm that people have for your offerings, (as implied by the statistic above) customers can be a great way to generate complementary content that helps close new business.

In the end, keeping these ideas in mind will help you think more like a publisher.  While your audience is not paying for your content, it is sacrificing its time and attention to read/listen to/watch what you create.  Orienting your organization around building specific messages for the right audience at the right stage in the customer relationship is most likely to generate the engagement that you need for driving and sustaining growth.

Leverage Ego to Build Content, Generate Leads

One of many great pieces from Mike Michalowicz (blog here) on how to use the fact that people will stop everything they are doing to read and promote their own name.  I’ve written in other posts about the importance of being a publisher-as Mike describes in his article, using this simple truth can be used in both the offline and online worlds to not only generate great content, but also generate leads.

Link to article here.

Publish or Perish- The New Paradigm for B2B Marketing? (Part 1 of 2)

I caught up with a long time friend and CMO, Dario Priolo a few weeks back and got to discussing best practices with him on B2B sales/marketing for software.  He markets web-based learning and training solutions, and I think is really on top of innovation and cutting edge trends in this area so I value his opinion and approach to leveraging social media in the B2B space (check out his blog here).

While we talked about several themes, one of the most important ones that we kept coming back to was getting the organizations we work with to think like publishers.

Now if you are in the business of selling enterprise software or solutions, you may ask yourself, “what does publishing have to do with my business?”  The conclusion that Dario and I kept coming back to in our conversation- Everything.

Consider the following:

Prospects are educating themselves. 90+% of decision makers have done some sort of web research on existing solutions before they talk to anyone at a vendor.  Decision makers are armed with the information that you provide and with materials that are being created by your competitors.

Awareness marketing is the norm.  Given the self directed nature of the modern day buying process, it is imperative that the people looking for the solutions that you offer can not only find you with minimal effort, but also find information that is useful to them.  To do this, you must create relevant and timely content that is useful to a broad range of constituents.  In sum, you are creating for a variety of audiences and needs.

Product knowledge is now easier than ever to share.  The proliferation of social media tools and their integration with how we regularly communicate with one another means that your content will reach more people in the purchasing process.  Your information isn’t static and doesn’t remain in the hands of the one person that found you on the web.  How you present your product/service moves and makes its way to other stakeholders in the purchasing process that you cannot control.  Further, the opinions of your prospects and users are now a part of the dialogue.

SaaS changes everything.  In on-demand models, product knowledge is increasingly driven by trial.  Long term profitability is driven by retention.  The role of the content that you produce and manage extends far beyond getting a foot in the door.  It is a meaningful part of maintaining an ongoing relationship with trial and paying customers.

It is critical to think carefully about who your audience is, what content you produce, how you distribute it and how to ensure that these consumers of your information continue to pay for this content with their time.  In sum, B2B marketers of software and technology need to think like publishers. Sounds basic I know, but most of the B2B companies I see out there don’t do this very well.  Does yours?

How Are LinkedIn Users Looking at Your Company?

Read an interesting research piece this morning on LinkedIn behavior by LeadFormix.  The company tracked behavior of nearly 300 of its clients’ LinkedIn profile pages to see how information posted there produced leads.

Interesting takeaways for me include:

• LinkedIn Groups are an effective means of gaining customer engagement- 1/3 of visitors from groups filled in a form on the company’s website
• Company/individual profiles are important in driving traffic to website- 1/2 of website traffic driven by linked in come from profile and company pages
• Most common intent of visitors who access company website via LinkedIn Groups is to gain access to webinar

To be sure I think that much of the stats in the report are a result of what I believe to be the most common uses of LinkedIn, namely gathering intel for job hunting or targeting prospects or networking, but still some interesting ways of looking at the data.  Further, these data are driving me to think more carefully about how companies should be properly raising their profile and market traction through participation in the LinkedIn Group forums.

Report can be accessed here: http://bit.ly/juo0gf

FB, Twitter, and LinkedIn: the Big Three social media channels for SMBs

Came across a research report on use of social marketing published by the Social Media Examiner.  I was initially drawn in by the fact that the report claimed to have insights on the differences in social media utilization between B2B and B2C companies.

Note that this is a report that will be most useful for people who want to understand the behavior of SMBs- 90% of the 3300+ respondents have less than 500 employees and the bulk of the respondents work for firms with less than 100 employees.

Main insights for me from this report are as follows:

• Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Blogs and Social Video (YouTube, et al) top the charts in terms of social media utilized
• Utilization of Groupon (6%) relatively low
• Geo mobile (e.g., Foursquare) comparatively high (17%)
• As expected, biggest variance between B2B and B2C utilization comes in their use of Facebook and Linked In (B2C using Facebook significantly more, B2B using Linkedin more)
• B2B utilization of twitter very high (86%)

Link to report is here (will be inserting full report shortly):http://bit.ly/eGOrws

Biggest hole in research for me is more detail on effectiveness- as noted in an earlier post, getting people to read your facebook page doesn’t necessarily mean you are driving sales.  That said, research provides an interesting window into what people are using and how much time they are spending on these channels.

Enterprise Selling- Not Just for the Salesperson Anymore

Great thinking from Sameer Patel on Saleforce.com acquisition of Radian6 and discussion of implications for Customer Experience Management (CEM).

Most relevant points/learning for me in the article that resonate with my own experience in selling enterprise solutions:

• Customers now come informed before they are ready to buy
• This is pushing a shift in marketing which requires involvement of entire organizations, not just sales/marketing (marketing fluff won’t cut it with these educated prospects).  Note: just because this is needed doesn’t necessarily mean that this is what the selling organizations are offering
•  This is in turn driving increased need for all parts of the organization (not just sales) to be listening and engaged in the discussion with customers- and where social networking tools can provide additional value
• The combination of Radian6/Salesforce.com provides an opportunity to begin to manage and mine these interactions, but it has a ways to do this before the vision is realized

One hole in the “stack” that Patel points out in the combined offering is the ability to generate leads.  He coyly suggests Marketo/Hubspot as solutions for this, but my question here is how effectively an application can do this.  In my view applications help manage the lead generation process, not execute it. If anyone has experience in the effectiveness of these tools or has come across resources which point to the success of these tools, I’d welcome your thoughts and input.

Link to the article here:

http://bit.ly/f9aSIT

While Others Argue on Ownership of Facebook, Let’s Figure Out if We Can Sell on It

 

WSJ article summarizes findings of a Forrester study that suggests that few businesses are having success with commerce on Facebook.

• Email and paid search are more effective at acquiring and retaining customers
• Generating awareness of commerce on Facebook requires investment (people need to be aware of your fan page)
• Appears to be fallback mechanism for businesses that do not have a website/web-commerce capabilities

In sum, people go to Facebook to socialize, not shop.    Something to consider when crafting your business’ social media strategy.

Link to article:

http://on.wsj.com/gkJLhj

 

Erasing the Stigma of Enterprise Software

I read an interesting article last night (thanks to @JHaughwout) reporting that Andreessen Horowitz (Silicon Valley VC) is bulking up its capabilities in enterprise computing and solutions.  There were a couple of great points made in the piece:

1) many VCs have shied away from investments in enterprise solutions because

• Sales cycles are long
• IT purchasers are a difficult sell (are a pain)
• The companies they fund compete with industry stalwarts such as IBM

2) there is a great divide between the quality and usability of B2C software and that of B2B solutions

Why is the elegance we find in consumer applications so blatantly missing on the enterprise side?  As the author of the article points out, our experience at home increasingly raises the bar for those who want to play in the enterprise side.  People will demand solutions at work that are as functional as those they use at home.  Companies who get this will not only be highly differentiated, but  will be able to bring a new set of evangelists and advocates for their solutions.

We believe that this “consumerization” of the enterprise space is a very important trend.  It is driven by the proliferation of Saas models, infrastructure on demand, outsourcing and increasingly efficient marketing and distribution methods.  Its why you will see more content from us on successful tactics used in B2C social media and how these can be applied to the B2B/enterprise world.

Through my experience with small enterprise software companies I have lived through the painful truth of the points above, but currents in the competitive structure of the enterprise software space that suggest that they may not be the status quo for long.

Link to the article:

http://read.bi/eyjCM8

Why Branding Matters

I was at a forum this week focused on helping a specific B2B technology/services company gain traction on an offering that was designed to provide enterprise security for mobile devices (target market is $1B+ in revenues).   As with many of the clients that I have worked with they struggled with the following:

1)      Shortening sales cycles

2)      Building brand recognition for a new offering

3)      Moving into an adjacent market with different decision makers

I will post more on my blog in future posts on topic #1, but I wanted to share the thoughts of one of the panelists on the forum- a CTO of a major hospital system- precisely the target customer for the company’s offering.  I got two main insights from his contributions to the talk.

1)      Brand recognition matters in so far as it helps in weed through deluge of communications that he gets from vendors on a daily basis .  “I get 60+ emails a day from people trying to sell me stuff.  If I have never heard of the company before, there is no chance that I will open an email or take a call from them.”

2)      References from his peers matter.  From same CTO- “If my peers are other organizations are talking about a new technology or company, I take notice.”

In my operating experience and as a business owner and entrepreneur, I have struggled with investments in branding not only because of the expense, but also because of the difficulty of tracking what meaningful results, if any, might result from these “investments.”

But clearly, as  the example of the CTO mentioned earlier- it helps drive effectiveness of sales and marketing and makes the path to the decision maker more efficient as well.

The good news here is that with social networking there are new and inexpensive ways to not only drive brand awareness, but also to begin tracking the effectiveness of these efforts.  To be sure, effective use of B2B social networking for the purposes of effective lead generation is in its infancy, but we see it as a critical means of driving efficiency and advantage versus some of the older methods that many B2B companies struggle to generate results from today.  In future posts, we will explore more specifically how this is done, but for now you may want to check out the following:

For B2B Social Networking: http://bit.ly/fslfC6

For B2B Brand Measurement/Tracking: http://buswk.co/e1tQgp