Every person, every organization, and every blog needs a purpose. Purpose provides focus, direction, and motivation. Without a clear purpose, people wander and organizations drift. The purpose of this blog, The Marketing Edge, is to communicate about ethical, effective B to B marketing.
Marketing's importance in B to B markets is increasing, and many small and medium size firms are behind. They rely on random referrals or salespeople to get prospects. These practices still work; it's just getting harder to get prospects and turn them into customers if you ignore or neglect how marketing can help you.
Here are some common challenges for companies that don't market effectively:
- Selling is more difficult. You have a few producers, but too many people struggle to sell your products or services to good customers.
- The hunt for “low hanging fruit” results in price-oriented, barely profitable customers that aren’t a great fit, don’t refer you to others, and don’t stay with you as long as your good customers.
- You compete for a fraction of the opportunities (10% or less) in your market because most prospects don’t know your company.
- You participate in too many opportunities at the last minute, and because you have no reputation or relationship with these prospects, your company is not really considered. Participating and NOT WINNING is frustrating, it’s a huge waste of time, and it’s very expensive.
- Your margins are lower than you’d like because your prospects don’t perceive higher value from your products or services and because you need to be competitive to win business
- Profitable growth is challenging because your company does not keep enough good customers, and it is not getting a steady stream of profitable new customers
When your competitors implement marketing best practices, from understanding customer priorities to providing more value to communicating that value systematically, they will attract, grow, and keep the best customers in your market. The effective marketers not only make it harder for poor marketers to get customers, but they also take customers away from the companies that neglect customers or don't add value continually. You can assess your firms's B to B marketing here.
Marketing is increasing in importance because people don't typically call a salesperson or open the yellow pages when they want information about something. They ask someone they trust, they call the providers they know, or they use a search engine such as Google. Marketing helps companies in each of these areas; marketing helps you tell your story to your market.
A colleague recently attended an event for Microsoft partners (resellers), and someone asked the Microsoft VP leading the event the following:
What is the difference between successful companies and those that struggle to survive?
“Our studies show that successful companies have a deep commitment to marketing while companies that fail do not.”
Microsoft Executive
While leading companies recognize what a difference effective marketing can make in their business, many owners and managers are still skeptical about marketing. How often do you hear owners and managers say something like this about marketing?
"We tried marketing, and it didn't work."
Many companies try marketing or advertising, but marketing requires knowledge, commitment, testing, execution, and analysis. Marketing is more like physical fitness than rocket science; knowledge helps, but commitment and consistency are equally important. When marketing fails for a company, it fails because one or more of these requirements is missing.
We'll discuss the principles and best practices of B to B marketing in this blog, and we'll note new strategies and tactics as they emerge. We'll discuss customer loyalty, market research, targeting, differentiation, messaging, branding, lead generation, relationship building, nurturing, online and offline tactics, technology and more.
The Marketing Edge blog is also about ethical marketing because it fits our values and because it works. Unethical marketing (lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, and scamming) is wrong and it's only effective temporarily. Lying only works temporarily in business to business markets because most business to business purchases are not spontaneous, one-time transactions.
B to B purchases involve trust, credibility, and ongoing relationships. They often involve multiple users and buyers, and if business is gotten based on false promises that are not real, the buyer stops doing business with the seller and they tell others about their bad experience. While this is obvious and has occurred for thousands of years, the consequences to the unethical business were not always so obvious in large markets. But with the internet, word travels fast and cheaters get pummeled by angry customers. So while ethical marketing may seem like an oxymoron to those jaded by scammers, I believe ethical marketing is the only effective marketing for businesses whose good reputation is an essential part of attracting, growing, and keeping customers.
Finally, marketing helps companies clarify their purpose and focus on the customers and markets that are the best fit for them. Focus is one of the fundamentals of effective B to B marketing. Rather than sell to any business that could buy your product or service, effective marketers identify their best customers,understand what is really important to them, and improve their products and services based on this insight about their customers. These improvements help effective marketers offer better value and differentiate themselves from competitors. Then, because effective marketers offer real value to the prospects in their market, their marketing message is real, it's truthful, and it attracts prospects.
If your business is already focused on certain markets and customers, then these marketing principles sound pretty basic. Unfortunately, too many companies try to sell everyone, so they appeal to no one. These unfocused companies will find great value in understanding their best customers, improving their service to them, and then targeting similar customers with marketing that really works.
