A recent report from eMarketer offers a lot of optimism on the use of social media in BtoB marketing. They found that marketers will spend far more over the next few years to create and manage their own social networks for business customers, partners, suppliers and vendors.
As important as social media has become for consumer marketing, it will be even more important for BtoB companies. Social media is all about developing and building strong relationships, and with so many people involved in the typical BtoB sales process, the quality of those relationships are critical to long-term sales success.
Unfortunately, many B2B marketers have had a hard time with social media. Forrester nailed it in their “How To Derive Value From B2B Blogging” report this summer. They found that the number of new BtoB blogs has dropped dramatically this year. The corporate blogs they reviewed read like warmed over press releases, they struggle to sustain any level of conversation and the overall user experiences are awful.
Where are they going wrong? Not only are they are treating social media like just another push channel, but they are not thinking big enough about how they can use social media tools. For most BtoB companies, social media means a blog. When done right, blogs can be a great way to create personality for your company that customers and prospects can get to know and trust. But as eMarketer referred to in their study, the real opportunity is much bigger.
It is about building a community around the company with the people that have the customer insight and deep product knowledge that customers want to interact with. For many companies, the seeds for this type of community are already planted. All those slick
whitepapers companies use to support their value proposition can be a great start to a community.
A community can make whitepaper content come alive with discussions, multimedia and responses to timely industry issues. Use it to draw prospects deeper into your company faster and give customers a way to share their ideas, successes and recommendations. Markets move fast so adding your insight to the community as news breaks might gain the attention of some high-profile bloggers/journalists looking for a point of view on emerging story.
It can also be used as a complement to your direct marketing efforts. Instead of driving search visitors to an inquiry form landing page, a community would capture their contact information and give them something deeper to explore.
These communities won’t attract millions, but they’ll get more of the people that matter the most to you. You know exactly who your audience is and you can create an environment that is catered specifically to them at their stage in the buying process.
Don’t forget that a little entertainment can go a long way. Just because this is BtoB marketing doesn’t mean it has to be Bland and Boring. A short video lets you rise about a page of text and stock photos to entertain your audience and deliver a point that illustrates your value and supports your call to action. Check out what we did recently for Newoware.
The Digital Influence Group is excited to be a part of the New Marketing Summit coming up at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA on October 14 and 15.
This conference is all about the knowledge, tools and strategies marketing and PR professionals now need to be successful in an economy driven by social technologies. They’ve got Chris Brogan, Paul Gillin and David Meerman Scott organizing the sessions so this should be the biggest event on social media and emerging marketing technologies in the Boston area this year.
I’ll be speaking on the panel “Selling Up - Convincing Senior Management about Social Media” at 12:30 on the 14th. Also, DIG will be sponsoring the networking cocktail reception at the Showcase that evening. (Nothing’s been announced yet, but there is talk of a possible appearance of one of the Patriots players) This will be a great event and we hope to see you there.
I’ve always been a big fan of the Gartner Hype Curve. It is an effective tool to visualize the evolution of the technologies around us so we can separate the hype from the business reality.
If you are not familiar with the hype curve, it is Gartner’s way of representing the maturity and business adoption of a group of technologies. There are 5 stages in the curve that represent the rise of a technology to a period of over-enthusiasm and “hype”, to a rapid decline period of disillusionment when it falls short of expectations - to a time of enlightenment when it evolves to become widely accepted and valuable for businesses.
Wikipedia has this explanation of each of the 5 stages:
1. “Technology Trigger” — The first phase of a hype cycle is the “technology trigger” or breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.
2. “Peak of Inflated Expectations” — In the next phase, a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.
3. “Trough of Disillusionment” — Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.
4. “Slope of Enlightenment” — Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.
5. “Plateau of Productivity” — A technology reaches the “plateau of productivity” as the benefits of it become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations. The final height of the plateau varies according to whether the technology is broadly applicable or benefits only a niche market.
Gartner’s 2008 Hype Curve for Emerging Technologies was just released and it is interesting to see where our favorite social media technologies are today.
(Click the image to enlarge)
On the Way Up
Microblogging is rising rapidly just about to enter the Peak of Inflated Expectations. (some Twitter users may say its been there for a long time) Not far behind is cloud computing. Both are expected to move through the cycle rapidly reaching mainstream adoption in 2 to 5 years.
On the Way Down
Social computing platforms and video telepresence reached their hype peak and are dropping into the trough of disillusionment. Further down trough are public virtual worlds and Web 2.0. Keep in mind this is part of the evolution and each of these are expected to evolve rapidly. From the Gartner’s press release:
“Although Web 2.0 is now entering the Trough of Disillusionment, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications,”
Rising Again
Corporate blogging, wikis and social networks have been through the worst and are now on the path towards productivity. Their technologies have been through a couple generations, they are being widely adopted by consumers and companies are making them work for business.
Social media tools are some of the fastest moving technologies on this curve. Gartner has shown how important these technologies are and how critical they will be for businesses in a very short period of time. The key to success right now is to develop a strategy and set some clear objectives so you can try the various tools and technologies to see where you can make the biggest impact for your business.
If you don’t believe me… see how Groundswell author Josh Bernoff combines social media strategies in this short video.
That “Social technology smoke, dont breathe this” line gets me every time I watch this.
Two recent studies highlight why companies are struggling with social media marketing.
We used to point to the fear of giving up control a lack of support from senior management as the primary reason for the slow adoption of social media, but recent studies from Jupiter Research and the Society of New Communication Research (SNCR) show that its not stubborn management anymore… its about strategy and management.
In Jupiter’s “Social Marketing Scorecard” report, they find that advertisers don’t have clear goals when approaching social media sites. In fact, 47% of large advertisers in their study said that figuring out which tactics suit campaign goals was their biggest challenge.
The Society of New Communications Research was part of another recent study that found that the greatest obstacle to making an only community work is not related to technology or funding. It’s about implementation and management.
In their “2008 Tribalization of Business” report, SNCR found that 51% of marketers believe their biggest obstacle was simply getting people involved in the community, and 45% said it is finding enough time to manage the community. In this study, only 9% indicated a lack of management support was a major obstacle.
Here’s a quote from one of the study partners, Lois Kelly of Beeline Labs, in MarketingVox:
“At conferences around the world we’ve heard marketers say that their biggest challenge is executives’ resistance because they fear losing control, but this research indicates that this may not be as big of an issue as marketers think. Clearly the bigger challenge is focusing the community around a purpose that people want to contribute to and be involved with - and devoting the right resources to promote and support the community.”
We’ve heard it a thousand times, social media is a new approach to marketing and not just a new channel to push messages at an audience…these studies give us more proof that this is true.
