I am a "huge" believer that statistics show whatever we want. (I have quoted Twain before, bit it's still one of my favorites: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.") But when statistics support my personal observations and experience, I have to believe. The use of social media by B2B companies is growing, is proving far more prevalent, and far more valuable than generally recognized.
What intrigues me, though, is how the effective use of B2B social media differs from the higher profile B2C usage. Content drives B2B social media, content that allows people access to a company's expertise, leading views, and unique insights. Social media not only puts a face to the corporate wall, but exposes a deeper understanding of the skills, talents and brains that make up the company.
Social media enables B2B companies to claim and demonstrate their position in the marketplace. What makes the company different? Why should we partner? What is the competitive edge you bring? Simply retweeting articles written by others or developing a fun Facebook page does not create the necessary demonstration of who you are.
Focus Research's 2011 Benchmark Study highlighted the importance of thoughtful content. B2B marketers ranked blogs, webinars, white papers and videos as more valuable for directly supporting marketing objectives than did B2C companies. User/peer-created content and data-driven research reports were more valuable to the B2C companies.
Corporate blogging is the primary purveyor of new content and has tremendous impact in the B2B space. B2B companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those who do not according to Hubspot (State of Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Report, 2010). Hubspot also found that companies that blog more than 4X a week see the greatest increase in traffic and leads.
Nice. But how does a company already stretched for resources blog that often?
This is when culture enables social media.
Too many companies are afraid to let their experts "talk." Materials need to be vetted through the PR or Communications or Marketing or Social Media Department. The tone has to be "right." The spin has to be "right." The message has to align with the corporate message.
Those companies don't trust their own culture; they don't trust the individual voices of their employees to harmonize. Trust comes from culture. A social culture is a necessary enabler of an effective B2B social media strategy.
Blogging is how companies share their thinking, their knowledge and the depth of their expertise. A blog post needs a genuine voice. It needs the person who has the knowledge to write the blog. Most companies have a number of "mile deep" experts, but few experts have the time to author a blog. Most, however, can find the time to write a post every couple of weeks. And that is the approach many of my most successful clients have taken - a shared blog. Each person writes every few weeks on a particular subject, sometimes on seemingly esoteric topics.
This approach works for the bloggers as well. Putting pictures, brief bios, contact information and expertise on the web site as well as on the blog helps the bloggers to raise their professional profiles. That practice also turns the company from a building into a group of people, individuals with personalities whom prospective buyers can reach out and contact - and with whom they can establish relationships. Deep experts and passionate employees are the new front line.
People learn about one another internally from blogs as well. A social culture not only drives lead generation and revenue, it also improves corporate loyalty and productivity.
Content and culture. They need each other.
Related articles you might like to read:
12 Tweetable Statistics Prove B2B Social Media Rocks: http://t.co/bsprfmox
Mature Companies Need to Break the Rules: http://bit.ly/kGxlxz
Corporate Culture and Leadership are Inextricably Bound Together: http://bit.ly/jHNyhg
Showing posts with label B2B. Show all posts
Showing posts with label B2B. Show all posts
Monday, November 7, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
The Inside Story - Show and Tell
Once upon a time (about a year ago), a client declared that their new focus would be improving the consumer experience. One executive wanted to know how to use social media to achieve this goal, although they sold through a global distributor network and did not deal directly with the consumer.
So we scoured discussion forums and blogs and other social media sites to learn what consumers liked, didn't like and wanted. Then we asked the distributors what they thought. How could the manufacturer better support them so that they could better support the consumer? Consumers, we discovered, wanted shorter repair time; they wanted repairs done right the first time, and they wanted leading edge information about the newest features and upgrades. Delivering those benefits correlated with higher consumer satisfaction and lower churn. Dealers wanted help.
We created a social media strategy and a new operating model that promised to give the dealers the tools to fuel their passion and to provide the experience the consumer wanted.
But the systems in place weren't "broken." Why "fix" them? How could we convince the majority of the executive team that the best approach was using social media platforms rather than call centers or road shows? We developed a business case.
We told stories.
With clip art and enthusiasm, we wrote and illustrated a series of vignettes. Carey and Caroline Consumer went through each stage of the customer lifecycle -- from becoming interested in the product through to purchasing, warranty repair issues, and ultimately deciding whether to upgrade, stay with the status quo, or move to a competitor. At each point in the customer lifecycle, we illustrated how the proposed social media would affect the process; how it helped to shape the consumer experience, and how it influenced measurable outcomes.
We presented the stories to the C-suite. No power point decks with bulleted lists, we used one-act plays and dramatic readings. We employed imagination plus some prototypes and mock-ups. It was fun; it was often times funny, and it drove home the value of the proposed social media strategy.
We hear a good deal about telling stories in social media. But the stories are usually about how other companies are succeeding, not visionary tales about the impact of social media inside our own organization.
Be creative. Show and tell. The inside story can be powerful.
What stories have you told?
So we scoured discussion forums and blogs and other social media sites to learn what consumers liked, didn't like and wanted. Then we asked the distributors what they thought. How could the manufacturer better support them so that they could better support the consumer? Consumers, we discovered, wanted shorter repair time; they wanted repairs done right the first time, and they wanted leading edge information about the newest features and upgrades. Delivering those benefits correlated with higher consumer satisfaction and lower churn. Dealers wanted help.
We created a social media strategy and a new operating model that promised to give the dealers the tools to fuel their passion and to provide the experience the consumer wanted.
But the systems in place weren't "broken." Why "fix" them? How could we convince the majority of the executive team that the best approach was using social media platforms rather than call centers or road shows? We developed a business case.
We told stories.
With clip art and enthusiasm, we wrote and illustrated a series of vignettes. Carey and Caroline Consumer went through each stage of the customer lifecycle -- from becoming interested in the product through to purchasing, warranty repair issues, and ultimately deciding whether to upgrade, stay with the status quo, or move to a competitor. At each point in the customer lifecycle, we illustrated how the proposed social media would affect the process; how it helped to shape the consumer experience, and how it influenced measurable outcomes.
We presented the stories to the C-suite. No power point decks with bulleted lists, we used one-act plays and dramatic readings. We employed imagination plus some prototypes and mock-ups. It was fun; it was often times funny, and it drove home the value of the proposed social media strategy.
We hear a good deal about telling stories in social media. But the stories are usually about how other companies are succeeding, not visionary tales about the impact of social media inside our own organization.
Be creative. Show and tell. The inside story can be powerful.
What stories have you told?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Forget the 4 Ps of Marketing; Think the 3 Cs of Social Business
How can a traditional marketing culture cope in the new social world of business? It can't.
Classical marketing, still taught at most business schools, misses the point. The 4 Ps that have defined marketing activity for so long - Product, Price, Place, Promotion - work when companies and customers participate in binary communications: company to customers, customer to company. But in a multi-channel world, inbound and outbound conversations exist for everyone, at any time, to anyone.
The 3 Cs of Social Business: Content, Customer, Channel
Social media is about engagement and relationships, two inherently unmanageable activities. Product, price, place and promotion might drive short-term results, but long-term relationships evolve from communities of interest, from respectful discussions, and from connections that cross and take unexpected paths. Those relationships create self-regenerating marketing engines, whether the core business is B2B, B2C or B2B2C. The basic building blocks are no longer the 4 Ps of marketing, but the 3 Cs of social business.
Content - is both the message and the words, pictures, sounds and context that convey your message. In a social relationship, content is the driver of engagement and often involves multiple messages, messages that get passed along (remember the old game of telephone?), and messages that are either much shorter or much longer than the traditional marketing message. Your content imparts not only information, but also the culture of your organization. As in any relationship, the customer needs to like you, or at least respect you, before engaging. Consistency in messaging over time and across business units and corporate silos is critical and impossible to manage. Content creation expands way beyond the old world Marketing Department.
Customer - Who is your target customer??? The holy grail of marketing used to be to identify your target customer segments, then align the 4 Ps around them. But customers have become peripatetic; they roam from one community of interest to another - both personal and professional; they surf blogs and tweets and Facebook posts and YouTube; they share what they find interesting with individuals outside your target segments. And then one of these people you hadn't targeted is suddenly a fan and pushing you into segments even further afield from your "target." In The Domino Project (see http://bit.ly/pEu1ta), Seth Godin suggests that publishers stop publishing books with a target audience in mind, "...the glory days of publishing to fill a niche are gone...The new frontier is to publish books that spread." Today, Marketing needs to let customers declare themselves first, then service those customers as effectively as possible.
Channel - Social media channels present a spaghetti web of connections. While advanced analytics are enabling more personalization, serving up ads for instance only to individuals who meet certain criteria, social media can also make it more difficult to engage. In the old B2B world, for example, personal knowledge of customers was a sales role, not a marketing perspective. Yet, effective use of social media channels requires knowing your customers. Where do they hang out on-line? In what social media communities? What Twitter hashtags do they follow? How do you humanize your organization to become part of the customer's personal network? Does your culture mesh with your customer's personal and professional cultures? Where you socialize is itself a message and a determinant of the customers likely to find you. Who within your organization can comfortably participate in these communities?
The 3 Cs of Social Media reflect the basic change demanded of Marketing and the role of Marketing in your organization.
How is your Marketing Department changing? Does it still exist?
Classical marketing, still taught at most business schools, misses the point. The 4 Ps that have defined marketing activity for so long - Product, Price, Place, Promotion - work when companies and customers participate in binary communications: company to customers, customer to company. But in a multi-channel world, inbound and outbound conversations exist for everyone, at any time, to anyone.
The 3 Cs of Social Business: Content, Customer, Channel
Social media is about engagement and relationships, two inherently unmanageable activities. Product, price, place and promotion might drive short-term results, but long-term relationships evolve from communities of interest, from respectful discussions, and from connections that cross and take unexpected paths. Those relationships create self-regenerating marketing engines, whether the core business is B2B, B2C or B2B2C. The basic building blocks are no longer the 4 Ps of marketing, but the 3 Cs of social business.
Content - is both the message and the words, pictures, sounds and context that convey your message. In a social relationship, content is the driver of engagement and often involves multiple messages, messages that get passed along (remember the old game of telephone?), and messages that are either much shorter or much longer than the traditional marketing message. Your content imparts not only information, but also the culture of your organization. As in any relationship, the customer needs to like you, or at least respect you, before engaging. Consistency in messaging over time and across business units and corporate silos is critical and impossible to manage. Content creation expands way beyond the old world Marketing Department.
Customer - Who is your target customer??? The holy grail of marketing used to be to identify your target customer segments, then align the 4 Ps around them. But customers have become peripatetic; they roam from one community of interest to another - both personal and professional; they surf blogs and tweets and Facebook posts and YouTube; they share what they find interesting with individuals outside your target segments. And then one of these people you hadn't targeted is suddenly a fan and pushing you into segments even further afield from your "target." In The Domino Project (see http://bit.ly/pEu1ta), Seth Godin suggests that publishers stop publishing books with a target audience in mind, "...the glory days of publishing to fill a niche are gone...The new frontier is to publish books that spread." Today, Marketing needs to let customers declare themselves first, then service those customers as effectively as possible.
Channel - Social media channels present a spaghetti web of connections. While advanced analytics are enabling more personalization, serving up ads for instance only to individuals who meet certain criteria, social media can also make it more difficult to engage. In the old B2B world, for example, personal knowledge of customers was a sales role, not a marketing perspective. Yet, effective use of social media channels requires knowing your customers. Where do they hang out on-line? In what social media communities? What Twitter hashtags do they follow? How do you humanize your organization to become part of the customer's personal network? Does your culture mesh with your customer's personal and professional cultures? Where you socialize is itself a message and a determinant of the customers likely to find you. Who within your organization can comfortably participate in these communities?
The 3 Cs of Social Media reflect the basic change demanded of Marketing and the role of Marketing in your organization.
How is your Marketing Department changing? Does it still exist?
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
How Social Networks Redefine Distributor-Manufacturer Relationships
Many years ago, P&G brought consumers into the conversation through the use of coupons. Then Intel, a high-tech engineering company, pushed this idea further and created a consumer image. Intel didn’t sell directly to consumers, but it created consumer loyalty and demand for its products. From far down the traditional supply chain, Intel reached around to the other end – the consumer.
Social media networks are now redefining the manufacturer-distributor-retailer-consumer chain from a series of sequential links to a circle of collaboration. Distributors are still critical; they still provide primary sales and support to consumers. Manufacturers, however, can use social networks to provide a great deal more assistance to distributors while creating stronger recognition and greater customer loyalty for their brands.
The top 5 opportunities are business-based, not channel- or tool-based. New apps and new channels can slide into execution plans to help meet business goals. And that is critical, because you don’t need a Facebook strategy; you need a business strategy. So how can social networks help manufacturers who rely on distributors?
v Locate parts and products – When customers contact a distributor for a part, they often need it now (or an hour ago). Few distributors, however, keep a full-line of parts in stock, and manufacturers might be OOS as well, particularly for older models. Of the several ways that manufacturers can address this issue, two stand out for me.
o Manufacturer-hosted forums for distributors provide a central location and parts exchange opportunity. Especially when distributors are geographically dispersed, they welcome the opportunity to reach out on a one-to-many rather than one-to-one basis. It’s more efficient; it creates new distributor-to-distributor relationships and greater engagement, and it solves problems.
o Pro-active notifications help avoid crisis situations. Wholesale Pallet Rack Products acquired some Prest Lock 1 frames and beams after Excel Storage Products went out of business. Joshua Smith, director of sales and operations at Wholesale Pallet’s sister company AK Material Handling Systems, tweeted to WPRP’s dealers that they had the Prest Rack beams. As Smith tells it, “it turns out one of our dealers had a customer that had recently damaged its uprights with a forklift. We were able to provide the dealer with the product in less than 48 hours.” Happy dealer. Happy customer. Sale made. (For more, see www.themhedajournal.org)
v Provide point-of-purchase customer assistance – Social media is mobile, which means that consumers can – and do – access information at the time of purchase. Flurry Analytics recently reported that people spend more time on mobile applications than on the web each day, 81 minutes vs. 74 minutes. According to LightSpeed Research (http://bit.ly/bizreport) almost 2/3 of consumers put heavy emphasis on product reviews, and over 2/3 say that 2 negative reviews would deter them from purchasing. Jordan Winery is taking advantage of these trends. The winery has built custom videos for digital wine menus, most prevalent at high-end restaurants. In about 2-minutes, Jordan’s winemaker describes his wine’s profile just when a customer is preparing to choose a bottle to order. Chicago Cut Steakhouse uses iPad menus loaded with a Jordan video, and Jordan reports that “within 45 days, our sales at the restaurant increased 17 percent.”
Dry Creek Vineyard is putting QR codes on its wine bottles, enabling customers in the wine aisle of a grocery to scan the code and be brought to a Dry Creek Vineyard webpage. (For more on wine industry social innovations, http://bit.ly/pressdemocrat)
Just-in-time information can be used in many situations – from car dealerships to electronics purchases. The information gives consumers confidence, gives the manufacturer a competitive edge, and makes it easier for dealers to close a sale.
v Spotlight the experts – You don’t have to know everything, but being the go-to location for expertise keeps customers and dealers engaged, and ultimately buying and selling. Manufacturer-hosted forums and blogs provide a unique opportunity to create communities that actively involve a range of stakeholders.
o In-house experts – Your engineers and back-office experts provide humanity and a face for your organization. Allowing them to have individual blogs on the corporate website also helps the employees establish their professional brands.
o Hobbyists and enthusiasts – Bring the most knowledgeable of these folks onto your site. Let them share their knowledge, answer questions, and raise ideas. Raise their profile and your own.
o Dealers – Front-line dealers have tremendous vision into the market, competitors, and product. Give them a voice. As smaller businesses, dealers often lack the time or resources to set up their own digital and social networks, but they welcome the venue that manufacturers can offer.
element14 (www.element14.com), built for electronic design engineers, brings together all of these various stakeholders. One of my favorite aspects is the use of YouTube, allowing people to showcase skills and techniques. The Ben Heck Show (http://bit.ly/e14benheck) is part of the element 14 community, yet it’s unique and fun and often fascinating. Take a look at Ben Heck’s Remote Expedition Camera Trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coMZY5FNado). It’s the type of exchange that simply wouldn’t happen without element14 and social media.
v Improve dealer “help desk” functions – Forums that allow questions and answers to be easily searched, that put internal experts in touch with dealers, and that enable dealers to help one another drive down call center costs and improve the information flow. I addressed this in a previous post, http://bit.ly/welcomingdistributorsontonetworks .
Establishing vibrant social networks creates greater engagement between manufacturer and dealer, helps dealers close sales, and forges greater bonds among the dealer, consumer, and manufacturer. B2B companies have been edging into social media reluctantly but steadily. The opportunity exists NOW to realize significant competitive advantage by establishing a social dealer network. It’s not the old supply chain any more.
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