Reputation to Revenue

TL in 4D: Four dimensions for thought leadership success

B2B marketers know that thought leadership is essential, especially when selling high-value solutions. Business buyers tune out most traditional marketing, but they are always looking for new ideas. If we can produce interesting and useful content, and use social media and other platforms to spread the good word, we at least have a chance of getting into the conversations that our customers and prospects actually want to have. 

Perhaps not surprisingly, thought leadership topped the list when ITSMA recently asked marketing leaders at big tech and IT services firms which tactics will be more important in 2010. According to ITSMA, 77% of respondents cited thought leadership development as a priority, beating out references and testimonials, senior executive programs, and social media. 

For most B2B firms, however, thought leadership is getting a great deal more lip service than investment. Other than top consulting and professional service firms like McKinsey, Deloitte, and Accenture, few B2B firms have yet created a focused and well-organized thought leadership marketing program. My own recent review of 72 corporate members of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, for example, found that only 24 of these manufacturing, industrial, and technology companies even had a link to thought leadership content on their home page.

All too often, thought leadership in B2B is thinly funded (if at all), episodic, and superficial. 

• There is no dedicated staff, no editorial calendar for content production, and a heavy reliance on subject matter experts "volunteering" their nights and weekends to bang out a few white papers, articles, and blog posts. 
• Content tends to overemphasize company promotion and underemphasize customer and market evidence. 
• Publications typically are one-off productions with little coordinated effort to leverage new thinking into multiple formats, networks, and channels.  

To make a real impact with customers and create real distinction in the market, thought leadership needs focus, depth, and continuity.

Consider, for example Accenture's years-long in-depth research on high performing companies. They focus on strategic challenges facing each industry the company serves, orient primary research and publications to different executive roles among their client base, and deliver insights across a wide range of online, face-to-face, and social media platforms.

Not every company has Accenture's deep pockets, to be sure, but the lessons are clear. And it's not just a matter of blogging more and getting more content onto Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube -- although social media clearly IS critical for thought leadership dissemination and engagement. 

At a more fundamental level, companies looking for greater impact with thought leadership need to consider four essential dimensions of program development:

1. Points of View: Effective thought leadership is rooted in compelling, differentiated, and evidence-based points of view on important business challenges -- not product features or quick opinions or the experience of a single client engagement. Companies need to invest the time, research budgets, and analytic expertise it takes to create points of view that really matter. You've got to take a stand, but in ways that are not simply provocative but rooted in primary research and real world experience. (For a guide to developing effective points of view, check out Solutions Insights' Point of View Development Template.)
2. Internal Education: Especially with the rise of social media, you're relying more and more on a great many employees to tell your story, not just a few executives or subject matter experts. Investing in internal education around your points of view is critical to equipping marketing, sales, and other customer-facing employees (which could be anyone online) to engage constructively on the issues that matter in ways that demonstrate real expertise. It's also a great way to generate more insight and tap more internal experience to feed into Point of View development.
3. Market Engagement: Publishing and disseminating content is what most people think of when they consider thought leadership marketing. But the traditional reliance on white paper publishing, conference speaking, and pushing for mainstream media coverage is far too limited in today's always-on, socially networked world. Market engagement today is about pervasive presence and ongoing conversation; publishing is just the beginning of the process. And the development of more substantial points of view makes it much easier to produce steadier streams of useful content across multiple platforms.
4. Program Operations: Making this all work requires dedicated staff, disciplined processes, and clear metrics and accountability. This doesn't have to mean huge staffs or budgets, but it does mean accepting that the "volunteer" work on nights and weekends is unlikely to have a serious impact or create distinction against competitors with a more organized and funded approach. Rather, you need to bring together people, processes and tools that can do the research and analysis, generate compelling points of view, and sustain the internal and market engagement required to reap the benefits effective thought leadership can provide.

Based on our own research and experience working with thought leadership programs across the IT and professional services sectors, Solutions Insights has developed a four stage roadmap for thought leadership program development, as you can see below. It's a simple model that necessarily abstracts a great deal of nuanced reality, but it should be useful in evaluating your own programmatic maturity and considering next steps for improvement. We'd love to know what you think of the roadmap -- and please weigh in with comments on your own approach and experience. We're still learning, too.

 
 

Words and meaning: The power of alignment

Suzanne Lowe from Expertise Marketing has a great piece in her June newsletter on the importance of developing a common lexicon for marketing and business development in professional service firms. 

Pointing to common misunderstandings between business leaders and partners, on the one hand, and marketers and business developers on the other, about such basic terms as "return on investment," Lowe suggests that PS firms would be well served by investing some time in building common understanding. 

Most important, she says, is defining marketing and business development "up" to a more expansive and strategic view: 

For example, why should the term "marketing only connote the limited activities of, let's say, "building awareness," or "sales support?" Shouldn't the term "marketing be understood to also include targeting and segmentation? Pricing? Client loyalty? In many professional firms, marketing does not mean these latter terms, only the former.

To which I can only say, Amen.

It's not just professional service firms, of course. Many of the technology firms I work with suffer from the same problems: confusion over key terms and meanings, and a general defining "down" of what marketing is all about. And now that we're all trying to sort out the tangled terms of Web 2.0/social media/social networking/social web/marketing 2.0, the language problem is only getting worse.

But all is not lost, and Lowe is right to suggest that lexiconical alignment (if there is such a phrase!) can be a powerful force. 

Just consider the confusion around the word "solutions." If marketing is often misunderstood, the "S" word is subject to near-universal confusion. For companies that have taken the time to work through a solutions lexicon and taxonomy, however, the benefits have been substantial. 

My old company ITSMA has been in the forefront of this work in the IT sector, and my colleagues and I at Solutions Insights have continued to work with clients in similar fashion. In a great many cases, progress on the real work of bringing new offerings to market, sharpening marketing messaging to emphasize strategic business problems rather than product features and functions, and reorienting sales forces to sell integrated business "solutions" could only happen after all the relevant stakeholders agreed on a common language.

As it has been with solutions, so it can be with "marketing." In Lowe's own words, "New understandings of terms will foster practitioners' ability to grow the 'right' revenues, gain meaningful market share, and optimally serve clients."

What do you think?

Photo credit: greebile

The hard questions about social media for B2B solutions providers

The skepticism about social media for B2B is pretty much gone by now. It's still pretty new for a great many companies, but the combination of legitimate success stories, overwhelming hype, and the desperate search for new ways to reach customers when the old ways work less and less has convinced all but the most recalcitrant among us that social media is at least worth a try.

But how to proceed is far from clear, especially for companies selling high-value solutions that typically require very long sales cycles with multiple influencers and decision makers in every transaction. Even for companies with a fair amount of social media experience, figuring out specifically where and how to invest in social media is a huge challenge. 

It's all well and good to dabble in blogging, Twitter, and YouTube, but creating a strategic, focused, and sustainable social media program requires answering some pretty tough questions, such as:

• Who are we really trying to reach? Do we have a clear sense of which customers, prospects, influencers, and/or other stakeholders are active in social networks, or could be -- and why it's important to reach them this way?
• How do we get their attention? Attention is the scarcest commodity, especially at the executive level where many solutions marketers are determined to engage. Do we really understand what social programs or activities or applications are most likely to succeed with the people we are trying to reach?
• Do we have the skills? Lots of people talk the social media talk, but can they really deliver? Executing with social media requires a diverse set of skills, including content development, recruitment, conversation, facilitation, analysis, and, most of all, LISTENING. Who in the organization is going to do the heavy lifting?
• How should we organize our efforts? Who should "own" social media is a big conversation topic these days, with claims coming from varying departments and types of agencies. Some suggest that the very idea of ownership goes against the democratic philosophy of social media. Do we have a solid strategy for planning, budgeting, and managing our efforts in a coordinated way? Are we confident that we're not taking too narrow or broad a view of how this might work best?
• Can we sustain the effort? Social media is generally a long term proposition; initiatives may take 6-12 months or more to gain real momentum even if they are well designed and managed. Do we have the staying power to stick with it month after month after month even if the early returns are slight?
• How do we capture real value and return on investment? How will we measure success? Do we have clearly defined and realistic objectives and metrics? How will we make sure the benefits reach across the organization?
• How can we minimize risk? Among the first question many executives ask about social media are: What if people say negative things about our company? What if one of our employees shares something proprietary or just stupid or embarrassing about our company? The reality is that social media does bring risk, but the risk is there whether we engage actively or not. How can we manage and support our activities in ways that lessen the risk and increase the reward?
• Are we culturally ready? A question that some companies don't ask is "are we really ready to open the doors and join the conversation?" The biggest challenge with social media is literally being social. It's having the mindset and the culture and the confidence to engage in open conversation, trust your colleagues and staff to do the same, accept criticism publicly, and give up the old notions of controlling the message and marketing to an audience.  

A great danger today is that, in their haste to "catch up," many companies are all of a sudden taking the social media plunge without addressing many of these essential questions. In my own recent discussions with clients and prospects, I've had a lot of questions about tools and tactics (e.g., "What should we be doing with Twitter or Facebook or online video), but less about strategy, objectives, organization, and culture.

Experimentation is fine, and even necessary given the constant innovation in social tools and channels, but taking social media requires a well-developed strategy. This seems almost too obvious to state; unfortunately, though, the hype around social media appears to have caused a lot of otherwise smart marketers to temporarily forget the basics of Marketing 101. Social media may well revolutionize the practice of marketing, but the will core objectives remain the same: serving customers, finding avenues for growth, building reputation, and supporting sales.

I'm not sure it's possible to define "best practice" for solutions marketing in such a new and fast-changing arena as social media, but answering the hard questions above will certainly go a long way toward developing a strategy with a good chance of success.

To help answer some of the hard questions, my partners and I at Solutions Insights have just published a short report, Socializing Solutions: Tapping Social Media for Solutions Success (PDF). The report includes a set of guidelines on where to focus your efforts and a basic, four-phase approach to building an integrated, sustainable program. Please check it out and pass it along. I'd love to know what you think.

Photo credit: OCLS

Put everyone in marketing? Yes, and with a social spin

Harvard management guru Rosabeth Moss Kanter last week suggested: "In a Recession, Put Everyone in Marketing." The idea, of course, is that you can't just keep cutting costs endlessly, and your employees are your most important asset. When times are tough, everyone needs to contribute to growth.

It's a perfectly fine idea, although often stated as one of those age-old cliches that you don't actually take seriously: "Sure, we're all marketers. Great. Can we get back to work now?"

In fact, the recession is the perfect time to merge the basic idea of everyone supporting marketing with the mega-trend of social media.

Kanter's five suggestions for how to put everyone in marketing are all good ones, but surprisingly pre-Web 2.0. If we give them a social spin, the possibilities become a lot more interesting.

• Increase customer contact and communication. Not only should senior executives reach out more, so should employees throughout the organization. "Perhaps a personal note or a phone call to provide news or ask questions." Isn't it time to accelerate efforts to connect with customers through social networks and communities, and tap employees around the organization who are already active to lead the charge?
• Start looking for new markets now. All employees should be looking for new uses of existing products and new areas for potential customers. "This might involve sales calls, tests of a new channel, postings on Web sites targeting new areas or industry segments, sending more people to speak at industry conferences and cultivate relationship." What about tapping the social web both internally and externally to rapidly crowdsource new market ideas and opportunities, as  companies like IBM, Dell, Cisco, and others are doing with innovation jams and webstorms?
• Invest in employee morale. When morale is down, productivity suffers. Managers should do more to show employees how much they are valued. "Small tokens of appreciation and enjoyment, such as a weekend outing with families or a food festival with employee contributions... go a long way to keep people motivated." Why not really open up the organization internally with a new transparency using honest executive blogs, wide-ranging online discussion of business challenges and opportunities, and an authentic commitment from the top to respond to employee questions and concerns? If the new external marketing is all about open conversation and community, the new internal marketing should be, too.  
• Emphasize and reward small wins. Tough times make it that much more important to get new ideas from anyone and everyone in the organization, but companies too often neglect to ask or provide incentives to help the process along. "A program that actively seeks these ideas and rewards them... can strengthen the company immediately." Why not use the crowdsourcing approach noted above for an even broader effort to generate and recognize new business improvement ideas. 
• Stick with your values. Managers are often tempted to cut ethical corners in a down economy, but desperate measures often come back to haunt the company soon thereafter -- "Reminders about company values can reinforce solidarity and increase the confidence that customers have in the company." What about using the recession as the perfect opportunity to increase public commitment to management transparency and corporate social responsibility, and create new online resources such as interactive sustainability reports to demonstrate the commitment?

Kanter is right on when she suggests that getting all employees involved in knowing and caring about customers is a key to success when times are tough. This is not exactly easy when many of those employees are understandably worried most of all about their own job security and families. Fortunately, our growing experience with new social tools and programs is making it a bit easier just when we need it most. 

What do you think?

Photo credit: aleske

Marketing, sales, and "digital body language"

Several years back, I put some energy into "solving" the age-old conflict between marketing and sales. Or, at least trying to help clients and member companies in the B2B technology world (I was at ITSMA at the time) think anew about how best to align the two functions and get them working together more effectively. 

The gist of the argument is that global competition and online transparency give buyers the ability to control the buying process far more than ever before. As such, sales is less able to go it alone, and relies more than ever on strong marketing to gain deep market and customer insight, build reputation, provide focused thought leadership content to fuel useful conversation, and build relationships of tangible value. 

We've seen some useful progress across the industry in recent years with marketing and sales playing together more nicely. Account-based marketing is one of the more promising initiatives in this regard, bringing together marketing and sales teams to create a marketing-driven approach to building business with strategic accounts.

But it may be all for naught if companies keep reacting to the current crisis the way they have reacted to downturns in the past: namely, to slash spending on marketing and put all hopes on beefing up sales. 

Marketing blogs and journals are of course filled with warnings about the folly of cutbacks and the historical successes of those companies that stayed the marketing course even amid declining sales. But the marketing cuts keep coming, and I wonder how companies expect to maintain or even increase sales while hacking away at the increasingly essential support systems that make those sales possible.

Steve Woods from Eloqua hit right on this critical point in an interview with Chris Herbert about his new book, Digital Body Language:  

If you look back prior to the information resources of the Internet, people needed to connect with a salesperson to get their information on a product or service. As the salesperson was that conduit, they had an opportunity to read that prospect's body language - crossed arms, smiles, frowns - and understand what messages resonated, and where they were in their decision-making process.

Now that prospective buyers get their information online, they no longer need the salesperson as information conduit. This means that the challenge of reading body language now is on the marketer, who must read their Digital Body Language - what messages they respond to, what information they find interesting - and use that to better guide any communications with them.

The point here is not that companies should cut sales instead of marketing. Rather, it's that they need to keep up the effort to integrate the two in a more collaborative approach that provides real value to potential customers. Now is the time to accelerate the change, not fall back into the old ways that won't work any more.

Social media reality check: Predictions for 2009

Amid the inevitable and generally useless flood of predictions for 2009, Peter Kim published a useful e-book today on Social Media Predictions 2009 (pdf). Based on the contributions of 14 other experts, the document covers a wide range of issues, from metrics and mobile to budget and B2B.

What I found most interesting, however, was the relatively sober tone of many of the contributors after the last several years of incredible social media hype. 

Partly this is just economic reality. Even as the advocates expect a greater push toward social media as potentially cheaper than other marketing programs, several also expect a shakeout of Web 2.0 firms as the reality of questionable (or no) business models finally catches up to them. As Chris Brogan noted, "Doors are going to close all over the social web. Why? Because the money didn't come the way people thought it would." 

And from the marketing side, as Jeremiah Owyang states,"The recession will force revenue results out of social technologies--marketing must prove its worth to actually changing the bottom line."

More important, from the large company perspective, is the growing recognition that social media is hard! The contributors themselves are all social media stars, of course, (and mostly consultants ready and able to help), but their success doesn't translate so easily at the enterprise level.

As David Armano explains:

In 2008 we saw many organizations taking Web 2.0 very seriously moving from 'why' to 'how' they should implement these new strategies and tactics. In 2009, reality will set in--big time...

Organizations will come to terms with the reality that although it is now 'cheaper' to launch an initiative leveraging Web 2.0 technology--it requires qualified and passionate people to make them successful. This will not be easy for many businesses/brands as it brings up a host of issues ranging from empowering employees & agencies to have direct contact with customers, to staffing up projects differently.

Meanwhile, as both Pete Blackshaw and Charlene Li argue, the rush to quantity (more, more, more connections on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) may shift the other way. For Blackshaw:

Many of us are going to wake up in 2009 wondering 'what did we eat?' -- everything from hastily assembled friends list to Twitter followers to groups, apps, and widgets that we 'impulse adopted' (usually while shadowing others) yet rarely revisited. Some of us will join the Social Media equivalent of Weight Watchers, eager to trim the excess and rediscover a modicum of 'don't follow everything' discipline.

More people backing away from "following everything" means we marketers will have to work that much harder to get them to follow us.

Todd Defren thinks that many more B2B companies will join the party in 2009. I certainly hope so, but if they do, they'll probably need to follow two other trends:

• Companies Increasingly Crafting Content. For Ann Handley, the important news is that "organizations are increasingly focusing on producing kick-ass content to attract and retain customers, rather than randomly grabbing folks off the street." Moreover, Handley notes, the sad news of a new wave of unemployed journalists and editors might have a silver lining if companies look in their direction for help in creating more compelling content.  
• Velvet Rope Social Networks. For Chris Brogan, "the real interest will be in making targeted networks that aren't 'come one, come all.' Companies instead will focus on narrower networks for specific industry verticals and interest groups. 

All in all, I remain bullish on social media marketing for B2B next year, but it's certainly helpful to have a more realistic attitude about the challenges of doing it well. Huge kudos to Peter Kim for pulling together such a useful guide.

Doing the right thing: Three quick thoughts

Not to be all doom and gloom or anything, but it's hard to talk to folks these days and not get caught up in the economic anxiety and client pullbacks that everyone is dealing with. In that context, three quick thoughts on doing the right thing:

• For clients: It's even more important now to go the extra mile to help out, even if this means advising them to cut back with you or look elsewhere for help. Seth Godin's blog today uses a shoe store story to illustrate the point: If you don't have the right size for a customer, help him find a store that does even if it is a competitor. Pushing him toward the wrong size will only backfire, and helping him out will generate the good will, stories, and referrals that we all need to succeed.
• For prospects: Run fast from any marketing tactic that suggests the barest hint of deception. Buyers in a bad mood jump even faster on attempts to fool them, and have more energy to spread the bad word -- which is then amplified by the online watchdogs. A recent MarketingProfs newsletter tells the tale of how Stokefire, a naming company, sniffed out deceptive blogging practices from a new competitor, blew the whistle, and watched the ensuing storm. As Tate Linden of Stokefire notes, "your brand is who you are when you think no one is looking." If you wouldn't be proud to have the tactic highlighted publicly to prospects and clients alike, don't do it!
• For employees: Communicate openly and aggressively about what's happening with the business, including possible layoffs or other cutbacks. Everyone is talking about it anyway, so being especially transparent lessens the rumor mill and inspires a bit more trust in company leadership. Communications coach Carmine Gallo recalls his own bad experience after 9/11 as a useful intro to some helpful tips in BusinessWeek. To which I would only add that how you deal with any required layoffs is equally critical. Your former colleagues will tell their stories far and wide as soon as they are laid off; stories of honesty, integrity, and fairness are obviously more helpful, or at least less destructive.

It's easy to let the daily struggle overwhelm our knowledge of what's really right. But much as we'll personally regret any "wrong thing" shortcuts in the days and months to come, we're all too likely to suffer the direct business consequences as well.

The training imperative for B2B marketing

AdWeek has a nice article today on how some of the large agencies are revamping their training programs to help attract, develop, and retain talent. A survey of agencies include DDB, Deutsch, Grey, McCann Erickson, and Saatchi & Saatchi highlights a number of new initiatives in such hot areas as mobile marketing, social media, and data analytics. "The overall consensus among the sample," according to AdWeek, "is that general 101-level classes aren't nearly enough in an industry that is defined today mainly by change."

It's a welcome recognition of the importance of continuing professional development, and one can only hope it is paralleled by a similar recognition within B2B marketing departments as well. Even if the agencies do catch up with the most needed skills and approaches, they are still only as good as the companies that hire them.

The problem on the corporate side, of course, is that training and professional development is the first thing to be cut when budgets tighten up.

For companies marketing to other businesses there is another problem, too. Even in today's services-dominated economy, most marketing training reflects its roots in consumer products.

A look at the recent Economist Intelligence Unit report on "10 Megatrends in B2B Marketing 2008" (PDF) suggests some critical areas for investment in training B2B marketing professionals, such as:

• Thought leadership marketing
• Executive relationship development
• Integrated marketing
• Marketing to emerging markets
• Web 2.0 and social media
• Marketing ROI

All of these areas are quite different in marketing to businesses than marketing to individual consumers -- and all are areas that the B2B marketing organizations I know, at the very least, are still early in developing.

As the pace of change continues to accelerate, B2B marketing leaders would do well to follow the lead of some of their agency partners. DDB, for example, sets aside a firm percentage of gross revenue each year for employee training, and that percentage has climbed steadily in the last few years, according to global chief communications officer Jeff Swystun -- who told AdWeek very clearly, "To us this is a huge investment in our ongoing relevance and differentiation."

New Booz CMO points the way for B2B

Booz & Company today announced that Thomas Stewart, former editor  and managing director of Harvard Business Review, is joining the management consulting firm as Chief Marketing and Knowledge Officer. It's not exactly a typical career progression for heads of marketing, but it is an important sign of the growing importance that companies are placing on winning with ideas.

Consulting firms like Booz are have always used their expertise as a core asset in marketing and selling their services. But putting a career writer, editor, and intellectual like Stewart atop marketing and into the C-suite reflects the growing understanding, especially in B2B and services companies, that marketing organizations as a whole need to think and behave more like publishers than promoters.

Developing, disseminating, and stimulating conversations about ideas and information that relevant audiences want is the future for B2B and services marketing; figuring out clever ways to get them to pay attention to your standard pitch is the past. Kudos to Booz for taking the logical but still unusual next step in marketing's evolution.  

"Did everyone hate me then as much as I hate them now?"

Wow. I've been working on a research project on how services companies build their brands and, although the project is confidential, I couldn't resist posting this line. It comes from a woman in her first field marketing job after spending years at the corporate/headquarters level. We were talking about the inevitable tensions between corporate and the field when it comes to messaging, advertising, and the like, and she just came out with this.

We always talk about the conflicts between marketing and sales, but this is a great reminder that those between corporate and field marketing, especially in large organizations, can be just as corrosive. Amid the race to do more with less, it's important to set aside the time to build collaboration and relationships across the organization. Brands reflect their people a lot more than any manufactured message or tag line, and "hating" across organizational lines is not exactly a recipe for success.