B2B Engagement Marketing

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Engagement Marketing Solutions

B2B Engagement Marketing:It’s Not All About You Anymore

WHITE PAPER

Engagement Marketing SolutionsSilverpop WHITE PAPER

www.silverpop.com/b2b 1-877-484-7704 © 2010 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 2

Brands, whether B2B or B2C, are no longer defined by marketers. Instead, they are now characterized by the very people marketers hope to influence–customers and prospects. But a new opportunity is emerging that will catapult marketing to an even higher level of effectiveness and influence. This new world of marketing takes advantage of the Web 2.0 phenomenon by allowing marketers to participate in the dialogues and forums occurring in the market-place that are undermining the traditional approaches to branding.

This new world is called engagement marketing.

Engagement marketing is all about developing a two-way dialogue between organizations and their markets. And B2B marketers, especially those closely aligned with their sales forces, fully understand the vital importance of listen-ing to the customer. B2B engagement marketers have imbedded in their DNA the need to not only sell but to listen, understand and react.

They know that business buyers have just as many choices regarding, for example, the kind of printer ink cartridges they buy for their offices as do consumers. Business buyers just buy more. A whole lot more. And so busi-ness buyers of ink cartridges will seek out more information before making a purchase decision than will a typical consumer. Consequently, B2B market-ers are quite familiar with the growing expectations on the part of customers and prospects to be treated as a partner as opposed to a lead.

B2B engagement marketing calls upon buyers to not only voice their opinions about the brand, but to actually help enhance it to participate in the brand’s evolution. Rather than looking at customers and prospects as passive receivers of messages, B2B engagement marketers believe that both the marketplace and the brand are best served when communication and understanding flow freely from one to the other. So when the office manager suggests to his or her vendor’s sales rep that ink cartridges should be packaged by the dozen, the manufacturer listens.

Interestingly, in some cases organizations with a very strong sales focus struggle to implement engagement marketing. Some B2B companies that have traditionally relied upon a strong and aggressive sales force can have

B2B ENGAGEMENT MARKETING: It’s not all about you anymoreIntroduction

B 2B marketers, like their B2C colleagues, have diligently worked at

perfecting the art of shaping customer and prospect perceptions.

They have years of experience developing precisely targeted communications

comprised of finely tuned content directed at the specific audiences they

want to influence. Traditional brand marketing requires the engineering of

messages that engender the right impressions about the company’s products

in the marketplace. The traditional art of branding has grown and flourished

for many years. But that’s all begun to change.

difficulty developing an online dialogue. Some marketers wrongly believe that sales are ultimately driven by the sales force alone. But in today’s interactive word, buyers are seeking as much information about new products and services as they can obtain. They want to do business with companies that are willing to have conversations with them and form more of a partnership, rather than limit interaction to a selling opportunity.

Establishing customer loyalty and prospect respect through marketing programs that fully engage with the marketplace will become increasingly important to remain competitive. This white paper provides strategies and tactics for B2B marketers to implement programs that create dialogue with customers and prospects, build brand value and customer loyalty, and help drive revenue.



Defining Engagement Marketing

While studies find that marketers recognize the importance of customer engagement, the latest “Online Customer Engagement Report” from Econsultancy found that fewer than half of organizations actually have a defined customer engagement strategy in place.1 How to go about establishing a deeper and more beneficial relationship with customers and prospects eludes most organizations.

Forrester Research defines online engagement as “the level of involvement, interaction, intimacy, and influence an individual has with a brand or company online over time.”2 To further define engagement marketing, it’s important to recognize that “targeting” is not “engagement.” Engagement happens when people are actually waiting to hear from you and find your communications personally relevant to them. And under the current economic conditions, engagement marketing makes more sense now than ever before for B2B marketers.

Customers and prospects want two-way conversations with the companies they do business with, especially when considering entering into any type of long-term relationship. Business buyers want the ability to offer insights and observations about a company’s products or services, and to play a role in the development and enhancement of products they care about or that are impor-tant to their own company’s success. They also want the ability to control the buying process, engaging in discussions when they feel the time is right.

When you reach out and listen to customers and prospects in authentic ways, you build relationships that can have significant impact on your com-pany’s growth and longevity. Working from a clear understanding of custom-ers’ needs and business goals drives engagement marketing strategy.

In 2009, you can expect marketers—especially those promoting big-ticket business products, solutions and services—to place greater effort on building customer loyalty rather than acquiring new prospects. Managing the customer experience will be a focus of successful marketers. Attempts to remove the threat of client defection and revenue loss will be a key strategy employed by most companies. Six out of 10 customer relationship managers say that’s their top goal this year.3

Implementing programs that more fully enhance customer experiences with the company’s products and services or that streamline the buying process of new prospects will help keep companies moving forward through these turbulent and largely uncharted economic

waters. And while a difficult economic environment is a good reason to start listening more closely to customers and prospects, the benefits of engagement marketing will continue long after the recession has passed.

Because engagement marketing puts customers and organizations in partnership with each other, the improved ability to identify “brand ambassadors” among customers becomes a key outcome of such initiatives. Engagement marketing creates cohesion and purpose between companies and their markets. By taking a customer-centric view, not only toward marketing messaging and channels but to product features and enhancements, marketers are able to position their companies as customer advocates. And customers can be more easily transformed into brand advocates.

Obtaining testimonials and recommendations—a necessary element of many B2B sales situations—more easily becomes part of the conversation when engagement marketing practices are put into place. In fact, when asked what value engagement marketing would bring to their organizations, 58 percent of marketers said the ability to turn customers into brand advocates—recommending the company’s products and services—was important to them.1 As it should be.

In a series of surveys, Forrester Research asked more than 7,000 North American and European enterprise IT decision makers about the sources they turn to for information about products and services. More than eight out of 10 respondents said word-of-mouth recommendations are the most important source when making buying decisions.2

The Strategy of B2B Engagement Marketing

The nuances of how you create an engagement marketing program that’s suited for your company, your offerings and your marketplace varies by the industry and



offering. But the core strategy upon which you build brand awareness and loyalty and move prospects farther along in the sales cycle revolves around communication.

Engagement marketing is not “push” marketing or “pull” marketing. It’s collaborative marketing. The messages emanating out the company are no more important than those coming from the marketplace.

Ultimately, the goal of engagement marketing is to create relationships that benefit both customers and organizations. In the Econsultancy survey, 38 percent of marketers said the value of engagement marketing was found in increasing customer lifetime value. But nearly the same percentage (34 percent) said it was about increasing the value the company delivered to the customer. In fact, it is both.

B2B marketers create a win-win scenario by continually supply-ing customers with information that helps them reach their own business goals. By giving audiences the chance to respond, you help build brand loyalty. Strong content and thought leadership aligned with the willingness to listen also helps build company credibility.

With the wealth of today’s user-generated content, buyers don’t need your Web site or your product brochure. But they do need you to listen to them, and will reward you for doing so. Take the time to actually ask for input on the types of content the marketplace wants to receive. You may well find that it’s not just the CEO that people want to hear from, and that the topics you’ve selected for the monthly newsletter are falling flat. Don’t assume you know what they want. Ask them.

When you talk to clients, you may hear gripes, but it’s important that you hear them and respond rather than allowing them to fester in the marketplace. And bringing clients together with various members of your organization can create dialogues that enable the company to better understand user needs.

In this regard, B2B marketers are somewhat more likely than their B2C colleagues to instigate real, two-way communications with their custom-ers and prospects. With often complex product and service offerings, plus long sales cycles and multiple decision makers, it’s incumbent upon B2B organizations to listen carefully to the marketplace and zero in on indi-vidual needs. B2B marketers understand that the better they can provide information and value that resonates with prospects, the more likely the company will be to close the deal.

Engagement Marketing Tactics That Work

Web 2.0 tools have created both the need for, and solution to, engage-ment marketing. Customers’ ability to easily communicate with each other, access brand information and reach decisions independently of brand marketing has never been stronger. But the very online tools custom-ers use to take control of the message can be shared with organizations willing to meet customers halfway. Following are Web 2.0 tactics to help broaden customer outreach and input.

Spread the load over multiple channels. Engagement marketing requires much more than a strong pay-per-click program, and even more than a comprehensive email marketing plan. It’s not enough to bring people to your Web site. Once there, you must entice them to stay awhile, giving you the

opportunity to gather information about interests and needs.

Econsultancy found that marketers believe email newsletters are most likely to help strengthen customer engagement, and nearly six out of 10 (59 percent) plan to increase their spending in this area.1

But newsletters aren’t the only method engagement marketers use to reach customers and prospects in new and meaningful ways. Just under a third of respondents to Econsultancy’s survey (30 percent) said the development of microsites helps them keep Web-site visitors informed of new product offerings and services.

B2B marketers create strong, brand-building programs when they reach out to decision makers through a diverse network of touch points. Use email, RSS, landing pages, surveys, white papers, byline articles, newslet-ters, direct mail, telesales and other marketing channels to communicate. Spread the message wide, but keep it focused.

Monitor the marketplace. B2B marketers must keep tabs on prospect and customer behavior in far greater detail than B2C marketers. Often faced with varying combinations of decision makers and influencers for each sale, B2B marketers must deliver a wider range of messaging through a wider array of channels. And messages must be finely crafted and tailored to the changing information needs of decision makers as they move through the buying cycle.

To create messages that resonate, you must know what the topics are under discussion. Begin by reading blogs relevant to your industry. Use blog search engines to capture posts about your company and your competitors. By monitoring the conversations regarding your brand and others, you’ll better understand how your marketing messages affect customers and prospects. Or know when they don’t have much of an impact at all.



In their book “Groundswell,” authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff safely point out that monitoring the marketplace helps what they call the “no-more-being-stupid” factor. 4 When customers complain in public forums, it’s hard to deny product flaws or poor service.

Work the Web. B2B marketers need to improve their offerings of unique and branded online content. Surf through a random selection of B2B Web sites and you’ll find generic “marketing speak” content with a lack of focus on customer and prospect interests and needs. That’s a shame.

Business buyers turn to the Web. Forrester Research found that nearly 84 percent of IT purchasers, for example, find information contained on a vendor’s Web site important.2 Unfortunately for many prospects, their Web experience is less than rewarding.

B2B buyers don’t leave their consumer-oriented online experiences at home. They’re used to gathering content from fabulous and richly format-ted B2C Web sites. Too often B2B sites don’t compare to their more flashy counterparts, and they fail to engage.

An engaged Web site is one that speaks to individuals, not a wide swath of online users. Messaging should be customer-centric rather than marketing-centric. Know who you need to reach with your marketing campaigns and make sure the content matches their expectations. You can do this by creating customer personas to help guide the organization’s discussions.

Leverage Your Sales Team. Talk to the people that talk to your custom-ers and prospects every single day. Compensated and incented to know the needs, interests, issues and concerns of customers and prospects, sales reps are an encyclopedia of customer data. They can provide B2B marketers with a wealth of marketplace information.

If you have a large and geographically dispersed sales force, send them monthly surveys that are easy to complete but provide you with a richer understanding of customer proclivities. Formalize the gathering of information from sales by integrating sales force data into your marketing automation platform.

Bottom line, don’t delay in using the sales force as a sounding board for new promotions, changes in your marketing channels or discount offers. Obtain

buy-in from sales before considering radically different approaches to your marketing program. They know the market. Ask for their input.

Incorporate customer conversations into lead-scoring methodologies. Talking to customers gives B2B marketers a jump on better communicating with prospects. Be sure the information you gather from customers flows back into your lead-scoring process, and use it to influence both the infor-mation you provide and the future questions you ask of leads.

To show that you are listening, avoid requiring a prospect to provide the same information multiple times. Instead, create a series of questions to ask that allow you to enhance your understanding of the needs and inter-ests of the lead. Enhance understanding of the customer and prospect by engaging in questions, personalizing interactions and gaining insights that add to depth of understanding.

Maintain uniform messaging. When email campaigns or banner ads lead to a landing page or microsite that doesn’t match in content or tone, there’s a disconnect. When creating marketing campaigns, keep all prospect touch points in mind. Messaging in emails, banner ads, direct mail pieces, telesales scripts, blog postings and other channels should be unified and support each other.

Gather together a cross-function task force (not just marketers) and cre-ate a formal brand document. Identify the key aspects of your brand that should be presented to the marketplace. Then use the brand document to develop key points for all the various communications.

Build a community. B2B marketers know that both customers and pros-pects want to reach out to one another and compare notes about products and services that have captured their interest. Companies capitalize on this desire by creating online communities where information and ideas can be exchanged. By fostering dialogue among participants, B2B marketers are able to “listen in” to the needs and frustrations of the marketplace.

Don’t be afraid to let clients and prospects communicate with one another. They will with or without your assistance anyway. It’s better to be a part of the conversation than to have it go along without you.

Of course, creating an active community while building loyalty to your brand requires compelling content that recognizes the customers’ passions and needs. Quality content will make the community “sticky” and keep it bonded.

Don’t just encourage input. Seek it out. B2B marketers must gather important information from prospects and customers throughout the

sales and buying cycles. Gaining an in-depth understanding



of customer pain points is an important component upon which to build not only messaging, but product development as well. Keeping prospects involved and talking during multistage consideration processes prior to purchase helps move leads more smoothly through the pipeline.

Send surveys. Make calls. Meet at conferences. Ask for feedback.

Drive relationships through data. A richly nuanced database of customer and prospect interactions is the fuel that drives engagement marketing. In order to ensure marketing suitability, B2B companies must not rely solely on sales force automation (SFA) or customer relationship management (CRM) applications to house actionable data. Instead, demand management platforms with sophisticated lead scoring and nurturing capabilities should be utilized to manage and manipulate customer and prospect data.

Forrester Research reports that successful B2B database marketing delivers three key benefits:5

1) Marketers are better able to reach customers and prospects with more timely and relevant messaging

2) They can better close the loop between sales and marketing with improved lead-management capabilities that detailed customer profiles deliver

3) A strong B2B database improves the efficiency of marketing programs

Because of the wide range of data sets available for many B2B marketers, a strong analytics capability will help ensure content is relevant, timely and distinctive for each customer or prospect. Lead management and marketing automation technologies can house customer and prospect data and make it easily available to marketers to understand a person’s online, digital profile.

Measuring Engagement

Every marketing initiative should be implemented with a clear understand-ing of how the results will be measured and how those results impact business goals. Yet when it comes to engagement marketing, too often the suggested metrics get fuzzy, or worse, don’t enter into the planning at all.

When calculating the level of involvement customers have with your brand, remember that it’s a sliding scale you’re looking at. Customers can become more or less engaged with the company and its products as time goes by and interactions occur─or fail to. Key measurements of B2B cus-tomer engagement follow the customer lifecycle. They include measuring prospect activity in the following areas:

Interest in the brand category• Downloads a white paper• Attends a trade conference• Registers for Webinars

Researching your product offerings• Spends time on your Web site• Downloads a product brochure• Opens all or most of the emails you send and clicks links

Makes a purchase• Receives a proposal• Short-term trial offer• Long-term commitment

Tells colleagues about your brand• Forwards your emails to others• Recommends your white papers as a source of market insight

Recommends your brand to friends• Agrees to be quoted about your products or services in press

releases• Approves the use of his or her quote on your Web site• Eagerly tells industry analysts about the terrific offerings your company

provides• Taking the time to measure customer engagement can provide a

wealth of feedback to incorporate into your marketing program as you move forward.

Conclusion

Online engagement marketing serves customers, prospects and organizations, delivering tangible benefits to all. The more engaged a company is with its marketplace, the better the chance prospects will obtain the information needed to make the right decisions, and the more likely it is that customers will be reminded they made the right decision in doing business with you. The company gains stronger customer loyalty, higher conversion rates and enhanced revenue.

Begin by setting realistic expectations about the effort and costs involved in orchestrating engagement marketing. Understand that once you begin to actively reach out to your customers and prospects to obtain their opinions and gather their insights, you can’t easily shut the flow of communications off without damaging relationships. Don’t start such a program if you and your company aren’t committed and serious about engaging with the marketplace.

New demand-generation and demand-management technologies have created the opportunity to reach out and touch individual customers and prospects in unique ways. As budgets tighten and pressures rise to show value, lead-management solutions with solid marketing automation capabilities can enable companies to achieve more customer engagement with less effort. By combining new technologies that support a comprehensive lead-management program, and capturing data to expand your knowledge of what makes your customers and prospects tick, you will generate a substantial return on investment from your marketing dollars.

FOOTNOTES:

1. “Online Customer Engagement Report,” Econsultancy and cScape, December 2008

2. “How To Take B2B Relationships From Indifferent To Engaged,” Forrester Research, January 2009

3. “How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence,” Forrester Research, January 15, 2009

4. “Groundswell,” Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, Harvard Business Press, 2008

5. “Database Marketing Fundamentals For B2B Marketers,” Forrester Research, June 2008