Have you seen the movie Jerry Maguire?  There is this scene where Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is greeted by his client Ron Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr):

Ron Tidwell: ‘Jerry Maguire, my agent. You’re my ambassador of Quan*.’

Jerry Maguire: ‘Quan. That’s your word?’

Ron Tidwell: ‘Yeah man, it means love, respect, community… and the dollar too. The whole package;  the… Quan’.

It seems like Ron could just as well have been talking about ‘The 4 Key Elements of Successful Content Marketing’, including aspects such as respect, trust, community…and the dollar too. 

AND THE DOLLAR TOO

Much has been written about being a respected and trusted member of your (on-line)community.

But how about ‘the dollar’? How about communicating the specific value your products or services bring to your (future) clients?

Especially when targeting large corporate clients:

• making the value your products/services deliver explicit is essential; repeated communication of this value will improve your clients’ perception of ‘value for money’;
• it can be challenging: I’ve spent many hours with product managers to find the right angles to determine and express the client value in a way that is relevant and easy to relate to;
• challenging, but it can be done (if not, you may want to reconsider offering the product/service in the first place).

VALUABLE CONTENT

Specifying ‘the dollar’ in a way that resonates with your target audience is not always an easy task and requires both analytical and creative skills. The good part: once you get a very clear specification of the value your products and services bring to your clients, you got some of the most powerful material for your content marketing program.

At the end of the day, especially in b2b markets, it all boils down to the effective combination of value and connection as also sharply articulated by Jerry and Rod in the movie Jerry Maguire:

Jerry Maguire: ‘Show me the money!, Show me the moneeeeeey!’

Ron Tidwell: ‘I need to feel you Jerry, I need to feel you!’

Wishing you, and your customers, lots of…Quan.

* also written as ‘Kwan’
 

Originally posted on B2B Bloggers

As content marketing is at the very heart of any effective B2B marketing approach, there are some interesting books on this topic to consider. One I picked up recently at the airport (a plane is a great reading place) is Get Content Get Customers from Joe Pulizzi and Newt Barrett.

The book is set up around 4 sections:

1. Coping with the content marketing revolution

2. How to put content marketing to work

3. Learning from smart marketers – best practice success stories (the largest section of the book)

4. Putting the lessons into action

Readers who have not yet started with a structured content marketing program will get the most benefit from this book. It gives a clear, but high level overview of the various aspects of a content marketing approach supported by an broad range of case studies

In my view the book will not provide any new insights for most B2B marketers who (by nature) have been using content marketing to win and retain clients for a long time already. However one of the authors (Joe Pulizzi) provides further, detailed best practices on his website that is definitely worth a visit @ the Content Marketing Institute blog.

** Update 31 Aug 2011 **

Hot of the press: today Joe Pulizzi announced the ‘follow-up’ to Get Content Get Customers he wrote together with Robert Rose. The book is called Managing Content Marketing and will go more into detail about the actual management of the content management proces including:

• How to build the business case for content marketing?
• Who are our buyer personas?
• What’s our content marketing workflow?
• What tools do we need to make content marketing happen?
• How do we measure success?
• How do we put it all together and integrate it with our total marketing plan?

 The book should be available at (online) bookstores around mid-September.

…looking forward to it.

There are very few regular podcasts that specifically focus on B2B marketing, however many podcasts about content marketing, lead generation, SEO etc. are relevant for the B2B marketing aficionado.

 After trying out quite a number of them, here are my favorites:

CopyBlogger

Interesting topics and guest speakers related to content marketing. Robert Bruce and Brian Clark keep the show quite lively, with a healthy dose of humor and definitely are experts in their field. Furthermore their podcasts have a good sound quality making it pleasant to listen to.

 Six Pixels of Separation

A weekly Podcast by Mitch Joel with a focus on digital marketing: blogs, SEO, viral marketing, but also stuff on personal branding etc. It is a well established podcast that regularly features key marketing writers such as Chris Brogan.

 Marketing over Coffee

A marketing podcast by John Wall and Christopher Penn that covers a broad range of (B2B)marketing related topics. They regularly succeed in getting high profile guests/writers to feature in their podcasts such as David Meerman Scott in one of their recent episodes.

“Year after year the number one priority for most buyers at all levels is ‘cost cutting’. Despite rhetoric about sophisticated sourcing it’s an issue that remains top of the agenda.  Why is this?”

In the article a number of Procurement Professionals were invited to comment on this statement. It triggered comments indicating different approaches to cost management that are essential for B2B marketers to identify and understand:

1. COST CUTTING

Some of your prospects may have a procurement approach as illustrated in the quotes below:

“We should embrace the requirement to drive out cost since that is what we are paid to do.”

“All our management wants to see is costs go down.”

“Cost-cutting is an tactical and short-term activity, nothing wrong with this as long as it is part of a long-term planned approach to managing cost.”

In fact this is not a bad representation of the more transactional focused B2B decision makers I have experienced in the past 10 years of B2B Marketing.

2. COST OPTIMIZATION

Some other sourcing procurement professionals expressed a more balanced view, relating to the broader notion of cost control and reduction:

“We seek to optimize our cost structure.”

“Just year-on-year price reduction can lead to disloyal suppliers, dissatisfied internal users and worse, a higher TCO”

3. VALUE CREATION

However most buyers interviewed maintained that at the end of the day, what matters is the sustainable profitability of their organization.

“Achieving a good negotiation result is intrinsic to our value and will always be, but we must ensure that our stakeholders understand this is only one component of a total procurement added-value-package.”

“I do not see many CPOs being able to make value sourcing transparent and measurable. It is the typical struggle between what is short-term, easy-to-measure reduction of external cost, and the more sophisticated, difficult-to-measure goal of supply chain optimization, reduction of waste and cost of poor quality.”

4. B2B MARKETING TAKEAWAYS

Getting out of the commodity trap is not easy for marketers, but apprearantly can be a challenge for buyers as well!

The B2B marketing imperative: MAKE YOUR VALUE EXPLICIT!

Make the value your products and services bring specific and measurable. Sourcing professionals will appreciate this approach as it will help them to:

1. Understand your offering (being responsible for multiple ‘categories’ to source is difficult enough as it is without needing to plough through piles of ‘vague’ supplier promises);
2. Explain to internal stakeholders how their choice for your solution, perhaps not at the lowest upfront price, in the end provides the best value for their company.

One key element that can support this process with existing clients is to provide quarterly value statements describing:

• What you have delivered to them (in terms of products, service calls, consultancy studies etc.);
• For each item, translate how this has brought value to their company, as much as possible in quantifiable terms.

By making the value your provide to existing customers explicit, you will not only increase their perception of ‘value for money’ and therefore loyalty, but at the same time create the best possible collateral for you sales teams!

WHY SHARPEN YOUR MARKETING ACCOUNTABILITY?

There are many reasons why it makes sense to sharpen the measurement of the value marketing brings to your company, but 3 key reasons I like to focus on for this post are:

1. Measurement is at the basis of improvement – this goes for any performance related activity whether in business, or for example in sports;
2. Measuring how marketing results contribute to the overall business or corporate objectives provides the ultimate argument for the ‘raison d’etre’ or reason of existence of a marketing department –and related budgets- in your company;
3. Most marketers prefer marketing to be seen as an investment rather than an expense; and investments are normally measured on the return they provide.

These are quite fundamental arguments, so why is B2B Marketing Accountability still identified as a weak spot in many B2B Marketing research papers? As I know from personal experience, it can be a challenging route to embark on. However if you feel you do want to take -even a small- step in advancing your B2B Marketing Accountability, now may be the best time to do it.

WHY NOW?

Now, or any time outside the annual planning season of your company may be the best time to review and sharpen your marketing accountability. By the time everybody starts to speak about the annual plan and budget, most marketing professionals will have little time to reflect on an improved measurement structure.

By taking the time now to think about your planning and related metrics you can create the opportunity to:

• Sharpen or set up your measurement system;
• See how it works in relation to your current business and marketing objectives;
• Adjust where necessary before the new budget-round comes along.

HOW TO GO ABOUT IT?

An effective approach to sharpening B2B Marketing Accountability includes 2 key elements:

1. START WITH BUSINESS OBJECTIVES

As a principle, marketing objectives should in the basis always be directly related to the overall business objectives of the company as:

1. Delivering a measureable contribution to the corporate strategic/business objectives is a prerequisite to B2B Marketing success;
2. In terms of internal communication: explicit links of marketing results to the overall business objectives resonate remarkably well with senior (financial) management.

The issue here is that the above sounds so blatantly obvious you could actually forget to make this link really explicit and instead focus on process related metrics, which are not always that relevant to senior management.

 2. START SIMPLE

Some companies have developed marketing dashboards with some 150 metrics and dials feeding into it. For (very) large marketing departments (often also in the B2C arena) this may be a necessary solution. For many B2B companies though it could mean spending too much resource on a means that becomes an end in itself.

In order to build a simple yet logical structure it may help to define your B2B Marketing metrics on 3 levels:

• Level 1: Start on a high level with the overall business objectives. What are the key areas where marketing will provide value?
• Level 2: For each of these areas indicate the key projects/activities with their objectives and desired outcomes. The key question here is: what will success look like for this project or process?
• Level 3: Where relevant, dive into further detail – for example into specific process metrics such as website or social media statistics.

 Again, don’t make it too complex to start with, but treat it as a development process. A good sanity check on your metrics includes verifying if they are really actionable.

Once you have set up a good foundation, you can always move into more sophisticated ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) metrics including NPV (Net Present Value), CLV (Client Lifetime Value) metrics and other interesting acronyms.

HOW YOU WILL BENEFIT

Starting the process of sharpening your B2B Marketing Accountability will give you a better overview of where you (want to) deliver marketing value to your company. Other benefits include:

• The increased transparency caused by a sharper measurement of what marketing really contributes to the business may be slightly uncomfortable at first. However once used to this, it will be a great asset in profiling the marketing department -and yourself- in terms of value contributed to the business;
• A balanced set of metrics as part of the marketing plan will also greatly help in focusing yourself and your team in terms of priorities and activities – next to the many ad-hoc requests most B2B Marketers receive on a daily (or hourly) basis;
• There is a lot of benefit into experimenting with these metrics for the sake of your own learning. Once you have a few planning cycles under your belt it will also greatly help to predict what you resources you need to achieve your next set of challenging objectives.

Marketing Budgets

2010 has seen a slight increase in the B2B marketing budgets: 26% of respondents indicated an increase. Typically the expenditure on websites, e-mail marketing, social media and CRM has grown, to the detriment of print advertising and DM as well as events.

Measuring Effectiveness

Remarkably only 1 out of 4 B2B professionals (typically those of larger organizations) indicated to actively measure the return on their marketing investments.

Social Media

12% of the interviewed organizations use a well-planned social media approach. 28% started experimenting in this area social media; most often used in a ‘non-interactive manner’ i.e. listening or experimenting with the various social media platforms.

Content Marketing

Nearly one out of 3 B2B companies has explicitly added content marketing in the marketing mix. They offer target audiences relevant information through whitepapers, newsletters, webinars or blogs. Also in this area the Dutch market lags behind the US where according to a study of Junta42 and MarketingProfs 9 in 10 companies have a content marketing strategy in place.

When going through the results of this report I was stunned by the low number of marketers actively measuring the effectiveness of their marketing actions. This is not only key to simply do a good -or increasingly better- job, but also to make future progress in the budget area. Wonder how this stacks up with alike studies in other countries though. Do you have any data from recent studies in your country? I’d be interested to compare some results on this challenging but essential item.

For Dutch readers a copy of the TNS report can be downloaded via this link.

Key Takeaways

Some of my key takeaways from this meeting include:

• Co-creation is about the way organizations engage individuals (customers, employees, suppliers, and other stake­holders) into the process of value creation. btw: when discussing the definition of ‘value’ this was not limited to captured/monetary value only, but also included the value of for example a positive user experience;
• The concept of co-creation is not limited to customer or supplier engagement. It is also about how any organization can spark a more effective collaboration through the application of shared internal values which is closely linked to the concept of internal branding;
• Fortunately, co-creation is not limited to funky flat organizations only. It can be applied very well in more ‘traditional’ organizations. In the end it is about motivating colleagues to create relevant internal and external connections with the objective of finding new ways to create and deliver value;
• To have an effective creation process; a good (and practical) funneling/selection process needs to be set up in order to have the most viable and profitable ideas surface and further developed.

In my opinion the above in itself does not describe a radically new approach; however the influx of social media have put the theory and its application in a significantly new context.

Here is a short video of Venkat Ramaswamy and Francis Gouillart discussing their book ‘The Power of Co-in which they also mention some specific B2B examples.

Adding a Community Perspective

The above did make me think about a particularly powerful article ‘Creating Shared Value’ by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in the Harvard Business Review of January/February 2011.

Adding the community perspective to the company/employee, supplier and customer networks results in a truly holistic view of your business ecosystem.

Follow this link to the article on the HBR site, or Google the title to find the pdf.

Why segment?

Two key reasons to define different market segments include:

1. Make sure you target the right persons with the right message and solution;
2. Effective resource allocation: ensure the sales and account teams spend their time on deliberately chosen sets of clients. Sometimes the most vocal -but not necessarily the most profitable- clients tend to get most of your limited resources (as they say, the squeaking wheel gets the oil).

What is a segment?

• One very simple but clean definition I have come across is: a piece of market. A charming summary indeed.
• A somewhat more inclusive version used for B2B markets : “A sub-set of a market made up of organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar products and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function”.

There are many lines across which you can segment a business market such as: company size, industry, demographic, specific client needs, client value, geography, and many other flavors.

Compared with consumer marketing, B2B marketers tend to work with a limited number of market segments. Some companies have been very effective in just using 2 segments: transaction and partnership focused clients.

Effective Segmentation

The key of this post is that it does not matter how you segment if you do not implement it in an effective way. A segmentation approach that really works for your company includes the following 4 key elements.

Your chosen segments should be:

1. CLEARLY DEFINABLE

Do segments include clients that clearly differ from one segment to the other? Do they display homogeneous needs within the segment? And are they easy to explain? This may sound trivial but in my experience you need to be able to clearly explain the different market segments to your sales teams, senior management etc. in a way that is easy to understand..and makes sense to them.

 2. ACTIONABLE

How will different segments be targeted differently?  How will value propositions or pricing differ from segment to segment? Answering these questions is at the basis of an effective B2B market segmentation approach that delivers results.

 3. MEASURABLE

How will the value of a segment be measured? And the internal (commercial) resources needed to serve it? What value points will be used to measure performance? My advice: define a clear measurement system right at the start. The outcomes may call for sometimes difficult decisions – but through these decisions value will be created for your company.

4. MANAGEABLE

Governance: define a clear process when segments will be reviewed; when clients will move from one segment to the other. Segmentation is a verb. A clear governance process will greatly enhance the chances of it being treated as such. Also in the next year.

In Summary

The above 4 prerequisites to effective B2B segmentation can be summarized with a much used, but very relevant quote from Steven Covey: “begin with the end in mind”. If you set up your segmentation with its practical use in mind, you will also make it an effective one.

 By Sunil Gupta, and Donald Lehmann

Understanding that customers are one the greatest assets of any business is not a new or novel idea. However many organizations struggle to define a clear assessment of the current and future value of these assets.

Forecasting Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)  can be a complex or even daunting task – especially with complex customers. A complex but definitely also one of the most important challenges for B2B marketers!

In this book the authors explain the concept of customer lifetime value in a straightforward and practical way. The authors are familiar with the data challenges in many organizations and also start from the realistic premise that it is better to be vaguely right than precisely wrong.

Combining the marketing and financial approach puts a different light on our B2B marketing activities. Indeed, taking a structured approach to managing customers as investments makes it very logical to classify marketing efforts as investments, rather than expenditures.

The authors build their CLV framework from a set of fairly straightforward elements and then add more detail to these. Some financial acumen may be helpful to apply the concepts of the book, but then again this holds true for the B2B marketing discipline in general..

KEY TAKEAWAYS  from this book include:

• customers are assets – so why not treat them as such?;
• how to calculate their value in a simple way;
• how CLV calculations can provide a good basis for B2B marketing strategy and planning;
• the importance of balancing the value of the customer with the value the firm provides to the customer;
• implications for organization and incentive structure and the limitations of B2B product and brand management.