Posted by Joe Galvin on Fri, Sep 03, 2010 @ 10:01 AM
Social media continues to be a rapidly expanding area of interest and untapped potential for sales and marketing leaders. We have published and presented on social media primarily as it impacts branding and reputation on the marketing side. When it comes to B2B sales organizations, its impact has been less profound. Sure, there are some Sales 2.0 advocates citing the value of social media in terms of identification and intelligence gathering for prospecting. The concept of social calling, using social media capabilities to improve the connect and conversion rates in cold calling is a good one, but any real impact from social media has escaped attention of the sales VP.
Social media’s greatest potential value to sales will be internal; enabling sales organizations to develop their own internal digital communities for sales reps to access and share knowledge, strategy, and tactics beyond their existing personal knowledge networks. Personal knowledge networks have always been important to sales reps. Over time they develop relationships with product, marketing, technical, finance, support and other internal resources to help them get what they need. That’s in addition to their network of other sales reps and managers they go to for strategy, tactics and real-time intelligence. In fact, sales organizations that went to virtual sales kickoffs in 2009 budget crisis cited the loss of the networking opportunities at the sales kickoff meeting as justification for returning to the live event. It’s not what you know, its who you know in sales and is a big part of what makes experienced sales reps successful and why new hires struggle to get up to speed.
Enter social media. A number of organizations are already using Facebook-type capabilities for subject matter experts, product specialists or even competitive intelligence teams to provide all sales with 24/7 access to the most current news, intelligence and content. They can maintain running commentary through blogs on their products, markets and competitors that allow any sales rep to tap into as needed. Moderated forums are being used to create discussion communities on important topics like product updates or pricing/negotiation tactics. Sales reps can customize individualized information portals pulling together and monitor the “nuggets” they are interested in. Sales communications functions are adding social media capabilities to portfolio to broaden their reach and impact to sales. Salesforce’s Chatter is another example of social technology being integrated into the SFA platform to allow greater levels of communication and broader capabilities for collaboration. With all the attention focused on how and where social media can impact customer interactions, it’s the ability to foster collaboration within sales that should be the focus.
And oh yeah, collaboration needs to be included in your sales enablement strategy. For many starting out, sales enablement is about content management and that’s a good starting point, but to maximize knowledge transfer to sales, social media and its undeveloped potential must included and a strategy for its execution needs to be created. Leveraging these social technologies will require new skills, capabilities and behaviors on the part of knowledge providers. Sales rep behavior will need to change as well. Collaboration is a two-way street. Being part of a community means giving information in addition to getting it. The strategy to develop this knowledge exchange needs to be considered as part of a broader definition for sales enablement.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 @ 10:42 AM
We've seen it happen in the realm of demand creation; marketers have realized that being more analytical about their activities has led to more measurable results. Understanding your marketing data leads to better targeting, segmenting and the more optimized pairing of tactics and offers to drive better results throughout the waterfall. More and more organizations are realizing the importance of the marketing operations role to make this a reality.
Now it's time to see a similar role (and more) that applies the same analytical discipline to the seeding of demand, typically the responsibility of the reputation function in driving engagement and awareness. When it comes to social media specifically, we continue to see a lack of insight and analytics both in the processes companies use to measure and in the capabilities of the technologies that are designed to assist in defining, collecting and analyzing metrics without employing expensive services. You may gain some depth of information regarding your share of voice, sentiment and engagement, but how wide does this knowledge go and what is it telling you about moving the needle for driving business?
Organizations need to take the solution into their own hands. Whether social operations becomes a specific role or a responsibility spread across a number of employees, the key is to take all the data and metrics you can collect to follow the social media breadcrumbs and connect the dots in ways that existing technologies and agencies can't provide beyond traditional brand measurement. Sure, it's useful to understand the demographics, habits and preferences of your networks and communities within Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, but you need the insights that go across these multiple communities (and more) to not only better understand and serve your customers and prospects, but to be able to market to them more effectively as well.
So, who is responsible for social operations within your company and how do you see such a role evolving?
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jul 09, 2010 @ 09:36 AM
In a previous post, I discussed our B2B buying cycle framework and the roles within it; in this post, I'll cover how these buying cycle phases should influence your B2B social media efforts. Given the importance of buying cycles, better alignment of key social media activities with these cycles will result in more targeted, measurable results. Let's look at it via the three macros buying cycle phases.
Education. Most organizations don't have a lack of content; rather too much content is locked into specific pieces of collateral and never reused. Go through a whitepaper and highlight content that can be leveraged as tweets or posts within your Facebook and LinkedIn groups to drive more awareness about who you are and what you do. Also, the work that goes into securing quotes and data points for press releases and testimonials can be used to reinforce the connection between a specific offering and core business issues within a vertical (or sub-vertical) market.
Active Buying. The active buying stage finds buyers looking for solutions to problems they have decided are a priority, matching solution types to their specific needs and uncovering vendors that offer their solution of choice. Your social efforts should drive focused awareness and engagement not around your brand, but around specific decisions made by current customers that drove them to choose the solution you offer and, subsequently, your organization in particular. In addition to leveraging subject matter expertise for posts, content that was created to make key influencers aware of emerging issues can be recast to drive home the importance of problem solving at the beginning of buying cycles.
Closing. The closing phase includes activities such as negotiations and terms/conditions creation required to seal a deal. While there may be less social media potential here because prospects have much of the information they need, late-stage buyers often turn to their online social networks for validation, and the social reputation (or lack of) you've built through engagement will have a huge impact. Tracking and addressing any issues that a prospect may have about your organization could help tip a decision in your favor. Facilitating connections to stakeholders and influencers within your online network will help as well.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jul 02, 2010 @ 09:02 AM
I've created a four component framework for developing and executing a robust B2B social media strategy that has resonated well with our clients, whether they're just starting out in social media or are looking to optimize their continuing efforts. The four components are: Monitor, Engagement, Awareness and Demand Creation. I've presented this model in-depth to our clients through a number of presentations and webcasts but would like to share a little more about the first component, monitoring, with a wider audience.
Monitoring forms the foundation of any B2B social media strategy, and is not only effective for knowing where you should be now; it’s extremely useful to identify where your organization may need to go in the future. It is critical to break down your monitoring strategy into six categories, including:
- Customers. Leverage monitoring to determine reach and sentiment; track both over time and then correlate changing data to internal (e.g. new product launches or other major announcements) and external (e.g. economic) factors.
- Prospects. Discover where and how prospect segments use social media, which is helpful for improving social media marketing efforts. Identify the types of content that prospects prefer to help prioritize your content development efforts.
- Influencers. Determine how much impact new influencers are having on buying decisions and how the role they play is different from traditional analysts. Large numbers of followers/fans doesn't always translate into true influence.
- Competitors. Track how established competitors are using social media in their core markets as well as new markets they enter, and put together a watch list of emerging competitors to be tracked as well.
- Future Markets. Monitoring trends and issues within industries and target markets that your organization doesn’t currently serve can help yield critical intelligence.
- Employees. While the thought of monitoring employees’ online behavior may prompt big brother and privacy concerns, doing so enables companies to feel more comfortable encouraging broad social media participation.
Whether you leverage a technology vendor or an agency, ensure they can provide you more than just a brand monitoring solution. While share of voice and sentiment trends are useful, B2B organizations need more insight into how social media is used across a long buying cycle.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jun 11, 2010 @ 08:58 AM
While methodologies and approaches abound for understanding where customers or prospects are in the social channel and how they use it, we've found no better guide than our buying cycle. I'll use this post to cover our buying cycle concept and the roles within it, while a future post will discuss how these notions should play a key role in your social strategy and execution.
If an organization doesn't understand — even at a basic level — the way prospects buy what it sells, it will never be able to use social media outlets and marketing to facilitate these decisions. This is due to the fact that as prospects move toward a purchase, the tone, message, offer and even communicator for a specific marketing effort should be altered.
Buyers don’t go through a straight-line process of getting information through the Web or social outlets, weighing one solution against another and finally making a decision. Instead, a typical B2B buying process comprises a series of smaller decisions involving a variety of audiences that move into and out of the buying process.
SiriusDecisions has created a model that describes six macro stages that B2B organizations typically go through (see diagram, below). These six stages can be rolled up into three higher-level phases: education, active buying and closing.
As you are identifying the distinct activity phases within a buying cycle, you should also be uncovering who the key “actors” are in each phase and the specific roles they play. Typical actors include champions, CXOs, influencers (can be external or internal to the company), users and ratifiers (usually purchasing, procurement or negotiations). It is common for groups to enter and leave regularly, and to play multiple — and very different — roles depending on the type of product or service being sold. While a CTO might play a significant role during the Exploring Possible Solutions stage in one case, he or she will wait for the Justifying the Decision stage in another. Users may be brought in early or late, while other executive groups play no role whatsoever.
An understanding of actors and roles by stage is a tremendous advantage to your sales and marketing teams; not only will they know whom to target (and who to ignore) and what channels (social or otherwise) to use, but messaging, programs and specific content can be developed and delivered at the right time. You also will avoid common mistakes such as targeting the CXO level with Loosening of the Status Quo and Committing to Change messages and demand creation efforts when these executives do not play any role at the beginning of the buying process.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Apr 02, 2010 @ 08:28 AM
Based on our most recent research, developing an internal community is one of the fastest growing uses of social media, accounting for over 20 percent of B2B social media budget (program and personnel) in 2010. While the benefits of such an internal platform are often easy to identify (such as increased collaboration and knowledge sharing between sales, marketing, support and other functions), developing and maintaining a vibrant internal community for your organization involves not only a measure of serious forethought but also dedication to ensure the community continues to grow and evolve once the inevitable initial enthusiasm ebbs.
An often overlooked component is to clearly identify the goals of the community, as this will be important in determining needed roles, technologies and processes. Start with a pilot, using a smaller group to test features and validate approaches. Measurement is key to demonstrating the overall effectiveness of the internal community. While metrics such as time to value, quicker development of content and collateral, the emergence of new subject matter experts, and faster internal support and training time can be determined through a combination of included platform technology and employee surveying, organizations should also take a disciplined approach by individual function.
With the limitations of static content portals forming a major barrier to collaboration within an organization, the rise of an internal community continues to gain traction. One prevalent argument against such a community platform is that email is the most pervasive communications mechanism within the organization and should be adequate; however, email is not effective for those who aren’t part of a discussion chain nor is it easy to socialize and catalog emails for further use. While an internal community can provide a more effective platform for collaboration and best practices sharing between sales, marketing and the rest of the organization, well-socialized strategy and guidelines, as well as improvements to drive the continued health of the community, are the critical success factors.
Posted by Jay Gaines on Fri, Mar 12, 2010 @ 09:22 AM
As I outlined in my previous post Matching Brand Promises To Customer Reality," with the power shift in the business/buyer relationship that social media and unprecedented access to information has brought about, it is more evident than ever that B2B marketers no longer have complete control over how there organization is perceived — rather, much of this power now lies with the empowered customer. So, what robust brand and customer experience management strategies can a B2B business leader use to ensure that their brands match the reality of their company? The following strategies extend beyond logos, words and colors, and should set the stage for a successful re-evaluation of the brand and customer experience management initiative:
- Customer experience management is ultimately a marketing responsibility. Marketing is clearly best suited to understand the expectations their messages create as it is within marketing that the brand and its associated promise is often defined, refined and projected out to the world. Also, customer experience is increasingly defined by marketing touches in the form of content, newsletters, websites, direct mail, email, events, tweets, customer communities and much more. Finally, developing and maintaining great relationships with prospective buyers starts with marketing and is an inherent part of the entire marketing process because relationships are exactly what leading marketers use to convert unknown prospects into engaged and sales-ready leads. The CMO, working closely with counterparts in sales, customer service and product development, should assume leadership of B2B customer experience management due to this intertwined link between marketing success and an exceptional buyer/customer experience — one that marketing is most likely to ensure matches the brand promise of the organization.
- Analyze and understand customer experience. Since the goal of customer experience management is to move customers from satisfied to loyal, and from loyal to advocate, the best place to begin analysis is simple customer loyalty surveys and in-depth interviews. Utilizing open-ended questions along with quantitative questions in surveys and interviews will help establish a baseline and identify specific strengths and issues. Also, identify ways to gather “operational feedback” that comes through the normal course of conducting business, including customer service, sales, CRM data and comments left on your Website. Finally, monitoring customer comments and discussions about your company in customer communities and other online social networks is another relatively easy way to continuously analyze customer experience and perceptions. If you don’t currently have a customer community, starting corporate/executive blogs can open up fruitful conversations between customer and business that can also streamline customer experience research.
- Manage the expectations your messages create. In a business environment defined by social media and empowered customers who expect transparency over-promising has gone from unwise to high-risk as significant promise/reality gaps will be ruthlessly exposed in customer communities or other business social networks. Mapping your primary messages and brand promise to what you learn about your customers’ perception of their own experiences working with your organization goes a long way toward identifying significant gaps. In general, be vigilant to avoid creating expectations that can’t or shouldn’t be met by focusing messages on core competencies that differentiate your organization or offering and matter most to your customers.
- Proactively turn customers into champions with a customer advisory board. B2B marketers should consider initiating a customer advisory board as a crucial component of the customer experience strategy. Customer advisory boards can help to flush out any troubles that buyers might be experiencing with the company, as well as highlight and improve what the organization is doing well. Also, by engaging customers in defining processes and initiatives to improve their own experience they will quickly adopt a sense of ownership, which will help significantly with managing risk and mitigating communications crisis if they come up. It is always good to have customers come to your defense if possible, particularly in the social world.
While there’s no doubt that successful brand and customer experience management takes time and business resources, positive brand awareness and customer perceptions do more to ensure the reputation and success of a B2B company than any short-term initiative. The sooner B2B CMOs takes this to heart, the sooner the business will survive and thrive well into an optimistic future.
Posted by Jay Gaines on Fri, Mar 05, 2010 @ 09:49 AM
What B2B company doesn’t want a powerful brand that draws customers and makes the competition green with envy? After all, a compelling brand can influence buying decisions, justify higher prices, transcend cultural barriers, and create deep and lasting loyalty among customers. But in the quest to find and project the perfect brand, many b-to-b leaders risk aligning their businesses with misleading and even false brand promises that simply don’t reflect their customers’ experience or the core competencies of the organization.
Marketers have experienced increased demand to deliver a continuous stream of highly qualified leads to a sales force under tremendous pressure. The inevitable result has been an intense focus on short-term revenue supporting efforts while longer-term strategies have taken a back seat. This shift from long-term growth strategies to short-term revenue generation means that many B2B CMOs have turned their focus away from (among other things) customer experience management at critical touch points, including products/services, customer service and web sites. While short-term cash flow remains critical, leading B2B organizations understand that ignoring customer experience management could be a recipe for disaster.
This decline in attending to customer experience can lay the foundation for negative perceptions that will last long after the economy picks up and spending increases. As much as B2B marketing is about doing what is necessary to achieve near-term financial goals, an equally important responsibility is creating and maintaining a lasting, powerful (and positive) perception of the company. That’s exactly where brand comes into play. It’s through the lens of brand and its associated promise that buyers measure their experiences with the company; therefore, brands that don’t align with the typical customer experience are doing far more harm than good.
Also, due to the explosion of social media, B2B customers and buyers have very visible channels for expressing their opinions, as well as increased access to the opinions of others — and as we all know, this new customer empowerment has changed the B2B world forever. For example, a Google search for virtually any company won’t just reveal links to the company website and relevant information pages; customer reviews, raves and rants will often pop up within the first page of Google results. It is increasingly clear that customers who have been given a voice through social media now have as much influence over how a company is perceived as marketers at the company.
While astute B2B companies can play this magnified customer voice to their advantage by identifying and closing gaps between their brand promise and customer reality, businesses that don’t take action are putting themselves at serious risk. The new transparency that exists in the typical business/customer relationship means that businesses with customer experience management strategies that aren’t aligned with their brand message risk damaging their reputation, their relationships with customers and their future sales.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Feb 19, 2010 @ 09:16 AM
Instead of focusing exclusively on generating yet more new leads that may or may not qualify, an effective way for marketing to impact the elongated B2B sales cycle is to help move deals that (for whatever reason) have stalled in the pipeline, an activity we call pipeline acceleration. While marketers have many tools to help prospects buy, and sales sell, there are two ways that marketing can drive late-stage pipeline: stimulus offers (specific programs extended to a prospect to increase the velocity of customer buying processes) and enablement/knowledge (internal programs designed to help sales build competence and neutralize roadblocks when dealing with stalled selling opportunities).
Social media can play a key role in stimulus offers. Giving a prospect controlled access to your online customer community shows that prospect the experience of what it would be like to be a customer. This lets the prospect see how customers interact with each other and your company; select prospects can browse and search community discussions to match their interests or concerns. Having the prospect see how issues and negative experiences with the company are resolved goes a long way in giving prospects evidence of how you treat customers. Also on the stimulus front, tap your subject matter experts to focus the critical content already available in whitepapers and other collateral into concise, customized podcast, blogs or tweets that align your message directly to known prospect pains. Podcasts can also be effective in distilling down case studies that can have direct relevance to prospect needs.
On the enablement/knowledge side, the inclusion of social media features within sales enablement platforms continues to gain steam as a more organizations leverage internal communities built around knowledge sharing and best practices; this is especially valuable for leveraging the group experience of not only other sales reps but also subject matter experts that reside in other parts of the organization. The use of podcasting as an internal training and communications tool continues to grow and is a proactive way in helping arm reps with the talk tracks and selling points to help accelerate prospects, particularly if they include the experiences of reps that have success accelerating their deals.
Remember, marketing is not just about new leads. You already have prospects in the pipeline that have a strong interest, now do what you can to help them close.
Posted by Jonathan Block on Fri, Jan 15, 2010 @ 09:55 AM
More and more B2B organizations recognize the value of having a clear strategy when it comes to social media to optimize returns and resources. According to our research data, over 60 percent of B2B organizations are doing something with social media (if only a blog) but of those only 30 percent have a documented strategy that seeks to interlock these activities with other marketing efforts. Given this reality, B2B organizations are looking to their peers but aren’t necessarily finding the answers they need. But there’s a good reason for that; most of the well-publicized success stories regarding social media are clearly in the B2C space. This really isn’t surprising since with such short sales cycles (i.e., transactional sales) it doesn’t take long to develop a critical mass of success stories and best practices. What becomes a stumbling block is when B2B organizations expect such quick hits. Well, sorry to say, it’s not going to happen. With the longer and more complex sales cycles that typify B2B, it takes a fair amount of time to be able to gauge the influence that social media is having on the business.
But this shouldn’t be an excuse to do nothing. Most likely your customers and prospects are already participating in social media (whether in online communities or Twitter) and may even be talking about you and your market. So even if you have no great social media aspirations at this time, or it’s not the way your target market consumes content, you should be monitoring to find out if people are talking about you, your competitors and market, and where these conversations are taking place. If you’re already participating you should be tracking all of these interactions. Without collecting such data you’ll never be able to determine what part social media plays among the series of interactions that typify the b-to-b buying process.
At the same time we regularly tell our customers not to ignore the internal value that social media can bring to the organization from a collaboration and best practices sharing perspective. Such internal uses, particularly between marketing and sales, can provide the quick hits you need to justify further investments that both internal and external uses of social media require. But remember that while social media may be inexpensive from a money perspective, it will require a large investment in time and money.