Microsoft Marketing Director
Microsoft Marketing Director
Improve your B2B marketing techniques
People are finally beginning to sit up and notice the business-to-business (B2B) marketing movement. More companies are turning to specialist B2B agencies for strategic advice, marketing ideas and creative services to reach and woo C-suite clients.
In Asia, the distinction between consumer marketing and B2B marketing is less clear. Many marketing directors and corporate communications managers are still outsourcing various marketing support projects on a piecemeal basis to advertising, event or public relations agencies for example, instead of seeking the services of dedicated full-service B2B agencies.
Is it surprising then that these companies feel their marketing needs are not optimally met?
Many traditional agencies have their roots in consumer marketing and do not have the experience needed to develop comprehensive B2B marketing programmes.
A few important characteristics distinguish B2B marketing from mass marketing, and can make all the difference to any B2B marketing effort.
1. The power of many
In consumer marketing, your target is an individual.
In B2B marketing, you could be targeting any number of people along the decision-making chain, some of whom may not even be located in the same country as you!
It is always useful to find out who is the ‘real’ decision maker. Is the purchasing or sourcing manager as important as the business-planning manager or the chief financial officer? In some companies, the human resources manager commissions services that have traditionally been the mandate of the office manager and vice versa.
Many B2B marketing professionals simply target the ‘C-suite’ but fail to realise that sometimes, it’s the CEO’s secretary who makes the ultimate decision on whether or not they should order products or services from your company. Either that, or he/she could be the ‘gatekeeper’ who foils any number of your marketing and sales attempts.
When the buying decision affects several departments such as IT, operations and finance for example, you should be looking at different ways to present your company’s credentials to a group of people, each with different concerns and expectations!
Being able to identify different groups and their interests, and combining them with tailored communications and a powerful database system, can result in a much higher rate of return.
2. The power of one
Every one of your employees that comes in contact with your customer is your “brand”, whether you are selling multi-million dollar commercial warehouses or consultancy services.
So it is crucial that your walking-talking brand ambassadors believe in your corporate values and what you are selling. Get your agency to give them customer-centric brand messages and sales tools to use, and ensure they are trained to make each customer feel as if they are the most important customer ever.
On the flip side, B2B companies must ensure that their corporate brands are strong enough that their customers don’t leave when their brand ambassadors do.
3. Target the head, not the heart
Validating and even quantifying one’s value proposition is crucial for any B2B company. Unlike B2C marketing, it is always about appealing to the head, and not to the heart (or eyes or ears, for that matter).
Your B2B marketing agency should help you answer tough customer questions such as, “Tell me why I should choose your company over your competitor? What value can you add to my bottom line or business plans? How much do you understand about my company’s needs? How will your products or services help our company get ahead?”
In mature B2B sectors, where the offering from company to company is almost homogeneous or ‘commoditised’, the value proposition is less about the core product or service and more about the ‘value-add’ or enhancements. The challenges are different, because the central question is often, “Can you do this at a better price than your competitor?”
4. Corporate brand, product brand or CEO brand
I often advise against building personality brands in any company, unless it is the founder. It is important not to let personal egos get in the way of building corporate persona, which will certainly outlive the former.
I also advise that B2B companies focus on building and protecting their corporate brands versus their product brands. Vista can fail for instance, but Microsoft should not.
Corporate brand building certainly comes in handy when closing new business deals for B2B companies - people are more comfortable recommending a new supplier, vendor or consultant that their bosses have heard about, versus one that is relatively unknown.
That is not to say that the lesser known brands will lose out on all opportunities, as long as they can prove that they can deliver. They are less likely to be considered however, if the risk of failure is too high i.e. when the products and services affect the company’s viability (productivity, legal standing, reputation etc.), if the value of the contract is very large, or if the ultimate decision maker is a good friend of your competitor (it does happen!) for instance.
5. Make me look good in front of my boss
This may seem like an odd suggestion but I sometimes ask clients how they can make their target customers look good in front of their bosses.
For example;
a. Can you package your products or services in a way that helps your contact’s business and shows him or her to be making a positive contribution to their employers? The closer you do this to the bonus period or your contract renewal time, the better.
b. Do you need to provide tools that help your contact/s present the validations for their recommended vendor ie. your company?
c. Should you prepare documents that demonstrate the value that your company can bring to other departments at your contact’s organisation?
d. Should you offer to help integrate your products or services into your customer’s organisation?
e. Are your ‘green credentials’ in line with your customer’s business sustainability efforts as a B2B vendor?
6. It’s not showing on TV
B2B customers don’t automatically turn on the television when they want to find a supplier. Often, one of the first sources of information they turn to is a search engine. Increasingly, B2B marketing is very much about Internet marketing and helping to raise a company’s profile and search engine rankings. The Internet instantly makes your competitive pool global. A company in India could offer business secretarial services that are almost identical to yours, only cheaper.
It is critical to constantly think of new ways of creating credible customer-driven content, online distribution channels, search terms, Internet links etc. in B2B marketing.
Traditional mass media has little or no relevance. That is why the B2B channel mix will look very different and may comprise:
* Search engines
* Niche websites such as LinkedIn
* Industry related online marketing
* Industry listings or online forums
* Accreditation with respected organisations
* Industry endorsements
* Case studies
* Client referrals and testimonials
* Thought leadership articles
* Awards
* Certifications
* Media relations and press mentions
* White papers and research studies
* Customised demonstrations
* Low-risk pilot tests
* Trade shows
* Trade directories
* Industry spokesmen
* Industry rankings and awards
* Industry publications
* Customer events
* Corporate videos and podcasts
* Executive bios etc.
Often, B2B communications output is best tailored to each target customer. Make sure your agency can also create great PowerPoint decks inhouse, so you can customise them for your corporate presentations.
7. There is a season for everything
Always gear your B2B marketing towards your customers’ planning cycles.
There are different financial year-ends in different countries, and it is important to make your business pitch at least three to four months before your customer’s year-end, to ensure your company has a chance of making the vendor shortlist for next year!
8. The grey line
Unlike consumer marketing, where you can offer seasonal sales and gifts in exchange for certain purchases, such tactics are not always viewed as ‘ethical’ in B2B marketing.
A token of customer appreciation worth 200 US dollars to someone who just signed a multi-million dollar contract may seem trivial in comparison, but it may be hastily returned if the customer’s corporate policy limits ‘lavish’ gifts beyond say, 100 US dollars. Don’t risk embarrassing your customers by forgetting to do a bit of discreet checking first.
What I have listed are just some important aspects of B2B marketing. Ultimately, it really helps to work with a B2B marketing agency that understands your B2B decision makers, decision influences, business needs, stakeholders, sources of information and available channels, and that is also able to add a good dose of creative thinking!
About the Author
Jennifer Tow is an experienced B2B marketing consultant who specializes in
advising professional service firms and companies targeting niche markets.
She is the founder of Manifesto, a Hong Kong-based marketing consultancy,
that helps turn strategic marketing advice into creative solutions and
results, for both international and Asia Pacific clients. Visit
www.manifesto.com.hk for more marketing advise.
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Scenario:
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Sorry Patrick,
This is too complex for this forum. I suggest that you study it from resources like the MCSE study materials by Microsoft.
Microsoft Marketing Director
MySpace Marketing Manager - Free Line Report for 5.30.08
Internet Explorer gains Web browser market share from Firefox
Rumor has it that by the time the South by SouthWest (SXSW) conference rolls around in a few weeks, all the major Web browsers-Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer (IE), Opera, and Safari–will have come out with new versions. So, why, is the oldest, and the most insecure of the lot, IE 6, making the single biggest browser version gain according to Net Applications‘ latest Web browser survey?
Well you can blame the CIA. No, seriously.
As Net Applications explained, "All of our global usage share reports are weighted based on C.I.A. data on how many Internet users per country there are. For example, we have more data on the U.S. than China so we weight the Chinese data proportionally higher according to the research provided by the C.I.A."
In February, the C.I.A. released new data on how many Internet users per country there are. It shows a large increase in the global percentage of Chinese users and a decrease in the global percentage of users from the U.S., U.K, Germany, France and other developed countries.
These geographic shifts in Internet usage have a significant impact on the global usage share numbers starting in February. This adjustment corrects an increasing inaccuracy over time as population shifts occur and reflects reality more closely than unadjusted numbers.
The net result is that between January 2011, with the old way of counting, and February 2011, with the CIA-adjusted numbers, IE 6–the browser that even Microsoft wants to kill, kill, kill–gained .7%. Fortunately, for the sake of the sanity of all Web security gurus everywhere, IE 6 adjusted numbers still shows the bad browser from pre-history still dropping.
So, how did IE 6 even show a gain of any sort by any kind of measurement? The answer is in that "large increase in the global percentage of Chinese users." In China, many, perhaps most, Windows users are using pirated copies of XP. Even though Microsoft has made it possible for pirate XP users to get IE 7 without proving they had legal copies with Windows Genuine Advantage, most such users don't appear to have taken advantage of the offer.
Net Applications doesn't have that much hard data from China, but it weights its Chinese data higher because it has a greater percentage of the world's Internet users than other countries. So it is, Net Applications reports that "Firefox loses global share since many of the countries it is most popular in (Western European, in particular) now have a lower percentage of global Internet users. Internet Explorer gains as browser usage shifts to countries with higher percentages of Internet Explorer users." Indeed in Europe, Firefox is still the number one browser.
That said, IE, for the first time in months, actually did show real gains. As Roger Capriotti, Microsoft's director of Internet Explorer Product Marketing, wrote, "We saw share of both Internet Explorer 8 and 9 grow." Specifically, "When adjusted using the older weighting, IE8 and 9 actually show even stronger growth on Windows: up 1.31% (versus 1.13% using the new February weighting) - or over three times Chrome's 0.42% growth. We continue to measure our share progress relative to our addressable base, and in this case our addressable base is Windows."
Even if you take into account Mac OS X, Linux and other users, IE did show smaller, but real, growth. This growth came at the expense of Firefox. I strongly suspect this was because of the growing popularity of IE 9, which is now at the release candidate stage; the continued rise of Chrome; and, it must be said, the continued delays in getting Firefox 4 out the door.
This spring and summer, after IE 9, which runs only on Windows 7, and Firefox 4 are rolled out and Chrome 9 has had a chance to establish itself, will tell the real story of which program will end up being the top Web browser for 2011 here, in Europe, and in China.
About the Author
If you want to buy cheap laptop battery, please visit http://www.batterylaptops.co.uk
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Software quality: genuinely understand the market. (Jim McCarthy, director of Microsoft Corp.'s Visual C++ development group, stresses that software ... (Interview): An article from: Soft-Letter $5.95 This digital document is an article from Soft-Letter, published by Soft-letter on February 25, 1994. The length of the article is 748 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.Citation DetailsTitle: Software qualit... |
Microsoft Marketing Director
