Essence in B2B Marketing

There have been numerous articles on B2C Marketing and a lot has been written about various subjects like – different approaches for marketing to them, branding, segmentation, profiling, customer delight, CRM and the list goes on, also covering new age tools like social media, viral, blogging, web, etc, etc…

This blog talks about B2B marketing and especially, those set of companies, with the following characteristics –
* whose products cannot be sold in the retail market
* where sales function is critical
* it’s all about big numbers
* where the normal gestation for sales conversion is 6 months or more

It is interesting to devise strategies to market such companies. Most of the things, I have read about, don’t have any relevance for such mammoths. Having spoken to some key people in some similar companies and taking their perspective alongwith my thoughts, my take on the things that forms the essence of B2B marketing.

Unlike most products in the B2C category, these products are not sold over mailers or phone or even the more recent ones, internet. In fact, because of the big world wide web, customers have a chance to meet your competitors as easily as ever. So, in traditional times, success of winning customers relied on the strength and smartness of your FOS, keeping other things constant, have changed now. It is, no doubt, important, but because of the overall emergence of new channels of information readily available, the buyer has become more aware and conscious about his requirements.

Things have changed dramatically, companies planning to buy your product or like, have the ability to research a hell-lot on the internet. This not only helps to get them self-educated, but also helps them reach to potential sellers (across the globe).. Markets are not restricted now to geograophies, bring in more competition..

I would like to detail the objectives, such companies want to achieve from marketing teams –
* Building a brand – which can be associated (and recognised) by employees, partners and customers (incl. prospects)

* Generate high credibility – by showcasing USPs, competitive advantage

* Develop internal resources to be industry experts (spokesperson) – who can exhibit detailed understanding about indusrty and its products/services in the marketplace

* Getting participation in the right forums / discussion boards / associations – which helps more involement from the industry as opinion leaders / experts

* Reaching out to a larger audience – by adopting new age tools like interactive web marketing, writing blogs on relevant subjects, Search engine optimisation, etc – to be in the loop and which can help educate customers about their requirements

I am concluding by stating my individual take on the most critical elements / stakeholders that need to be effectivey addressed in this space –
Employees – These are of utmost importance to your business. They are your mouthpiece in the market. Since, advertising does not play a big role here; these set of people, not only drive revenues, but also publicise your company and offering. More successful companies put huge efforts on this stakeholder to ensure their positivity and involement. Most of the advertising is restricted to hiring employees.

Partners / alliances – Most of B2B businesses work with partners (either forward or backward integration), their relationship is key to your business success. They might only enhance your offering, bring operational ease or help your business to be cost-effective, they can be strong advocates. They will talk a lot about you and another channel of being your spokesperson.

Customers – They bring you the money. They bring you the credibility. More the merrier or few but more satisifed the merrier would depend on the business

New age tools – All companies need to adopt / step-up to the new-age marketing.
Advertising on non-relevant, non-targeted space can just keep the marketing function occupied, but hardly generate results. The new-age is about interactive marketing where the relationship is changed from one-way-one-to-many to two-way-many-to-many. It’s the age where customers have more options to research (extensively), get educated and be informed.
The new-age PR is not about pushing a story to a publication. The new-journo finds relevant articles through web-sites, blogs and discussion forums on the topics they wish to write. They create a pool of information, overtime, and use it as an input to their writing.

Empowering customers - select products at your defined prices

An interesting concept of allowing the customers to select their own offers - put a reward to the item they want to buy. Customers can choose from an assortment of 'marked' produts in different categories and decide on the prices. By giving an alternate to have offers aligned to those needed products, am sure it makes a much fulfilling shopping experience.
Carrefour has initiated this and you can read more about it in http://www.thewisemarketer.com/news/read.asp?lc=h70213sx3128zk.
It takes the customer relationship and engagement at the next level - from pure selling to managing relationships to empowering them. Customers are themselves a part of the retailer's pricing policy.
To a certain extent, can this not be a Marketing Lagniappe (which i discussed in my previous blog).
It is an unexpected surprise, each time, every time and the customer, surely, talks about it to all...

Do something 'unexpected' extra, each time, every time

Marketing lagniappe (lăn-yăp)
The first few minutes, looking at the word mentioned in the title, just went in struggling to get the pronunciation right. Anyways...

Its a very interesting concept that i have come across and thought of having it mentioned in this site. The definition of 'Marketing Lagniappe' is act of differentiating your product or service by providing something little 'unexpected' extras.

It was interesting beacuse out of the whole list of examples that one gets to find on the blogs by Stan Phelps @ http://www.marketinglagniappe.com/, so much so that he is writing a book on this 'Marketing lagniappe - in search of your purple goldfish'.

I found the whole thing extremely simple, yet intriguing. After reading some of the cases, some of them were very run-of-the-mill, but I guess the presentation and ability to perform the task at all times was the real differentiator. One QSR - serves peanuts, while customers wait in the queue to get their order; while a hotel room – welcomes you with a funny animal (made out of towel) kept on the bed. There are whole loads of them and wonder why i haven’t seen any of them anywhere. Or is it that some of them are so simple (and subtle and not hitting straight in your face), that the experience lingers in the back of the mind for a long time..

I was attending a loyalty summit and the speaker gave us an example (as of now, it was one step towards lagniappe). He and his son were waiting in MacDonalds to get their burger and took unusually longer time. Observing them, one of the employee walked to them and asked about their irritation. Having heard their story, the employee was back with thier order, with an additional softie, for the son. This made the man (our speaker) more loyalist to MacDonalds than his son.

Taking this as a cue, do you think, the speaker and his son would have got almost same treatment at any other MacDonalds store. The answer is 'May or May not'. Here, I feel that the lagniappe was created by the employee (in an individual capacity) and not the corporate and this is the difference.

The beauty of this concept is not a little extra one time, but over and over again, which means that the dna of the org has to be aligned towards acting in a particular way (as a practice) that every individual in the org performs the task to turn the customers visit into 'an experience'. An experience, which he keeps talking about. It is an on-going concept (a practice, a mandate, a habit) to thrill your customer on any aspect of your business.