Marketing Briefs

B2B Marketing – Clouds Ahead

As I get back to the blog after a summer hiatus, one of the trends impacting B2B marketers is how B2B buyers are operating with a “cloud” mentality and expectations these days. It isn’t just technology companies like Microsoft figuring out how to move their product offering, business model and pricing to “the cloud.”

Companies providing services to B2B buyers need to adapt to the corporate buyer’s new expectations: that services are “packaged” like products, priced “by the drink,” are available without a long-term contract, and that make an immediate impact on financial results. Packaging services like products isn’t as hard as many marketers make it sound. Making services feel more like products – or “making the invisible visible”— really boils down to understanding who your customers are, how your customers are using your services, what “features” of the service they use the most and find the most valuable, how do they want to buy/pay for the service, and what kind of a commitment do they want to make.

Once you understand these essential elements, you can use them to “package” your services as products that service specific customer needs, delivered in a way they want to consume them, and priced the way they want to buy them. This also makes it fairly straightforward to assign a specific return on investment expectation to each “product” so that your customer can make the connection between what you offer and how they can grow revenue and/or reduce expense. This alone will enable many B2B marketers to help their companies set themselves apart from competitors who make it nearly impossible to connect the investment in the service with a specific outcome. Finally, while some customer segments are interested in long-term contracts because of their specific industry or business model, most companies are looking to make shorter commitments even if your current service offer is not set up to be sold that way. In addition to slowing down your sales cycle, this also results in significantly narrowing the universe of buyers for your service.

Once you understand how your customer would like to buy, you may need to re-think how you can deliver your productized service in a way that allows your customer to buy by the month or year vs. multi-year contracts. There are many ways to do this, depending on your specific service and business model, including increasing the monthly fees for shorter term contracts to cover your upfront costs, having a balloon payment at the end should a customer leave you before you have recouped your start-up costs, or offering financing through a third-party so your customer can avoid having to come up with upfront cash while benefiting from a fixed monthly fee.

At the end of the day, B2B marketers are going continue to have to keep thinking like consumer marketers with an eye for making their company products and services available in a “cloud-like” way.

Start the New Year Right By Balancing Customer Acquisition and Retention

We have the first 10 days of the new year behind us, email boxes cleaned out from the holidays and should be looking ahead to starting the year with a good first quarter and build up of first half momentum to meet annual targets for profitable revenue growth. Marketers must focus on many priorities – build the brand, develop new solution offerings and line extensions, continually infuse the “voice of the customer” into developing market strategies and positioning, etc. – but the top priority on any list has to be focusing on acquiring new customers while retaining and growing revenue from the current customer base.

 

Achieve the right balance in your marketing for new customer acquisition and current client retention, resulting in increases in revenue, profitability and customer satisfaction, by following these five key steps:

 

Targeting – The first step focuses on “the who” for both current customers and new customers/segments to target. Marketing needs to take ownership of identifying the highest potential customers for both revenue growth and margin enhancement by conducting analysis of the current customer database by revenue, product, profitability, region, and channel; market segmentation research focusing on prospective customer targets; and thoughtful construction of go-to-market programs, messages and promotions. The target database to drive this investment in marketing to the right targets is what will yield the best Lifetime Customer Value. Ensuring your teams don’t rush past the “who” to the “what” is imperative in ensuring you have most effectively allocated your time and budget resources to capturing the right business.

 

Retention – Most marketing teams don’t spend enough time on programs to retain customers and expand their usage of company solution offerings. While there is indeed pressure from sales and leadership teams to invest mostly in new customer acquisition, the reality is you must fight to maintain a more balanced view of keeping the customers you already have while adding new ones to the company roster. In addition to reducing churn and improving customer satisfaction, use an on-going dialogue with your customers via formal and informal research channels (focus groups, internet and mobile surveys, engagement via social media networks, customer user groups, etc.) to gain the insights you need for understanding what they’re saying about your product or service, how they’re using it and how they believe it can be improved. This insight is an invaluable tool to use when developing your strategies for up-selling or cross-selling existing or new products. This attention to retaining and growing margin from current customers improves your Lifetime Customer Value and benefits you in the new customer acquisition mode due to the ability to leverage a positive customer base in testimonials.

 

Acquisition – Whether your company is marketing to consumers, large enterprise or small business customer segments ( or some combination), ensure your marketing strategy and teams are clear about what the “net new” customer acquisition goals are by customer segment, product/service line and geography. Additionally, assuming you’ve spent the necessary time on targeting and segmentation upfront to drive your marketing plan using facts, successful teams are also optimizing the mix of what channels they plan to use to reach prospective customers where and how they want to be reached. This includes looking at the mix of online/offline channels, direct/indirect channels, what social media networks each prospect segment uses, etc. With the right understanding of the goals and marketing mix, you should establish up front what the goals are for revenue and profit expected per customer and the expected cost-per-acquisition targets so that you have a way to measure the effectiveness of your programs and assumptions.

 

Engagement & Activation – Integration of marketing tactics, channels and programs is never out of style. In both your retention and acquisition programs, ensure your engagement and activation efforts leverage the right mix and integration of all facets of marketing – effectively making every dollar spent work like five dollars – including web/online marketing, social media, email marketing, search engine optimization and marketing, online/offline direct marketing, advertising, PR, alliances and channel marketing to name a few. Equally important is to ensure you are engaging with internal colleagues who become critical brand ambassadors throughout your organization at each customer and prospect touch point.

 

Measurement – Last and certainly not least, is measurement. I’ve written in past blog entries about the importance of measuring your marketing efforts and spend against goals that are agreed upon UPFRONT by your other cross-functional management team colleagues. Not every marketing program and effort is going to yield the results you expect – but what are the results you expect? It’s not unreasonable to attempt to have a measurement component built into every program at its inception. Metrics for measuring results can include specific retention measures; impact on lifetime customer value; growth in revenue, profits and market share; cost-per-acquisition; and number of new customers added and current customers retained. Every program should also include an ROI measure by product, channel and customer segment.

Marketing 2010: Drive Efficiencies By Thinking Global

Marketing leaders at larger enterprises doing business globally can drive further efficiencies in their 2010 marketing budgets by putting in place the right frameworks to foster global planning and concepting. This isn't easy since there exists territorial attitudes related to budgets and staff that "sit" outside the corporate office in regions around the world. This happens even if there is a "solid line" reporting relationship from the regional marketing leaders and teams to the corporate CMO because the allegiance to the local market leader is usually strong.

However, that shouldn't stop global CMOs on insisting on driving global concepting and planning for as many initiatives as appropriate. One way to do this is to work closely with your financial officer counterpart to demonstrate how this will save the corporation money, while delivering a more consistent global approach to customers, prospects and partners. The power of the purse will help make this an imperative for 2010 but ensuring budget dollars for concepting key global programs are removed from regional budgets.

Now I'm not suggesting that there are not specific differences region-by-region that can all be captured by a one size fits all approach. There are, however, many programs that can be concepted and planned centrally and then simply localized. Most companies consider this with basic collateral, business communications and global events, but do not look at how this concept can be driven (with some extra work and pre-planning) through most of the marketing programs a company executes.

I've found the key to success is to institute central planning and execution with a dose of local programs and execution that happens in each region. I've established global strategy teams made up of the senior leaders of the corporate marketing functions, regional marketing heads and a representative from each major external agency partner. I've typically branded these internally, "TeamGevity" or "TeamIomega" for example, and have created a sense of mission and purpose. This way it hasn't turned out to be "corporate" trying to execute one program for every market but a global team planning the major initiatives to eliminate waste and local market re-work. This idea isn't that much different than Ford trying to create several global car platforms versus having every car in every region using all different components.

This "embrace and extend" approach has served me and my teams well at multiple companies. We've planned and strategized on all programs that could be used across regions. The regions would then "embrace" these corporate programs, "extending" them as appropriate into their local markets. Additionally, these would be supplemented with region-specific programs and lead generation programs where a global, corporate program wouldn't make sense.

While the real reason to aim for this approach is to deliver better marketing, a side benefit will be reduced cost to your company. And in this economic environment, that's a real win for marketing.

Marketing 2010: Is It Marketing if You Can't Measure It?

I believe every marketing plan, program and expense can and should be designed with a measurement element built in at the very beginning. After years of leading teams, assembling plans of all descriptions and participating in many budgeting cycles, it's clear to me that every marketing initiative CAN be measured in some way and shouldn't be funded if it isn't measured.

There's the quote I'm sure many have read (attributed to a number of different sources) that says, "I know that half of my advertising budget is wasted, but I'm not sure which half." While that was once probably true, today's marketing teams need to build in measurement as a fundamental requirement before launching new initiatives. Businesses are under tremendous pressure to increase the growth rate of revenue and profits, and marketing has to demonstrate how what it is doing is not a "nice to have" but a value-added partner with sales in delivering on forecasted growth.

Measures used to gauge effectiveness of programs can include things like how many leads are actually converted to qualified pipeline opportunities (as recognized by the sales team), registrations at tradeshows and how these are qualified and moved into the pipeline, and effectiveness at increasing awareness. You may also want to focus on how marketing programs are expanding use of your products or services by the installed base. There are many others and you can be quite specific as you build in measurement components at the program level. You should also consider running your ideas on what is meaningful measurement by both your financial officer and sales officer counterparts to ensure you all agree upfront on what constitutes meaningful indicators of positive results.

As you put the finishing touches on your 2010 marketing plan and budget, think about including a section on measurement ... and then follow-through during the year to ensure your teams are measuring how their marketing initiatives are impacting business results.

 

Marketing 2010: Lead Your Customer and Prospect "Conversations"

My upcoming blog posts will focus on upcoming marketing concepts you should consider as you formulate your marketing strategies and plans for 2010.

Clearly, the advance of social media sites has increased the ability for your existing communities of users to interact with your potential pool of new buyers. This goes for any size company, in any industry, B2B or consumer.

Instead of "direct marketing" for 2010, think about your marketing program in terms of creating programs that create and nurture "conversations" with your current and prospective customers. Focus on what you want at the center of your "conversation" platform -- is it a social media site like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others? Is this where your current customers "hang out?" Or will you focus on creating opportunities for on-going conversations and interactions through deploying a virtual event hub?

Seth Godin's recent book, "Tribes," explores this concept as it relates to tribes being any group of people who are connected to one another, in big groups or small, by a leader and an idea. While there is much more in the book, which I recommend, one core concept is that while the web and social media and virtual events platforms can do phenomenal things in terms of connecting you with your customers and prospects, the web doesn't provide leadership. That still has to come from you. From your company. From your marketing.

Don't miss the opportunity as your finalize your 2010 marketing initiatives to plan, budget and create opportunities to provide leadership in the conversations your customers and prospects are already having about your company and its products and services. Start with this concept and then focus on building the tactics to support it.

Twitter Increases Relevance for B2B Marketing

While this isn’t “new” news, for those of you B2B marketers who view Twitter as the “social media flavor of the moment,” you may want to take note about the strategic moves underway that continues to increase Twitter’s relevance for B2B marketing. While I am not a personal fan of using Twitter to share updates about the “best fries ever” I just ate or feeling the need to post a picture of my latest pair of new socks or that Ashton Kutcher has over a million followers, B2B companies should care about both being in the conversation going on between their customers on Twitter AND how these posts are now showing up in Google (and Bing) search results.

 

 

Recently, Google announced that they believe Twitter adds value to search and Google is now including Twitter updates in Google search results. Google believes this near real-time data from Tweets can make search more relevant and timely. As an example, the next time someone searches for the product or service your B2B company provides, real-time observations (positive and negative) from your customers who are tweeting about your company will be included in the search results.

 

 

This is a meaningful validation of the Twitter business and the mark it is making on B2B marketing. I believe this agreement between Google and Twitter is a good thing and accelerates the imperative for B2B marketers to embrace Twitter and social media in general as important tools to infuse customer and market dialogue and insights into positioning, messaging and development of marketing programs. With Google and Microsoft partnered up with Twitter on search, Twitter is here to stay and marketers should ignore Twitter and other social media at their peril.

Are Your Marketing Tools and Sales Process In Sync?

One way to drive additional synergy between your marketing and sales investments, is to clearly map your sales process with your prospecting activities and supporting marketing tools and resources.

Typically companies do a good job of mapping out a defined sales process, with key "gates" that opportunities must move through from entering the sales funnel to coming out the other end as a new client. Against this process sales teams usually understand what prospecting activities they must execute to build the sales pipeline. Finally, marketing also usually has a strategic marketing plan or framework against which tactical programs are executed.

However, bringing these three streams together -- sales process, prospecting activities and marketing resources and tools -- is not an area where many companies excel. I believe marketing needs to take the lead in getting these points of integration to happen. While this leadership can come from marketing or sales, to ensure the marketing investment (read "cost center") is most effective with demonstrated ROI and programs that sales supports, marketing has the most to gain to ensure this integration happens.

This example is from a company where we had a successful partnership between marketing and sales with a collaborative approach to integrating the marketing output with the sales process and activities.

During this time of year as you're planning your 2010 marketing approach and activities, sit down with your sales counterparts to map out a plan that ensures you're in sync.

Make Every Dollar Work like Five Dollars!

Do your marketing and sales activities extract enough value for every marketing dollar you spend? Think about these ideas as you plan your 2010 marketing roadmap and budget.

 

Form Alliances and Partnerships that Deliver Co-Marketing Dollars: The return on your investment doubles when you only pay for half of the campaign.

 

Negotiate Extras: most marketing investments can be negotiated to include more than what is actually being purchased. Get online banner placements thrown in with ad placements. Have the printer use the extra stock from brochures to deliver direct mail postcards. Ask the trade show sponsor to upsize your ad in the program. Get maximum value from every dollar spent.

 

Close the Gap Between Marketing and Sales: In the end, sales delivers the real return on marketing’s investment. The ongoing battle between sales (they don’t utilize the leads!) and marketing (all of their leads are terrible!) is counterproductive to working as a team to maximize the efforts of both groups. Open communication and genuine integration are the keys to optimal return on the marketing investment.

 

Give Prospects More Than Just a Slick Marketing Pitch: As the competition to get customers’ attention grows, so does their skepticism of everyone trying to get it. The company that delivers meaningful information to help the customer address their business objectives will benefit by positioning themselves as an industry expert, and elevating themselves above the noise. For the cost of a flash pop-up window, a company can instead deliver a whitepaper – not on their product, but on the space. Web content can go beyond self-promotion to offer industry insights. Blogs can summarize current analyst reports, etc…through value, vendors build trust.

 

Leads – Decide What To Do With Them: Filling in the blanks between lead generation goals and revenue goals is key to realizing meaningful ROI. What is the process for qualifying and following up on a lead? Is that process consistent with the size and bandwidth of the sales team? How is it tracked? Who is accountable? What stages does a prospect go through as they move “down the funnel”?

Physical and Virtual Events Converge

Incorporating a virtual event component concurrent with a physical event is an attractive and cost-effective way to capture more audience participation at your event. Purely standalone physical events have been disappearing for years due to economic downturns, tightening T&E budgets and the ability for anyone to spare enough time to travel to a physical event location.

In fact, an even bigger factor to consider is the cost for a company sponsoring an event to get all of their executives and other presenters in one location at one time. Many companies, maybe even your company, has dropped most of your events and are doing webinars. While this is one way to engage with your target audience, it doesn’t incorporate the networking and community feel of an event.

There are a number of excellent virtual event platforms out there but I recently viewed the demo for Cramer Digital’s Event Hub virtual platform. It’s six minutes and definitely demonstrates how easy it is to integrate a virtual component with your physical event. (http://www.cramereventmedia.com/vblast/EventHub/EventHub.html).

I also like the idea for global corporations to leverage a virtual/digital event platform for launching new products simultaneously in multiple markets. Perhaps the physical event is held in the region where the “push” for the product service is strongest and the virtual event is marketed extensively to include attendees from other regions.  Also, integrating social media between both the physical and virtual event environments extends the reach of the event to networks of social networks.

With budgets continuing to tighten and driving the best ROI a “must-do” instead of just a “goal,” implementing a virtual event strategy in your marketing mix should be top on your list for 2010.

Market With Every Box You Ship

Don’t stop marketing and selling once you take an order and ship out the package. Take the opportunity to market and sell with every box you ship!

Market Outside the Box for Free Brand Awareness

On the outside of the box, you have the opportunity to use your packaging as a traveling billboard that anyone who touches your package in shipping will see. Include your company name, logo and web address on the outside of every package. If you ship many packages, have your box supplier imprint this messaging for you. If you ship in smaller quantities, use stock boxes shipping boxes and affix preprinted stickers with your branding information.

Market Inside the Box for Add-On Sales

Marketing on the outside of the packages you ship is only the beginning. Move inside the box to market additional products and services to your customers. Include brochures or fliers that advertise complementary products and services to what you are shipping to the customer. Include ordering information to make it easy for your customers to re-order consumables like ink cartridges or complementary products like a color printer to go with a camera. Another way to continue the marketing “conversation” with your customers is to include fliers inside your packaging that educates them on the various uses of your products or care instructions for your products. You can both sell inside your package as well as educate your customers. This also gives you the opportunity to follow-up each shipment with a phone call to see how they liked their order, to ask them if there is anything else you can do for them and to specifically ask if they would like to take advantage of a special offer you have included in their package.