The perception influencers

As the perception by your clients and potential customers is utmost important for your company, your online presence needs to enhance or stimulate their perception.

Your online presence consist of very different content on different Internet sites:
- Your website
- Pages on social media
- Whatever is posted by others on forums and social media about your company or products.

While you can control the first two entirely, the latter is beyond your control. This “social input” requires to be monitored for all forums and social media in order to handle postings and issues as the reputation of your company can be at stake.

Negative news spreads faster than positive news

While a positive reputation takes years to cultivate, it can be torn apart with just a single bad review or complaint. This is why you need to monitor the social media using one or more web services.
Once an issue has been found it has to be handled with care and appropriately which can be very challenging. Hence it is not a job or function for the junior assistant but requires experience and wishful thinking. Any action should be considered twice before being published or replied – still within the shortest amount of time as negative news spreads faster than positive news.

How do you handle social media issues?

Massive content creation

A few years ago the hype of content marketing started. At first it proved to be really successful. Meanwhile most marketers create or let create ever more content hoping to catch the attention of the potential customers. This massive content creation will only increase adding on to the large volumes of content already present on the Internet which is content overflow.

As content is the hype, the word content is used in all possible contexts in order to sell marketing services.
Marketing agencies have shifted their business services from SEO, copy writing and advertising to content creation and social media influencers.

Quality content ?

Not all content has the same quality and value. It is utmost necessary to create quality content as lesser quality content can harm more than bring additional sales. However it is hard to define what is quality content and create quality content as it not only requires creativity and skills like writing or imaging, but also knowing what to write matching the interests of the target market segment. In the end the content produced needs to be consumed by the potential customers and preferably ‘liked’ on social media or forwarded to peers.

Crap content

As new concepts, creativity and producing quality content are not standard services you can order or self-produce easily, it is likely much of the content created has and will have a lower value due to:
- Copy content
- One or two concepts or ideas are being spread over many pages
- The same concept or solution is repackaged many times over
- Nothing new but old stuff
- Not unique
- Avoiding the innovation as it is too disruptive

The end of content marketing hype

In the end we will be flooded mostly by average or even crappy content that nobody takes interest in.
This might lead to the end of the content marketing hype as too much content and especially non-quality content will tun people off.

If you can only publish you quality content as it will increase the perception of your company or brand.

How would you describe and evaluate your content ?

Paid Media

Paid media is advertising, banner ads, paid search, paid content (editorials), paid content distribution (white papers), paid press releases, …
The impact lasts as long and reaches as far as is paid for. As the exposure is mainly a function of the amount paid, the more money spend the more exposure obtained.
The influence can last and reach beyond the the campaign depending on the quality and impression it made.
Due to the investment for distribution and exposure, paid media is limited in time and reach.

The disadvantage is that it is a short-lived investment requiring a fast ROI.

The advantage is that it mainly requires money and hardly any creativity.

Owned Media

Owned media is the company website, the company blog, profiles on public, generic or social websites, free press releases, free white paper distributions, published content on social media, newsletters, printed newsletters, …
The impact lasts as long as the content is available for people to find and consume (read, view) it. The impact and reach depends on the quality of the content, the initial controlled distribution and the uncontrolled distribution (if your content is passed on to others or copied in different media and communication channels).
Hence owned media can almost last forever.

The disadvantage is that anyone can create quality content. Creativity is a gift and not completely related to money. Although much time, effort and money is invested in trying to create quality content, the resulting content might not have become quality content.

The advantage is that instead of money, creativity is required. Wealthy companies can pay for creating content. Small companies and start-ups can also create quality content which opens up the competition.

Earned Media

Earned media is Word of Mouth: both physically (verbally or written) and virtual (digital on social media). The impact and reach of the word of mouth can almost be infinite larger than the initial distribution. Leverage will go far beyond the original reach with the benefit of people remembering or remaining findable for almost forever.

The disadvantage is that content needs to be picked up by many and shared, recommended, replicated or forwarded to many which is a gamble creating a risk for engaging in creating content.

The advantage is that nor the size of the company, nor the amount of money of a company can significantly influence the Word of Mouth. If the audience likes the content then the origin doesn’t matter. Moreover the ‘Underdog’ can have a slight advantage over the major player in a market.

The Three Stooges Of Media

In most cases companies have a media mix of Paid, Owned and Earned media as each feeds content to the other media.
Paid media will feed to the Owned media and Owned media will feed to the paid as both help the findability of each other on the Internet.
Earned Media will enhance the Paid and the Owned media, which on their turn will feed the Earned media with new content.
This results in the Three Stooges of media.

What is your media mix Paid, Owned and Earned ?

Quite often management and marketing assume the marketing that is successful in retail (B2C) will also work for their B2B business.
However marketing in B2C is very different of marketing in B2B.

Potential Customer Quantity

For start the number of the potential customers is much smaller than in B2C: thousands instead of millions.
In B2C it is feasible and effective segmenting their target market for different marketing messages.
In B2B business marketing the number of companies will become too small in one segment as it almost becomes a unique segment per potential customer.

Social Media is not for B2B

Applying Social Media methods like in B2C is not feasible too as people are on social media but not their companies as the audience. Companies are using social media as communications channel for promoting their own products, but they are not part of the masses taking part in Social Media.

Sales Deal Value

Moreover the higher the sales deal value the more personalized marketing messages are required. In B2C the sales deals are rather low $15 to $1000 (except when it comes to buying a new car which only happens every 5 years).

In some B2B businesses the sales deal value can range from $500 to $5,000 -having a larger audience thus some B2C marketing strategies could apply.

However most B2B sales deals are way over $10,000 easily reaching $100,000 or even millions. As such the audience is much smaller

Unique or Personal Message

Instead of having generic messages that apply for and appeal to larger potential customer groups as in B2C, the messages should almost become personal or unique in B2B. This can be appropriate when the potential sales deal value is high enough.

There are many reasons why retail marketing isn’t appropriate for business marketing.

Are your CxO also confusing their B2B with B2C marketing ?

Content is King

You can create content as much as you want and as much as you are able to. Your content should be informative, valuable, trustworthy and entertaining.
However without a distribution your content has no value as nobody knows or hears about it. Just like in chess a King can only move one square at a time, your content won’t reach far without a distributor or amplifier.

Social Media is Queen

As searches on Google, Yahoo and Bing will only bring the basic traffic level, your great content needs to be distributed through a channel.
In order to exceed the average traffic through searches and have a significant amount of visitors for your content you will need Social Media as distributor and amplifier. Social Media is the channel promoting your content.

Only Social Media is capable of generating lots of interest for your content as people will post the link to your web page in Social Media. The more people participate the more traffic it will generate. Additionally Google, Yahoo and Bing will increase the importance of your web page as they find many links on different pages in Social Media which will increase the traffic through searches too.
Social Media will significantly amplify your content and increase its’ reach.

The couple King Content and Queen Social Media

If Content is King, then you better marry it with Social Media Queen for maximizing its’ exposure.
In order to get picked up by people your content should not only be interesting but also entertaining as this will increase the posting by people on Social Media.

Did you already have married Content King with Social Media Queen ?

In consumer business social marketing there are ample conversation engines available.
However in Business-To-Business there is no conversation engine available.

For social engagement in B2B this lacking conversation engine is the big component that is missing in order to to have social media marketing succeeding.
In consumer business there are tools and communication channels present which the consumer really use.

Instead in B2B employees of potential customer don’t communicate. They don’t engage in a digital communication. They don’t contact you.

What other requirements for social media marketing in B2B are missing ?

Blog Post Reach

A successful blog post gets copied, re-tweeted, referred on Facebook or mentioned in Linkedin. The success is in the spreading to many more people as the reach is far further than your normal reach.

However the problem with these successful blog posts is that it reaches a large population, this large population is not necessarily your target market or is reaching people that are not ready to buy. Thus not immediate business.

Business or Branding

The only thing to aim for is the generation of awareness and increased branding.
Not only amongst the people who read the blog post initially, but also through the search engines that present the blog post high up in the rankings of searches.
The more reach and re-tweets, the higher the post will show up in searches which increases the brand awareness. The people interested in the subject of the blog post are likely to read this blog post, which brings awareness and increases the branding of your company or products.
Will it bring immediate business? Probably not.

Blog Post ROI

As with most social media marketing the initial investment (writing the blog post) will only have a return on investment after a long time. If you want fast results then avoid social media marketing.

Do you consider blogging still beneficial for your business?

Apparently Social Media is working for B2C companies.
However in B2B much less or even not at all.

Purchase Cycle Differences

If we examine the purchase cycle the differences are apparent:
- In B2B people will investigate and compare products and solutions far more than consumers
- As the purchase cycle is quite long in B2B quite a significant amount of information will be gathered before and during the process by different people
- The B2B purchases are (supposedly) rational decisions
- During the purchase cycle you will start to know the different people involved personally or you will know them at least by name.

- Consumers still have a high level of impulsive buying with much less investigation during their short purchase process.
- In B2C only after the purchase you might obtain the name and address of a customer if they fill out the warranty card or the money back voucher.

Customer Retention Differences

If we examine the retention of customers:
In B2C you don’t know your customers
In B2B you will exactly know who you are dealing with: the decision makers, the influencers, the purchasers and the opponents

Social Media Differences

Hence in B2C a generic platform like social media can be used as mass messaging is feasible and can reach your customers.

In B2B you can and should talk and discuss to each of them individually as mass media messages using Social Media are unlikely to reach your target.

What is your take on Social Media in B2B ?
Any Social Media success stories in B2B ?

Accepting invitations on LinkedIn

A few years ago people on LinkedIn would only click “Accept” from invitations of people the know or have done business with.

Currently more and more invitations to link up on LinkedIn are no longer related to a previous encounter or a business. This helps to grow the network of relationships considerably for each member of LinkedIn and also helps LinkedIn to become more important to their users as it is the fastest method for enlarging your relationship span. Reaching far beyond the physical relations one ever can achieve.

LinkedIn has evolved from relations with people you have worked with to connections of people you have worked with and with whom you might be working next.

The challenge of LinkedIn is retaining their users

The business model of LinkedIn is about selling premium memberships and advertising. Both directly targeting the free members:
- The premium memberships use their knowledge on the free members for head hunting
- The advertisers pay for reaching a very specific market segment
In both cases it is in the interest of LinkedIn to keep and to increase as much users possible. Hence not only users can show their curriculum vitae but also build up and expand their relationships.
In order to further stimulate the retaining of members LinkedIn has started the easy endorsements by just one click as their ‘Recommendations’ required to create a positive text about the recommended person, which is way too difficult and/or time consuming for most people.

The future of LinkedIn

- Will we keep using LinkedIn? Probably as there is long term benefit and interest for each user: getting the next job
- Will there be a new player (like Muxi) in the market? Probably as the relations are becoming less valuable.
- Will LinkedIn ever cease to exist? Probably just like all social networks on the Internet but it just might take much longer.

Do you accept every invite you receive on LinkedIn or do you have rules ? If so what rules do you use ?

Content marketing became interruption marketing

The idealistic picture painted by the marketing guru’s of content marketing for driving interested parties to your website and getting them to buy your products or services has become in reality sequential spam.
Instead of creating interesting documents where your experts share their knowledge and experience, content marketing has evolved into publishing content of lesser quality on social media. Not just one announcement on each social media, but multiple shouts on all possible social media. Just like interruption marketing, content marketing has become interruption marketing on social media.

Broadcasting instead of conversation

So instead of having a two-way conversation on social media as this media was intended in the first place, the content marketing has turned it into a broadcast media for sequential spam content.

Sequential spam instead of connecting

Most marketers still don’t understand content marketing as they have interpreted as sequential spam. They think about broadcasting and shouting their nice stories, but they miss the concept of two-way communication. This gives the potential customers no possibility of starting a conversation or allowing to connect.
As such the content marketing misses its’ goal of generating leads and acquiring customers through content completely.

How effective is your content marketing ?
Is your content marketing sequential spam too ?