|
B-to-B Insights: The More You Tell, the More You Sell
Applying the 'new rules' of marketing to B-to-B
Earlier this year, a colleague, David Meerman Scott, wrote a second edition of his bestselling book "The New Rules of Marketing & PR." The three new rules are:
Rule No. 1: Nobody cares about your products and services. What they care about is themselves and solving their problems.
No. 2: All organizations need to be real-time publishers. A brand journalism approach of creating blogs, videos, podcasts, photos and the like drives action.
No. 3: Have fun. People do business with those they like.
In the old days we followed a couple of these rules only lightly, and violated the spirit of most of them regularly-as many marketers continue to do today.
Let's start with Rule No. 1: "Nobody cares about your products and services. What they care about is themselves and solving their problems." Everybody gives lip service to this truism, but how many companies stick with it in their communications? Precious few. Most people are me-oriented, and most companies seem us-oriented. For instance, in its annual report, one software company featured the same image every year, a nice picture of its building. As Scott says, the prospect cares about his needs, wants, fears and desires. He cares about your product only insofar as it can address those needs. Remember the old saying: Don't tell the prospect about your grass seed; tell him about his lawn.
Let's skip over Rule No. 2 momentarily. Rule No. 3: "Have fun. People do business with those they like." Successful salespeople know the importance of building a relationship with customers and making them like you. In his book "The Likability Factor," Tim Sanders writes: "When people like the source of a message, they tend to trust the message or, at least, try to find a way to believe it." As for "Have fun," to me it's less clear that having fun is a core component of the "new" marketing Scott talks about. Yes, people who are having fun are generally more pleasant to be around; which, in turn, raises their likeability and, therefore, their effectiveness in selling. But I've seen no major study that says companies in which employees have lots of fun outperform those with more somber workplaces.
Now, let's circle back to Rule No. 2: "All organizations need to be real-time publishers. A brand journalism approach of creating blogs, videos, podcasts, photos and the like drives action." To me, this is the sea change affecting B-to-B marketing today: the relentless pressure to turn out a never ending stream of valuable content to establish your company as the authoritative provider in its niche.
In the "good old days," marketing communications departments would create a product ad highlighting features and benefits. They would then insert it into a few trade publications. The creation and scheduling of promotions was simple and straightforward, at an undemanding pace.
Today, instead of a few big central media (the trade publications), there are hundreds of little media, each giving us an opportunity to promote, however modestly, our businesses to an often surprisingly large audience. The creation of content for these different media-blogs, videos, audios, podcasts, and postings on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter-is real-time and time-consuming. Content is King. The major trend in B-to-B marketing communications is to market with useful information, information of the problem-solving, how-to variety-rather than product benefits, features, facts and specs.
No one, it seems to me, has a handle on how much content you must publish and at what frequency to gain visibility and credibility among your core audience. It sometimes seems as if the need to churn out fresh content for your readership is unceasing. As blogger Robert Scoble says, "Your output is what people follow."
Some of the more traditional methods of content dissemination include: brochures, catalogs, technical manuals, whitepapers, PowerPoint presentations, tradeshows, print ads and press releases.
Each of these is still around, but varies in importance. Whitepapers are used, but they must present valuable content, not thinly diguised sales puffery. The number and size of brochures has shrunk dramatically as marketers put product information online instead. When I started in corporate marketing communications in the late 1970s, sales and marketing were not equal. The salesperson was king, because he was the one who made the sale. All we communicators supposedly did was help out with lead generation and support materials. Our stuff was nice to look at, but the salesperson always got the credit when a new account was landed. And perhaps he deserved it.
The Internet has ended the supremacy of the salesperson. Buyers don't need salespeople today to get the product information they seek; they can find virtually any information they want on the Internet, in general, and on your company's website, in particular. Who controls the content and design of the website? Why, marketing, of course. So the tables are somewhat turned.
Some of the new methods of content dissemination that seem to be preferred by today's buyers-especially younger ones-include blogs, podcasts, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, online videos, e-newsletters, email marketing, mobile communications and content-rich websites.
My old colleague Jim Hansberger once told me, "Everyone has to be a salesperson at least part of the time." Today, every B-to-B marketer has to be a publisher/content provider at least part of the time. One objection to a content-based marketing strategy is, "we don't have specialized knowledge; everyone in our industry knows what we know." To which I say: You would be surprised. You possess knowledge of your product, technology or application that very few people know and which would be valuable to them. Strategic dissemination of that knowledge positions you as an expert and creates demand for your advice, products and services.
The other objection to content-based marketing is the fear that marketers will risk giving away proprietary knowledge, which their competitors will get their hands on. I have news for you: the salesperson who left you this summer has already given all your secrets to your competitor that hired him. Don't worry about bean spilling. The old saying in direct mail is just as true in content marketing: The more you tell, the more you sell.
Source: Bob Bly in Target Marketing, is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 75 books. www.bly.com. |
