B2B marketing has emerged to as a specialty that is treated as distinctly different from B2C marketing.  This is based on the premise that B2C marketing is characterized by consumer goods like food products and services (restaurants).  Marketing for Subway as a smart alternative to MacDonald’s is vastly different than marketing cloud solutions to IT buyers. No duh!

The purchase process for consumer electronics (laptops, tablets, and smartphones) in addition to high value items like automobiles is, however, very similar to the IT purchase process.  Consider the following factors:

1.     Length of the Purchase Process – The time invested in making a decision to buy a new car or laptop is often measured in months.  This is the case unless consumers are forced into making a quick decision, (the transmission has fallen out of your old car or your laptop was stolen).  The average purchase cycle reported for IT decisions has dropped dramatically in the past couple of years…to around 6 months. 

2.     Average Deal Size - Investment of hundreds or thousands of dollars makes consumers consider the purchase carefully before making a decision. 

3.     Number of Decision Makers – Few IT buyers makes a purchase decision without consulting business users. Like it or not, your spouse (or even your kids) may have significant influence on your next car or laptop.  No self-respecting teen will support mom’s temptation to purchase another mini-van.

4.     Higher Risk Decision – The purchase process for b2b and high tech consumer goods is longer because it is a higher risk decision.  It the b2b IT decision maker makes a poor choice, it reflects poorly on him/her.  Business users may point fingers.  This is not so different than choosing what car to drive for the next 48 months.  Who wants to listen to their spouse complain for 48 straight months.  Who wants to live with a laptop that doesn’t meet your needs?

5.     Role of Content Marketing is paramount in higher risk decisions.  Shoppers will seek information from multiple sources to support their decision process.  They will seek out expert commentary, independent comparisons, specifications, and pricing. 

I spent nearly ten years in marketing at Nissan North America.  We analyzed the purchase cycle for our products and those of our competitor’s.  We had a plethora of syndicated data to analyze and learn from.  We designed marketing campaigns to strategically “plug the leaks” in our purchase funnel.  I applied the same principles in high-tech B2B marketing.  Google analytics, CRM tools like Salesforce.com, and marketing automation tools give B2B users similar data.  In a recent Pardot survey, many B2B marketers claim the lack of time and resources make tracking marketing performance difficult.  The good news: 80% of B2B marketers claim that they will invest more time and resources in marketing metrics in 2012.  

This infographic is based on a B2B Benchmark study released by MECLABS shows how marketers are optimizing their marketing funnels.  

The biggest surprise is that a whopping 68% of organizations have not identified their marketing funnel!   Thus, as the infographic displays,  they are focused on the total lead volume and the closing rate of those leads.  This is a limited view of the business.   

Conversely, only 32% of businesses surveyed have identified their funnel to reveal its:   
1.  Strengths - what works at generating qualified leads and converting them to customers  
2.  Weaknesses (where leads are not converting or leaking out of the funnel). 

The logical question is - "How do you optimize a marketing funnel that you don't understand?"  This is an an expensive way to operate.  


Invest the time to understand your how your marketing funnel works at all levels.  Strive to improve funnel conversion rates and improve the the ROI of your marketing spend.  

I was struck by a discussion on the difference between Lead Generation and Demand Generation -  "Lead Generation is Crippling Demand Generation"  The two terms are often used interchangeably - but they are absolutely different.  I had this discussion just yesterday with a marketing leader.  

Before you build a launch plan, recommend specific marketing content and campaigns, you need to know what the organizations objectives are?  How will the ROI of this investment in marketing be measured?  Additionally, where is the marketing funnel working, and where are the "leaks", where your prospects are opting-out of the purchase process?

Lead Generation is characterized by offering up relevant content to prospects.  If a prospect fills out a form to download your white paper, case study, comparison guide, or archived webinar...they are characterized as a "lead".  There are all sorts of leads, however, in different stages of the purchase process.  The quality of the lead can be measured by the rate at which they convert to sales readiness.  A lead is not simply a job title at a specific type of business.  A lead is a hand-raiser - a prospect who has a problem that you can help them solve.  The quality of the content, how well the title and summary engage a prospect (who has a problem your solution can solve) is imperative.  

Demand Generation requires more broad distribution of content and messaging.  All of your content cannot be gated behind a registration form.  Building awareness with potential buyers (early in the purchase process) is important.  Snippets of your content and messaging must be integrated across your website and social media conversations.  Ensuring that your organization builds a reputation for leadership in your space will get you on the "shopping list" when prospects are ready to actively shop.  

Development of a comprehensive Content Marketing Strategy integrates content across both Demand Generation and Lead Generation.   Executing on both will accelerate the ROI of your marketing exponentially.  

I admit it…I watch the Super Bowl for the ads – not the football.  You know people like me; I get quiet during the advertising breaks.  I enjoy evaluating each $3.5 million ad and distract the real football fans in the room.   Super Bowl is likely the only event that audiences remain glued to their televisions to watch the ads.  Viewers use TiVo or a DVR to skip advertisements the other 364 days a year. 

I, as a marketer, have been asked by sales, “Why can’t we run Super Bowl Commercials too?” Next time they ask, I will pull out this handy list of 25 Things You Could do with a Super Bowl Ad Budget.   While $3.5m may get your product on the shopping list, there is much more work to be done to close a sale.

The shopping experience has changed fundamentally – especially for long purchase cycle consumer goods (consumer electronics, cars, etc) and B2B solutions.  We live in world in which we are deluged by marketing noise.  Prospects have adapted by tuning us out.  They skip our ads (except on Super Bowl Sunday), toss direct mail, ignore our banners, and snicker when the see our emails languishing in their junk email folders.  Our world is a nightmare for the “Mad Men” marketers of the past. 

Prospects will actively engage when they are ready to make a purchase decision. Investments in branding advertising can help you make their short list. According the recent research, the B2B IT purchase cycle has shrunk significantly.  This is one of the reasons content marketing becomes a critical investment.  Prospects want information quickly.  Marketing content includes white papers, case studies, comparison guides, video demonstrations, webcasts, and podcasts.  Prospects may visit your website.  They are more likely to seek unbiased reviews from blogs, industry experts, twitter and other social media venues.

Integrating your content marketing with messaging, positioning, and calls-to-action across multiple sources allows you to leverage the web to its potential.  Inbound marketing, where your SEO optimized marketing content draws prospects to you is evolving to be one of the most cost-effective ways to generate qualified leads. 

One Super Bowl Ad is not likely to sell a car; but it can get the car on the shopping list.  Once it is on the shopping list, savvy marketers need to have marketing content ready to help the prospect make the purchase decision.  

A feedback loop between sales and marketing helps integrate learning into the creation of effective content and campaigns for every organization.  There are several ways this feedback can be exchanged.  Periodic coordination meetings are often established to ensure that the departments are talking.  It is easy for these meetings to become ineffective gripe sessions.  Every marketer has heard things like:

1.  "These leads are junk."  
2.  "Why can't we just run a Super Bowl ad instead of these stupid campaigns?"
3.  We need marketing to "Do Me a ...." to solve the gripe of the week.

The meeting results in both teams feeling frustrated.  

Marketing feels like they have turned into fire-fighters who must jump from project to project.  Allowing your marketing team to become a reactive group of fire-fighters is not going to help sales in the long term.  

The bottom line is that large group meetings will not suffice if you want to build a productive partnership between marketing and sales.  
I have a few ideas on how to turn these gripe sessions into productive learning exchanges:

1.  Sales and marketing leaders should formalize the agenda ahead of time to ensure each group is prepared to respond.

2.  Marketing needs to listen at a more personal level.  I suggest you establish specific goals for your marketing team members to have a one-on-one meeting with members of your sales team every week. (yes every week). This "meeting" does not need to be a formal affair with conference rooms or presentations.  There should, however, be an agenda - to collect learning about leads, campaigns, and competitive actions.  

3.  The agenda needs to include high level summaries of:

• Quantitative results of recent activities
  
• Plans and priorities
• Summary of the qualitative learning collected in the informal meetings 

4.  Discussion on how the marketing team will integrate feedback into priority projects - and how some ideas (i.e. the Super Bowl Ad) will be put on the back-burner until there are additional available resources.

The results -  Each team leaves the meeting knowing that their feedback has been heard and  prioritized.