In all our excitement about multichannel engagement in customer journeys, have we forgotten about personal contact? Face to face, person to person, great service delivered on site can leave a lasting and positive impression. Perhaps more memorable than a digital communication, thanks to its physical presence, the service visit, on time, prepared for action, ready to resolve the issue at hand is probably the one that makes the most compelling association of your brand. Somewhere on a customer’s journey, they’ll meet someone who represents your company, face to face. Make sure it’s a positive engagement and I’ll bet you’ll reap the rewards, even just by being different when the good experience is so unexpected.
Don’t forget the physical link in all this online activity, it might be the one that counts the most.
Don’t forget the human touch
Customer experience and marketing – what’s so different?
Meets the need, is easy and enjoyable. That’s what Forrester’s Harley Manning says makes for a good customer experience. All things being equal, if two companies offer an experience which meets the need, the consumer will plump for making less effort, and then for the more enjoyable. If those three criteria are applied to a marketing campaign, which is a part of the overall experience, then wouldn’t that make life a bit better all round?
Meets the need should go without saying; how else can a campaign even get out of the blocks if it doesn’t address a market with that requirement? Easy, though – I like that thought. Our campaigns should be effortless for the recipient – easy to navigate, to respond to, to understand and action. Complexity without added value all too often can turn the prospect away. And enjoyable; well there’s a thought. It doesn’t have to be frivolous, but as I’ve said before, market to the person that is each of us, whether at work or play. B2B marketing doesn’t have to be boring.
Content or context? Or a bit of both.
So content is king. The message we share, the story we weave, the impression we leave with the reader. But this exciting new world of Content (let’s give it a capital C) is much more than the words. The impression you leave, the association with the brand can be enhanced or left flat by the medium you choose. The common, dare I say lazy use of pdfs could kill a fantastic argument stone dead. How much better and more compelling could it be to add some vision, some movement? Turn it into an ebook, add some animation, embed video and you can rise above the competition. Don’t be constrained by what’s expected and you could unlock a whole new life and audience for your tired old content. Refresh doesn’t have to just mean changing the date and title, you can revitalise an asset and make it work better than ever for you. Think interactive, deploy images and you won’t have to be so hung up on the words. Remember it’s about connecting with your audience and being remembered. And who is remembered for the boring stuff?
Focus first or filter later?
So what’s better? Marcoms basics – at some point you need to find and connect with your target prospects. Personally I’d rather do it sooner rather than later. It might seem easy to spread the net wide, entrap anything with a pulse that clicks on your link, downloads your white paper, registers for your webinar (whether or not they have any intention of actually watching, reading, listening is another matter). Then call them, filter them and nurture the worthy ones.
Or do the hard work up front – research your prospects, slice them up (metaphorically, of course) and bring them in one by one. You won’t be able to say that you just got 500 registrations, but you should find that there’s a better conversion rate. You’ll most likely have teased them in with a more pertinent message, so should be more connected – have that joint level of understanding – that means something may come of it.
I’ll be doing the work up front (again) on the next project – are you with me?
We’re all people too
One of the commonly overlooked factors in B2B marketing is pretty obvious. We’re all people too. Yes we’ve all got our business heads on and we’re all busy doing the day job – but we’re all people too. We’re all consumers. In the customer experience and many other markets where the technology sale is B2B, we’re the end of the chain too – that person that our B2C client is ultimately trying to sell to.
That can help with marketing; sometimes it helps to stop and think about the end consumer, the person receiving the customer experience we’re creating and marketing, to check that you’re on the right tracks. And it’s not difficult, because that person is you or me.
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“People don’t want information, they want your story.”
“”Haven’t you ever heard of information overload?” we ask them. “People don’t want information, they want your story.”Most people have developed a genuine distrust of top-down messages and corporate jargon.“So, please tell us your story, authentic and personal. Humanise your brand.”” So says aroundtheworldin80brands.com
And it’s just so true. And even more surprisingly to many, it’s so true for B2B too. So much of B2B marketing has its hands tied by the bits and bytes, the how does it work, the feature/function/benefit, that it forgets that (yes folks, that theme again) – we’re dealing with people. And your general, average people at that – it’s you and me (well me, anyway). When faced with corporate purchasing decisions, so often it’s hard to tell the difference, or at least to cut through the (marketing 😉 ) spin and know what you’re really getting. It looks like it fits the bill, but then so probably does at least one other vendor, who is at the same price point, with much the same set of promises. What might make you choose one over the other then? Maybe the sales person but it might well be the brand too – what that vendor means to you, what you associate with it, how you (dare I say) feel about it. So, humanise the brand, give your proposition a feeling that it can portray to your prospects; hook into their ideals, make them feel they can be a star, let them dream, even if just a little. It may sound far-fetched but I’ll bet there’s potential for any brand to dream a bit. That could be the one thing that really makes you different, and people have bought for stranger reasons than that.
So what, exactly, is the point of marketing?
Make sure you’re equal then make yourself different. So goes one marketing mantra which has stuck with me over the years. Make yourself different so that you can be remembered, so you stand out from the crowd, so – when it comes to that buying decision – you’re not only on the short-list, but you’re the one the rest want to equal and better. That is marketing’s job – to get you on the list and hopefully to the top of it.
Take your bucket of prospects and slice it into 3.
Slice 1 is going to do something, they will buy something eventually. How can marketing help? It can contribute to the deal by providing the case for accelerating the rate of the project and of course making sure you’re on the list.
Slice 2 might do nothing at all, just never will.
And slice 3? That’s the challenge and the fun. These are the ones that need teasing, nurturing, persuading. They may need to know they’re not alone, that they’re doing the right thing and that the benefits will out. They need to have confidence that the project is the right thing, before they even start to wonder who is the best placed vendor to help them. Help these people and you’ll be top of the pile when they do come round to making a decision.
Some might think that it’s just a matter of time for suspects and prospects to flow through the funnel. Marketing knows different.
B2B marketing need not be boring
In fact in my experience, creativity is key. You don’t have to do what everyone else does, and maybe you really shouldn’t. You’re still selling to people, after all, and people are busy, and flooded with interruptions in the form of marketing calls and email. You need to get past that filter of “who the hell are you”, “why should I care” and “why should I believe you”. So, your proposition needs to stand out from the crowd in a good way.
Contrary to the belief of all those entrepreneurs and inspired techies out there, technology does not just sell itself. Build it and they will come? You might be waiting a while 😉
I’m currently involved with a creative B2B campaign which aims to stand out from the crowd while doing its job, which is to show prospective customers that we understand them and their customers, that we can help them and in a way that implies that we might be good people to do business with. We want to have a conversation with our prospects and this is where we start to do so.
The customer journey navigator http://customerjourney.egain.com/ is an infographic with a difference. The info is all there about recognised consumer problems on their journeys, their solutions, organisations’ benefits and (softly now, we don’t want to scare people off) the technology which can help. Or at least how it can help. But it approaches it in an unobtrusive, fun way. It’s interactive, it has lots of levels and different media and tells 5 different stories each with their own sub-stories. The viewer is in control; the media we chose just led them to visit. The customer narrative leads the way through the journeys, reminding us all that the consumer is our ultimate driving force – that’s why your company is in business and organisations like my employer are supporting them with multichannel customer experience software.
Sometimes it pays to be different and you don’t have to spend the big bucks to do it. If you can’t compete with the big boys in terms of media reach, then you can always fight a different fight. The customer journey navigator is a good example of that. We chose our fight carefully and this is starting some conversations that we didn’t get close to before. It may be B2B, but remember it’s people that we’re dealing with.
Exercise – mapping your universe
You know your business better than anyone else. Yet you keep getting calls from agencies pushing their services, selling events, seminars and advertising, some of which can be quite tempting. It can’t do any harm, it will get your name ‘out there’ and you’ve got some money allocated to business development activities.
So, how about tackling marketing in a constructive way? You’re more likely to get a better return on any activity if you just step back and work out what fits and whether it ‘s a good idea, right now.
My first suggestion for any company embarking on any promotional activity, is to map out its universe. You can do it with a white board or a set of post-it notes and a big wall, but the aim is to draw up an image of the world according to your company and its (prospective) customers. You can then see where worlds overlap and where the gaps are…
Who are your customers, what do they read, where are they, which influencers do they look to, where do they look for information, where do these influencers look for information, – how can you get in front of them? Understanding who you need to get to and how to get to them can help you sort the wheat from the chaff. This exercise just might help you clarify which of the many promotional offers might work for you – and which might look impressive but are really just waste of your hard earned money. Oh, and don’t forget the magic words: So What?
"so what?" marketing 