Brand management

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B2B Social Media Marketing: Why should you start?

5 February 2009 in Business to Business by Kate | View Comments

Marketing Profs had a great post last week about the benefits of social media for B2B companies.  They focused primarily on the research advantages it offers, with the following highlights:

  • Conducting research to understand more about a prospect’s or client’s “buying desires.”
  • Finding decision makers for certain products and services.
  • Extracting names from a given community for lead generation.
  • Getting answers to questions, reaching out to other experts.
  • Finding joint-venture marketing partners and creating various “cooperative opportunities.”
  • Connecting with past customers, keeping them up-to-date.

The research capabilities that social media channels offer are great, without a doubt.  But I think there’s more potential that it can offer B2B companies, especially in the way of brand outreach and thought leadership.  A few ideas are below**:

Brand Outreach

  • People often congregate online based on common interests or professions.  Many of these people are, as you guessed, employed in their field and, if not in a decision-making position, are at least closer to the decision-maker than you may be.  Join in their conversation in a valuable way.
  • Sponsor groups or networks that offer a forum of exchange and engagement for people that might be in what you consider your “target company” (see above).
  • Rethink how you communicate with your clients.  Offer them a platform of 2-way conversation.

Thought Leadership

  • Provide valuable information that establishes your company as an innovate thinker in your industry.  The end goal is to position yourself as an industry leader.
  • You could post a blog on useful industry information, again providing timely and innovative content to your readers.  Kinaxis has done a good job at this with their blog, The 21st Century Supply Chain.
  • Develop a complete content production program with such things as eBooks, white papers, webcasts etc and utilize social media channels to disseminate your information.
  • Part of the idea of a content production plan is that the information that you’re outputting is ultimately connected to your brand in the eyes of the reader.

And of course, there’s good ole’ brand management and brand equity.

** This is not about broadcasting your brand.  Developing a concrete social media strategy is key for success!  Haphazard entry into the social media space usually ends up being ineffective at best, and detrimental at worst.

Can you think of anything other ways that social media can benefit B2B companies?

[Update] There’s a more robust follow-up to this post over on B2B Voices – “4 Great Reasons to Start a Social Media Program as a B2B“

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Your Brand: Being Online and Brand Equity

30 September 2008 in Modern Business by Kate | View Comments

Above is a depiction, provided by Brand Channel of the factors that go into a brand’s equity.  I could have inserted any number of images, but the general concepts are the same.

I want to talk about brand equity because I don’t feel there has been enough straight forward conversation about what this means in new and social media.  We all know that most brand images are effected by their presence online, but I wonder how much real discussion there is with colleagues and, more importantly, with clients about what this means to the bottom line (sidenote: there are still many spaces that aren’t highly visible online, so, for now, we’re talking about industries for which the Web 2.0 space is highly important).

I’ll use just a few of the above factors as examples:

  • Image and Personality: Several months ago, Chris Brogan had a webinar that was called “Who Really Owns Your Brand?” (I discussed it in-depth here).  He and the discussants talked about the changes that occur to your brand image in social media: that customers now have more influence over your brand, and that the amount of control a company has over their image is shifting away from them.  A company can decide to either enter this space and influence to some extent where their brand is going, or they can remain in a traditional mindset and “push” brand image on customers. We know where that’s headed…..
  • Awareness: There are a ton of possible consumer touch points available to companies in the new media space.  There are also very attractive opportunities for Word-of-Mouth (WOM).  There’s the possibility that customers can bring either positive or negative brand awareness to the table in a high-profile manner.  A major way that people become aware of a brand nowadays is online, through friends and in communities. With an increased positive brand awareness comes an increase in brand equity.
  • Loyalty: Discussion and conversation with your customers (when done properly) breeds loyalty.  I don’t need to beat this one to death.  Online is where this is taking place. You wouldn’t want to be left out of the conversation of your own brand would you, or left out of the opportunity to develop a relationship with your customers?

These are just some examples, I could break down all of the above further if I wanted to but I think you get where I’m headed.

The main point is that, while we all know these things, I wonder how many of us directly correlate it to brand equity in the monetary sense, especially with clients. This is important, so let me repeat.  New/social media and the Web 2.0 space have important effects on the monetary value of your company.

We recently had a potential client who was wondering what the point was of using new media in his marketing program if they were looking to enter IPO stages in less than five years.  The company was absolutely a candidate for new media marketing, and its brand image was already being affected positively and negatively in this space.

My argument to him was (not only that the space is moving incredibly fast and five years could make a huge difference), but, almost more importantly:  Your brand image IS online right now, and it IS being affected.  And that DOES and WILL matter when determining the value of your company.  In some cases, it’s not even a matter of going where it’s hot (although that has its advantages!).  Your brand is there, you should be there too.

What’s more, the Web 2.0 world is completely visible to anyone who chooses to look, including potential funders or buyers of your company.  That information matters.  I’ll not deny that measurement of that value in dollar terms is difficult, but many traditional aspects of brand equity are the same. It still applies.

Most funders and buyers are looking to social media to figure out at least part of the value of brands (and if they’re not, they probably should be, because it’s often one of the best indicators of how consumers feel about your brand).  It should be considered right along side of sales figures or profitability.

So I encourage people to talk to clients directly not just about the benefits of new media marketing, but also about the necessity to be in the space from a brand management perspective.

Have you discussed this with clients?  Do you consider it important?  Is it too vague at this stage to be put into monetary terms?  Any thoughts are welcome.  Below are a few of Zemanta’s thoughts on the issue, as well as a couple of posts I came across.

Some thoughts from Web Marketing Strategies, Trends and Tips.
Customer Think has some advice.

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Addendum to a past post: storytelling

27 March 2008 in Uncategorized by Kate | View Comments

A comment was recently added to a past blog posting of mine, by Randall Ringer of the Verse Group. His company is an “independent brand consultancy that combines practical marketing experience with a storyteller’s creativity.” You can read his comments (and they were pertinent to the topic). After a few emails back and forth with him, the following came up in addition to those comments:

“There is a lot of talk about storytelling but actual methodologies used by most ad agencies and corporations are all based on theories of positioning. Story telling is relegated to an afterthought or an executional element. That is why we developed Narrative Branding — a strategic process that places storytelling at the heart of branding.”

I’m a little embarrassed that I had written a somewhat brash blog posting about the study (especially having not actually read it), but it had seemed like an “Oh, duh” moment to me. I then realized that, in the past year, I’ve had the good fortune to work with people who I think value the storytelling part of a brand as one of their most valuable assets. But Randall does well to point out that this topic needs more attention than it’s getting.

Next order of business?  Go read the study.

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