5Ms of B2B Online Marketing

The CXO forum sponsored by the Silicon Valley Association of Start-up Entrepreneurs was held recently in San Francisco. In today’s post I quote some excerpts of the presentation given by Srihari Kumar, CEO, LeadForce1. While his presentation was more focussed on the need for Marketing Automation and how companies can gain from this growing phenomenon, what caught my attention was his slide on ‘The 5Ms of Online Marketing‘. These are 5 techniques, that are core to the success of any online B2B marketing campaign.

5Ms of B2B Marketing

1. Map

Before starting any online marketing campaign it is important to map the channels you plan to use for your promotions. All sites and blogs are not equal. Click-throughs and conversion can be dramatically improved by using mediums which offer high value, are influential in your space and have a proven track record. Be it any aspect of marketing – advertising, PR or Buzz generation-  this activity is a must to ensure, you derive more value out of your campaign and your investment.

2. Micro- Segment

One size does not fit all and the same applies to the marketing channels you choose. Campaigns which are tailor made with a specific channels (website, blog, Social network) in mind are more successful. Here tailor made means taking into account the specific attributes of a site you plan to use – like its traffic, site demographics, site popularity, campaign sentiment, campaign focus, catch phrases used etc. Such defined campaigns record higher conversions because they appeal to their target audience – employing a medium and a tone they can identify with.

3. Motivate Social Magnets

As in the offline world, the online world also has its set of influencers who over a period of time have garnered a huge following of people who believe in their expertise, their word. These include, a number of bloggers, tweeters, journalists, social activists etc. in every business or industry space you can probably think of. These are people whose personal opinion makes a lot of difference to the decision taken by their huge list of fans. It pays companies to develop a relationship with these influencers over a period of time just like they would with the media offline. If these inluencers believe in your product or service and write about it using their creative channels, it can make a huge difference to your Brand’s online equity.

4. Moderate

All online marketing campaigns need constant monitoring. You need to get involved, stay involved and show that you care. Respond to any queries and responses on a regular basis. Resolve issues. Also constant monitoring helps you keep track of your campaigns, change its feel and tone as per the reader responses – ensuring you keep the momentum and show your readers that you are paying attention to what they think. Keep updating your readers on the developments – keep them engaged through the life of the campaign – only then can you expect to succeed.

5. Mechanize

Set alerts, notifications etc. to ensure you are in tune and upto date with the status of your marketing campaigns. Automate the process if possible but avoid surprises and action immediately where ever your intervention is required. Ongoing analysis of the data at hand is essential to derive definite action steps for future implementation. Such data should also be used to gain insight  into the reaction of your readers and to decide the fate of the campaign.

The 5Ms precisely put down the wireframe of building a successful B2B online marketing campaign. Reaffirming the need for campaigns which focus on customization and reaching out to that niche audience than going mass with their offerings.

Is Your Company Engaging its Promoters???

The Net Promoter Scoring system is a fairly well known concept in the marketing circles.

What makes NPS work is its simplicity, based on the ‘fundamental perspective that every company’s customers can be divided into three categories: Promoters, Passives, and Detractors. By asking one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [Company X] to a friend or colleague? —  a company can get a clear measure of its performance through its customers’ eyes. Customers respond on a 0-to-10 point rating scale and are categorized as follows:

• Promoters (score 9-10) are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fueling growth.
• Passives (score 7-8) are satisfied but unenthusiastic customers who are vulnerable to competitive offerings.
• Detractors (score 0-6) are unhappy customers who can damage your brand and impede growth through negative word-of-mouth.

To calculate its Net Promoter Score (NPS), a company can take the percentage of customers who are Promoters and subtract the percentage who are Detractors.’

The results derived are not only indicative of the goodwill that exits in the market for your company but is also reflective of your growth in profits and going further the areas within your company which might require improvement.
The decision to recommend a company is often influenced by a lot of factors – from the quality of the product being sold to the sale experience and after- sales service. Enough reason to prioritize and measure customer satisfaction at each level of customer interaction.

To ensure you get value of the NPS system it is important to make it a part of your day to day company processes. If the goal of every employee in your company is to ensure customer satisfaction both in principal and action, rarely can you go wrong.

In this era of social media, the NPS system can give a whole new meaning to marketing. Drawing your promoters to help you with the process of brand building by sharing their brand experiences with a larger audience can be a great add-on to any marketing strategy. This also increases the chances of turning the Passives into active Promoters.

I personally see the NPS system as a great value add for the PR and branding team of any company.  This can be a two level process –

Engaging your Promoters & Converting the passives

1. Create campaigns which encourage your promoters to share their positive feedback about your company with others on and across the social mediasphere.
2. Reward them for their loyalty by either recognizing their efforts or by providing them with a more premium service offering. Their happiness should be your company’s ultimate goal; these are your walking, talking assets, your investors and advertisers.
3. Create campaigns which offer value to the Passives in turning Promoters of your brand. It could be seasonal discounts, opportunities to participate in contests, priority redressal of complaints, referral programs etc. which ensures they see value in sticking to your brand and also of promoting it to others. Remember these groups of people have used your product and probably like using it but may switch brands if something better comes along – so the idea is to hold them and offer them value in sticking to the brand that goes beyond just your product.
4. At the engagement level it will help to identify the channels most commonly used by your Promoters, so that you can optimize your presence there. Also, since these are channels your promoters are used to, they would be more comfortable sharing their experiences here than anywhere else. If the sites and networks are different to those, you use for your promotions, its best to come up with a plan on how you will interlink the two, so that your existing networks can get a peek into your promoters endorsements.

Engaging your Detractors

1. Engage them to understand the cause of their dissatisfaction. This insight is critical for your future plans. Also, it will inform you about areas and processes within your company which need a re-look. Working on these will also reduce the number of Detractors you might have in future.
2. Most people feel unhappy about a company, when they feel the company is not bothered with the issues they have faced when dealing with the company. So it is important to build an image of your company which listens and responds to the complaints of its customers. Ensure your website has a complaint and suggestions address and a prompt response system in place – it says a lot about your willingness to address the issues raised by your customers.
3. Winning back people can be a difficult task and a long drawn process – but sometimes it is worth the effort because then the loyalty towards a brand is much more. Invite your Detractors to re-use your product or service, assure them that you have tried to address the issues raised by them and this time around if you can ensure them a fulfilling experience, you will have a customer who will talk about “how you cared to look into his concerns and made him feel important.”

The effectiveness of the Net Promoter Score has been a topic debate among marketers, market researchers and marketing professors ever since it was first developed by Fred Reichheld in 2003. But the concept continues to find believers and has been successfully adopted and implemented in big organizations like Microsoft, GE, Intuit etc.

It is a great brand growth measurement tool – and also one that helps in deciding the way forward.

iPitch : Apple's Media Spin!!

Apple launched its iPad this week and made the media across the world go into a tizzy. The buzz that followed the launch was any PR professional’s dream come true – every one had something to say about the new Apple product.

7000 Apple tweets per minute during iPad announcement.

Thousands of technology journalists and bloggers across the World hooked to every word Steve Jobs had to say about his latest offering and a front page headline on most publications across the World.

A quick search on Google – is enough to showcase the media frenzy Apple unleashed with its recent product launch.

Over 6 Million coverages for its iPad is currently visible on the search engine of which more than 330,000 are mentions in blogs from all over…

Am I then surprised to hear a fellow tweeter tweet – “I would love to join the PR team of Apple – it is the easiest job on Earth.”

Looking at all the eyeballs Apple manages to get and all the tongues it sets rolling, I feel like agreeing with my tweet buddy. iPod, iPhone and now the iPad each outdid the other in terms of media coverage.

As a company Apple has always been tight lipped, which has worked for it in many ways. Speculations about its tablet PC were rife in the market, videos of its tablet PC were available on YouTube for over a month before the launch, yet it could not diminish the curiosity of the technology buffs and managed to take all by surprise.

While I would like to believe all this interest in Apple and its products is because of the great work and efforts put in by their marketing and communications team – in truth it’s not their doing, at least not ‘just’ their doing.

The real credit goes to the people behind the products Apple launches. They have managed to establish themselves as the creators of the most desirable products in the World – known for their cutting edge technology and exclusiveness, which every time manages to change the course of future technology.

Very rarely do you see the pride of owning a branded gadget like that among the Apple users.

Cynics can debate that despite the technology they were down in the dumps and almost on the verge of closure before they re-created themselves with the iPod, and yes there is truth in that – but then iPod was a success because of its technology and the way it managed to capture the imagination of music lovers all over.

Public Relations as a profession is a lot about creating that feel good fluff around your clients and their products, but for it to really make a mark it is important that the product in itself is good, of high quality and one which finds favor among its users.

At the end of the day, if the user experience is compromised, then how much ever good you write about it – the truth will finally find its way out.

Public Relations as a profession is a lot about creating that feel good fluff around your clients and their products, but for it to really make a mark it is important that the product in itself is good, of high quality and one which finds favor among its users.

At the end of the day, if the user experience is compromised, then how much ever good you write about it – the truth will finally find its way out.

I wouldn’t like to undermine the role PR professionals can play in creating the hype and building a company’s brand reputation – after all it’s my bread and butter.

But the truth is even if I were the best PR person in the World, with the best of media relations I would not be able to build the hype and keep it going if, the end product I was promoting was not good enough.

That is where Apple makes a mark. Its products and their users speak on its behalf. Apple believes in making – the ownership of an Apple product an experience. From the way Steve Jobs launches a product to the way Apple stores market it – everything is about experience.

UTalkMarketing Editor, Clark Turner quotes, “Tim Greenhalgh, a PR consultant at Liberate Media in his post, “No one does desire like Apple, and no one presents desire as well as Steve Jobs.”

Apple iPad

Good or bad, every time Apple launches its products – it creates something that is desirable by millions around the planet. And when millions want information on something – there will be thousands who would seek to provide them.