Are you building your b2b online marketing expertise?
Is a large part of your marketing efforts focused on b2b online marketing? If you are part of the marketing team at any self respecting b2b company, that’s probably the case.
No matter how traditional your audience or what is your target demographic, it’s safe to say that in 2012 we are all doing a significant share of our marketing – in the digital world.
It’s often a steep curve to climb, especially for marketing departments in traditional companies, where some of the brightest most experienced marketers have just started wrapping their heads around the concepts of Facebook and LinkedIn and how they can be leveraged for business.
Yes, some savvy marketing departments are on top of the latest and greatest in b2b online marketing, but most others are outsourcing all their online campaigns to external agencies.
In traditional ‘less sexy’ industries B2B marketing departments still have a lot to learn on how to truly engage and attract their target audience online.
If your company is experiencing with b2b online marketing through advertising, social networking, blogging and content marketing, then you are on the right path. Pay attention, though, more often than not, marketers are so focused on executing individual online campaigns and seeing one time results, that they lose out on a great opportunity: to learn a great deal about their customers and to retain any knowledge acquired by individuals in the organization, so it can be leveraged in the future.
The digital, online and mobile environment is constantly evolving. The internet has been part of our life for less than a few decades and what a leap technology has made. With disruptive technologies constantly changing the online arena, and sites and communities popping up as a matter of routine (Pinterest anyone?) adapting to change becomes a skill any organization who wants to succeed in the online world needs to master.
The nature of the online media landscape is not likely to stabilize any time soon. New technologies will keep popping up and the more established traditional ones will move online. Customers and consumer behaviors will constantly shift in ways that are very hard to predict.
What does a marketer to do?
A great advice that will always reap dividends is to put the focus in your organization on learning and building an internal knowledge base and skill-set rather and on the results of individual campaigns.
Focusing on executing just one specific piece of the puzzle will not help your company build a b2b online marketing competitive advantage that can really last. Yes, you will see ad hock results but you will always be chasing your tail trying to emulate the latest cool idea you have seen a competitor do or blindly following best practice recommendations by the lately hyped b2b online marketing agency of the day.
You might not be moving ahead with your digital efforts overall, and not building a platform from which you could truly build a competitive edge and leverage your aggregated acquired experience.
A great way to do this is to make sure your company develops an infrastructure that is geared towards organizational learning and one that continually takes advantage of the rich data and flexibility that are associated with digital media.
How can you do that? Create a culture that promotes learning and adaptation.
Ongoing learning as well as supporting and promoting an organizational culture that encourages it, are critical to your ability to develop a true competitive edge online.
Instead of pushing your marketing staff to go ahead and implement another campaign on Facebook, invest in building your company’s capacity to learn and quickly apply the more general b2b online marketing concepts.
Invest in learning:
There is no end to marketing trainers and agencies on offer that can work with your staff to teach them the basics. Make sure, whoever you are hiring is focused on teaching your staff how to do things themselves and not just promoting employing them if you want to see real results.
Even if budget is a concern and your organization can’t afford a large expenditure, invest in online training solutions or just buy a training course in a box and share it with your employees.
This highly popular online marketing training course, for example, is presented by some of the best names in online marketing today, who charge big brands an arm and a leg for their consulting services – it requires the most minimal investment and no facilities or additional costs to run.
Share the Knowledge:
It’s not enough to learn, you need to implement a process that will help apply the lessons that are learned immediately into your campaigns and future b2b online marketing activities. Agility is key. Don’t just stop at implementing and applying the insights into your marketing efforts – make sure the insights are shared across your organization -for sales teams, and customer support to learn from and act upon.
Using solutions like online marketing portals can provide a great platform for sharing marketing insights across the organization and onwards with partners and resellers. It’s important to design them in a way that promotes knowledge sharing and learning.
Any investment you make now in infrastructure will be returned tenfold when your employees start to get true insights into the results of their campaigns and the preferences of customers.
B2B marketing strategies to help you survive a recession
Marketers commonly look for b2b marketing strategies that can help their business survive tough financial times. The first tip to consider – never view an economic downturn as a time to shrink and retreat, hang in there and hope for the best.
With the right perspective you can help your business turn a potentially problematic situation into a positive marketing opportunity.
If you too are concerned about the best way to prioritise your marketing efforts during a recession, read on to find out some great b2b marketing strategies on how to handle an economic slowdown, and come out of it as a winner, prepared for the next economic boom.
B2B marketing strategy #1: Communicate with confidence and don’t avoid the issues
When communicating with your customers, both existing and potential customers, you need to recognize the situation they are in. You are not the only company struggling with the downturn. Your customers have their own worries and concerns about the situation and you need to acknowledge that in all your communication.
Start by mapping out who among your potential customers and existing clients is likely to be most concerned about the impact the downturn is having on your business.
Then, put yourself in your clients shoes and come up with what their individual concerns might be. If you have a trusted partner you can turn to for advice, learn from him what concerns your other potential buyers.
Once you know the issues that concern your potential customers and might be preventing them from coming to you for their purchases, make sure to provide sincere answers to everything you identified. Craft your messages in a way that addresses all the different issues and is honest and to the point – yet positive.
Most importantly, don’t gloss over the hard questions – you will come across as insincere. Rather, reach into the organisation and dig out proof and evidence to any of the points you make. One of the best b2b marketing strategies you can use is to be transparent with your customer and build trust.
Communicate from the top – the involvement of senior management in any campaign proves that you are taking those issues seriously and will do whatever it takes to address them.
Encourage your audience to submit their questions too – help them engage with you.
Your customers will thank you in loyalty – in the near future and further on, when times are better.
B2B marketing strategy #2: Use technology to cut costs
A recession brings with it lower budgets forcing marketers to find smart ways to maintain a dialogue with their customers. The focus shifts to optimising both spend and impact.
Communications need to be optimised for your target audience interest and channels, as you cannot afford to spend money on messaging that doesn’t reach its targets. It’s therefore important to put in place processes that will help produce the right segmented data and the ability to analyse it.
Communicating in a cost effective way also becomes essential. Use different channels, look at your results and test test test. Focus only on the most effective campaigns, and optimise constantly. From email to SMS, contextual messaging that appears across channels becomes the way to go.
Try web collaboration tools to test ideas and gain customer buy-in through online focus groups and e-surveys. Crawl the social media scene. The more you learn about your customers the more you will be able to improve the quality of your campaigns and to accelerate the time it takes to bring your message to the market and to generate more revenue.
Look for technology based solutions that don’t cost much or serve as a long term investment, but cut costs and improve process immediately. Take advantage of virtual meeting rooms to cut the time and cost related with flying across continents and conducting group wide meetings. Use Marketing portals to automate sales staff access to marketing collateral and improve internal communication among the different divisions.
B2B marketing strategy #3: Let your brand concept guide you:
Any marketer will tell you how valuable it is to have a strong brand. But your brand can really shine as one of your strongest assets during a recession. It can help you make your own company decisions, while attracting potential customers.
During a recession, firms with weak brands shrink, whilst those with strong brands can get ahead.
Companies with strong impactful brands can take a long term view while making decisions, because they have a vision for the future. A vision that is derived from their brand idea. They innovate to fulfil their brand promise to their customer, and stand out as a partner you can trust to deliver. They have a core belief that guides them in anything they do.
For B2B brands these are invaluable assets – ones that may often justify potential customers choosing your company over the cheaper alternative in an increasingly commoditized market.
Strong brands lead marketing efforts with a clear and unique message – this is what we stand for. With a strong brand message you don’t need to spend precious resources on blanket advertising.
Smart companies use the downturn as a time to reinforce their brand proposition in everything they do: who they hire and who they fire, which partnerships to choose and how to innovate. They let their brand concept and what it stands for guide them through any decisions they need to make.
Use this b2b marketing strategies to propel your business forward. With the right attitude you can look at the recession as your chance to craft your unique niche in a less cluttered marketplace and come through as a winner.
Marketing Portals – The tool your B2B business can’t ignore
Marketing portals are a good investment for any B2B business, but their value is truly apparent in the face of an economic recession.
More than 82 percent of marketing agency clients say their marketing budgets have been greatly reduced for the upcoming year, noted The DRUM Modern Marketing & Media organization’s Design Industry Voices Survey in December 2011. Contrary to expert opinions, marketing departments are usually the first to be cut or reduced during hard economic times. As a result, salespeople have much less support and access to the key tools they need to help bring their companies through the economic downtown. Consequently, they are recruiting fewer clients in the business-to-business arena.
The skeletal marketing department that remains has less time to respond to the pressing needs of its sales staff and shifting customer confidence. At the same time, sales personnel are asking for more leads, more analyses, more trade shows, more seminars and other resources. They are desperate to distinguish their product or service in a very competitive market.
What’s the solution? An effective solution is a marketing portal. What is a marketing portal and how can it benefit your company?
Marketing Portals: What are they?
Think of a marketing portal as a gateway for your marketing team, sales staff, business partners, clients, potential customers and senior management. A marketing portal uses specific software that helps your organization control, distribute and track the results of every type of marketing.
If your business relies upon a business-to-business sales model, marketing portals can be especially useful by providing a 24-hour self-service resource for distributors, dealers, agents, retailers or any type of clients you may have. Content is also targeted, so sales personnel can access the most up-to-date materials and internal company documents while other audiences can access information only meant for them.
What are the benefits?
Previously, companies provided information via intranets and sales extranets. However, users frequently complained about poor navigation and functionality, outdated information and inconsistent branding. “The marketing portal is a sales nirvana where every salesperson can find the right information at the right time for each selling situation,” Scott Richardson with Chief Marketer said. “It’s where every salesperson benefits from best practices and company-wide expertise.”
Advantages of installing a marketing portal as opposed to an intranet or extranet include:
The initial investment is minimal. There is usually a set-up fee, then subsequent service fees based on your company’s needs. Often times, the right supplier will help you build a marketing portal that meets your needs, which you can then maintain and tweak as needed, as your company’s marketing needs change.
There is often very little development time – the right supplier can offer you existing templates, built based on extensive input from companies such as yours or work with you to design the right marketing portal for your company’s needs, but this should happen quite quickly.
Marketers will be able to customize the functionality based on what they perceive as needed to produce results.
There is no limit on the number or type of items you can include.
You can track the performance of your marketing collateral and improve your offering, as you go along, based on real data.
Salespeople have real-time access to every marketing item that they need, including trade show booths, product samples and literature.
The middleman is totally removed. As a result, you can speed up the process of getting the requested materials to your salespeople and business partners.
While it’s often a good idea to have them take part in the process, in most cases your Information Technology department does not need to be involved in the installation or maintenance.
How should they be set up?
The amount of quality information provided and the way in which it is organized should be of vital importance. Your portal will be useless if it does not contain what your staff and business partners are seeking.
Good content has three main benefits. First, it makes the information easy to find.
Second, it encourages the accidental discovery of additional information. When potential clients are interested in one product, a portal allows them the opportunity to discover additional content that addresses any other questions they may have.
Third, up-to-date content will increase a user’s “session time,” how long they spend on your portal and how frequently they will return for updated content.
Moreover, an interconnected portal with a large amount of relevant information will encourage your clients to share the links and recommend your portal to others in their industry.
A key tip from Property Portal Watch (PPW) is to build quality links. When other sites in your industry refer back to your portal, it builds your reputation and presence on the Internet. Bill Striker, a writer with PPW, says, “The best way to do this is by providing unique and interesting content that industry sites will want to reference. The quality of links is just as, if not more, important than the quantity.” This technique increases your portal’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
In addition, SEO must constantly be re-evaluated. Sites evolve. What’s acceptable today might not be tomorrow. It’s important to stay up to date so that potential clients find your portal.
One last tip, also from PPW, is to encourage conversation about your portal on social networking sites. Cone Inc.’s Social Media In Business Study says 93 percent of business buyers believe all companies should have a presence in social media. Such a presence will help position your portal as an authority and expose it beyond just search engines.
The business-to-business area is competitive. Ensure that your clients have access to relevant content and your sales staff have access to the marketing analyses and materials they need by creating a marketing portal.
There are numerous companies available that provide portal set-up and SEO optimization. It is always recommended you seek a professional in order to fully take advantage of what a portal can offer.
How to get the most out of your sales portal
Think of a sales portal as a knowledge system that encourages the members of your organisation to take action and helps generate sales for your company.
Traditionally, sales portals were online sites meant to increase the effectiveness of your sales force work through the provision of information and tools that will help them identify leads and close deals.
While closing deals is the role of your sales force, by leveraging other members of your community you will be able to generate much better results. Why not harness other stakeholders in the company to help you generate leads and sales?
Sales portals really deliver value when they not only serve as a static repository of information, but rather incentivise and promote interactions and push whoever is browsing them to take action. If those interactions are organisation wide, you can really turbo charge your sales process.
Imagine a sales portal that not only helps the sales team identify the information they need to close a deal, but is a collaborative community of your entire organisation.
Design your sales portal as a place where all stakeholders can contribute their input to the selling cycle.
A good sales force is built of the right information and the right tools. It’s about finding everything you need, that is sales related, at any point in time, but also helping the process of moving potential customers and leads through the sales funnel.
A company wide sales force
Give everyone in your company a place to log interest in products or new potential customers. If your operations or support staff has been asked a question by an existing customer about a feature which doesn’t exist in the version he currently owns, he might have been told this feature is not available or that another premium solution you sell provides it. The conversation is one of many, and soon forgotten. What if your support staff was incentivised to easily log on to an online sales portal and log in the name of the customer and the interest expressed? Online campaigns could be sent, the lead nurturing process started, and your sales team could very easily pick up on this bit of information and start moving that client through the sales funnel.
This is true of any interaction, from a secretary meeting a friend over lunch and being asked what the company she works for does, and hearing that her friend’s company is looking for the exact solution to registering ideas for future features of interest that could be incorporated into the product pipeline.
By properly setting up an easy to use portal, that is not only about the information, but focuses on the interactions and actions you want to achieve, you can effectively create a company wide sales force, that focuses on helping your company generate more sales and helping your sales force improve its results.
Streamline access to information
Some sales tools are usually considered the property of your sales force and no one else – for example, tools that help your sales team create quotes or submit proposals. There are several arguments in favour of keeping them in the hands of sales people. However, imagine the benefits of allowing your support staff and others working with your customers or providing front line service to gain access to parts of this information.
How will their work and engagement improve if they understand the value your company assigns to its services, products and solutions? Can they not better deliver on what your sales people are pitching in their proposals?
How would marketing efforts and deliverables improve, were sales related information to seamlessly transition into their hands? By gaining insights into the types of materials leads were exposed to, what was pushed by representatives of your company and what was pulled by potential customers your marketing team can gain a real understanding of how to help leads move through the sales funnel.
Statistics and information usually available on marketing portals, should streamline and flow onto a sales portal.
In reality the two can be merged with levels of permissions and views. The benefits are greater effectiveness and enhanced collaboration.
Design for consumption and use
Make sure your sales portal encourages use. Think about providing just in time information, when it is needed, in an easy to digest format. Help users navigate the portal and its tools in a way that is easy and intuitive. Incorporate best practice information and use it as a teaching tool, at the point of need, when a sales person access the portal to get a specific answer. The likelihood of him using that best practice bit, are much higher than if he had to refer to training offered several months before.
Sales portals have a huge potential- fewer emails would be sent and more knowledge shared on one hub, instead of being locked in the hands of a few. The main beneficiaries– your company and your bottom line results.
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How to design your marketing portal for commercial success
Creating a marketing portal to automate some of your marketing department interactions with your company’s clients, partners or agents is a smart move
By having a central online repository that is used to showcase, promote and distribute your marketing collateral, you are able to better support your sales teams, any marketing offices and business partners.
Having a marketing portal helps you make sure that you provide the best support to your internal and external clients, by providing:
Control – You decide what is on offer on your portal. By providing only the most up to date versions of your marketing collateral, you make sure that your brand is properly showcased around the world and by any agents – the most up to date logo and the right taglines. You can offer customisable templates that can only be changed within certain parameters, enforcing your brand guidelines and making sure brand adherence is high across all your partners.
Flexibility – By giving your clients 24×7 access to any marketing materials they might need, you are really supporting their work. No more complaints from the sales teams that they cannot get what they need in time. With the ability to search, print or order the materials they are interested in – the power has shifted to their hands.
Increase usage – You can properly showcase any marketing material you have created and increase its usage. If clients have an easy, uniform way to search and access your marketing collateral, they are bound to use it more, and at the same time gain exposure to everything you are offering.
Improve efficiency and cost effectiveness – a Marketing portal offers the ability to only print materials, when they are needed. On demand printing or ordering of marketing collateral costs less and allows you to track and measure the use of marketing budgets by your partners.
Gain valuable feedback- if you set up your marketing portal correctly you can track and measure what products are used, downloaded and printed the most, and create more of your most effective marketing tools. This makes your marketing department’s work more efficient and adds tremendous value over time.
Here are some top tips to keep in mind when designing your company’s marketing portal:
Put your clients first
Marketing professionals don’t need to be told to put the customer first and to keep his needs in mind. However, a lot of us often forget that our internal sales force, our franchisees and our agents are the marketing department’s customers. It’s worth investing time in understanding exactly what they expect and need, in order to do their job properly.
Tailor your marketing portal to your clients needs. It’s there to serve them. The easier to use and more intuitive it will be, the higher the chances of them actually using it – and of you reaping the benefits.
Prioritize interactivity over static content – by default, online marketing portals often serve as a repository of anything and everything that marketing departments produce. Don’t just dump your marketing collateral under general categories such as ‘white papers’ and ‘case studies’.
Offer users the exact products they need and an intuitive path to finding that which is most relevant and useful to them. If you have several clients using your marketing portal, consider creating users personas representing the different groups and offering tailored information and collateral as well as a unique browsing experience.
On your home page, ask users to choose which group they belong to or identify them based on their login ID. This will require setting up different login id’s for different user groups. If you cannot create a portal that is truly tailored to a customer’s needs, and limits a customer’s view to what he needs and is interested in, you can always help your customer choose his browsing experience.
Offer your users the option to easily navigate your marketing portal by providing a clear browsing path that leads him towards the solutions to his needs. Predict users needs in advance. Ask them to choose which task they came to the portal to do and offer a list of options. Based on the answer provide a second navigation menu – only present users with options that are relevant to them, and let them select which option is most relevant to their unique needs or roles.
By giving your users control over their experience online, you are saving them time and improving your brand perception in their eyes.
Go Mobile
Make your portal mobile friendly, or provide a mobile component. Whether you are targeting your sales force, which might need to access case studies at a potential customer’s site or business partners setting their own local advertising campaigns, our world is going mobile.
Offering your clients the ability to access exactly what they need, wherever they need it, is not only good practice but increasingly a required feature.
One size does not fit all
Setting up a marketing portal is a great opportunity to leverage and showcase your marketing assets. Take this opportunity to make sure your are offering content that meets the needs of your target client groups. Personalized navigation is great, but only if its complemented with content that is tailored to the appropriate audience. Take your marketing to the next level by tailoring what you offer per location, needs and brand.
You could also create templates and interactive online tools that allow your user groups to customize and create collateral that meets their unique needs, but also adheres to your brand guidelines.
Your initial work and time will be more than worth it when your marketing portal is used as you meant it to be used, thus saving your company and your department cost and time in future requests and interactions. You are also improving your control over what is being used around the world and by different partners. By updating your marketing collateral frequently you can make sure no outdated materials are being shared.
Track, measure and report:
Implement tracking capabilities and automated analysis tools to help you measure which programs, offers or documents are downloaded the most and are most successful.
One important view to keep in mind when designing your marketing portal is how to increase workflow efficiencies in your organization. By tracking and measuring the time users spend on your portal, where they go and what they do, you will be able to improve your offering to them.
Tracking is especially important if you include digital assets on your portal, and not only web to print ones. With digital assets you are able built-in your analytics and tracking properties to the different banners, pictures and links, allowing you to get a crystal clear picture of which programs and campaigns work best for which groups.
Go Social
Social marketing is here to stay, and your marketing portal is the perfect place to build a launching pad for your online marketing campaigns and cross-media initiatives.
By integrating your social media strategies into your portal, you will not only be able to enhance the buzz around your programs, but also track it and offer your clients those programs that work best and bring results. They will appreciate your help, and you will be able to gain very detailed analysis of the effectiveness of your marketing initiative for different sectors and locations.
Portal Design – Best practice
Done right, marketing portals have the potential to be game changers. You are taking traditional processes with all their known problems and setbacks and making them more efficient and more innovative. Your marketing will be better, your clients happier and the main beneficiary? Your brand.
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