Jun 7, 2021 | Branding, Marketing
Brand is underplayed as a source of economic power in B2B. We seem to default to the tactical marketing tools used in B2C too easily.
Over the years I have concluded that there are only two core elements in B2B brand strength:
Trust.
Service.
They are mutually reinforcing, or indeed, depreciating, and are both multi-faceted, with variations that are as varied as the businesses that deal with each other.
The dictionary definition of Trust is something like:” A statement that is taken as truth in the absence of anything more than the word of the party giving it”.
So, trust is based on doing what we say we will do.
The definition of service would be something like: “An act of selflessly helping someone else”.
Again, as varied as the contexts in which it is used.
Clearly however, service drives trust, and trust is the fodder of service, and both go both ways.
You still must do all the stuff to get customers inside the tent, once there, they have at least once, accepted that you will do as you say. Do that, and the reasons they might move on for the next time are way more limited than if you fail on some dimension of the service that they believe is important.
Therein lies the dilemma. Every business sees ‘service and trust’ in their own context, within their own definitions of ‘Value’.
It is your task, as the seller to unravel that often unclear ball of expectations.
When you think you would benefit if your customers trusted you more, give me a call, an audit of your trust profile with customers may be enlightening.
Header cartoon credit: Scott Adams’ alter ego Dilbert does it again.
May 31, 2021 | Analytics, Marketing, Social Media
‘Social Media Marketing’ has become a substitute in many people’s minds for ‘Marketing’.
It is sensible to have such a strategy, just as it is sensible to have an email marketing strategy, and a telephone marketing strategy, in the appropriate circumstances. However, to treat it as anything more than another tool in the marketer’s toolbox is to completely misunderstand the whole process of marketing.
Following is a reproduction of a note I sent after a long conversation with a potential client who runs a large function venue in a regional area. It all happened pre-covid, but it seems the sentiments were still valid, based on a similar conversation last week.
Thanks for taking the time to talk to me yesterday, you clearly have some challenging issues to be dealt with.
I suspect that the social media “brain-dump” over the phone I delivered yesterday may have been a little unclear, so I thought I would follow up with a few points that have consistently come through over the course of the work I have done in this space.
- To achieve anything at a cost that delivers leverage on your investment, you need a plan.
- A core part of that plan is establishing objectives for your activity, and in social media marketing the real objective should be to generate “leads”. Not sales, leads. Social media will not be effective directly selling a product such as yours. It can, however, be a very potent tool to identify and feed leads into a sales process that can be at least partially automated.
- There will be investment required in the process, particularly the development of the ‘content’ and messages you send, irrespective of the level of automation.
- The starting point to developing the messages as it should always be, is the definition of the value of the product you are selling to the receiver of the communication. This is the point where your mix will be challenging, as the wedding reception product you have will be different to the corporate function product, although held in the same room, just re-arranged, and with differing support services. Similarly, the person to whom you are marketing the wedding product will be different to the one likely to be the buyer of the corporate function. Defining all this is critically important, much more now in the time of social media because of its ability to deliver a specifically targeted series of messages to a well-defined individual potential buyer.
- You can develop metrics that will give you indications of the effectiveness and impact of your activity. However, the problem of attribution is a significant one. Which piece of content, or ‘marketing collateral’ was the driver of the move towards the objective of a sale? Any digital agency that tells you they have that absolutely nailed is dreaming. However, you do now have the opportunity to test all parts of the process in a multitude of ways and optimise over time.
- The nurturing requires a “toolbox” of content, aimed at the individuals inhabiting specific target markets that you are setting out to reach. Some of this content can be challenging to create, but once done, can be used, and re-used, improved, and used again for little cost, providing your investment with considerable leverage. In your case, you do not have to do everything at once, pick a market (like weddings) and create a few pieces of content, such as the “Guide to the big day” I suggested yesterday, together with a few supporting pieces such as photos of decoration options, flower seasonality guides, and checklists of the really little things that make a difference on the day. These will both alleviate the planning headaches of the wedding planner, and make your life easier by neutralising those last minute panics.
- Once you have some of this, you can utilise social media to target the buyer. For example, Facebook and Pinterest will probably work for the bride to be, but LinkedIn may be better for the corporate buyer. In corporate it is rarely the one signing the cheque that does the investigation into venue options. Having such targeted message recipients means you can get some useful measurements of the outcomes of your social media spend, that can be supported by some of the other media options you are already using. I am however, a great believer, based on the results of the years, of being able to create a “conversation” with potential customers via social media, but this is just an automated and ubiquitous version of the opportunities we have always had to communicate, as evidenced by this story which goes back many years that I related in a post back in 2013.
As a last word, it is really difficult to find people who genuinely understand all this stuff and can implement as well. There are many around who will promise the world, and deliver something entirely different, when they deliver anything beyond an invoice. However, if you are curious, and prepared to explore the options, much can be done very effectively, and the outcomes are measurable and cost accountable.
If it costs you $50, or even a couple of hundred dollars to find, nurture and convert a prospect for a wedding reception into a sale, is that a worthwhile investment? I suspect so.
Let me know if I can help you develop and implement a plan that will deliver a return on the investment you have made in a terrific venue. Just do not be seduced by the hyperbolic nonsense sprouted by many self-styled ‘Social media experts’
Header cartoon credit: Hugh McLeod at www.gapingvoid.com
May 19, 2021 | Governance, Leadership
The characteristics of leadership we expect from the local non-profit, to the largest businesses in the country, to the Prime Minister, are pretty much the same.
Trust.
We need to trust those who lead. However, trust is never just given, it must be earned by the behaviour we observe. It is also incremental, built over time, it is fragile, and can be brought down in a minute by one bad example. The test, if there is such a thing, is whether we believe that the private conversations the ‘leader’ is having are the same as the public ones, and would they be prepared to say those private things on the 6 O’clock news. By this test, many in prominent so called ‘leadership’ roles in this country fail. Dismally.
Dependability.
Dependability is a component of trust. It has many forms, from delivering on the big promises made, to turning up on time for an appointment with the local hairdresser. In any leadership role, no matter the size, when a real leader finds themselves from time to time unable to deliver, they do not walk away from the fact, they acknowledge the failure, learn from it, and move on. To many, this is the essence of leadership, to me, in it is simplest form, it is only common courtesy painted on a wider canvas.
Competence.
Leaders must be Competent. Someone placed in a leadership role, who is an example of the Peter principal is corrosive to the rest of the organisation. Those being led must believe that the leader is someone who can get the job done. That does not mean they never make a mistake; it does not mean they are never unsure of themselves or exhibit human frailties. It just means that we believe that they have the wisdom, skills, and experience to get the job done. This extends further, by ensuring they teach others to be competent at their job, and the next one. Competence is a compounding quality they pass on to others.
Humanity.
We are herd animals, we rely on those around us for safety, and security. We have evolved and prospered as a species because we are able to collaborate and care for one another and rely on our neighbours in times of stress and crisis. Someone in a leadership position who does not care about those being led, is not a leader, at best they are a manager, dispensable and easily replaced.
In summary, you can always tell who the real leader is: they are the ones others follow because they want to.
How does your leadership style stack up??
May 17, 2021 | Leadership, Strategy
‘The smartest people are constantly revising their understanding, reconsidering a problem they thought they’d already solved. They’re open to new points of view, new information, new ideas, contradictions, and challenges to their own way of thinking.” Jeff Bezos
Strategy development is an inherently creative pursuit, you are seeking to visualise and articulate something that does not currently exist. Like any creative pursuit there are barriers to thinking in this manner, barriers that must be addressed if you are to build a robust strategic response to opportunities that may be very hard to see.
6 ways to achieve this elusive outcome:
- Forget finding the right answer. The ‘right’ answer probably does not exist, what does exist is the best answer today, that delivers another step on the road to the strategic objective. Looking for the ‘right’ answer is a way to ensure nothing gets done and that you drown in data.
- Don’t follow the rules. Every industry and market has ‘rules’. These are the assumptions that this is the way things always work. If you follow them, you will never come up with any combination of factors that delivers anything new. The best you can do is optimise, and while optimising is a very sensible and competitively necessary thing to be doing, it is not strategy.
- Allow yourself to ‘play’ with ideas. Try applying metaphors and similes to the situations you outline and see what happens. This is hard work, but it frees the mind. Just like little kids do not play by any rules, they make them up as they go, you should do the same. Throw logic out the window and enable the ‘inner child’ to come out, you may be surprised at what emerges. Like children, everybody is creative in their own way, it has just been beaten out of us by the education systems and life. Encourage the creativity by play, it is in these unrestricted and non-confrontational situations where tacit knowledge flourishes and is shared, and can be turned into original ideas.
- Get everyone involved. this is a cultural thing, and enables the seeds of creativity to grow. One of the greatest impediments to creativity is when someone thinks ‘this is not my job’. Strategy is everyone’s job. Being close to customers is typically the job of the salespeople, but look at what happens when your engineers and logistics people get close to them, all sorts of opportunities emerge because they are looking at things from a different perspective. It is challenging to create and nurture the processes and cultural drivers that encourage this sort of general engagement, but it pays great dividends.
- Ambiguity is your friend. It enables different thinking to be applied when the rules are unclear, so redefining the situation is easier.
- Be prepared, even happy to be wrong. So long as you recognise being wrong as a learning opportunity rather than one to apportion blame, this is a powerful practice. Recognising a mistake means you have tried something, learnt something, and moved forward. One of the realities that risks becoming a cliché is ‘Psychological safety’. This is when people are relaxed about being wrong, it is safe to call out mistakes while knowing it is about the process and conclusion, not the person. There is however a flip side to this ‘happy to be wrong’ choir. It is not an excuse for sloppy due diligence, or shallow consideration. This is a cultural tightrope that requires confident leadership to flourish
None of this is easy, if it was, everybody would be doing it. When you need the necessary outside assistance, let me know, I can help. Alternatively, Call Jeff, he has some time now, and has exemplified strategic creativity for the last 25 years.
May 13, 2021 | Branding, Customers, Marketing
Having a point of differentiation that is sustainable, and sufficiently valuable to customers that they are prepared to pay for it, is marketing’s holy grail.
Everybody seeks differentiation, the challenge is to do it effectively.
It seems to me there are three dimensions:
The first is the product itself, pretty obvious. The benefits that the various product features that add the differentiated value to customers are not easily replicated by competitors.
The second is the means by which you deliver those benefits, which is your business model.
A valuable differentiation is one that competitors cannot or will not replicate without great expense and effort. Some of these evolve out of a significant change in the prevailing business model, such as happened when Amazon started to sell books, but most happen incrementally.
It is relatively easy for a competitor to copy one or two things you do, and usually they will get it pretty right, even 99% right. However, when you do a whole lot of things together, it is harder to copy them all, and even if they do, getting 5 elements of your strategy copied at 99% accuracy, delivers only 95%. Few customers will opt for 95% without a significant discount.
The third is the choices you make that exclude some customers but have an impact on your ability to better service those who remain. This is a strategic choice you make based on the needs of your ideal customer.
Years ago, part of my sales responsibility for my employer at the time was for the regional distributors we used. Across NSW we had numerous small distributors, most of whom took small amounts of product on each delivery. The logistic costs were often more than the gross margin on the sales, but the sales revenue in total was significant. I took the decision to deliver only in 1/2 pallet lots of any product, and put in a staged discount for increased pallet numbers. After the initial yelling finished, most distributors moved to one of our competitors, along with the margin losses. We were able to increase the levels of support we gave to the remaining larger distributors, and they were able to significantly increase their sales, and our costs dropped accordingly. That segment of distributor customers suddenly became profitable after years of losses.
If you cannot figure out how to differentiate in ways that are meaningful to a cohort of customers, you are destined to be defined by price.
No future in that!
