MOCCA & MarketingProfs: B2B Marketers Focus On Social Media and Metrics

June 9, 2009 — Laura Ramos

During the past week I’ve had the privilege of presenting to two different organizations that I think B2B marketers would benefit from exploring further.

MOCCA Quarterly Meeting

Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance

Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance

June 3, 2009 I spoke at the MOCCA quarterly meeting, held at Adobe’s facilities in downtown San Jose. The Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance (MOCCA) is a community for sharing practical experience between Marketing Operations professionals in technology companies. Attendees worry about customer data quality, measuring marketing results against sales pipeline, and demonstrating that marketing investment pays dividends. What we call “Left Brain” marketers here at Forrester.

I talked about the impact of social media on the marketing mix and how social activity requires marketers to focus more on outcomes – how marketing activity engages prospects and customers in building relationship – than on marketing activity that we have become comfortable and accustomed to measuring (view, clicks, impressions, market share, cost per lead, etc.). The presentation was well received judging by the thoughtful questions. Feel free to visit MOCCA’s site and access a copy of it.

MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum 2009

June 9, 2009 I joined Roy Young, President of MarketingProfs, LLC, and Sandy Carter, IBM’s Vice President, SOA & WebSphere Marketing, Strategy and Channels, at MarketingProfs B2B Forum in Boston, MA, to discuss the impact of the current economy on marketing mix and budget trends. MarketingProfs recently published their report about the joint research we conducted in Dec 2008/Jan 2009. While MarketingProfs included responses from companies under 100 employees (and Forrester did not), the results were strikingly similar. Broad dependence on traditional tactics will shift more toward digital and social “tactics” in 2009 and beyond, driven mainly by the economy (which has forced marketing budget cuts) and the interest/hype around social media.

Sandy brings fantastic, credible perspective about the challenge, and rewards, of integrating social media into the marketing mix. Three key points we firmly agree upon:

1) Social strategy and execution should not reside solely in marketing. A cross-functional team that includes sales, development, support, and marketing – among others as your firm’s needs dictate – is essential to setting strategy, managing community, helping all your social participants communicate consistently, and keeping out of “social trouble”.

2) Social is part of an integrated approach that combines traditional and digital tactics. Social media helps to turn the brand, lead generation, and loyalty (measured by cross sell, upsell and retention) dials when combined and managed as part of a larger marketing dashboard of options.

3) Social media’s biggest impact in B2B will be in creating and sustaining gated, invited communities. Tech is already leading the way since developers have used forums and discussion threads for years – social tools just makes this self-support more appealing. Sandy and the audience offered interesting examples of private communities from the medical field that show “gated” community potential outside of high tech.

Check out Forrester’s report on B2B marketing trends from the joint research with MarketingProfs. I look forward to hearing your questions and observations; how is the current economy impacting your marketing mix and tactic choices?

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Customer Reference Programs: Time To Embrace Social Media/Web 2.0

May 27, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Customer reference management has moved from the sidelines to the mainstream of corporate marketing activity. This is good news for the dozens of customer reference management professionals who attended the February Customer Reference Forum in Berkeley, CA and participated in the 2009 survey. Why? Because authentic customer references help sales close business and marketing persuade analysts, press, and investors that corporate positioning and product claims are legitimate.

Yet, with dedicated budgets, headcount, and ties to business goals, now is not the time for customer reference managers to rest on their laurels. Customer reference management can play a vital, new role in executing a community-centered, socially-savvy communication strategy — one based on emerging Web 2.0 tools that blends online/offline experiences. This was the theme of the keynote presentation I  gave at the conference, revisited again in research published today on Forrester’s site, which you can access.

In the survey of customer reference professionals, jointly conducted by Forrester, the Customer Reference Forum, and Point of Reference, we found that — while meeting expectations and goals today — customer reference professionals need to tune up their Web 2.0 skills and take a more active role in setting social strategy because technology customers are a socially active group. Unfortunately, as you can see in the figure, B2B customer reference managers aren’t thinking along social lines today.

Less than 1/2 of respondents use social approaches in programs

Less than 1/2 of respondents use social approaches in programs

Customers want to engage in peer communities that help them successfully implement technology, produce new business capabilities, and gain competitive advantage. Getting customers to reference out of goodwill gets difficult without something to offer them in return. Combine the two, and watch private, gated business communities grow.

To get started on this path, I suggest customer reference managers take three key steps to socially-enable their programs:

  • Step 1: Create more opportunity for customers to engage socially. B2B marketers must encourage reference customers to interact with prospects and each other, share stories, and talk about the facts — like problem details, numbers, and specific steps they took to solve their issues. Social applications like wikis, ratings, and widgets give customers more ways to share ideas, content, and information in a structured, controlled manner without the overhead of formal publication and approval processes.
  • Step 2: Help references testify in virtual venues. To take advantage of emerging social business behavior, customer reference professionals and marketers need to move beyond the group setting and let references engage outside the boundaries of the formal program. Less than 30% of respondents let references build profile pages, guest blog, rate community-contributed content, or author wikis, activities that permit customers to strut their stuff in the online, virtual world and create broader connections.
  • Step 3: Use metrics that focus on engagement, not just activity. For creating new leads or enlisting participants, social tools earned accolades from less than 10% of respondents and make the social media effort seem hardly worth the effort. To capture the real value of social media in customer reference programs, customer reference managers should focus on how social touchpoints increase the quality (not quantity) of customer-to-prospect interactions, bump up participation intensity, and amplify topic discussions by prospects and references alike.

Check out the report and let me know what you think of my analysis and advice.  Are you engaged in customer reference management? Is social a part of your plans? Is this an area of research I should continue to pursue in 2009? Looking forward to the dialogue.

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Direct Marketers Are Tired Of “Social Media” Hype

March 3, 2009 — Laura Ramos

I ran across a blog post by Dave Raffaelle, Executive Director, Customer Data Management at Quaero, who works with my good friend Michelle Boockoff-Bajdek (BB).  Dave highlights results from a recent survey of the Marketing Executive Networking Group where respondents picked the Web 2.0 terms they were most sick of hearing about.  Web 2.0, Social Networking, and Social Media topped the list.  Why is this? Dave shares some great insight, which I’d like to paraphrase here:

  1. Marketers already have their hands full trying to get their existing email and direct mail out the door. They may experiment with social tactics, but when they don’t provide a better return, marketers go back to what’s worked before.
  2. There are no enterprise or even entry level technology solutions that allow marketers to leverage social media or Web 2.0 efficiently and effectively to deliver targeted messaging and capture response to those messages. (I have more to say about this below.)
  3. Return on Investment (ROI) is still king. Until there is model for how a company can explicitly increase response and profitability from their social networking initiatives — as well as complement their existing marketing mix– social media will continue to be on the “nice to have” list.
  4. Social Media Marketing is daunting. Even though there is a lot of talk regarding the benefits of it and how a marketer can get leverage it, Social Media involves technology and concepts that are far reaching and many times beyond comprehension.

In my research with B2B marketers, I see part of the backlash around the terms “social networking” and ”social media” happen because the phrases are ambiguous.  They lump together technologies that are not necessarily social on their own, but *can* be part of an integrated direct program aimed at building prospect/buyer engagement in several steps. Getting marketers to differentiate explicitly between social media and Web 2.0 tools would help, but this requires marketing discipline and consistent usage that only time will produce.

Regarding Dave’s #2, I agree that enterprise and entry level tools are lacking. But truly social media — like wikis, voting, ranking, and idea solicitation — require a different marketing mindset than Web 2.0 tools like video, podcasts and widgets. The later we can treat like communication channels, the former we should not. I don’t see one set of tools addressing both, which complicates adoption further.

Regarding #3 and #4, I see measurement and business case as the big stumbling blocks today.  Many social media experts (including a few at Forrester) advise marketers to “just get involved” — because your customers are already involved and, if you are not, then you run the risk of your competitors getting there first.  I question this logic.  I think it is possible to justify the ROI of social activity, but the value comes from replacing/supplementing traditional brand building activities and for increasing customer (not prospect) engagement. Both are traditionally hard to measure and less interesting to management when the economy is sour and leads are at a premium.

To round things out, I would suggest a 5th issue: marketers don’t know whether or not buyers are engaging socially and, if they are, does this engagement matter in the purchase decision making process.  Oliver Young and I surveyed 1200+ B2B buyers recently to try to get a handle on this.  Understanding buyer social behavior is not easy because any one audience — technology buyers in our case — may or may not behave similarly to other audiences.  Social Technographics provides a model for understanding buyer social participation, but it must be applied to a specific cusotmer group and then it only tells part of the story.  More targeted, behavior-based analytics could really help.

Is there a 6th or 7th reason behind the backlash?  Let me know your thoughts.

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B2B Marketing Budgets Trend Downward in 2009

February 12, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Ok, given the current economy, it’s no surprise that we found B2B marketers expect to have less budget to work with in 2009. I teamed up with MarketingProfs to field the 2009 marketing budgets and mix effectiveness survey. I’ll write about the results soon — now that I’ve got the social media research behind me for now — but wanted to share a few tidbits with you ahead of time. We found:

75% of respondents said their budgets increased or stayed the same (vs 2007) last year. Avg. increase was about 20%.

However, 58% feel the same way in 2008. 42% expect budgets to decrease by 23% on average (with a wide deviation.)

I talked a bit about this when I teamed up with a number of other analysts here to write our 2009 predictions document for technology/B2B marketers. Here’s what I said about it on our blog for Interactive Marketers:

How Are 2009 Marketing Budgets Shaping Up? — January 8,  2009

Happy New Year, Everyone! Looking over my holiday and Christmas greetings this year, I was struck by the change in tone from 2007 and how everyone’s wishes for a “happy” new year seemed more sincere and profound in light of the current economy.

In our Predictions 2009 research, published December 23, Forrester analysts who cover B2B and technology marketing predict that marketing budgets will take big hits early in 2009, with typical decreases in the 15% to 25% range. To investigate whether this prediction is tracking current experience and to look at the impact of the economy on this year’s B2B marketing spending, Forrester teamed up with MarketingProfs to field a survey that explores 2009 budget plans and looks back at 2008 effectiveness.  Interactive marketers who work at firms who sell primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) to businesses will find participating in this research relevant because we explore a number of online and social tactics along with the conventional.

<Deleted solicitation to participate in the survey.>

Here’s wishing you a more prosperous new year.

Tags: , , :: Add to del.icio.us

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I found it interesting that my “thumb in the wind” prediction proved out in this particular survey. I am concerned, however, that the second half of 2009 may actually get worse before things get better.

I also looked at which tactics — conventional, online, and social — marketers use and find effective for building brand and generating demand. Not surprisingly, traditional approaches like trade shows, PR, print and direct mail still figure highly on the marketing tactic popularity list. 2/3 or more of respondents said they used these tactics — along with the corporate Web site, email, and search marketing — in their 2008 marketing programs.

I expect this to change in 2009 as the budget crunch tightens. Respondents said they expect their Web sites, inside sales, email and Web-based events to become more important in their overall marketing mix.  Among social media, 30%+ of respondents said online demos, discussion forums, blogs, open social networks, and podcasts would become more important — which is not that far behind the other, more popular channels. 

Will 2009 become the year that B2B marketers finally wake up to the power of online, inbound, pull-oriented marketing?  Let’s hope so. The data points in that direction, but let me know what you are seeing as well.

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B2B Marketers: Getting On Top Of Social Media

February 3, 2009 — Laura Ramos

Last year, I jumped onto the social media bandwagon and started researching and writing about the use of Web 2.0 technologies — like blogs, podcasting, wikis, tagging services, shared bookmarks, social networks, dynamic applications, and rich Internet apps. — in B2B marketing. In mid-July, Forrester officially kicked off this research, which you can read about in the copy of the blog post below. Here are the three things I have learned in the meantime:

1) B2B marketers are worried about social media, but don’t yet fully understand it’s implications.  Many treat social tactics like yet another outbound communication channel — which is a recipe for disaster.

2) Social media is not the same as social networks or communities. Buyers, customers, influencers, technical types, and “concerned citizens’ will band together online to get what they need from each other — regardless of how clever, interesting, or mundane a social venue vendors try to put in front of them.  Marketers need to understand the impact of social communities, but trying to start one on behalf of your business is an endeavor not to be taken lightly.

3) Marketers focus too much on the tools and not enough on the community/activity.  Even after carefully explaining why it is essential to put audience and business purpose ahead of tools when considering social media, marketers still ask me “but what are the best examples of how other companies have used <fill in the blank with any social tool you can think of> in their marketing programs?”

Bottomline: B2B marketers have a long way to go to set and execute successful social media strategy.  Here’s more food for thought on the matter. (Yes, the date is ‘dated’ but much of the insight still applies):

B2B Marketers Eye Social Media, Web 2.0 Tactics — August 1, 2008

Last Wednesday, Dan Klein — who heads up tech industry consulting here at Forrester — joined me on a teleconference to talk about how B2B marketers should “Define Your B2B Social Media Strategy.” Web 2.0 marketing is a subject of great interest to business marketers as almost 700 signed up for the Webinar, just over 300 attended, and 120 participated in a pre-show survey. The vast majority of the invitations went out to Forrester clients and, judging by the list of attendees, the participation ranged from large tech firms to small business services providers. Folks from software, hardware, telecom, agencies, start ups, database marketing, and media were present.

What did we learn from this interactive session? Here are a few highlights:

1) Social media use in marketing is just emerging. While 2/3 say they use email and Webinars in their marketing mix today, only 35% or fewer use blogs, online forums, video produced by marketing, podcasts, customer contributed content, or other Web 2.0 tactics.  Surprisingly, 42% said they are using social networks like Facebook — up from the 25% who said they did in our earlier 2008 research. (Click on the tiny picture below to see the data up close.)

Social_media_webinar_survey_3

2) Benefits are hard to gauge right now. Depending on which tactic they use, between 30 and 36% of respondents said it was “Too early to tell” whether using social media translated into marketing success.  In contrast, 25% said landing pages and Webinars successfully helped the generate leads in a measurable way.

3) Marketers are sticking with what works. As a result, 65% or more of the survey respondents said that Webinars, landing pages, video marketing, and online forums figure significantly in their 2009 marketing plans. On the other hand 55% or more said that RSS feeds, podcasting, widgets and virtual worlds were marginal or irrelevant in their futures.

4) And, finally, the most popular questions were about how to understand customers’ use of social media. They included: How do we figure out what customers are doing socially? What is the best way to get this information? How do we understand how Web 2.0- savvy our buyers are? How do we assess customer use of social media?

It’s the $64,000 question, isn’t it?  How to reach customers through this brand-spanking new medium. But it’s the wrong question for marketers to ask if they want to be successful with social media.  Social media use is about creating dialog and relationships with a community. The community says what is important, not the marketing folks. This is going to be a very hard lesson for B2B marketers to learn because it means putting the right people — technical, customer-facing, problem-solving people — in front of the community and letting them engage in an open, trustworthy manner. And they may not get the corporate messaging right everytime…

In this new Web 2.0 world, the right question is: how do I get to know my audience better and what they want from social interaction? For this, Forrester developed Social Technographics and the POST methodology, which we talked about briefly on the Webinar.

If you’d like to know more, check out our research on POST and Social Technographics. Or you can join me in Cambridge, MA on August 13 for my “Making B2B Marketing Work” work shop, where we will talk more about social media, among other topics.  In the meantime, let me know what successes you are finding as you explore incorporating social behavior and Web 2.0 tools in your marketing.

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BTW – The next installment of the “Making B2B Marketing Work” work shop will be held February 19, 2009 in Foster City. It will focus on social media as an essential part of the B2B marketing mix and go-to-market strategy.

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