Is there a role for branded websites in the social media age?

Matt White examines the growing trend for businesses to market their Facebook presence in preference to their website.

A recent article in Brand Republic concerning the shift by businesses from traditional websites to social media pages, such as Facebook, left me with more questions than answers.

The facts put forward by the article suggest that social media pages would replace branded websites within 5 years. The case in point is rum brand Bacardi, whose unique website visitors fell 77% between 2009 and 2010. Bacardi is now reportedly shifting up to 90% of its digital spend to its presence on Facebook.

Certainly it is true to say that we are seeing Facebook used as the lead online destination for a number of consumer brands – one only has to look at their adverts to see that this is the case.

The arguments put forward by these brands are that Facebook is the primary destination for their target audience and it is easier for their consumers to engage via a Facebook page than it is through a corporate website. This reasoning seems sound enough.

In order for leading brands to move fully away from traditional websites, however, some barriers need to be negotiated. Below are some key issues that are not outlined in the article:

• SEO is generally regarded as a very important part of online presence. Brands would need to be able to fully optimise their social media pages. A Google search for Bacardi reveals the Facebook page is not on page 1, but the website still occupies top spot.

• Ownership of content is another key issue. For example, if you capture data, who owns the data? The branded Facebook or Twitter pages are still owned by Facebook and Twitter, not the brands themselves. The implications of this are an entirely separate debate in itself!

• If social media is to be the main online presence, brands need to have the confidence to allow certain aspects of control to pass to the consumer – branded websites have the peace of mind of 100% content management.

With this in mind, I predict the majority of brands, particularly those who market B2B, will increasingly use Facebook in support of their branded website – but I can’t see Facebook replacing it.

The reason you cannot make generalisations is a matter of budget and what is being marketed to whom.

'Super-brands’ such as Coca-Cola and Nike have a ready fan base of millions of people who will ‘like’ their Facebook pages and who, in turn, will receive their updates. Furthermore, they have the budget to market the page and create engaging material on a regular basis to reach their social audience.

There are, however, many industries where, no matter how innovative businesses are in their use of Facebook and social media in general, the available fan base will always be small. This is before we come to the cultural (or age related) issues of business leaders not seeing social media as an appropriate outlet to promote their business to existing and prospective customers.

Answering the question posed in the Brand republic article – is there a role for branded websites in the social media age? - my response is a resounding yes. I predict that 99% of businesses will still use a branded website in 5 years time. What we may see is more and more campaign specific social media pages in both the B2B and B2C sectors, and this is the trend that needs to be watched.

The Marketing Eye is gearing itself up to be able to advise clients appropriately.

You can visit The Marketing Eye’s Facebook pages and see how we are using it in our business at www.facebook.com/themarketingeye.

Let us know what you think.

Demand Generation - the theory and practise. #1 Gaining acceptance

Over the last few months, we have been immersing ourselves in the concept and application of B2B demand generation.

For those unfamiliar with the term, Demand Generation is a marketing process that nurtures and engages prospects appropriately at each stage of the buying cycle.

We have a number of client projects in progress at this time and are closely monitoring the challenges and successes that we encounter. This is in the interests of continuous improvement, practical insight and, of course, great results for our clients.

The principle of demand generation is the application of multi-touch marketing communications that respect, and are tailored to, where the prospect is in the buying process. In simple terms, it is holding back from trying to close the sale on first contact - because the attempt will fail unless the buyer is ready to buy.

As ever, matching the theory to the practice is the hardest part and the first obstacle normally occurs at the acceptance stage.

The theory says that we must stop the salesperson going in too soon. Instead, we must align the nature of the conversation with where the prospect is in the buying cycle.

When implementing a programme of this nature, early challenges arise when you have a sales-force that needs feeding. A proposal to slow the flow of leads in the interests of a higher rate of sales conversion further down the line is rarely popular with a team that likes to show it is active, if not always successful.

This is closely related to persuading telemarketers not to go straight for the appointment when all of the instincts and training are directed towards this end.

The demand generation process requires nothing short of a wholesale change in the sales process and sales culture, which is a big ask of any organisation. We, therefore, address this with a three-tier approach to gaining the support and engagement of Sales.

Firstly, we enter into open and shared communication with the sales teams to explain the approach.

Secondly, we run a dual system in which we work the new approach on a specific set of data and allow traditional methods to run on the remainder. This retains the continuity of supply and keeps the sales team on board during the transition.

Thirdly, we persuade senior management to adjust incentives relating to the demand generation exercise to reflect nurturing, not just closures.

Demand Generation requires discipline and a whole-hearted commitment to the methodology by us and the client. A breakdown in any area of the process undermines the programme - and, more importantly, the results.

In future posts, we will take a look at some of the specific 'in-life' challenges that we encounter, such as generating relevant content and managing and monitoring the process without a sophisticated CRM system.

Stay tuned!

Why most marketing fails

If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say: "we tried marketing once and it didn’t work", I could have retired long ago.

Not only does the phrase betray a lack of understanding of what marketing really is, it is often a reliable indicator of how the fateful marketing programme will have been run in the first place.

Despite many advances in knowledge and information sharing, marketing remains one of the least understood of the business disciplines. Shrouded in mystery, and slippery in its accountability, it is a topic that everybody has an opinion on and most people believe they can do better than the marketing department.

Marketing isn’t rocket science, nor does it demand significant creativity or originality (albeit a little imagination helps). Largely it is a matter of process, understanding of the human psyche and persistent effort – otherwise known as hard work.

Most marketing programmes operate like this:

A marketing campaign will be sent out. The target buyer will respond or not (most often not). Any orders will be followed up (hopefully) and the remainder will be discarded and forgotten.

This formula applies whether we are talking about a direct mail campaign, e-shot, advert, trade show or any other form of marketing.

Is it any wonder that responses are typically way below 1% and that there is no return on investment?

To run a marketing campaign in this way borders on insanity. No regard is given to the buying process and little respect is given to the intelligence and needs of the buyer. In other words, the campaign is not buyer centric.

In earlier posts, I have referred to Jolles model of the buying process and the stages that we all go through when considering a purchase. The stages apply whether it is an impulse buy or a major capital investment – all that changes is the speed with which we go through the phases and potentially the number of people that will be involved in the decision.

If we take a step back for a moment, it is clear that the buying process is highly sophisticated. The buyer operates under a whole range of influences:
– Past experience
– Peer group comment
– Social media
– Google searches
– Webinars / Seminars / Events
– Advertising / direct marketing

While advertising and direct marketing still has a role, we as buyers are much more resistant to it. We like to feel that we are researching and finding our own solutions and only want to engage the sales person in the final stages of the buying process, when our mind is pretty much made up.

An intelligent marketing programme therefore needs to take account of the buying process and run like this:

The buyer will be engaged at all stages of the buying process with methods and content that are appropriate to where he or she is in the cycle.

In the consideration phase, which may be conscious or unconscious, we need to be educating and informing to stimulate interest. This could be with White Papers, blog posts and press releases or indeed with advertising and direct mail – it is the content that is important, not the medium of delivery (which should be varied).

Once the buyer has decided to act, he or she will then start to work out exactly what they want from their purchase. Case studies, product sheets and seminars can be useful in this phase.

When the criteria are defined, the buyer will then start to look for solutions to meet those needs. Past experience, peer group recommendations and web searches will all come into play.

If our previous engagement programme has been successful, we will be firmly on the consideration list – and potentially the only name on it.

The process of converting a prospect into a client can take many months – years in some cases. Jolles tells us that we spend 79% of our time in the consideration phase, umming and ahhing over whether we have a need or not. Our marketing contact programmes must therefore be multi-faceted and continuous.

Of course, the process doesn’t stop when our product or service has been selected. We need to keep engaging the client to make sure that our solution has properly met the need and then stay in touch to ensure retention, repeat purchases and up-sell.

When we look at the buying process in this way it is obvious that simple outbound campaigns are destined to fail. Marketing must comprise multi-touch activity that builds dialogue and engages the prospect at all stages in the buying process.

The theory, when converted to practice, produces results. Recent research by Forrester Consulting showed that businesses that market successfully:

1. Focus on lead generation as a process


2. Profile and segment prospects based on customer behaviour (not just demographics)


3. Design content that builds dialogue


4. Employ some form of lead scoring / prioritisation measure


5. Nurture prospects that are not yet ready to buy


6. Make certain that marketing works collaboratively with sales
   

The Forrester research further shows that these businesses enjoy a more robust pipeline, better customer insight, improved marketing and sales accountability and ultimately improved marketing ROI.

What more can anybody want?

Acknowledgements

How managing leads pays off in a stronger, more qualified pipeline - Forrester Consulting November 2009

Adam Needles - Demand Generation Blog 2009-10

Connecting Sales and Marketing in B2B

The following post is a transcript of my responses to a set of questions put to me recently by Adam Needles, Field Marketing Director with US marketing automation specialists, Silverpop.

1.) What strategy have you seen work the best for connecting sales and marketing teams?

Sales and Marketing teams need to communicate often and earn mutual respect. By engaging with Sales and drawing on its knowledge of what customers want and respond to, Marketing can develop buyer-centric campaigns that Sales will want to support. Similarly, Sales can learn to accept the strategic direction set by marketing in terms of key messages and target markets.

In sales-led organisations, I have always focused on developing a rigid process that gives Sales a set period of notice before a campaign goes out. The objectives of the campaign, the key messages and the creative are all communicated, the prospects that are being contacted are circulated and the database carved up and allocated for follow-up. Once the campaign has landed, the Sales function identifies a day to dedicate itself to making 1:1 contact with the prospects that have been targeted. Results are collated afterwards and success is celebrated together.

Sales and Marketing need to combine to form a powerful business development unit that works as one to nurture a prospect from target name through to customer.

2.) What metrics have you seen work best for tracking and measuring the ROI of lead-management programs?

Ultimately, the only true measure of success is sales conversions, but ROI, as measured by sales income, is too blunt a measure of success in the short term. We have to recognise that in B2B, it is rare to convert a business from prospect to customer in one hit: there are several steps along the way and it is therefore necessary to set goals and measures for the degrees of engagement. In the first instance, these goals can be opening rates on email campaigns; click-throughs on links and downloads of product information. Further along the line it is the results of targeted follow-up of the names that have shown the first signs of interest - perhaps agreement to a meeting or a product demonstration.

Lead-scoring and lead nurturing mechanisms are in their early days, but it is exciting to see businesses like Silverpop and The Accuitas Group working towards systems that work.

3.) If you were going to do only one thing, what part of a B2B lead-management program would you implement (demand generation, lead scoring, lead nurturing or ROI measurement)?

Lead nurturing. While we are nowhere without the initial demand, in the scheme of things, generating a contact is relatively easy. The challenge is turning the contact into a client. We have to have systems and methodologies that enable Sales and Marketing to constantly and appropriately increase the level of engagement to the point where the sale is made.

4.) Which business practices are working best in B2B lead generation today, and which would you like to disappear?

The practices and hence the campaigns that work best are the ones that have buyer relevance at their core. This means identify the issues that are important to the prospect and owning the conversation that surrounds them. Whether it is with e-mail campaigns, press releases, blog posts or advertising, the organisations that understand and incorporate buyer relevance into their communications will be the ones that win.

My perpetual hope is that one day we will see an end to the sniping between Sales and Marketing. Too many organisations operate in silos and with a blame culture: Marketing blaming Sales for not backing its campaigns and Sales seeing Marketing as disconnected from the real world, generating no leads or leads it can’t do anything with. Come on guys, we’re all in this together – let’s have a coffee!

5.) What's your advice to marketers working with executives who view marketing as a discretionary budget item during a recession?

Marketers need to present requests for budgets in ways that are aligned to the strategic goals of the business. Unfortunately there are still too many people in Marketing with insufficient commercial acumen. A proposal for an advertising campaign or trade show in isolation can look like a flight of fancy and will be deservedly knocked back. However, presented as part of an integrated strategy that shows the activity as an integral part of moving prospects through a planned engagement process, will make sense to even the most parsimonious CEO or CFO.

These are tough times for many organisations and Marketing can’t spend money that doesn’t exist. More intelligent targeting, for example, by identifying niches or top-slicing prospect pools; better use of lower cost methodologies, such as e-mail campaigns and social media; and, most importantly of all, avoiding the waste that is inherent in generating leads that aren’t effectively nurtured and converted, are all ways of adapting a plan to a reduced budget and maximising the ROI.

How would you answer any of these questions? Please share your thoughts.

Identify the issue and own the conversation - effective engagement in B2B marketing

The nature of B2B marketing is changing - the evidence is in our pipelines. The decision making process, which has always been slow and complicated, is now even longer and more unwieldy.

The economic climate means that the old adage of 'you'll never get fired for buying IBM' no longer holds true. Now we can say ‘you'll never get fired for deferring a purchasing decision' or 'you'll never get fired for implementing the lowest cost solution’. The shadow of the unseen decision maker- more often than not the finance department - looms large.

Marketers need to rise above the frustration and develop new strategies to generate profitable and sustainable demand.

Adam Needles of Silverpop pointed me to Jolles model of the decision making process. A more sophisticated interpretation of AIDA, it helps us consider our proposed activities in the context of where a prospect is in the buying cycle.

An enlightening finding is that purchasers spend 79% of their time in the acknowledgement phase - deciding whether or not they have a need that requires satisfying at all.

Armed with this information, we can make great sense of the importance of structured and relevant engagement marketing activity. This might include inbound marketing, such as search and social media, or more traditional outbound tactics including sponsorship and advertising. These are all areas where it is hard to show a short term ROI, but, as shown by Jolles model, they need to be in every marketing plan in one form or another.

The key to ensuring the investment is ultimately returned is buyer relevance. Businesses have to commence and maintain a dialogue with prospects on issues that are relevant to the buyer. The mantra must be: identify the issue and own the conversation.

Richard Bush, MD of Base One Group said recently:
"We need to change our traditional approach of: 'Find; Convert; Develop; Keep' to 'Engage; Convert; Develop; Keep'".

How to engage is the tricky bit. Insight is at the heart of building more buyer-centric campaigns and a variety of techniques can be used. There is, of course, the option of formal research, but more economically, a Twitter search is a great way of feeling the pulse of people's reaction and opinion on any topic. A simple Google Alert can do the same job, as can reading the trade press. And let's not forget the basic principle of keeping engaged with sales – talking to the people that are talking to customers every day.

When the central issue is identified, it can be used as the platform for advertising messages, email campaigns, blog posts and press releases that inform and engage. The goal is 1:1 marketing on a mass scale.

There is no denying that it is difficult. The central issue for one audience will be different to the central issue for another. Segmentation, niching and top-slicing are probably the best chances that we have got and, even to get to this point, research, data analysis and an incredibly robust CRM system are essential to delivering the right message to the right prospect at the right point in the buying cycle.

Can it ever be automated? Companies like Silverpop and The Annuitas Group are making immense strides with lead scoring and lead nurturing, but even with great systems, marketing messages that don’t engage are lost in the wind.

The business that can identify and own the topic of the day is the business that will be top of mind when acknowledgement moves to search.

B2B vs B2C - more than just a letter

A friend asked me in the week to explain the difference between marketing to businesses and marketing to consumers. Unprepared, I fumbled my way to an answer, but soon realised it was a deeper question than it first seemed.

There is, of course, a plethora of theoretical responses. B2C is traditionally said to be:

• Product driven



• Aimed at maximizing the value of the transaction



• Mass-market



• A single step buying process and a shorter sales cycle



• A creator of brand loyalty through repetition and imagery



• Reliant on merchandising and point of purchase activities



• The leverage of emotional buying decisions based on status, desire, or price

Whereas B2B:

• Is relationship driven



• Aims to maximize the value of the relationship



• Has a small, focused target market



• Involves a multi-step buying process and longer sales cycle



• Creates brand loyalty through personal relationships



• Uses educational and awareness building activities



• Leverages rational buying decisions based on business value

A useful analysis, but not uniformly true by any means.

The eminent Professor Malcolm McDonald says that 'the central ideas of marketing are universal' and it therefore makes no difference whether you are marketing vacuum cleaners or power furnaces. This seems overly simplistic too.

The principle that all marketing has the basic aim of satisfying the customer is, of course, incontrovertible, but the important follow-on questions are: 'who is the customer?' and 'what is my product?'

We can say that consumers are, on the whole, more impulsive in their decision making than business buyers, because the financial risk is often so much smaller. This means B2C marketers can focus less on the rational basis for a purchase, and more on the emotional appeal. B2C marketing is often geared towards catching the wave or, better still, creating the wave in the first place.

To say, however, that B2C marketing isn't relationship driven is a mistake. Any retailer, from a supermarket monolith to the local corner shop, needs to form a relationship with its customers to build loyalty and drive repeat business. Retailers are merely intermediaries in the value chain between the manufacturer and the buyer. Manufacturers themselves would also be mis-advised not to consider the relationship - Sony wants loyalty over Panasonic as does BMW over Mercedes. A charity will want a relationship with a donor to encourage repeat donations.

And what of professional services firms? They want life-time relationships with both business and private clients, which means that the marketing must be entirely geared towards the principles that are outlined in the traditional analysis of B2B.

In B2B marketing, the pure number of people involved in a purchase tends to have the effect of suppressing the emotion and bringing everything back to the business case. A good B2B campaign has to be brimming with promises of increased profitability, reduced costs or enhanced productivity. This is not to say that there is no room for the emotional influence of the brand. The old adage that 'nobody ever got sacked for buying IBM' still holds true in many quarters and familiarity breeds comfort in the board room. There is a clear need to build the brand with air cover from advertising, sponsorship and pr.

The conclusion is that the biggest drivers of the marketing approach are not whether it is B2B or B2C, but in the size of the financial risk, the nature of the relationship and the complexity of the decision making process for the customer. If we understand this then we are likely to make the right decisions. Perhaps we should do away with the distinction and simply call it Business to Customer - which is probably the point Professor McDonald was making.

Links

Source of Theoretical differences between B2B and B2C: Vista Consulting

Professor Malcolm McDonald