Do B2B Marketers Hibernate Come Christmas, New Year and Financial Year-end?

A friend who works for a telecom company raised this question to me just yesterday. Day after day for months without fail, just like an alarm clock, we get bombarded with mails which share product updates, thought leadership articles and event invites. And suddenly, just as Q3 comes to a close, all you get is a seasons’ greeting card. Given this, how can one grouse someone for asking if we are hibernating?

Unlike B2C marketing, where the merry season brings with it sales, discounts and crazy promotional tactics, B2B marketing suddenly takes a back seat. And rightly so! What’s the point in jamming someone’s mailbox when they are either holidaying or, preparing for year-end results or, are knee-deep in planning their next year’s strategy?

These 2 months (15-Dec onwards till mid-Jan and the whole of March), as most have found, are most effective for strategy revisiting. There is less dilution of your concentration and the year-end is a perfect opportunity to analyze what worked and what did not. This is, of course, not to state that B2C marketers do not carry out these activities. 

While defining ‘What will my brand speak about next year?’ it will do us good to visit:

1.       “What worked and what did not?”

2.       “What are the key messages we will talk about”?

3.        “Are my people aligned right?”

4.       “Which channels will be most effective for me?”

5.        “What kind of budgets will I need?”

You will notice that I have put budget-consideration as the last step and that’s the way it would be in the ideal scenario. Unfortunately, this is not the way most organizations see it. B2B marketing is often considered an overhead and changing that mindset will not happen overnight. In the meanwhile, keeping a larger number in mind and then breaking it into different activities and channels might be a good idea. One could always revisit the overall number, towards the end, for tweaking and fine-tuning.

The 5 Questions of Marketing Communication - Are You Answering These?

Events, email campaigns, social media - be it B2B or B2C, external or internal to your organization - any communication or, exchange of information, is incomplete if you are not answering the 'Why', 'Who', 'What' and 'How'. Even more importantly, once these 4 questions have been answered you must look at the 'So What'.

The concept is out there, albeit in a segmented fashion. We all know that targeting, segmenting, messaging are key to any kind of communication but only once these are put in a logical order can the benefits be truely realized.

• WHY - A marketing communication plan is not a transaction but rather a program and it should be treated as such. Before starting the entire planning process all participants must be clear as to:
• Why is this program needed? 
• What purpose is it expected to serve?
• Why should X, Y, Z teams be involved?

• WHO - Before any kind of communication can be dispersed have you identified who is it really meant for? What is your key target base? Is your messaging appropriate for the CXO-level or, is it targeting to the mid-tier executives? Are you targeting other businesses or, is your client the end customer and is your messaging apt for this audience?

• WHAT - Messaging - plain and simple. What are you trying to communicate? What is the information you would like to share and what approach or, message construction will you use?

• HOW - Only once the above questions are answered can you move to this question. Answering the 'How' requires visiting - 
• How will you disperse the information? 
• What channels will you employ? 
• Is a e-campaign the best way, or would print media give better results or, both? How will you employ social media to boost your program? Today, no one channel can guarantee success. It has to be a judicious combination of various such channels which will get your closer to your goal ...the 'Why'.

• SO WHAT -  This is a crucial stage - the post-program retrospection. Studying the results, analyzing the findings and feedback... This will provide direct insights into your next program and help you build a best practice repository.

So what do you think? In your opinion does the idea of following a logical order or answering the Why, Who, What, How and So What apply to all industries, across interaction levels or, can we include more steps in this process?  

Why did the Dog Climb aboard the Elevator?

It did happen….while I was on my way out of the office, right when we reached the ground floor…a brown mix-breed dog (no collar so not a pet) calmly walks into the elevator as the door swishes open. I am more shocked than amused and try to shoo the little doggie out, but to no avail. A co-passenger quips "Must be tired of the ground floor and would like to visit the basement!" We reach the basement and sure enough Jingle (Yes, I named the dog in those 30 seconds) walks out, all prim and proper, her head held high.

The question is why did the dog climb aboard? I have been thinking and believe either the dog is a thinker and a visionary for its kind or, is simply a follower of the other beings in its existing environment - in this case, the humans.

Translate this to our daily life and we can learn from Jingle that it is all about doing things in a new way!

•    A new way to reach an old goal can lead to doing things more easily - Till the world was introduced to emails, marketers promoted their products via letters and print media. When social media came into being marketing communication saw the birth of micro-blogs and informal connections across Facebook and Twitter.  Building relationships, the age-old goal, just got simpler and faster. The effort and time invested might be equivalent but the costs reduced and the networking became more real-time.

•     You might become the first (in your circle) to try out a new idea -When Facebook started becoming a rage amongst the people for staying in touch and building personal relationships  who would have thought that the same platform could be used  by global organizations to build social connections with their end consumers. Today, from Coco Cola to Ford to Lufthansa, companies are using this channel as part of their everyday marketing. Many of these social connections also attribute to the bottom line – a Coco-cola loyal Facebook fan will buy his favorite soft drink next time she is thirsty.

•      Learning from cross-species - You might be a B2B brand but you could learn from a B2C company like Coco-Cola how to engage with customers and keep them involved. You might be a B2C company but learning how Lady Gaga has created her Little Monsters community can help change how the relationship game is played.  A manufacturing company can learn from Walmart how to ensure that the supply chain is operating as efficiently as possible. In fact, the spill-over is already happening – for example, banks are going the ecommerce way; insurance is available online, just like your favorite sweater is!
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•     Patience is a virtue - Once Jingle got onto the elevator and the doors closed she did not start panicking or, scratching the doors in an effort to get out. She waited till the doors opened, walked out and assessed whether she like the new surroundings or not. Similarly, once you have made the effort, done the research and started on a venture it is best you follow it to some kind of conclusion. Ditching the plans mid-way when you hit a block, without any kind of analysis done on the proceedings, will only lead to frustration. When you start a marketing program, say an e-campaign or, a PR effort, make measurable checkpoints in the roadmap. Every time a checkpoint is reached, review whether the program is going as per plan. If not, recheck whether you could do certain things differently to map to the expected results. Only when this fails should you drop the program. Keeping an eye on the way the program is being carried out can usually help identify problem areas and help rectify them.

Jingle may or may not have stayed in the basement but she tried something new on the way. We might not like where we end up once we start on a marketing program but that does not mean that the learnings from the effort will not help us in the future - after all what good is a best practice repository if the best practices are not updated often enough!

What Twilight (the movie) and Marketing have in common.

Let’s admit it ...Drama enhances likability.

 Those who have seen the last of the twilight saga and have even managed to get through the last of the book series will have to admit that the movie is much more likable. Had the drama - the slight embellishments, the nicely shot fight sequence towards the end of the movie - been missing we would have been watching a picturised version of a very bland, boring, no-content book.         

Translate this thought to your day-to-day marketing. When one sits to design a new campaign for what is in reality a boring product with too many functionalities...say an IT product for the financial industry....you must look at it from different perspectives and if required, change the good ole sales story . If we were to focus on how would the product affect the end consumer and then create a story-line around it we are adding drama to an otherwise boring pitch.

The 1 min elevator pitch is actually all about tweaking the long story and bringing the dramatic bits to the front ....not changing it so it becomes totally out of context.

‘So what’s the game plan?’ - B2B Marketing Plan for Newbies

When the opportunity to create a ‘Product plan’ came to me the very first time I had the look on my face which clearly reflected my thoughts (at least that’s what my senior colleague said)….”Hmmmmm I think I will throw 4 emails, 2 events and a webinar together and voila the plan is done!”. 

Of course it doesn’t take a real genius to figure out that it’s not all that simple. So here are my newbie learnings in a nutshell. 

When one is faced with the challenge of creating a game plan – a full fledged global cross-channel campaign – especially for a B2B product, one simply can’t put those 4 emails, 2 events and a webinar together and say “I think this is the best way to take this product to the market”. While the MBA classes had taught the same thing to me, somehow translating it to the real life scenario is well a completely different experience. So start with the basics – an opportunity study is the best thing to do. I don’t mean go out carrying a survey questionnaire and stopping Tom, Dick and Harry to share their thoughts (I agree that for a B2C market this might be the only way, so don’t beat me over it), but rather understand your market from these angles:

· Global and regional – What is the current market size? What are the predicted future trends? Don’t worry – these things are quite easily found. Google – the world’s best invention. 
· Your ‘Target prospective clients’ strategy – Have a broad target segment in mind. Is the offering a cross-vertical product? Is the business targeting a particular segment or will the product be for any company, irrespective of its size? Will each segment’s need be same? 
· End customers perspective – It’s not enough to research the above two and slap them onto a powerpoint presentation. You need to establish how this product will affect your customer’s customer. If you do not have an end-to-end framework established, if you cannot convince the prospects that the product will enable them to gain their customers trust and build a relationship then you might just have failed before you started. 

 Once the dynamics of the market are clear and you have an understanding of the business’ objectives – the revenue projections from product, any particular regions planned for short-term and the long-term – you will need to define what marketing’s objectives will be. 

The key thing to remember is never to spread yourself too thin. No plan can achieve it all at the first go. Break up the objectives into logical sections – you may want to direct only particular regions in first year or, particular customer segments. The main thing is this should tie in with the organization’s business objectives. 

The last step, and perhaps the most important one, is identifying the marketing strategy – 
· What is the key messaging that will be used for your targeted sections? – This can be a common messaging or can even differ depending upon what your opportunity study has told you 
· What is it that you hope to achieve – What is the intent – is it awareness or, opportunity generation or, both? 
· Define the marketing approach – Will you talk about the value the product will bring to market to each of the segments? Will you showcase success stories to strengthen your proposition to build awareness or, will you use thought leadership?

After this it is simply a matter of deploying the most effective channels – yes, those 4 emails, 2 events and a webinar! The key thing being knowing what works where. The best thing to do would be study how your competitors are marketing their products – which influencers are they tying up with or, which events are they showcasing their wares. Set-up your Gantt charts and then define the budgets. 

And here, I am going to end with a slightly controversial statement. Having a ‘Budgets-then-Plan’ point of view will restrict the scope of your reach. Of course budgets are important. However, once you have the key activities you will like to undertake in mind, you can scale them up or down to suit the available budgets. This approach allows you to have a more long term perspective rather than ‘Do it now and get it over with’.