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19 B2B Marketers:One Question,Many Insights

 The ongoing “consumerization of B2B” has long been a passionate conversation topic among marketers. As a B2B marketer myself, I wanted to better understand how B2B marketers were perceiving this trend. I reached out to the marketers in my network with a simple question:

“How has the trend in consumerization of B2B changed your behaviors?”

Here’s what they had to say…

Margaret MolloyGlobal CMOSiegel+Gale

“Consumerization of B2B means that purpose matters and requires that we engage customers in a dialog to turn them into brand advocates.”

Nick BesbeasVP, Marketing and Customer Support

LinkedIn

@nickbesbeas

Purpose Matters

“B2B marketers need to remember that big glass buildings don’t buy software, people do. We created an initiative called ‘Humanize the Brand’ that encourages and enables SAP to communicate more consistently, more simply, and in ways that are more empathetic to our customers.” Jonathan BecherCMOSAP @jbecher

Humanizing Brands

“The trend in consumerization has guided us toward taking a new lens on how we create content—always asking ourselves ‘is this piece providing something valuable and actionable for the reader?’ We’re continuously striving to produce content that is informative, educational, or provides our audiences with tips and tools that make their jobs easier.”

Margaret MolloyGlobal CMO Siegel+Gale

@MargaretMolloy

Provide Professional Value

Customers must become brand advocates

“The biggest changes are simplifying the message, a better adherence to messaging and positioning across the company, and a broader use of social media to communicate the message.”

Mark WilsonSVP, MarketingBlackberry

Simple, Integrated Marketing

“The biggest change is the use of measurement tools like attribution modeling, which connect individual person-level exposure to CRM conversions to better understand the ROI of advertising and communications touchpoints.”

Randall BeardGlobal Head of Advertising Solutions

Nielsen

@beardrs

Measurement Tools

“Terms like B2B and B2C are no longer relevant—it is all about B2C. Whether you are a CEO or a CPA, you can be a consumer anywhere and at anytime. And when you go back to being a CEO or CPA, you want the same always-on, simple experience in your "B2B" world since there is no longer a distinction between what hat you are wearing.”Marty HomlishEVP and CXOHP

Consumer Behavior

“Consumerization is changing the tone and voice of ADP's brand in multiple ways. It has not only changed what we say, but whom we talk to as we increasingly reach end users and not just decision makers through mobile and social channels.”

Steven HardyVP, NAS and MNC Strategy and Marketing

ADP

@steevh

Tone + Voice

Marketing is optimizing for the technology of the consumer

“My view of what’s ‘good enough’ for the user experience has dramatically changed. Products must be intuitively designed, requiring an iterative design approach. As well, 60% of the buyers journey happens before sales team engagement, so we need to focus on answering buyers’ questions early on in their journey. Overall, there’s been a radical shift in emphasis from push to pull marketing.”

Richard CampionePresident, Cloud and Data Services

ServiceSource

@campione

UX + Pull Marketing

“We strive to get closer to the final end user.  Avoid jargon.  Forge the relationship.  Create huge value for the customer.”

Fred NiemeierPresident, Energy and Fuels Marketing GroupIDEX Corporation

Forge Relationships

“As marketers, we don’t focus on B2C or B2B—it’s about leveraging technology to provide tailored information and interacting individually with customers and prospects throughout their buyer journey—that’s critical for consumer purchases and for complex technology decisions.”

Debbie MurphyVP, Global MarketingZebra Technologies

@dhmurphy

Tailored Interactions

Produce helpful content that makes your customer’s job easier

“The consumerization of IT contributed to the convergence of B2B and B2C to a path of B2i; the i stands for an increasing number of critical individuals that IT B2B marketers have to market to with B2C simplicity in order to gain and sustain relationship permission.”

Eric-Jan SchmidtVP, Global and Digital MarketingHitachi Data Systems

@EricJanSchmidt

Individuals

“The biggest impact of consumerization of enterprise technology has been on product design and development, as well as the advent of bottoms-up business models. Inevitably, it has impacted how we market our products with increasing use of subscription-based pricing and greater focus on end user (vs. buyer) marketing to drive adoption and usage.”

Rahul SachdevPresident and CEOGet Satisfaction

@rahul_sachdev

End User Marketing

“B2B buyers are already ‘consuming’ information, just like consumers. We’re embracing their active role in the buying process by developing shareable content and stories.”

Steven HandmakerCMOAssurance

@handmaker

Sharable Content

Brands must relate to their customers on a human level

“The consumerization of B2B has enabled Kofax to adopt a consumer-driven positioning. We have shifted budgets, embraced customer versus product focused messaging, and shaped our brand voice to be more conversational and provocative.”

Grant JohnsonCMOKofax

@grantejohnson1

Shifted Budgets

“The ubiquity and transparency of information and data has made the B2B consumer more informed and in control. Marketing must adapt to shorter buying cycles, faster reaction times and increased non-traditional competition. Influencing customers along multiple channels in real time is critical. In short B2B consumerization has required marketing organizations to move from push to pull centric.”

John DragoonEVP and CMO

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

@jkdragoon

More Pull, Less Push

“We are seeing the selling motion move from a sales rep meeting customers to a digitally driven environment where customers’ preferences are already influenced by online information prior to their first encounter with a sales person.  This inflection requires our marketing team to rely more heavily on outside vendors with the latest in technology and expertise to help drive our marketing mix.”

Bob BrahamSVP and CMOSGI

@bobbraham_sgi

Digital Drivers

Information and data have empowered the B2B consumer

“B2B marketing is finally recognizing the relevancy of B2C consumerism. For example, B2B’s growing emphasis on personalization, search optimization and sentiment analysis.”

Gary DamianoVP, MarketingVeeva Systems

@GEDamiano

Personalization

“It has made marketing engage more fully with the individual buyer, versus the company persona. Marketers are trying to appeal more overtly to the people involved in the buying cycle, leading marketing to optimize for mobile devices and the technology of the consumer, rather than the traditional desktop.”Chris BoormanChief Marketing and Customer Success OfficerHuddle

@CHBoorman

Digital Drivers

“What do people exactly mean by ‘consumerization of B2B’? It's one of those terms we invent or reinvent. I'd say it was always there, it's just that most B2B marketers were previously focused on a lot of the wrong things or not focused enough on the right things.”

Shane LennonVP and CMO

Epiq Systems

@virtualCMO

Consumerization Isn’t New

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Thanks to the 19 B2B marketing leaders

Now over to you… “How has the consumerization of B2B changed your behaviors?”

We’d love to hear from you.

Tweet me @MargaretMolloy

Margaret MolloyGlobal CMO

Siegel+Gale

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Simple is smart.

www.siegelgale.com