CONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgments
How to Use This Book
Preface
Part One: Setting the Table
Chapter One: The Changing Rules of B2B Marketing
The B2B Difference
To Err Is Human
Much to Gain
Chapter Two: Seven Ways You Can Use Social Media
Market Intelligence
Identify Opportunities
Build Thought Leadership Through Blogging
Market Research
Support Customers
Crisis Management
Solicit Feedback
Chapter Three: Winning Buy-In and Resources
Caveats
Sell the Concept
Just Do It
Answering Common Objections
Embracing Disruption
Chapter Four: Creating a Social Organization
The Openness Challenge
Infectious Growth
Working at Internet Speed
Chapter Five: Creating and Enforcing Social Media Policies
Why Not Use Existing Policies?
Corporate Policy Making 101
Sequencing the Chain of Events
Threat of “Bureaucratese”
Part Two: Tools and Tactics
Chapter Six: Learning by Listening
Listening to the Crowd
Listening to Keywords
Building a Social Media Monitoring Dashboard
Measure Marketing Effectiveness
Internal Feedback Loops
Chapter Seven: Understanding Search
Keyword Research
Advanced Search
Volume vs. Relevance
Relevancy and Bias
Mechanics of Search Engine Optimization
Social Media Optimization
Chapter Eight: Choosing Platforms
The Big Four and More
Other Platforms of Note
Chapter Nine: A Non-Techie’s Guide to Choosing Platforms
Destination Web Site as Home Base
Control the Interface, Not the Conversation
Content Management Systems
The Future of the Destination Web Site
Part Three: Going to Market
Chapter Ten: Social Platforms in Use
Emerson Process Experts (Blog)
CME Group (Twitter)
Infusionsoft (Video, Social Networks)
Avaya (Twitter)
IEEE (Linkedin)
Cree (Video, Contests)
Cisco Systems (Simulation Game)
Deloitte Development LLC (Facebook)
Chapter Eleven: Pick Your Spots: Planning Social Marketing Campaigns
A Four-Step Process
Process in Practice
Chapter Twelve: Lead Generation
Get the Lead Out
The Social Funnel
Search Traffic
Link Traffic
What’s the Diff?
Lead Management
Prospecting 2.0
Be Helpful
Chapter Thirteen: Profiting from Communities
Essential Utility
Friends and Fame
Hosting Conversations
2 Million Friends
Other Uses of Communities
Crowdsourcing
Community Essentials
Chapter Fourteen: Return on Investment
Defining ROI
Metrics
Putting It All Together
Measuring Intangibles
Chapter Fifteen: What’s Next for B2B Social Media?
Inside-Out Marketing
Secrets of the River
Seven Habits of Highly Effective B2B Social Marketers
Appendix: Elements of a Social Media Policy
Notes
About the Authors
Index
Copyright © 2011 by Paul Gillin. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information on our other products and services or for technical support, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at (800) 762-2974, outside the United States at (317) 572-3993 or fax (317) 572-4002.
Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Gillin, Paul.
Social marketing to the business customer : listen to your B2B market, generate major account leads, and build client relationships / Paul Gillin, Eric Schwartzman.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-63933-7 (hardback); ISBN 978-0-470-93972-7 (ebk); 978-0-470-93973-4 (ebk)
1. Internet marketing. 2. Marketing—Social aspects. 3. Social media. I. Schwartzman, Eric. II. Title.
HF5415.1265.G554 2011
658.8'72—dc22
2010031874
To my grandfathers, Morton and Phillip, for teaching me the value of a buck.
—Eric
To Patrick J. McGovern, a brilliant mind and my personal hero.
—Paul
FOREWORD
If you’re reading this book, you are probably interested in understanding how social marketing can enhance your brand, grow your business, and increase customer loyalty. The authors of this book make the important point that B2B relationships are defined by value, and social marketing has the power to dramatically increase the value that companies can provide to their customers.
Dell is, at our core, a B2B company and has been since Michael founded Dell in 1984 when he started out selling computers to businesses and universities. He had an idea that direct relationships with customers would allow more people access to technology so they could reach their full potential, and that is still very much a guiding principle for us today. Today, sales to commercial and public customers account for approximately 80 percent of revenue—and there’s nothing more direct than using the input we get from social media to help our customers solve their most complex challenges.
Why Social?
Many companies talk about the importance of customers, but when it comes to embracing the principles of openness and interaction that social marketing enables, they may hesitate. After all, there may be just as much unfavorable feedback as there is favorable feedback out there. However, it’s the combination of both the positive and the negative that can truly empower organizations to make meaningful changes to better serve customers and build loyalty. Social media certainly make listening easier, but it’s the actions that organizations take from their conversations that build enduring relationships with customers that last long after a single transaction.
When I’m meeting with customers or speaking at conferences, I’m often asked why Dell has embraced social media with such enthusiasm. Our commitment to blogs, social networks, and customer forums seems particularly striking in light of the fact that just four years ago we were the target of some vocal criticism in those same places. Here’s why we embrace social media. It’s because these social communities are where we get honest, candid feedback from our customers that we incorporate into solutions that better meet their needs. Our early conversations with online critics were actually a blessing. They reminded us of the importance of how direct customer interaction drives our business strategy and growth. Dell is mentioned in thousands of online conversations, and on any given day, comments about Dell on Twitter can reach as many as 10 million people. Each of these discussions is an opportunity for us to enhance or build a customer relationship, and to act on what we hear. Social media provide simply another way that we can listen to and engage with our customers—and a powerful way for us to learn what we need to do to help our customers succeed.
At Dell, we believe that team members are our most valuable assets, and they should be the ones to interact with our customers. If a customer has a technical issue, he or she will chat with someone from our product or engineering team. If it’s a service issue, that customer will interact with our support team. We provide the foundation that our global team members need to use social media as part of their jobs through our Social Media and Communities University.
This scale of interaction may sound a bit scary at first, but it doesn’t have to be when you align people around a common purpose so that when they speak to customers, they’re working toward the same goal. For Dell, that purpose is to provide technology that gives our customers the power to do more—to grow, to thrive.
Why Social Marketing for B2B?
B2B relationships are fundamentally not about companies but about people. At Dell, we encourage team members to use their blogs and Twitter accounts to talk about their families, vacations, and passions, if that’s information they want to share. These glimpses into the personal lives of professional colleagues are essential to building strong relationships. Think of it: When you speak to a trusted business partner at a meeting or on the phone, you typically spend several minutes chatting about events that go on outside the office. The better you know people professionally, the better you get to know them personally.
B2B relationships are also about being helpful, and here is where social media have opened some amazing new opportunities for us. A great example is our Social Media for Small Business page on Facebook. Those business owners look to us for advice on how to leverage social channels for their businesses, and we’re excited to share what we have learned. We take great care not to make this resource a sales pitch. These days, the best marketing is the kind that helps people to be successful.
The authors give one example of how we support our customers in Chapter 1, where they tell the story of Dell TechCenter, an online support resource for customers who purchase Dell solutions for their businesses. TechCenter exemplifies the value of personal engagement in a business context. Our TechCenter staffers have gotten to know many of our customers personally as a result of their technical support interactions. These relationships are enhanced through dinners and meet-ups at conferences or even at Dell’s offices, where customers often request meetings with the TechCenter experts.
Preparing for What’s Next
The information technology ecosystem is constantly transforming itself, but even more impactful is how people are using technology to create innovations that will change our world. A few years ago, customers primarily used Dell.com to buy products. Today, it’s the focal point for a variety of social platforms where they learn from each other as well as from us. Tomorrow, the boundaries between online and offline may entirely disappear as “digital” and “virtual” just become ingrained in how we all communicate.
However, the one constant that will remain is the value that organizations of all sizes can realize from social marketing. Does social marketing enable a business to get closer to its customers? Does it provide feedback that can be used to improve the customer experience? Does it help grow the business and build the brand? The answer in all cases is yes. Embracing social marketing and finding a way to integrate it into the fabric of doing business can help B2B companies truly provide more value to the people they serve and create loyal customers for life.
—Karen Quintos
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Dell Inc.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Much of what I’ve learned about business-to-business (B2B) social marketing has resulted from the generosity of Ellis Booker, former editor-in-chief of BtoB magazine. It was Ellis who gave me writing assignments and eventually a monthly column when I was striking out in this territory in 2006. BtoB publisher Bob Felsenthal has also been generous in allowing me to further my education in this area as a representative of his fine publication. Many of the case studies in this book began as BtoB assignments.
Dell is often held up as an icon of B2B social media excellence. Richard Binhammer has helped me understand how that innovative company has transformed itself. He’s also been a great source of contacts.
Jen McClure and her nonprofit Society for New Communications Research deliver unrivaled insight through their publications and conferences. She has made it possible for me to meet so many people who have influenced my life that I can never thank her enough.
Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson have recorded an incredible 553 episodes of their “For Immediate Release” podcast as of this writing. I never miss a program. They’ve pointed me to people and research that was invaluable in preparing this book.
Several people gave generously of their time in helping me understand the issues in B2B social marketing, including Alan Belniak (PTC); Barbara Bix, Chris Boudreaux (SocialMediaGovernance.com); Jim Cahill (Emerson); Bobbie Carlton, Ron Casalotti (Bloomberg); Brian Casey (AuntMinnie); Nick Fishman (EmployeeScreen); Christian Gunning (Boingo); Jay Halberg (Spiceworks); Scott Hanson (Dell); Sumaya Kazi (YoProCo); Christina Kerley, Wyatt Kilmartin (RIDGID); Joseph Manna (Infusionsoft); James Mathewson (IBM); Debbie McGrath (HR.com); Michelle Murray (Cree); Bill Robb (Cisco); Danny Schaeffler, Allan Schoenberg (CME); Rick Short (Indium); Dwayne Spradlin (InnoCentive); David van Toor (NoPlanB.com); Deirdre Walsh (National Instruments); and Scott Wurtele (IdeaConnection). I’m sure I’ve missed a few, and I apologize for that.
My wife and soul mate, Dana, has stuck with me through four books in four years, which qualifies her for sainthood. She has carefully copyedited and proofread each one. I don’t know what I would do without her, and I hope I never find out.
—Paul Gillin
Above all, I thank my wife, Celia, for her love and support, and my son, William, for continuously renewing my spirit and perspective.
Many have contributed to my professional growth and understanding of the social media world. They include (in alphabetical order) Elizabeth Albrycht, David Almy, Robin Antin, Lauren Bartlett, Major Carrie Batson, Kimberlee Beers, Pete Blackshaw, Paul Bloch, Henri Bollinger, Tim Bourquin, Michael Butler, David Carr, CC Chapman, Major Danny Chung, Craig Comeau, Christopher Degnan, Andree Deissenberg, Joe DeMattos, Major Christian Devine, Scott DeYager, Steve Doctorow, John Elsasser, Michael Furtney, Steve Garfield, John Gerstner, Tammy Lynn Gilmore, Lisa S. Gleason, Billie Gross, Captain Dustin Hart, John Hatfield, Liza Henshaw, Neville Hobson, Harlan Hogan, Shel Holtz, Captain Kymberly Jurado, Greg Jarboe, Dominic Jones, Beth Kanter, Sulosana Karthigasu, Joanne Killeen, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel King, Erica Klein, Bruce P. Kleiner, Stacey Knott, Michael Kroll, Kaiser Kuo, Dany Levy, Marsha Lindsay, Michael Liskin, Lawrence Lokman, Krista Loretto, Matthew Lussenhop, William Lutz, Mary Matalobos, John Matel, Jennifer McClure, Barbara McDonald, Julie McDonald, Thomas S. Miller, Bull Murray, Michael Netzley, Major David Nevers, Karen North, Gunnery Sergeant Chanin Nuntavong, Leysia Palen, Christopher Penn, Jeremy Pepper, Andy Perez, Steve Perlman, Bryan Person, Jeremy Rawitch, Lieutenant Colonel Gregory Reeder, Sean Riley, Kevin Roderick, Steve Rubel, Colonel Brian Salas, Rob Scheidlinger, Colleen Seaver, Tony Selznick, Fay Shapiro, Helene Silber, Jim Sinkinson, Tom Smith, Brain Solis, Don Spetner, Sarah Spitz, Mark Story, Tom Tardio, Captain Eric Tausch, Laurel Touby, Judy Voss, and John Wall.
To everyone else who has shared their experience, strength and hope, I am forever grateful.
—Eric Schwartzman
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK
Social marketing is about tools, people, and organization. To get the greatest impact, you need to introduce the technology to a receptive audience and then apply it for business value. We’ve organized this book into three parts to step you through the process.
Part 1 (Chapters 1 through 5) sets the table for the introduction of tools. These chapters tell you how social marketing is revolutionizing customer relationships and offer seven business case scenarios for applying tools. We then offer advice on how to sell social marketing to skeptical bosses, build an organization that listens and responds constantly to its constituents, and create guidelines and policies for appropriate behavior. The framework for building a policy is covered in Appendix A.
Part 2 (Chapters 6 through 9) is about technology. We tell you how to build a listening dashboard, which is an essential first step to applying new technology. Chapter 7 guides you through the intricacies of search and keywords; these are essential concepts to know when building online visibility. We then look at the major public social media platforms, such as LinkedIn and Twitter, and offer some context for the value of each. Finally, we tell you how to build your own community platform.
Part 3 (Chapters 10 through 15) is about putting social marketing to work. We start with a series of short case studies that spotlight B2B companies that are achieving results with various tools. The next few chapters step you through the process of identifying good opportunities for social marketing, generating leads, and putting communities to work. We include plenty of examples of how others are achieving success. We wrap up with an explanation of how to calculate return on investment (ROI). Contrary to popular perception, we believe you can figure out the ROI of social marketing if you have the right historical data in place.
PREFACE
The idea for this book was hatched in October 2009 at the Inbound Marketing Summit in Foxboro, Massachusetts. More than 70 speakers packed a terrific two-day agenda, relating stories of how they sold everything from cameras to Cabernet Sauvignon using the new tools of social media.
On the afternoon of the first day, an attendee raised her hand and asked how a speaker’s advice could be applied to business-to-business (B2B) marketing. The speaker (we can’t remember who it was) asked which members of the audience worked for B2B companies. More than half the hands in a room packed with 450 marketers went up.
Paul watched the scene with interest. He had been a journalist and executive at B2B publishers in the technology field for more than 20 years before making the switch to social media consulting in 2005. It had never occurred to him how different the needs are between a company that sells clothing and one that sells uniforms. A quick check on Amazon revealed that of the 50+ social media marketing books that had been published in the prior year, not one specifically addressed the needs of the B2B marketer.
We began to ask questions of event organizers and social media publishers. Why was it that consumer success stories like Zappos and Blendtec continued to dominate conference agendas and research reports when B2B companies had been such early and enthusiastic adopters of social tools? The answer we got back most often—that similar principles applied to both types of businesses—seemed insufficient. We love it when the two guys from EepyBird.com drop Mentos into bottles of Diet Coke, but we couldn’t see how that example would apply to a marketer at ConAgra.
The two of us were already planning to collaborate on a book based on Eric’s archive of On the Record . . . Online podcasts. We quickly switched gears and spent the next 6 months delving into the intricacies of the business buying decision. We learned how very different the two business types really are.
Changing Channels
B2B marketing has been conducted pretty much the same way for decades. Direct sales forces followed up on leads generated by trade print advertising, trade show exhibitions, direct-mail campaigns, and telemarketing. These channels were always expensive and have become less effective than they once were. As this Penril modem ad from an early 1980s issue of Computerworld demonstrates (Figure P.1), the limitations of traditional, intrusion-based advertising sometimes forced B2B marketers to use extreme tactics to attract attention.
Consider the corporate technology executive, who was the target for this ad. Until about 10 years ago, the typical information technology (IT) manager’s mailbox bulged with print trade magazines. It was not unusual for IT executives to have a stack of unread magazines in the corner of their offices and to take piles of them on plane trips for rapid processing. Paul remembers with a chuckle the IT manager who referred to his weekly trade magazine deliveries in a metric he called “stack feet.”
This was a highly wasteful system. Technology companies could pay as much as $30,000 for a full-page advertisement that might be seen by only a tiny percentage of the magazine’s readers in any given week. Of those who noticed the ad, an even smaller percentage were in a position to make a purchase at that time. It was impossible to communicate the value of a product in this format; advertisers mainly relied on quick slogans borrowed from the consumer sector that they hoped would spur a phone call. Lead quality was poor, and sales cycles were long and arduous.
It’s not surprising that the technology sector was one of the first to discard print advertising. Today, only a handful of technology magazines still exist in the United States, and their average size has shrunk from hundreds of pages a week to a few dozen. In 2009, the trade publishing sector was the single largest declining print market, with ad pages contracting 28 percent on top of years of previous declines. The collapse of that industry was dramatized in November 2008, when PC Magazine, which once generated more than $100 million in annual revenues, announced it was exiting the print business and going fully online.
What explains this dramatic turnaround? Quite simply: choice. Business buyers are looking to make decisions as quickly and as intelligently as possible. Searching for solutions online is more efficient than relying on the serendipity of encountering an ad in a magazine or seeing a flyer in a mailbox. Americans older than age 15 conducted 131 billion searches in December 2009,1 according to comScore. Marketo reported that 93 percent of B2B buyers use search to begin the buying process,2 and Forbes Insight reported that 74 percent of C-level executives call the Internet “very valuable,” and 53 percent said they prefer to locate information themselves.3 Nor is it shocking that direct-mail spending is expected to decline nearly 40 percent by 2014. Buyers’ information discovery habits have changed forever thanks to search engines.
But it isn’t just search. Business buyers have been saying for many years that their most important source of information is each other. Research in early 2010 by Genius.com and DemandGen Report found that 59 percent of B2B buyers engaged with peers before making a buying decision, 48 percent followed industry conversations, and 44 percent conducted anonymous research among a select group of vendors. Forrester Research reported that more than 8 in 10 IT decision makers said word-of-mouth recommendations are their most important source when making buying decisions.4 Countless other surveys, stretching back more than 30 years, have reached the same conclusions. Business buyers actively seek out others like them because they believe they will get the most direct, untarnished advice.
Marketers have many more options for reaching business buyers than they did just five years ago. All of the traditional channels are still available, and many new ones have also emerged. Marketing today is a lot more complex than it used to be, but the opportunities are also greater for marketers who can figure out the right combination of dials to turn.
Social media empowers individuals to share their experiences directly with one another and without the filters of corporate public relations (PR) departments and lawyers. People are more honest and direct when speaking with their peers, which is one reason why feedback from social networks is more compelling than packaged case studies. As the number of channels multiplies and more participants come online, the quality of information improves, a phenomenon knows as the “network effect.”
Today, prospective buyers have other options beyond search. They can ask questions directly of one another via Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Response is nearly instantaneous and, because each message is tied back to an individual profile, participants have a high degree of confidence in the quality of the information.
“If a customer in the chemicals industry is having a challenge and wants to know best practices for distribution of chemicals through a supply chain, he or she can turn to another chemicals customer in our ecosystem through our [online] communities and learn,” says Mark Yolton, senior vice president of the 2-million-member SAP Community Network.
Andrew McAfee, principal research scientist at the MIT Sloan School and author of Enterprise 2.0, has gone so far as to suggest that a new kind of search is emerging based on the ask-and-answer metaphor. So now, not only can we search the web for others’ experiences, but we can ask questions directly of an anonymous or semi-anonymous group and get back experiential advice. Those “stack feet” of printed magazines have been replaced by a vast network of people who freely share their firsthand experiences for no reason other than to help others make better decisions.
For many B2B companies, these new information-gathering metaphors will ripple across every function in the organization. Customers, suppliers, and investors will demand that businesses become more open and responsive. They will grant attention to companies that deliver useful information and shun those that simply deliver sales pitches. “People want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold to,” says Benjamin Ellis, a serial entrepreneur based in the United Kingdom who now specializes in social marketing.
Find Your Own Path
There’s an inherent risk in generalizing about the needs of companies that run the gamut from high-volume office supply retailers like Staples to highly focused firms like American Biltrite, whose Autowrap division is so specialized that executives already know everyone who could possibly do business with them. In some ways, these two kinds of B2B companies couldn’t be more different, but there are also a surprising number of common threads to their experiences: their markets are value-driven and relationship-based. There are no impulse purchases and no fashion statements. Word of mouth is a powerful source of influence. Reputations and even careers ride on buying decisions.
Any company that sees virtue in better connecting the people who build and sell its products with the people who buy them can find opportunities to apply the new tools of social marketing. In the following pages, we’ll introduce you to dozens that already have. We’ll also continue to tell stories on our blogs: paulgillin.com, spinfluencer.com, and ontherecordpodcast.com. We hope you’ll contribute yours to the conversation.
Paul Gillin |
Eric Schwartzman |
paul@gillin.com |
eric@ericschwartzman.com |
twitter.com/pgillin |
twitter.com/ericschwartzman |
Part One
Setting the Table