Fall Styles

It’s been a while folks, but I think it’s time to take a step away from the career advice and take a look at some awesome fall fashions!  After all, fall did arrive at 10:29pm this Monday…

                                   

Happy Fall!

6 B2B Lessons from Last Week’s Inbound14

I truly wish I could have attended, but this quick synopsis of the Inbound14 & FutureM event truly helped me and I hope it will help you.

I leave you with this thought: “If you want to not only make it, but thrive, in the B2B marketing world you have to have the courage to be different, instantaneous, engaging and artistic. ”

One last note…KoMarketing is one of our partners right now and do amazing work and have helped us grow tremendously.  You should check them out!

Marketing in the Life Sciences World

Just as marketing is unique to the previous markets/industries we talked about, it is also unique when it comes to the life sciences or scientific arena.  I would bet you, that more companies than not don’t hit that home run when it comes to telling their overall story in this market.  There are those few that do, but for the most part, if you are not intimately involved in the market, you’re likely to get very overwhelmed by the jargon and the wealth of information.  So I decided to search and learn about the best marketing methods, and mistakes, when it comes to marketing to the life sciences market.

What I quickly learned, and agree with, is that often times, a company gets pigeon holed into only being known for its product(s) and not its overall solutions.  That’s all I’ll say about that but I do want to point you in the direction of a fascinating article that has me jotting down notes and wondering if I should rethink the way I’ve been thinking.

The Brand vs. Product Marketing Paradox in the Life Sciences article goes through some of the pitfalls of ineffective marketing:

1. “Truth is, the majority of the marketing resources that scientific companies expend are for product promotions. Very little attention is paid to brand building.

2. Product-marketing leads to company becoming synonymous with a technology, limiting its actual potential.

3. Product-based messages raise the baseline noise.

4. Market forces define the company’s brand.

5. A study published in Harvard Business Review[2] has profound implications about the power of brands to motivate people towards action, and the adverse effects that promotional headlines have on customer behavior. In short, it is actually possible that brands can generate demand with far more efficiency than product marketing activities.

6. Companies don’t actually have to choose between brand-vs-product marketing. They can do both. But it takes more than marcom-level template-enforcing. It takes action.

Companies can build their brands through product marketing, by focusing on the content of their programs and encouraging an experience for their customers, instead of just saying their value proposition.

The first step is to develop a content model and a campaign architecture that engages with scientists and encourages them to experience the value proposition. The Content-Centric Marketing for Science is one such framework.”

Is your mind blown a bit?  Will you rethink your marketing strategy even if you’re not in the life sciences field?

Here is one more nugget from the Content Centric Marketing article:

“Most marketing messages for scientific products and services provide only logical feature/benefit statements, failing to engage the scientist’s emotion or ego. The key is to know when and how to engage either a scientist’s emotion, or his/her logic or ego during the buying journey. This can be approached by mapping how the archetypal scientist consumes information.”
“The goal of marketers should be to develop information that removes any impediments for scientists to move swiftly from stage to stage in their own buying journeys, all the while becoming predisposed to the company’s way of thinking. It is important to remember that scientists need to make their own conclusions at each stage, rather than being told what to think and how to act.”

 

Marketing Thoughts

Today is a big day for me, hence why I’m excited enough to post an extra blog for the week.  I get a bunch of proposals back from various PR and web vendors and get to make the big choice of who fits us best and who gets our vision and won’t be afraid to push us out of our box.

What I’ve said to everyone so far is that we *need* someone to be that voice that tells us what we should be doing, as I won’t pretend to be an expert in the things that I don’t directly work on day to day.  I try to be expert enough that I can have a conversation about all things marketing but you can’t be all things to all people no matter how hard you try.

However, some of the best meetings for me have been when I’ve walked away energized about the prospect of something new and when I feel like I’ve learned something new.  Case in point, yesterday I learned that I’ve been living under a rock and in the meantime there have been some amazing B2B meetings going on and some amazing people have shared very interesting insights into the marketing world.  For example, here are the names and books I urge you to look up as well.  I’ll leave it at that:

* Gary Vaynerchuk, a TED speaker

* Simon Sinek, another TED speaker talks about asking “WHY?” instead of  “WHAT?” when it comes to product

* Jim Stengel has written a book titled GROW. “Grow presents an actionable framework for developing the roots that are necessary to thrive in the new business climate.”

I hope these links have inspired you to get out from under the rock and look around at what has changed in marketing.

What new news can you share with me?

Industrial Marketing

Last week I addressed the various CPG marketing areas but today I wanted to talk about a little known area of B2B marketing that pertains to the industrial & manufacturing market.  The above graph depicts the marketing goals that fall in to this kind of marketing which differ from traditional marketing that is talked about in schools. Typically, you’re talking more about brand awareness and sales and quick buying cycles.  However, although sales is very important, lead generation is right up there on the totem pole.

Why school?  Well, I was looking in to new ways of setting up our marketing strategy, which I hope to share with you, for next year and decided to see what others in the industry are doing.  For the past year I’ve been focusing first and foremost on the various markets we sell in to, and secondly the buying times of those markets.  Based on those two things, we decide what kind of outreach we should focus on when and what topics should be talked about.  In my research, I came across a really great article from mbtmag.com, or Manufacturing Business Technology.  In this article, Industrial Marketing Is Not Consumer Marketing, the author talks about the fact that B2B industrial marketing tactics are not taught in schools and universities.  What are taught, are the glorified B2C scenarios of the infamous Nova case study or most recently the Domino’s reinvention of their pizzas.  I haven’t read the last one, but I’m sure it’s out there somewhere, along with these few as well.

The point is, professors in a lot of cases are professors.  What I found in my own studies is that these folks are educators first, or last.  What I mean by that is they perhaps did work in the respective areas of a business that they are teaching, but at this stage in their lives, they are teachers and have been removed from the day to day world.  Or, they have read enough books to put us all to shame about various marketing practices, but haven’t actually put them to the test.

However, the main point that the article I came across talks about is that it’s difficult, and often boring, to teach industrial marketing because you’re talking about manufacturing and buying cycles, and sales people, and budgeting and things that college students don’t comprehend because they haven’t been there yet and haven’t done it.  Hence, a lot of marketers are unprepared for working in this kind of environment.

My suggestion?  Co-op!  It makes a world of difference!  Or field trips to manufacturing companies in the surrounding areas.  Field trips to any company in the surrounding area would help the students see what it is they would actually, potentially, be doing and how different it is from place to place.

Maybe one day I’ll get the chance to be a teacher or professor and I hope to whatever power is out there that I keep the students on the edge of their seats even during the boring lectures.

Not B2B, not B2C, but A/E/C Marketing

What in the *world* is A/E/C marketing?  Well, it has to do with architecture, engineering and contract based firms.  Having worked in a couple engineering firms during my Northeastern Co-op days, most marketing related activities revolved around proposal writing and proofing.  It seems however that some A/E/C companies are beginning to look into bridging the gap between marketing strategy and proposals.

But how does one “market” when it comes to long lead projects?  Do you make sure your business has invested in programs such as REED Construction or other platforms/data bases that allow you to know in advance about projects that will be taking place?  Do you send snail mail flyers to the architects involved in the projects to get your services and products in front of them & keep you top of mind?  The answers could be endless, but the main point is, the proposal writing, submitting, and bidding (and hopefully winning) process should fit somewhere in to the overall marketing mix and vice versa…at least in my mind.

After all, no matter what your product or service, and no matter who your audience, you can’t just go with the mind set of “build it and they will come.”

Here are some helpful articles for those entering this new arena:

6 Ways to Revitalize Your A/E/C Marketing Program
Social Media for A/E/C Marketing –> A quick slide share presentation
3 Common A/E/C Marketing Roadblocks and How to Avoid Them
HelpEverybodyEveryday.com –> A/E/C Marketing Advice, Training and Support Group