Posted by Robert Celaschi on Thu, Aug 13, 2009
By Robert Celaschi
I won't buy your product or service if you don't tell me what it is.
Fun and games!
Here’s a fun game:
Guess what each company is selling, using these lines from their press releases.
“…an expert in the image solution arena.”
“This is a result of an improved customer focus and strong actions to improve our solution competitiveness.”
“… delivers business-aligned solutions
“… a provider of mobility solutions”
And my favorite of the moment:
“… a trusted solutions provider to customers in manufacturing, health care, financial services, public safety, transportation & logistics, and other industries.”
Believe it or not, these companies sell specific things: elevators, servers, computer consulting services, camera phones, iPhone applications.
Drifting off message
I know how we got here. Back in the mists of the 20th century, some truly brilliant marketing folks got the idea that their company did more than push a product out the door; the product actually solved a problem for their customers.
“Mr. Customer, we aren’t just selling you a widget polisher, we are providing a solution to your scuffed-widget problem.”
But somewhere along the way, companies got so fixated on “solution” that they forgot to say what they are selling.
Think about the marketing material you are writing right now. When it falls into my hands, it may be the first time I have run across your company, and I’d really like to know what business you are in. But I don’t have time to play detective. Tell me the specific product or service, preferably near the start.
If you want to call it a “solution” later on, that’s fine.
Reality check
Here’s your homework assignment: Pick up some of your marketing materials and look at them through the eyes of someone who never heard of your company. Is it clear from the start what you are offering? Or are you merely providing vague “solutions” for an undefined problem?
Get help
We design and copywrite marketing materials that encourage prospects to take the next step.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Feb 09, 2009
Today Cris Rominger and I published a free B2B marketing e-book (550KB PDF) called The New Rules of Outsourcing B2B Marketing: What Marketing Directors need in a B2B marketing consultant today.
In it we discuss how the shift to inbound marketing affects Marketing Directors; the 5 essential traits your B2B marketer needs and why each is important; 10 questions to ask a prospective B2B marketing consultant; how to cut ROI guesswork; what B2B buyers are looking for; and why B2B marketing differs from B2C.
We’re hoping to hear feedback. Please weigh in. (Tip: to comment, scroll down to the bottom of an article.)
We started this e-book in the summer of 2008, and finished it… well… every time I open it I start tinkering. My file name for it is currently ”Outsourcing ebook FINAL v7″. But give birth we must.
My hope is that this blog post could work as a discussion area for the e-book. To try to get things rolling, here are some questions for you readers:
Premise: Changed marketing landscape
1. We argue that the marketing landscape has changed. Did we get it right? Leave anything out?
Premise: Specialization not enough
2. We argue that because of a changed marketing landscape, it takes special skills to see and seize opportunities. Did we get that right? Leave anything out?
To engage decision makers today, our view is that B2B companies need to:
- Prove their value through a strong business case
- Build sites and other communications vehicles in a way that fosters trust
- Pull in prospects
… and that doing it requires specialists in both new and traditional marketing disciplines. Still, it’s your B2B marketing partner’s job to see all the options and how they can work together.
Premise: higher bar for B2B marketing consultants
The e-book is really about what it takes to help Marketing Directors reach and engage today’s savvy B2B buyers without breaking the bank. We’re trying to articulate a standard to which Marketing Directors should hold us and other B2B marketing agencies.
Are there parts of the e-book you particularly agree or disagree with? We’re hoping to hear feedback. Please weigh in.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Wed, Oct 29, 2008
There were dynamite questions to Laura Ramos and me on today's Forrester teleconference about B2B Marketing Obsolete, Really? (Part III). Let's continue the conversation!
Impact of social media on B2B marketing
[11/24 update: The archived teleconference ($250) is up.]
Laura has blogged and tweeted on the topic Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? In this presentation, some of the key questions she addressed were: What is the state of B2B marketing, and what factors increase the risk that marketing will become obsolete in B2B, high technology, and services firms? What is B2B marketing's biggest challenge in light of these changes? What are the five best practices for improving B2B marketing's standing inside the organization?
Top b2b social media platforms
During the presentation I mentioned a marketer's question late last year about whether social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, are used mostly by a younger set. It's a reasonable question - isn't a 48 year old corporate decision maker going to be a later adopter of these tools than, say, an 18 year old?
Overall, probably - but check out this Quantcast info showing that it's far more likely that a LinkedIn user is age 35-49 than 34 or younger.
On top of that, look at the thumbnail showing LinkedIn user growth charted over the last 18 months - there's been several hundred percent growth.
What IS b2b marketing?
Before the call I too tapped colleagues - asking for input on this topic via this blog, tweeting, and posting a query on LinkedIn.
On LinkedIn, I asked
"What IS b2b marketing today? how will it change or stay the same in the next few years?"
The question elicited more and stronger reactions from colleagues than I'd expected. Several said emphatically that *of course* businesses will always need to tell their story, ergo marketing will always be essential as the storyteller.
B2B Marketing Teleconference Q&A
Questions that I noted from attendees this morning included (I'm roughly paraphrasing based on my understanding of what I heard - and also giving these not in the order received):
Q1: Won't B2B buyers "see through" businesses' use of social media... and possibly resent that the platform is being used to subtly pitch them (albeit in a new way)?
A: I think this is an incredibly insightful question! The short version of my own stab at an answer was that there are good practices and bad practices when it comes to businesses engaging with buyers through social media. Per excellent advice about business blogging from Tom Pick, David Meerman Scott, Laura Ramos, and others, good practices seem to include:
- Transparency
- Letting your personality show
- Being authentic
- Being humble
- Writing without company approvals/editing
- Being consistent about contibuting
If you’re thinking about getting started, I think it’s a good bet to
- Cite data or personal experience as a starting point for framing an issue
- Ask for help from readers in answering tough questions
- Acknowledge other bloggers thinking about similar issues
- Offer your frank opinion
On the flip side, it’s a bad bet (and, in some cases, just ethically wrong) to be
- Self-centered, as in never or seldom acknowledging others who are contributing to the marketplace of ideas
- Excessively proud, as in using a ‘do this, do that’ tone as if you’re the consummate guru
- Lazy, as in dropping the ball once your audience gives you their attention
- Salesy, as in pitching your products or services
- A robber, as in using others’ ideas without giving credit (ala the recent 3M fiasco)
Q2: With social media in the mix, how should b2b marketers measure ROI now?
A: It seems to me that frequently and closely examining correlations between CRM data and marketing efforts is important. And I suggested not settling for a “sorry, no impact/correlation” report from Sales unless you (the marketer) have talked with customers themselves.
- I cited an example where a marketer I worked with had to record in the CRM of marketing’s role in some major deals — this was overcome by asking customers directly for their perspective.
- In another case, cross-tabbing CRM data with which customers had participated in case studies helped to uncover a possible connection between case study participation and higher customer lifetime value.
Q3: What about PR efforts to reach traditional media at trade shows – worthwhile or not worthwhile?
A: I fielded this one, responding that I’d suggest having both traditional and non-traditional media contacts on your radar. Coverage in traditional media outlets is still useful and important because not all B2B buyers follow industry blogs or discussion forums and, even with those that do, there is still credibility imparted through coverage in some pubs.
Last but not least, traditional media contacts want a 2.0 style two-way dialogue with PR people, too. There is more on this idea in the bottom section of my interview with Ron Trujillo, editor of the Sacramento Business Journal.
There was also a question about research and examples showing how to make social media work for business. For that, Laura’s recent report Making Social Media Work In B2B Marketing is a recommended resource.
B2B marketing’s future — your thoughts?
What do you think the answers are to the above questions? Did we get it right? Did we leave anything out?
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Mon, Oct 13, 2008
A recent post by Shandi on the Golden Capital Network blog alludes to the challenge of keeping up with the latest communications methods. He alludes to Twitter as an example of a new technology that’s reached a tipping point.
He writes:
Brooks Jordan discusses trends, for instance, Twitter and why and how some things are successful, when some are not. In the digital age there is so much growth. How does one keep up with it all and who gets left behind?
(In my own experience it’s more challenging to keep up with questions/comments on LinkedIn, and questions/comments in business blogs I follow, than it is to keep up with Twitter updates — but that’s probably just me. Also, I find Malcolm Gladwell the most illuminating regarding tipping points – his ideas are summarized in this Tipping Point wikipedia entry.)
Anyway, after the long excerpt from Jordan, Shandi says,
Everyone needs to realize that the digital world will go on whether we learn to change with it or not. Might as well, roll up our sleeves and stop sniveling and get down to business.
Cone’s 2008 Business in Social Media Study Fact Sheet says that sixty percent of Americans use social media, and of those, 59 percent interact with companies on social media Web sites. One in four interacts more than once per week.
I’ve posted two of their charts at our site.
To Shandi’s point: yes, let’s roll up sleeves and get cracking. After all, what’s the alternative? Not striving to keep up? That would be like deciding not to use email anymore because I get alot of it.
On the bright side
If you would like to tone your business-participation-in-social-media networking muscles, you can meet me in these forums:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/b2bcommunicate
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/b2bcommunications
Red On Marketing Blog: http://blog.b2bcommunications.com/
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Sat, Oct 11, 2008
Do you think there are any feature-talk lovers?
B2B marketers agree that if you pound your audience with "we-we" messaging - meaning talk about your products and services and what they do and how they're different - they'll be turned off.
Writing B2B tech marketing content - are we due for a shift?
I espouse this very message with clients - or, I should say, most clients. The paradigm shift that so many companies need to make is articulated by David Meerman Scott in his video "Nobody Cares About Your Products and Services."
Still, when I watch this video I think about how business decision makers and most consumers are Solution-Talk Lovers, while technical decision makers are generally Solution-Talk Haters.
Here's my case: I've been business to business technology marketing since about 1997. And I've found that there is a strong correlation between geekiness and love of feature talk. But geekiness is not limited to just high tech geeks (who, like Devo and Napolean Dynamite, are totally hot...).
For example, think of the Car Geek who reads articles about the design of a new type of overhead cam. The Camping Gear Geek who reads all the Consumer Reports rankings on sleeping bags then goes to the store and reads all the pull sheets on sleeping bags at REI. There is the Coffee Geek who hand roasts coffee - but only coffee grown in the shade of native trees and without supplemental watering. Diaper Geeks who review the latest diaper tape innovations in parent forums.
Writing for B2B tech marketing: if the shoe fits...
And there are guys, like my husband, who want every feature of their full size operating built-from-the-ground-up R2D2 to exactly match the movie version. Getting features right is intrisincally valuable, in their view... not just pragmatic. The features themselves are art.
The only Feature-Talk Lovers who have rattled me, though, are the mid-level IT guys. They are Solution-Talk Haters and proud of it. They'd rather chew their own leg off than listen to a bunch of girly marketing fluff about how I understand their problems and have a solution etc etc. They want to get down to brass tacks and hear what the damn features are without the patronizing spoon-feeding of conclusions, thank you very much.
Writing B2B content: toward a solution
How can we reconcile the existence of Solution-Talk Haters with the marketing worldview that says ‘features talk bad, solution talk good'?
Do we have to do this?
No One Cares About Your Products and Services*
*Unless your best customers really do
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Sun, Oct 05, 2008
Cris Rominger and I will lead the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance (SARTA) Leadership Series seminar titled “How to Succeed at Web Marketing in 2009″ on Wednesday, October 15, 2008.
About this web marketing seminar
Details
Succeeding at web marketing is important for virtually all businesses – but none more so than early stage and small firms. Web marketing can bring outsized returns for a relatively modest investment. Plus, you can see what exactly works with your audience, unlike in offline mediums.
In a recent survey of 1,000 business decision makers by marketing research firm Enquiro, 92 percent of respondents said they turn to online resources in the early stages of the buying cycle. And 77 percent named Google as their first choice among all search engines.
In this session we’ll show you charts and examples of what works and what doesn’t in web marketing today and 9 ways to make your business website work harder for you. You may be able to do all the steps yourself.
Attendees get a briefing and question-and-answer session plus a checklist, charts, samples of effective websites, and case studies.
Registration link
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Fri, Sep 26, 2008
Some marketers I know sense, on a gut level, that the marketplace has experienced a significant shift in power. No longer are just vendors hunting prospects. Prospects, now, are experienced marksmen too.
What is your role now?
So… what now? What does this mean for B2B marketers? Should we change professions? Retool our company’s marketing?
Wait and see?
Fresh insights on Oct 29th
Laura Ramos, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research Inc., has invited me to talk with her on the Forrester teleconference “Why B2B Marketing Risks Becoming Obsolete” on Wed, October 29th, 8-9 am PT.
Among other questions, she will address:
- What factors increase the risk that marketing will become obsolete in B2B, high technology, and services firms?
- What is B2B marketing’s biggest challenge in light of these changes?
Worth 1,000 words
Having been to many a marketing seminar since 1995, I was impressed when I got the material for this Forrester teleconference. The insights are fresh – and my expectations were high. I’ve started referring to one of the charts in client meetings. And Laura’s graphic illustrating B2B marketing 2.0 is worth 1,000 words.
To learn more and register
http://www.forrester.com/rb/teleconference/why_b2b_marketing_risks_becoming_obsolete/q/id/5224/t/1
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, Aug 28, 2008
This morning was the “Future of Green Business in Sacramento” forum hosted by the Sacramento Business Journal. The event, moderated by Ron Trujillo, was sold out in advance. And a Monday article at Greentech Media, “Can Sacramento Become a Greentech Hub?“, cited four reasons to think Sacramento will be a green technology hub. Namely:
“1. A university bent on commercializing its technology….
“2. A big technology executive alumni club….
“3. Cozy government relations….
“4. Property values….
These insights jive with what I see in the board rooms of organizations working to position our region for growth. There, key business and technology leaders are working as passionate volunteers to kick Sacramento up a notch.
Here are just two examples:
The Marketing Committee of the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance is now headed by Scott Lenet. Among other projects, SARTA is accelerating the development of clean energy technology ventures here. Scott’s agreeing to oversee SARTA marketing is no small committment. And it brings remarkable value to members and affiliates of SARTA.
The campaign for a Powerhouse Science Center is co-chaired by Michele Wong – one of the 100 most influential people in Sacramento. Powerhouse will celebrate the breakthroughs coming out of our region in green energy, high tech, food science, biotech, and other areas. It’s success will contribute to better regional test scores, job growth, and innovation. (Get Powerhouse email updates.)
The fifth element: passion
So there’s a fifth thing we’ve got going for us. It’s not quite captured by “technology executive alumni club” — though that’s close. It’s a something that is harder to quantify but perhaps even more important:
5. Passionate, influential volunteers determined to kick Sacramento up a notch…
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Thu, May 15, 2008
I spoke last month with a reporter writing about the health and direction of the Sacramento region tech industry. There’s doom and gloom in much of the news, but all the software companies I work with are positioning for growth. Where is the disconnect happening?
I may have a skewed sample. Clients I work with are working their tails off to attract the best clients with the least amount of effort and expense. And that’s the sort of company that calls in a Sacramento marketing consultant.
Other positives: at least three of our South Placer area tech clients are hiring not firing. Several will roll out additional products and services in summer and fall ‘08.
Every time there’s negative buzz about the economy, Sacramento technology firms choose a path with respect to lead generation — actively or by default. Cut back? Accelerate? Wait and see?
It seems to me that the most successful players are not reactionary — they find ways to get closer to and more trusted by their clients and target audiences, proverbial rain or shine.
Zooming out to look at our whole region, the SARTA Technology Index rose by 2.79 percent to a new high over the second quarter of 2007. In fact, it slightly outperformed major public indices. (Credit: http://www.sarta.org/go/sarta/tech-index/)
That said, the Sac Region is in a poor competitive position world wide. Job creation follows engineering and math. US engineering graduates 122,000, Asian Countries 636,000 and 370,000 in European countries.
Why is that? Education is really the engine for our region’s growth. And Sacramento is in the lowest 25% of high school science and math proficiency in a state that is almost last at 49th.
70% of all jobs offered in the region do not require a college degree. So some think there is NO true job creation happening here, and that it’s a country-wide problem that’s built over 30 years. Still, the Sac Region is almost last in USA. (Credit: Above stats assembled by Warren Smith of Warren Smith Group.)
Looking at those sorts of numbers, in ‘04 I joined in the activities of AeA, a national technology trade association addressing, among other issues, science and technology education.
Then a year or so ago I joined up with Michele Wong to work on establishing a landmark science center in downtown Sacramento called Powerhouse Science Center. It will be visible from I-5 when passing downtown, and should open by 2011. I’ll post a link in coming months.
The Powerhouse effort is the beginning of a new way to celebrate the breakthroughs coming out of our region in green energy/technology, food science, biotech, and other areas.
We are engaging the corporate community and large employers as partners in the solution. We want success to mean better test scores, job growth, more local tech and science innovation and — best of all — a lifelong love of science and technology among Sacramento region kids and young adults.
Posted by Rebekah Donaldson on Fri, Apr 25, 2008
As the latest BtoB Magazine webcast, “How to Leverage Online Communities for B2B Marketing,”got underway, I visited the launch page for a link to the webcast’s major sponsor, ITtoolbox .
The result? Nada.
I really wouldn’t pick on them for this oversight, if it weren’t for the fact that real-world examples can teach us much about best practices.
So, my apologies, ITtoolbox marketing team, for calling it out. But I fear that omitting a link from the event lobby might mean you have no click through stats on visits to ITtoolbox from the BtoB webcast event lobby. I definitely did not get routed to a customized landing page that helps move BtoB subscribers to accept the next offer: membership… and ultimately abandoned the site, for reasons I describe below.
I fear too that, as a result of omitting that all-important link from the event lobby to a customized landing page, the ITtoolbox marketing team might not get maximum dollar for dollar ROI on the webcast sponsorship – or indeed be able to measure ROI.
Going forward, this issue could be overcome with a few hours content writing and web development guided by MarketingSherpa’s Landing Page Handbook, so aptly described in Brian Carroll’s post Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions by 40% (get the handbook – worth every red cent if you’re responsible for conversions at your company’s site – at Landing Page Handbook: How to Raise Conversions).
I did accurately guess ITtoolbox’s URL, accepted a membership, started to complete a profile, and began searching for blogs to track and sub-groups to join. I got the impression that community creators want folks to blog and wiki about technical issues like software code. I’m not whining about their focus, I’m just mystified about the push to get me, a Sacramento marketing consultant, to join in the fun.
I abandoned the profile completion because there doesn’t seem to be a community of people at the site who are like me or could use my perspective.
Back to the BtoB webcast content.
One of the two most useful slides was provided by Booker Ellis. He discussed the shift in B2B PR and ad budgets from editorial and paid placements in traditional business media, toward user-generated business media. Here’s the matrix he developed to illustrate the point:
(Credit: Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB magazine)
I wonder if perhaps the content-rich Technorati might be a better choice for the upper right quadrant, if we’re seeking companies emblematic of user-generated business media. I find LinkedIn great for keeping up with professional contacts but light on user-generated content – despite the fact that they make it very easy to connect one’s profile with one’s feed.
(Sidebar: Of the 2 contacts in my LinkedIn network that have linked their feed to their profile, there’s 1 I want to disconnect with — but is there any way to disconnect with people on LinkedIn – ?)
That said, Booker’s ‘evolving media landscape’ slide raises several interesting ideas. Among them is how this mapping approach might apply to the evolving agency landscape.
If Sacramento marketing consultants, for example, were mapped to this sort of matrix, a handful of nimble Web 2.0-savvy marketing agencies would sit in the top right quadrant; by contrast, I think all but one of the large Sacramento PR and ad agencies would sit in the bottom left area – due to their continuing focus on paid and editorial placements in traditional consumer media. (Friends at local large agencies, feel free to set me straight.)
Perhaps someone out there could establish a wiki-style forum for nailing down where Sacramento marketing consultants sit in such a matrix. Helping prospects see where various Sacramento marketing firms sit regarding Web 2.0 technologies is an idea that’s been rattling around in the back of my head for a couple of years — it was first inspired by SARTA’s effort to show the genealogy of Sacramento technology firms — but I never seem to get around to it.
Last item worth passing along: Jeff Zabin of Aberdeen Group noted the explosion in social media by huge enterprises, and provided this compelling image:
(Credit: Jeff Zabin, Research Fellow, Customer Management practice, Aberdeen Group)
Having a collection of enterprise perspectives on marketing via social media could be very useful when it comes to steering marketing budget allocations for the remainder of ‘08. And it conveys – to me, anyway - that we might be in a Web 3.0 world now.