Why B2B Marketers Are Slow to Adopt Tools That Help Them Communicate

  According to a new report from Forrester Research B2B marketers are sticking with tired and true digital tactics (emails, newsletters, and webinars) while less than 1/3 are using blogs, podcasts, and social networks for marketing. In addition the research pointed out that less than 10% of the respondents use widgets, mashups, advergaming, or virtual worlds in their marketing. 25% of respondents said they think social networks and online communities help build brand awareness. One of the challenges facing marketers was the ability to tie these tactics to sales and ROI, the survey found.

Recent research from the Marketing Executives Networking group (MENG) finds that social media practices are still in their infancy as part of an integrated marketing approach. 67% of respondents consider themselves beginners at using social media for marketing purposes. Additionally, more than 87% of respondents are not regularly measuring the ROI of their social media marketing efforts. Richard Guha, Chairman of MENG. "While many marketers are worried they're missing the boat, in reality even the Fortune 500 companies don't feel they've mastered social media just yet."

So why does the research point to the fact that a profession built on conversing is slow to adopt new tools that enable us to do this efficiently and effectively. I think there are three main reasons:

Lack of Audience Insight

Before one can really understand how to deploy the new conversational tools of the 21^st century one really needs to understand how their customers, prospects, and influencers are conversing currently, how they wish they could converse, and where they are going to converse. Dwight Griesman, Chief Marketing Officer at Forrester Research notes "It's important to make the decision on what to do based on your target audience and your strategy, not the technology.” Forrester provides a good framework for leveraging social media that they call POST-People, Objectives, Strategy & and Technology. The point in POST is that you really need to understand your audience first in how, why and where they want to converse. Gaining this understanding will provide insight into the objectives you want to accomplish, the strategy and tools you will use to execute your strategy.

The Fallacy of ROI and Social Media

ROI or ROMI (Return on Marketing Investment) is such a hot buzz word that I think we are losing sight of the Forrest through the trees. Do you need an ROI to justify a conversation with someone who may or may not be interested in you, or your solution? Do I need an ROI for driving to work in the morning? If you don’t converse you surely will never need any ROI measure because you won’t have anything to measure it on. This point ties into the “Objectives” part of the POST framework.

What do you really want to accomplish. I don’t believe that social media is about demand generation, click through rates, offer conversations or sales. These elements are all positive side effects of having a good conversation with your target audience are they not? Social media is a buzz word for using new tools to go back to that most fundamental principle of marketing. Telling others what you do, why you do it, and the value that you can create for them.

New measures are required but in my view they are about the quality of conversation, the experience people have while engaging with your brand, and what they are saying about you. Don’t let traditional ROI metrics delay your entry into the digital conversation. Besides most of the new communication tools have no cost associated with their use.

Knowing Where to Start

Paul Dunay wrote a blog post where he submits a point of view that Social Media is harder for a B2B companies in that they cannot speak to an audience so perfectly that it resonates with the vast majority. He goes on to say that B2B audiences are more fragmented with internal employees, external partners, channel partners, third party vendors, customers and prospects. This reality will make it more difficult to reach the B2B ecosystem with messages that will resonate.

Well lets go back to POST for a minute. What and who is the audience I’m trying to converse with? Why do I want to converse with them? And how and where should I converse with them. Do not for a minute think that just because you enable the latest hot social media tool of the day that you will achieve viral results akin to a “Justin Timberlake Video”. If you build it they will not come. But if you converse those that are interested will converse with you. In addition you may need to deploy several communication channels to converse with different elements of your B2B ecosystem.

My feeling is that B2B marketing was built for leveraging the new social media tools by the very nature that our audiences are fragmented and we need very efficient means of communicating with them. Never before has it been possible to efficiently communicate with more parts of our ecosystem. This is day of the long tail. As B2B marketers we need to be in those digital locales where the “12 people” that are interested in what I do are conversing. I can’t afford not be.

So where to start? Know your audiences, set your objectives, define your strategy, and then select and leverage the tools and technologies.

All you need to do to start today is to go to the places where people with similar needs are gathering and talking about you, and solutions like yours. Once there listen, and then converse. Become part of the community. Nuff said.

Comments

[scott]

Another awesome post my friend.

You have probably read:

http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/2008/10/will-b2b-market.html

The adoption of SM in the B2B space has been extremely slow, and will continue to be especially among larger corporations, in my estimation. It's too much of a moving target, too hard to quantify, to hard to model and process. Goals and deliverables for SM are harder to nail down; responsible marketing managers really can't take risks without it.

[ed]

Hi Scott

Thanks for your great comment. My view is you cannot afford not to take risks with these new communication tools, especially in light of how the buying process has changed and the impact of word of mouth.

I came across a recent article that highlighted how several tech firms are now more aggressively utilizing these new tools at http://ca.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idCATRE4AH8G820081118