Brand schmand? Does it really matter in B2B?
Our customers almost exclusively deal business to business. The reason we focus on this specific segment is because they tend to have limited in-house marketing resources, so we can fill a gap in a flexible format. As a rule, B2B companies in the SME space have a management team consisting of a CEO/Business owner as well as a Sales, Finance and Operations Manager.
Selling is the key marketing activity. And clearly, selling is the most important marketing function in B2B.
Marketing is generally equated with advertising, which is on the nose (and often for good reasons). Marketing is not seen as a strategic tool, because it is often not understood. The Accenture report I referred to in my last post pointed this out too, but related more to large corporate companies (with Marketing Managers) rather than SME's who have no internal marketing champion.
Take branding. When recently discussing a proposed tagline with a customer they insisted on using a tagline that would explain what they do. I argued that we need to aim for an emotional response, not a factual one. I read an interesting article in MarketingProfs by Kevin Randall, which has an interesting observation:
People say that they are not influenced by advertisements, but data and client spending suggest otherwise. In the early-to-mid 1980s, IBM did
not have the best computer systems or pricing. "Big Blue," however, became the enterprise systems market leader because you never got fired for buying IBM (same with Cisco today). IT Directors "bought" a relationship, company,
reputation, service, people, assurance. In other words, they bought
goodwill or the brand.
I still believe that most marketing services are aimed at either large corporate or FMCG organisations, not business-to-business, not SME. They need a combination of marketing services, rather than point solutions. From help with analysing opportunties to branding, to marketing communications and customer satifaction/loyalty programs.
A great opportunity for progressive B2B companies, a great opportunity for marketing firms.
Knowing what you don’t want is important
As we are working on re-developing our website and brand identity, I have come across a couple of sites that do a great job in highlighting what we have to avoid at all cost.
From my experience in planning anything, it's equally important to look at what you don't like as it is to look at what you do like.
The first one is webpagesthatsuck.com which is a bit of a classic in webdesign land I think, but I had never had a close look.
The second one is sending-up well, us I guess. I mean marketing consultants, marketing experts, whatever you wish to call us...the name says it all: Huhcorp
Please let me know if we ever start to sound like this...
Some data on how much we trust marketers
My last post on customers' cynical outlook on marketing messages stuck with me and I came across www.womma.org, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association.
It caught my eye because word of mouth is such a major factor in business to business marketing, and small business marketing in particular. I must say I felt a bit slack for not being aware of this groundswell, until I found out that they freely interchange WOM with viral...and I knew about viral of course.
The association has just had their love-in in Orlando, so there is quite a bit of presentation material, and some interesting research into consumers perception of word of mouth. There is no question in my mind that with the information overload we look for filters to get information on products and services more efficiently.
So is this really the future of marketing? Maybe, maybe not. Let me think this over a little more. And I welcome your thoughts.
The cobblers children have no shoes
Cliche, but true. Advising people on marketing for a living, we've had a good look at what we actually do for our own business and decided that our children desperately need new shoes...
Our brand image doesn't represent who we are very well, our communications are too dull and wordy and our promotional activities are inconsistent and spasmodic.
The thing is that business is actually going well, so why would we bother? Simple; we will never grow significantly if we don't, and when business is good, it is much easier to do new things than when you are under pressure.
So we've reviewed our business plan, developed our marketing plan, commissioned a re-branding excercise and are in working hard on developing a new website as part of the marketing plan for 2006. Now all we have to do is what we tell our customers to do; follow through.
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