Executive Summary
This paper explores the differences between the old and new ways of B2B Marketing, and then lays out the five practical steps to assist you in taking advantage of the new Marketing 2.0 opportunities.
Porter Power
The catalyst for Marketing 2.0 is the amount of knowledge that is now freely available on the Internet for B2B buyers. Knowledge that shifts the power from seller to buyer. Traditional methods, such as Outbound or Interruption Marketing are no longer effective. The new model revolves around "permission-based", Inbound Marketing, and the capability of integrated Sales and Marketing Automation (SAMA).
The five practical steps to help your organization take advantage of the new environment are:
1) Shift from Outbound to Inbound Marketing.
2) Automate.
3) Harness the power of Analytics.
4) Participate in the Online Discussion.
5) Make it easy to buy!
KEY TERMS
For your convenience, some of the key terms discussed in this whitepaper are summarized below.
Marketing 2.0 reflects a web-enabled shift from selling to buying, delivers a new permission-based 1:1 relationship between seller and prospects, and is powered by new web-based automation and real-time analytics.
Inbound Marketing encourages prospects to find you (the seller) when they are looking for solutions, versus Outbound Marketing where you broadcast to prospects in the hope that they are interested in your message.
CRM/SFA: Customer Relationship Managementor Sales Force Automation Systems. Software systems, traditionally maintained by sales, that store prospect, customer and sales opportunity customer data.
SAMA: Integrated Sales And Marketing Automation. Includes Web Analytics, Demand Generation, Reputation Management, and CRM/SFA automation.
ROMI: Return On Marketing Investment. SAMA closes the loop between marketing investment and sales returns.
INTRODUCTION
Ah, the good old days of marketing and sales. It was 1982, mid-winter, in Moscow of the former Soviet Union. As a young marketing rep for a manufacturer of capital equipment, I sat across the table from the Deputy Minister of Forestry. I was there to solve the problem of why our equipment - deployed in deepest Siberia - was underperforming.
I discovered that the maintenance manuals we shipped with every piece of equipment never made it to the field. In those days information was power, and the Deputy Minister of Forestry wasn't about to let any power slip out of his grasp: he kept each and every manual tucked away in his large office in Moscow. If you wanted that information, you had to contact Moscow and ask him for it.
That was the world of 1.0. Everything revolved around controlling the information, controlling the conversation, and controlling the message. People built silos around their proprietary information. Everyone zealously protected their turf.
Marketing communications was primarily a monologue delivered by the seller to a buyer. The seller controlled the information and dispensed it to the buyer in a strictly controlled fashion. To break through and make a sale, the seller repeated his message louder and more frequently than the competition.
Today, however, more new information is published online every year than in the previous 5000 years of man's history. This unfettered access to information has empowered the individual user, with dramatic implications for both marketing and sales. Information that is immediately available to anyone with an Internet connection who cares to look for it.
And the vast majority of B2B buyers, these days, do choose to look for it. They start the sales process without the seller's knowledge, searching for solutions online. Should they find yours, they'll come knocking on your portal's door and may give you their permission to sell to them.
And so, with the click of a mouse, power has shifted from seller to buyer.
WHAT IS MARKETING 2.0?
It certainly seems like we have a fascination with everything "2.0" these days. Business 2.0; Sales 2.0; Viral Marketing 2.0; even Mobile Cocooning 2.0! It's enough to make your head spin.
The root of all these transformations is, of course, the web. Web 2.0 delivers user empowerment, interaction, collaboration, and sharing of information.
Has Web 2.0 transformed Marketing in the same way? Absolutely, but at a far deeper level than you expect at first glance. Sure, you can now participate in the latest buzz, like "glocalization", "zalking", "business blurring", and "geostreaming". You can blog your way to blogosphere stardom, and tweet all your co-workers, clients, and suppliers ad nauseum. But if that is the extent of your new marketing paradigm, you're really missing the boat.
Do I believe that twitter will fundamentally change the way complex business-to-business products are bought and sold? No. But I do believe that the new world that spawned twitter is creating seismic shifts in the way business products are being bought and sold.
From Selling to Buying
Here's the big picture: with web2.0, power has fundamentally shifted from the seller to the buyer. The buyer no longer depends on the seller for the information he or she needs to make the buying decision. Think back to my Moscow example in the Introduction. Today, the information is simply "out there" 7/24: Industry trends, company and products, features and benefits, pricing, channels, testimonials. If it's not available on "official" websites, then it is through web2.0 vehicles like blogs and online communities. The bottom line is that prospects and buyers are now empowered to make decisions without you, the seller.
What fuels this shift is an age-old desire on the part of the buyer to control the buying process. Think about it. People hate to be sold. But they love to buy. The explosion of freely available information on the Internet simply made this natural progression possible.
As a business-to-business marketer, if you feel this "loss of control" is scary, you're not alone. But before you contemplate a career change, consider that the corresponding shift from Marketing 1.0 to Marketing 2.0 actually carries more opportunities than threats.
From Outbound to Inbound
The first opportunity is to replace an inefficient marketing model with a more effective approach. Instead of the outbound technique, where you blast out advertising messages in the hope that someone will pay attention, the inbound model has prospective buyers seeking you out to gain information and insight. Seth Godin calls this a move from interruption marketing to permission marketing. Either way, the end result is more effective and efficient for both the buyer and the seller.
Inbound marketing attracts prospects to your website, since that is the easiest way for prospects to find you anytime and from anyplace. And, as the research shows, today's business-to-business buyers overwhelmingly use the Internet as their primary tool for researching solutions to their business needs.
Your website, no longer just one of the elements of your marketing mix, becomes the central "clearing house" for all marketing efforts, both online and offline. Why? Because the digital nature of the Internet allows you to easily automate for speed and efficiency, track all traffic and activity, and capture data into one eCRM database.
From Manual to Automation
Marketing 2.0 revolves around the web, and the web is too big and too fast to deal with manually. In addition, prospects expect you to be "open for business" 24/7 online. Herein lies the second opportunity: Marketing 2.0 uses the powerful technology of SAMA to help you cope with the scale and scope of the web - all while reducing costs and operating more efficiently.
A key component of SAMA, Demand Generation technology, now allows you to automate the online sales lead generation and sales lead management process. Site visitors convert to prospects by engaging with the website, and accessing valuable content like whitepapers, videos, or webinars. In return for gaining access to this information, prospects share their email address and some of their professional profile, opening the door for further "permission-based" communication.
The system automatically grades and scores prospects according to their profile and "digital footprint" - where they go on your site, how they interact, how long they stay, and how often they return. The system then nurtures prospects with "drip" email campaigns that offer progressively more detailed information over time. Prospects achieve sales ready status when their scores demonstrate that they have completed enough successful interactions to move from early Awareness to Consideration. At this point they are seamlessly passed to sales.
From Art to Science
However, perhaps the biggest opportunity for marketers is the ability to transform much of your marketing effort from an art to a science. With Marketing 2.0 and SAMA, you can capture massive amounts of market data in real time, in the process receiving market insight that you could only dream of in prior days.
One of these insights is that you can now, finally, calculate your Return on Marketing Investment, or ROMI. What better way to decide which campaigns are working best? In addition, you watch prospects interacting with your campaigns in real time, as you digitally track their preferences. It's like having an ongoing, free focus group. But there's more: You can now use multivariate testing to quickly determine which elements of a campaign work, and which don't, and correct your marketing strategies on the fly.
In other words, you can finally answer the age-old question of which 50% of the marketing budget is producing results.
Over time, SAMA systems use their priceless database of prospects and market preferences, to shine a lens on individual prospects, particular market segments, and your market as a whole. New levels of micro-segmentation, laser targeting and true 1:1 marketing are now possible. Think of the competitive advantages such invaluable real-time insight provides to your sales and marketing teams.
What others are saying about Marketing 2.0
"We are witnessing the obsolescence of advertising. The new marketing requires a feedback loop; it is this element that is missing from the monologue of advertising." - Regis McKenna, a founding father of hi-tech marketing.
"Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't. Finding new ways, more clever ways to interrupt people doesn't work." - Seth Godin, author of the most popular marketing blog in the world.
Summing it all up
So, for those who are still trying to wrap their mind around the Marketing 2.0 beast, here is our short and easy definition:
Marketing 2.0 reflects a web-enabled shift from selling to buying, delivers a new permission-based 1:1 relationship between seller and prospects, and is powered by new web-based automation, real-time analytics, and market insight.
Some things never change
As you embrace the powerful new world of 2.0, it's important not to neglect those Marketing 1.0 elements that continue to work: a sound marketing strategy for example, that still revolves around Porter's Five Forces, and the basics of segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Three of the 4Ps are also still the same: Price, Product, and even Place (especially for bricks and mortar B2B companies). Only Promotion has drastically changed.
And marketing and sales is still about people dealing with people. Implemented well, Marketing 2.0 actually strengthens this relationship between the prospect, marketing, and sales.
Now that we understand the differences between 1.0 and 2.0, it's time to put the rubber on the road and look at our five ways to begin using the new approach.
5 PRACTICAL STEPS TO MARKETING 2.0
However, before we set off to embrace the opportunities of Marketing 2.0, it's worthwhile to suggest, as with any journey, that it pays to know where you are going before you depart. So make sure you set clear, measurable objectives beforehand for what you would like to achieve. For example, you may want:
Specific market insight to improve your marketing tactics and strategies (good)
Generate new leads and prospects, and the generation of incremental revenue & profit (better)
Combination of both (best).Then develop a clear and concise Marketing Dashboard so that you and the rest of your management team can keep track of progress along the way. Remember, what doesn't get measured, doesn't get done.
STEP 1: Shift from outbound to inbound marketing
The goal here is to stop interruption marketing, and engage in permission marketing where prospects come to you with their interests and buying needs. Use the following Inbound Marketing techniques to turn your website into a prospect magnet.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Start with developing your "keyword identity". Find those keyword phrases that you can successfully compete on, and that will minimize prospect "bounce" and maximize conversion. Then optimize the content and structure of your website around those keyword phrases. Finally, create meaningful external backlinks to your site, to boost your site's credibility and importance to search engines. Successful SEO is as much a marketing exercise as it is a technical one, so don't just leave it to the techies.
PPC (pay-per-click advertising): If needed, compliment your SEO with PPC around this same "keyword identity".
Free Content: Create great content that displays your company's knowledge leadership in your industry, and that inbound prospects will want. Publish this content in the form of whitepapers, videos, and webinars. Make it available for free download provided prospects identify themselves and give you permission to communication with them 1:1. And map your content to the sales cycle, so that you can feed prospects with valuable information as they move through all of its stages.
Integrate Outbound with Inbound Campaigns: Some outbound campaigns - like tradeshows and direct contact programs - may still be delivering ROMI. Through customized landing pages on your website, bring those traditional outbound campaigns into the efficiency of the inbound world with integrated analytics, CRM integration, and automated sales lead management.
Step 2: Automate
The world of web-based inbound marketing is too big and too fast to handle manually. So tap into SAMA technology, and automate the routine repeatable tasks, like data analysis and the generation and management of inbound sales leads. Free up marketing and sales for value-added, strategic activities and the closing of deals. Two key components of SAMA are:
Reputation Management Automation: Monitor the online conversation about your company, your products, and your brand in both social and conventional news media. Determine the trends in either positive or negative perception, and locate the key points of influence that drive those trends, allowing you to interact and influence the conversation.
Sales Lead Management Automation: Employ a Demand Generation software solution to automate the generation and management of inbound sales leads. Collaborate with sales to automate best practices and set business rules to automatically grade, score, and nurture prospects, and determine at what stage a prospect is ready to be handed to sales. Seamlessly integrate prospect profile and "digital footprint" data with your CRM or SFA systems.
Step 3: Harness the power of marketing 2.0 analytics
Shift marketing from an art to a science. With the digital world and SAMA comes the ability to capture and process massive amounts of information, allowing you to close the loop and get feedback from your market and individual prospects in real time.
Macro-level Analytics: For a macro view of your market, you can implement a free analytics program like Google Analytics. Google Analytics will give you macro insight, but will not "put a face" to an individual visitor.
Prospect-level Analytics: The real power of Marketing 2.0 analytics is in capturing the profile and digital footprint of each and every prospect who visits your website. To achieve such 1:1 insight into your prospect's needs and preferences, you need to implement an automated Demand Generation solution tied directly into your CRM or SFA system.
Multivariate testing enables you to compare the effectiveness of different marketing messages, landing pages, and campaigns in real time.
Step 4: Participate in the online discussion
Joining the conversation in relevant social media is another opportunity to accomplish McKenna's closing the loop.
Join the Conversation: Find the key blogs, forms, and communities in your industry. Listen to industry trends, issues, and concerns. Voice your unique perspective, and point others back to your website and your valuable content, so that you can build backlinks and boost your site's credibility with search engines.
Create your own unique voice: If you feel you can contribute ongoing, value-added ideas and opinions, consider starting your own blog. But beware of the time commitment, and the effort required to keep it meaningful. Blogging is also a great way to create effective backlinks to your site, and increase your SEO effectiveness.
Give your market a voice: Empower your customers and prospects by giving them a forum to discuss issues of relevance and the tools to build their own content. Create a portal that gives customers and prospects a "water cooler". To 1.0 marketers this is definitely a risky proposition, but to 2.0 marketers it is an opportunity to add value to the industry, show leadership, and strengthen connections with your market.
Step 5: make it easy to buy!
This step may seem low-tech, but at the core, this is really what Marketing 2.0 is all about. Think Buying, not selling. Empower the Buyer.
Consider not only your prospect's initial online experience, but the entire customer interaction lifecycle - from first contact, to training and after-sales support.
As a B2B marketer, remember that your customers must buy. Unlike in B2C, where many purchases are discretionary, B2B customers need your products and services to keep their own businesses running. It's not a want; it's a need. Therefore what often determines where they buy is how easy you make the buying process.
In other words, make it easy for your customer to buy from you, and you'll have a customer for life.
SOME FINAL THOUGHTS
So how long does it take to do all this? If you started today, when would you be running at full speed? The answer depends on two elements:
How committed your executive team is to implementing the new approach. Sales and Marketing need to collaborate to implement Marketing 2.0.
How much help you get along the way. Select a capable partner to help you through the challenges of Inbound Marketing and the complexities of SAMA, including SEO, PPC, Demand Generation, Reputation Management and CRM systems.Is it worth it? That depends on whether you want to spend the rest of your life in Siberia, or to come in from the cold. It's no secret that companies who implement Sales and Marketing Automation systems and embrace Marketing 2.0 see large increases in leads and triple digit increases in their sales conversion rates.