How the Internet is Transforming B2B Marketing
Business-to-business marketers are taking on an increasingly pivotal role in the Internet-driven transformation of the economy. In the next 12 months, we anticipate the pace of revolutionary change to accelerate as the Internet rapidly evolves to become far more than just another business tool.
Strategies and tactics are emerging in connection with the B2B marketing-driven revolution making it possible to more profitably acquire and retain customers. These changes are destined to radically re-shape almost every business process and create an entirely new way of conducting business.
A single factor is propelling B2B past B2C and is causing it to become the point of innovation and economic change – hyper-competition.
This stands in sharp contrast to the B2C side, where the impetus for the use of the Web is greatly dependent on the vagaries of consumer tastes and the perception of convenience offered by new technologies.
Instead, the implementation of new technologies in the B2B arena is being driven by compelling competitive considerations and by important bottom-line imperatives. Companies recognize that it is crucial to use the new technological capabilities to streamline and dramatically improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their business operations – and those of their customers and suppliers.
In fact, for more than a decade, the re-engineering of linkages between customers and suppliers already has been under way in more operational B2B arenas through such initiatives as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and just-in-time delivery. Already, these types of efforts have spurred major changes in the ways that activities such as manufacturing and logistics are executed. There has even been significant progress in areas such as collaborative product design and development.
Now, through the use of the Web, this paradigm is being combined with quantum leaps in Customer-Relationship Management (CRM) capabilities to re-shape the way in which traditional B2B marketing is conducted.
Full recognition of the importance of these marketing-driven B2B transformations was initially obscured by the flurry of early attention showered on B2B exchanges.
Online exchanges undoubtedly will play an important role in helping buyers and sellers execute B2B transactions. However, unlike the B2C marketplace, the B2B arena involves a much more complex web of interactions between prospects and vendors in which the actual transaction represents only a small part of the entire purchase process.
Too much of a focus on transaction-centered exchanges inevitably runs the risk of overlooking much greater opportunities that the Internet avails for B2B marketers – a new generation of Web-enabled, CRM-based, marketing initiatives that add enormous value to customers and prospects.
The strategies and tactics emerging in connection with this B2B marketing revolution are destined to radically re-shape almost every business process. It is a revolution that is triggering changes on a similar scale in such innovations as the use of interchangeable parts and the development of the assembly line and mass-production processes.
This leading-edge role in driving the adoption of new technology is not a new one for the B2B community; in fact, it represents the usual trajectory of the development of a new technology.
There are nine emerging trends in B2B marketing driven by technological and competitive developments:
Contextual Marketing Messages
Pervasive Touch-Points
Deep Targeting
Collaborative Purchase Decisions and Facilitative Marketing
Branding And Deliberative Purchases
Privacy
Primacy of Branded Content
Web-based Marketing Enables ROI Measurement
Wireless Ads
Contextual Marketing Messages
The business world has embraced the Internet, and now for-work users are embracing focus and task-oriented Web activities.
When business users are online, they typically have a specific task to complete or specific information to gather. Business users are likely to respond positively to online marketing initiatives that assist them in completing tasks at hand. On the same note, they are likely to be annoyed by marketing messages that they see as deflecting them from the work in which they are immersed.
The implications for B2B marketers are clear.
It is crucial that marketers be sensitive to the users work environment and the context in which those marketing messages will be received, especially when they try to reach prospects and customers via online media. The most successful marketing efforts will be those that create a contextual bridge that clarifies for the user that the marketer is providing useful, task-specific information that is just a click away.
Pervasive Touch-Points
The amount of time business professionals spend online has dramatically increased and is translating into an equally dramatic multiplication in the number of potential touch points between suppliers and customers. In fact, some customers might reasonably be described as online all the time. This means suppliers and customers can be thought of as being in virtually constant touch as well as open to relevant communication at any given time.
The Internet provides powerful new tools that make it possible for B2B marketers to use a combination of sophisticated CRM applications and Web-based delivery of advertising to effectively engage in on-going interactions with their customers.
The Web has made it feasible to connect with customers all the time, in real-time. A supplier can provide information, the customer can come back with a request for clarifications and additional details, and so on.
Instead of thinking of themselves as advertising to the audience, marketers will move towards a focus on encompassing on-going conversations with customers that can be activated at almost any time.
Deep Targeting
Be on the watch for a shift in B2B marketing activity toward Deep Targeting initiatives that use highly tailored advertising to reach the appropriate audiences. This will represent a significant move away from the approach that has characterized much of the early online advertising activity – a focus on large, broad-based business Websites.
Critical factors for successful deep targeting efforts include:
The use of ad vehicles that not only can reach the target audiences, but also have sufficient standing and credibility with the audiences to get their attention.
A rich understanding of the type of message content and format to which the highly specific audiences are most receptive and to which they will respond most favorably.
In the face of increasingly intense accountability and budget challenges, B2B marketers will seek out and employ more ultra-targeted online marketing tactics.
Collaborative Purchase Decisions and Facilitative Marketing
B2B marketers gain significant insight from their interactions with customers that can effectively position them to help customers streamline and improve their purchasing-decision processes.
Web-enabled facilitative marketing programs represent an important new facet in which marketers can add significant value to customers – especially via valuable information at crucial points in the purchase-decision process. Web-based facilitative marketing can be thought of as emulating the role played by an experienced, top-notch sales team that helps prospective customers work their way through the buying process.
In order to do this type of marketing successfully, those overseeing B2B advertising and marketing initiatives will find it important to develop a much deeper understanding of their customers’ operations:
What is the business process inherent in customers’ purchase decisions?
Do they issue a Request for Information?
What roles do Request for Proposals play?
How and from whom do they get quotes?
Who examines and evaluates those quotes?
How does the internal buy-in typically proceed?
Are customers buying online or merely using the Web to enable a sales transaction?
What criteria does each influencer use to make a decision?
Based on deep understanding and insights gained from working with multiple customers, B2B marketers can go beyond helping facilitate the customer’s existing purchase-decision process and even suggest changes that could improve the process.
Branding And Deliberative Purchases
The B2B arena is largely void of impulse buys, therefore it is especially crucial for companies to stay in front of prospects via the Web. This also generates important implications for the value of B2B online branding initiatives.
The bulk of the B2B marketplace consists of “buyers in waiting.” These future purchasers are perpetually in the process of scanning the business environment for solutions and exchanging information with suppliers and colleagues.
Marketers need to keep their brand message in front of latent prospects. As well, marketers must utilize the Web as a platform in which they can build intimate relationships with prospects. It is important to remember that most B2B Web experiences originate with content pursuit and then evolve to a purchasing event.
Privacy: A Different Story In B2B
Online privacy issues connected with e-commerce are getting increasing attention; but B2B privacy concerns contrast sharply with developments on the B2C side.
Business buyers – whether they are registering for trade shows or subscribing to business and trade publications – have long accepted the notion that they will provide data about their companies and job functions, not personal information, in exchange useful business information and for complimentary subscriptions to controlled-circulation business publications.
Over the last half-century, print B2B publications have made extensive use of data gathered via reader-qualification cards, and the publications have earned the trust of their readerships regarding their handling of this information.
Savvy B2B online registration initiatives have built upon that reservoir of trust by mirroring, in the online world, the familiar qualification cards and processes with which business readers have become comfortable.
Despite the well-established acceptance of data collection on the B2B side, there is no guarantee that the potential for increasingly intrusive marketing activity on the Web will not disrupt the existing B2B balance.
Indiscriminate mass e-mailing (a.k.a. “Spam”) is no more acceptable in B2B than it is in B2C. However, what will emerge is the desire by buyers to see relevant messages which actually help them to do their jobs better.
Additionally, concerns of consumer backlash against online privacy abuses on the B2C side could result in blanket government regulations that would cause significant problems for B2B marketers. Of particular concern is the FTC, which might take regulatory steps that do not make a distinction between the privacy issues that are relevant in the B2B arena and issues that are relevant on the consumer side.
Primacy Of Branded Content in B2B
Look for branded content provided by traditional trade publishers and trade associations to be the key to winning the long-term game in the B2B arena.
The primary purpose of B2C content is to entertain and create an emotional experience. In B2B, however, content serves important practical and pragmatic functions.
Business executives go online to secure valuable information in order to make educated buying decisions as well as improve their work style and approach. B2B content players are now in an enviable position. They have a trusted voice, deep industry contacts and are typically at the epicenter of their industries.
Traditional trade and business publishers are in a key position to create powerful industry search engines as they move their intellectual archives to Web platforms. It is impossible for the mass-reach engines to compete with the deep B2B content assets these players can leverage. New B2B e-hubs and content sites are finding it challenging to build traction in vertical markets.
Traditional publishers who own the multiple communication platforms -- such as publications, trade shows, permission lists, directories, and buyers’ guides -- in these tightly defined and tough-to-penetrate niches have the clear content edge in B2B.
The reader of the trade publication, the visitor to the trade show, and now, the user of the Website are all the same executive -- and the brand drives their allegiance across this wide swath of information platforms. This interlocking loyalty is partially why pure play exchanges have had difficulty getting market entry into these tight verticals.
Just as in the B2C space, it takes a major capital investment to build a trusted brand, whether the site is content or commerce driven. In these branded content environments, the affinity to purchase has been validated time and time again.
B2B Brands Move From Flirtation To Serious Dating
The Web is driving changes in the ways companies and their customers can interact, thus re-defining the nature of customers’ relationships with B2B brands.
Many B2B companies are finding their corporate brand becoming more operational. With the Internet Age, brand can come into play with the simple click of a mouse. More than ever, it is important to assure the execution of the brand promise.
Corporate Websites provide opportunities for customers and prospects to interact with the brand to an extent that has never before been possible. Brand identity is increasingly driven and shaped by the experience that customers and prospects alike have when they reach a given corporate Website and by the fulfillment that stems from the Web interaction.
Marketers now have the incredible dexterity to brand deep into niches, programs that position a brand in ways that are extremely relevant to a particular industry or vertical.
For example, a hardware company knows that brand attributes in one market do not necessarily play out in another. The Web offers the real-time ability to both target and have relevant creative messages. This means marketers now can tend to their vertical brand equity. For instance, a company’s brand attributes in the chemical field may differ significantly from perception in the aviation field. Marketers now have ideal opportunities to address brand image variations across numerous industries.
The increased level of customer-company interaction, made possible via the Web, suggests that brand relationships need to move from flirtations to serious dating relationships.
Web-based Marketing Enables ROI Measurement
Because the Internet gives online marketers the ability to gather customer-behavior data, companies can begin to develop quantifiable ROI connections between online marketing activities and metrics such as price differentials, market-share growth and sales increases.
As Web-based marketing matures, the roles of the Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Financial Officer and the Chief Information Officer are becoming more interwoven. This is especially true since it becomes possible to directly link marketing investments with the generation of shareholder value through the creation of customer and marketplace equity.
These types of analyses are possible through a combination of data-gathering capabilities of Web-based marketing and the availability of increasingly powerful and sophisticated database marketing tools. Such tools make it much more feasible to treat online marketing communications just like any other business expenditure. B2B marketers are thus enabled to calculate customer value in terms of income flow and customer spending over a defined period of time.
Analyses based on income-flow calculations then make it possible to identify the value of a customer (or customer group) and weigh future marketing investments. The result is ROI calculations derived from the money spent on marketing to the customer/prospect versus the expected net earnings anticipated from target customers.
A recent Forrester Report (Online Advertising Eclipsed, January 2001, p.19) suggested the maturation of Web-centered marketing will place a premium on marketing executives who can, for example, show the CEO how shifting 5 percent of the marketing budget from promotions to loyalty programs will add 8 percent to the bottom line. Forrester foresees the growing need for deep data-analysis and systems-design skills, which prompts companies to recruit from applied-math departments to fill junior brand-manager slots instead of hiring MBAs with general-management skills. This could very well lead to recruitment ads that read: “Wanted: VP, Marketing. Math degree required.”
Wireless Ads in B2B: First Examples
Wireless Internet connections offer an exciting opportunity for wireless technologies to deliver highly targeted, context-specific marketing messages.
Since the first uses of wireless as a B2B ad vehicle, success of this particular medium in the B2B world will largely depend on the precision with which ultra-relevant marketing messages can be delivered to extremely targeted audiences. B2B marketers will likely use wireless messaging to steer audiences to a Web connection, which underscores the important role of the company’s Website as the nexus where customers and prospects will obtain deeper information.
In one early B2B wireless marketing initiative, the marketing messages were aimed at the growing population of tech-savvy users who are equipped with PDAs that have wireless capability. Those responding to the marketing message, which was delivered via wireless Net connection, were offered a free premium item if they hit the submit button. A follow-up e-mail then provided more information from the marketer and steered the respondent to a Website that was able to disseminate additional and more complex information.
Another promising set of wireless applications involves the use of vicinity ads – marketing messages are sent based on the location of the potential customer. One intriguing set of possible B2B applications: messages directed to trade show attendees who are in the vicinity of a specific booth or display.
Wireless advertising does pose the potential for serious Spam issues. However there are a variety of initiatives underway to address those potential difficulties. One service is now offering registration for wireless users, which includes information about the time of day and location where they are willing to accept wireless ads and when/where they do not want to receive them.
B2B marketers are being forced to re-think their roles as the Web penetrates deeply and pervasively into business activities.
With breathtaking speed, the Internet is becoming the environment in which virtually all business activity takes place. E-mail, now the backbone of intra- and extra-company communication, comes via the Net. Work-in-progress documents, spreadsheets and databases are stored online and accessed via online connections. Collaborative tools depend on Net-based connections. The information and reference materials needed to make business decisions are increasingly sought online.
The Internet’s new role as the medium in which businesses operate is triggering the emergence of a new type of marketplace. Buyer/seller relationships are being transformed in a world increasingly inter-connected on a 24x7 basis. Particularly exciting are the opportunities to add significant economic value by utilizing more advanced CRM tools, and by combining them with the Web's ability to execute deep targeting and deliver build-to-order advertising messages on a just-in-time basis to customers and prospects.
The Web has also enabled greater efficiencies in the B2B purchasing process – specifically in collaboration. Marketers now can reach numerous business professionals involved in a single procurement process with unique and targeted messages.
Additionally, the Web has begun to re-shape inter-corporate relationships by making it easier for companies to form partnerships and strike Web-facilitated alliances. By the same token, the Web also makes it easier to abandon joint initiatives when things do not go well.
Overall, corporate leaders/marketers need to re-think the ways to approach such central issues as brand identity and customer-supplier loyalty, as well as the ability to effectively handle partnerships and alliances.
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