DaveStevensNow

Blogging about Profitable B2B Marketing | Branding | Digital | Team-Building

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Dave is an experienced global B2B Chief Marketing Officer / Marketing Director with an established reputation for delivering commercial results in start-up, mid-tier, and blue-chip businesses across technology, and business services and professional services sectors. Dave has worked for major brands such as Telefonica O2, EY, and Barclays and held posts from Chief Marketing Officer to Director of Online, has run his own business, and managed a P&L for a major corporate. He is chair and co-founder of the Business Marketing Club (www.businessmarketingclub.org.uk) – a network of B2B marketers. In 2019, he was named one of the top 100 B2B European marketing leaders (https://www.hottopics.ht/34199/top-100-b2b-european-marketing-leaders-2019/). He is a graduate of Cambridge University, a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Chartered Marketer and holds a MBA with Imperial College, London. Dave is a keen cyclist and adventure traveller, is married, and lives in Buckinghamshire. You can read his blogs at www.DaveStevensNow.com.

  • Why is listening more important than talking in social media?


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    I attended PRmoment.com’s “Social media in B2B Communications:  The power of integration” conference on Wednesday and presented a paper on why listening is more important than talking in social media.  This is a summary of what I presented…

    There are some honourable exceptions, but the state of social media in B2B communications right now can be summarised in the phrase “we talk lots”.  B2B organisations send as much marketing stuff out from the corporate centre as we can.

    There are three reasons why that is the case:-

    (1)  ROI Marketing.  “Return on Marketing Investment” was originated as a concept with the work of Kotler and Lilien in the 1990s and it caught on.  By the early 21st century B2B marketers were finding themselves under more and more pressure to demonstrate a return in their marketing.  This is difficult in the world of social media and so we have tended towards measuring outputs rather than outcomes because that is easier.  Marketers are helped here with the dashboards on different social media sites and by aggregation tools such as Klout.  And so marketers focus on numbers of messages, likes, and follows.  Small industries spring up offering opportunities to buy followers and the press gets hot under the collar about scandals such as fake followers.  And because marketers can measure these outputs effectively, we focus our efforts on trying to secure more of them.  And sending out lots of stuff is a great way of building up such numbers.

    (2) Micro-marketing and Personalisation.  This is a trend that took off in the 1990s too:  encouraging the operation of marketing at an individual one-to-one level.  Again in social media this is difficult to achieve.  And so marketers have looked to tools like Hootsuite that enable mass marketing in  a slightly customised way.  Essentially though such tools are broadcast machines.

    (3) Centralisation.  Social media is new.  And B2B organisations tend to run new things from the centre to see how they work and to control them.  This happened with the internet almost twenty years ago, and it happens today with social media.  And such centralisation under the management of a few makes interaction on a mass scale between organisations and audience difficult.  And so marketers broadcast instead.

    So for these very understandable reasons, we talk lots in social media.  But B2B organisations should talk less and “listen more”.

    There are three reasons why:-

    (A) People use social media to interact.  In my experience , interaction is the value of social media.  Social media provides the opportunity to share experiences and knowledge and thinking with others of like mind wherever they are.  That means following people not organisations because people talk to people not entities and that means reflecting on things going on in other channels than just social media.  My personal usage of social media reflects this.  I don’t follow back many companies because I don’t want a relationship with a thing.  I’m having lots of interesting discussions over social media – about the value of infographics, whether B2B marketing should get more emotion, whether there is any difference between B2B and B2C marketing…  I carry on discussions with people I’ve met at events or about issues raised on television.  And so as CMO of a B2B organisation, I have encouraged individuals – people – in the business of my firm to use social media, aided by the professionals in my team and social media tools that guide who to follow on which topics.  I have used LinkedIn groups to follow-up round-table events allowing attendees to continue the conversations that they were having off-line.

    (B)  Your organisation will take more note of social media if you listen.  In a recent CIM survey of 2000 marketers (48% of them B2B, most of them based in the UK and Western Europe), 26% of them said that the biggest barrier to progress in social media was management understanding.  This was the biggest barrier cited.  Management don’t get social.  And that shouldn’t be a surprise.  Social media hasn’t been around for very long and it uses meaningless terms like “follows” and “likes” to present its achievements.  However, if you use social media to listen you can present your findings on a topic and in a way that senior management will understand.  At my firm, we used social media as evidence as to how we should recalibrate our brand by combining use of a social media analysis tool with some consultant analysis.  We compared what people were saying about our brand with what they were saying about our competitors and because it was research without buzzwords on a topic that senior management were already interested in, management listened.  This is the kind of listening we should be doing on social media.  And if we do it well on a topic that management consider to be important already, they will listen.

    (C)  Your customers want you to listen.  A February 2012 survey for Yomego showed that 62% of consumers used social media for customer service issues.  88% said they were less likely to buy from a brand if questions asked on social media went unanswered.  Customers expect your organisation to be listening.  At our firm, we listen and flag up social media conversations to management so that they can decide how best to respond to them.

    So I think B2B organisations need to listen using social media:  keep it personal, interact, integrate, research usefully, and always consider responding.

    What do you think?

  • Why the Infographic Bubble will burst [words]…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    The world has gone mad for infographics.

    Go on – do a Twitter search right now and you’ll see what I mean.  I’m writing this in the early hours of Sunday morning and seven tweets containing infographics have come through in the last minute.  There’s even a multitude of Twitter handles you can follow to get your full fix of the things.  And have you seen Pinterest lately?  There are boards and boards full of infographics…

    And boy do we make a big thing of them!  “[Infographic]” has thirteen characters – that’s practically a tenth of a tweet.  Yet most tweets containing a link to an infographic will make a point of telling you by adding those thireen characters at the end.  Links to text don’t make a big thing of it and yet to write “[Words]” takes up much less real estate.

    It’s not hard to see how we’ve got into this place.  A picture can tell a thousand words, they say.  And images are popular in social media.   Infographics shared on Twitter are re-tweeted more than just words.  And if that’s not clear here are two infographics on the subject:- http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/infographics-on-twitter_b26840;  and http://www.prnewsonline.com/free/Media-Watch-Journalists-Demand-More-Visuals_16829.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2512573&hq_l=10&hq_v=bec5c1ee8b.

    But I bet that the infographic bubble will burst quickly.  And here’s three reasons why – which I’ve written below in an old-fashioned medium called “text”:-

    1.  Infographics don’t contain information.  Most infographics that pass by my desk don’t convey information or data.  They simply pitch an opinion in a graphical way.  So if people are attracted by infographics because they give them a basis of fact in a social media sea of vapid, gossip-heavy content, they can forget it.

    2.  Infographics don’t convey their point clearly. The point of a graphic or an image is that it conveys its point clearly and cleanly.  Most infographics that I see don’t.  Lay-out is poor so that the argument is difficult to follow.  Frequently infographics don’t display on one screen so that you have to scroll which makes the point difficult to take in.   It is difficult to focus on the information and not the graphic as there’s lots of competing imagery.  Frequently the data is distorted or difficult to read and the statistic and the text desciptions are not well-integrated.

    3.  Infographics no longer offer differentiation.  So if these things don’t convey information and aren’t clear, why are so many marketers opting for them?  Because they stand out?  Because they differentiate you from the crowd?   Not for much longer!  Infographics are becoming the norm.  Text could soon be a differentiator.

    So I reckon the infographics bubble will burst.  Rather than jumping to design an infographic, marketers should consider how best to convey their content clearly and effectively to achieve their objectives.  And then use the medium taht does that best.

    I could have conveyed this view as an infographic of course.  Perhaps a big infographic blue bubble being divided into three sections for the key-lines of my argument by a small child with a stripy woolly hat (for colour) who happens to be riding a unicycle across a high wire (for added differentiation)?

    But on second thoughts, perhaps just a bit of text is a better bet…

  • Shut the door as you leave the nursery please…

    Shut the door as you leave the nursery please…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    And so it’s back to business!  Whether it’s the arrival of Labor Day, the end of the school holidays, or simply the change of the weather, you can’t help but have picked up the signals that the final business term of 2012 is upon us.

    For marketers, the season ahead is always a busy one as we focus on achieving or exceeding the business targets we signed up to some time ago now.  There’s little time for thought.  It’s all about execution by this time of year.

    But I’d like to urge you to stop for a moment during the race to finalise an event, design a web-page, or test a new product – stop and consider the optics of what you are doing internally within your business.  Do the people in your organisation actually know what you are doing?  And why you are doing it?  Does your business actually know what marketing is?  And do you?

    I’ve worked in a fair number of businesses in my career – public and private sector, large corporates and SMEs, B2C and B2B.  And I have to say that I’m not convinced that I’ve met many people in those businesses who have known what the role of the marketing department actually is.  That’s reflected in the remit of marketing in different organisations.  There’s astonishing diversity here:  should it include product management, price-setting, promotion, or distribution – or a mix of the same?  And if it’s only about marcomms, should the department include public relations, online, and what about social media?   It’s reflected too in reporting lines – should the marketing department sit in sales or operations or somewhere else?  It’s reflected in many, many CMOs not having a seat at the Board table.  And this ignorance of marketing is self-perpetuating, because business owners do not know what to look for in a marketer and so they recruit someone who does not have the right marketing skills to do a marketing job.

    Why is marketing in this position?  Because marketing is an astonishingly young discipline.  It was practically unheard of as a term before 1970 and if you are in B2B before 1985.  Marketing did not reach most MBA syllabuses before 1990.  And then it took businesses a generation to get on board and build a department dedicated to marketing.  So we shouldn’t be surprised if, by 2012, businesses still don’t get it.  Those people reaching senior board positions right now started their business careers in firms with no marketing department.

    It is our responsibility as professional marketers to work to turn this around.  Here are some suggestions for what we can do to fix the misconception.

    1.  Marketers should establish a trade body that is able to set a common standard of qualification for the marketing profession and marketing leaders should insist that all practising marketers have that qualification.  It is through this model that accountancy got on the business map as a profession.  Why not marketing too?  In the UK, the Chartered Institute of Marketing has made an effort in this space, but its qualifications are too slanted to FMCG marketers and its qualifications are not enforced as licences to practice.  Professionals first of all need a profession.

    2.  Marketers need to take the time to explain to our internal customers what marketing is and what it can do for them.  Start from the assumption that your internal audience does not know what you do and take the time to explain.  As marketers we should know how to market.  But we need to take the time to market ourselves as much as our products, services, and organisations.  We need to apply all of the skills that we have learnt over the last forty years – on ourselves.

    3.  Marketers need to be more scientific in our marketing.  As our profession grows up, so must we.  Far too much of our work has historically been based on assertion not fact base.  We can no longer afford not to know which area of our marketing is most effective.  We need to understand the contribution of every part of our marketing to our goals.  We need to operate in a constant state of test and learn.

    I think it’s time that our profession grew up.  It’s time for us to leave the nursery.  Who’s with me?

  • Why B2B Marketing should get more emotional…

    Why B2B Marketing should get more emotional…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    Last weekend, I headed up to Edinburgh to spend a couple of days enjoying the Fringe Festival.  If you’ve not been, it’s well-worth a visit.  There’s a real sense of carnival to proceedings.  There are hundreds of shows that you can dip into covering comedy, drama, dance, and magic.  And even the environment is benign.  At this time of year, Edinburgh is mildly warm and there’s at least a 30% chance of it staying dry.

    The excursion to the Fringe has become something of an annual tradition for me.  Each time, I try something new (this year, some modern folk / jazz dance combo that I don’t think I’ll be trying again), but for the most part this yearly trek is a chance for me to enjoy some good stand-up comedy.

    Stand-up comedy is something of a British tradition and in the last couple of decades in particular has focused on political and observational humour.  However there was a new trend that I saw in many of the comics’ shows this time.  Stewart Lee talked about his life as a dad effectively acting as a taxi service for his son.  Toby Hadoke showed us pictures of his children and his new step-son and images from his wedding day.  Reginald D. Hunter told us about his relationship with his father and siblings.  Stand-up has gone emotional.

    And it works.  People relate to people.  The audience is pulled onto the comedian’s side when we hear about their struggles to bring up a family and hold their own in difficult relationships.  It’s natural that we connect.  That’s what we do every day ourselves.

    Why then hasn’t the emotional wave embraced B2B marketing?  B2B communications are still typified by jargon, capability statements, and formality.  Case studies talk about processes and services rather than people.  Social media is focused upon building followers rather than relating to them.

    I think there are three reasons why B2B marketers hold off from going emotional.  Let’s look at each reason in turn.

    1.  B2B is a different sell to B2C.  It’s likely to be of high value and therefore is a decision that needs to be rationalised.  What is being purchased is more frequently a bespoke or complex item or service. It will probably involve a decision from a group of buyers rather than just one individual.  All true.  But if anything these points require more of an emotional push not less.  If something is a high value, complex, or bespoke purchase, surely the buyer(s) want to know the people behind it?  Don’t they want to understand that suppliers know their stuff, that they are passionate about their subject, and that they care about their customers?  If there is more than one buyer decision maker, that just means that suppliers should be communicating with them all at an emotional level.  Of course suppliers need to have product specifications and case studies and testimonials – but the way they are presented, the language that they are presented in, the channels that are used, the stories that they present – are more important in B2B marketing than in B2C, not less.

    2.  B2B leaders don’t get marketing.  Marketing is still a young discipline in B2B – in many companies, it’s only twenty years old.  therefore, it’s not given much attention or love.  For the same reason, it’s also easier to do B2B marketing as it’s always been done and with no extra money or resources.  All true.  But you don’t need to spend more money or throw more resources at something to communicate at an emotional level.  And you can still use the same channels and content.  You just have to market in a different way.  Consider the images you use to represent your company – and make them more human.  Make the language you use more personal.  Interact rather than broadcast.

    3.  B2B products and services aren’t something to get emotional about.  Everyone can understand how you can wax lyrical about the latest shiny Apple (or Samsung) phone, the latest Virgin Airways service, the new Paul Smith shirt – no wonder these are the brands marketers flock to work for.  It’s easy to communicate on an emotional level about them.  Not so B2B products and services like consulting, private banking, a new server.  Well no.  I disagree.  You just have to get to the heart of the need that a product or service is meeting.  And then it’s very possible to see it on an emotional level.  Why does your service make the world that bit better?  And because the emotional heart of B2B is less apparent, B2B marketers should invest more heavily than B2C marketers in communicating out what it is.

    In my view, there’s nothing to stop B2B marketers from getting more emotional in their communications.  And every reason why they should.  So go on.  Get shedding a tear or two this week and see what a difference it makes to your results…

  • Five lessons for marketing from London 2012


    Dave Stevens – Olympic volunteer!

     

     

    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    In the last week, I’ve taken time off from my regular marketing job to play a part as one of the many volunteers helping to make London 2012 the big success that it is.

    I’ve not been stationed anywhere glamorous like the Olympic Park or Horseguards’ Parade.  Instead I’ve been based in one of the airports where my role, alongside four colleagues, is to help visitors find their way into London to enjoy the Games.  To help us, there’s a big display board that describes the Olympics and shows a big map of the City and we have hand-out materials such as maps of London, theatre guides, and copies of “Time Out” magazine.  My coleagues and I are very proud to be doing our bit for the country where we live and for the the great cause of the Olympic Games.

    My volunteering has given me time to think about the lessons from the London Olympics that I can take back to my marketing job when the Games are over.  I think there are five key points.

    1.  Your biggest brand channel is your work-force.  London 2012 volunteers have helped to make the Games such a positive and memorable experience (for example:-  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/05/observer-editorial-big-society-legacy-of-olympics; http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/aug/04/olympic-volunteers-happy-to-help).  The volunteers feel really proud of London or the UK and can relate to the brand values of the Olympic Games.  To be working for causes that you are proud of creates positivity.  No one trained the volunteers to be positive.  Positivity is nowhere mentioned in the many training manuals I’ve been given.  It arose naturally from the brands of London, the UK, and the Games.  That positivity is infectious among the volunteers and it has left our clients and customers feeling good too.  I’ve been astonished by how many people have come up to the airport volunteer team and asked to have their photos taken with us or praised the role of the volunteer task force and how good it has made them feel.

    And so my first lesson to take back to work is that your employees need to feel pride in your brand if your customers are going to feel positive about what you have to offer.

    2.  Sponsorship works if there is a direct and tangible connection.  There has been lots of talk about the merits or not of becoming a sponsor of the Olympics.  Some brands have declared that such sponsorship is not for them citing Gallup & Robinson research that the sponsorships of some companies are known by less than 10% of viewers.  But other brands have really invested and the 11 biggest corporate sponsors paid nearly $1 billion for the rights to flaunt the Olympic seal in London (source:  http://corporationsandhealth.org/2012/08/01/mcdonalds-coca-cola-seek-gold-in-london-olympics/).  It seems to me that that the sponsorships that have worked best have been where a company is able to make a direct and tangible link between itself and the Olympics.  So John Lewis does retail and associates itself with the Olympic retail shop.  I understand that John Lewis’ takings in Oxford Street in London have been dramatically up in the Olympic fortnight with revenue targets for whole weeks achieved by day two and that they can directly relate this back to passing trade from the London 2012 shop stationed in their store.  Adidas have reported that their Olympic sponsorship has already driven a return of £100MM (source:  http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/olympic-sponsorship-lifts-adidas-sales/4003094.article).  As the manufacturers of the Team GB kit, there is again a direct and tangible link between Adidas and London 2012 that good marketing can emphasise.  Such direct connections are more difficult for businesses like McDonald’s or Lloyds TSB (neither of whom even retail in the Olympic Park).  The Olympics is not about hamburgers or bank accounts.

    So if your organisation is going to sponsor something, make sure that there is a direct and practical link between what your company does and what it sponsors.  It is not enough just to make a connection on the basis of brand values.

    3.  Small changes in your market can have big effects.  The presence of Olympic volunteers in a London airport has had a big impact on two other airport operators – the taxi drivers and the newsagents.  Both have complained.  The taxi drivers are used to picking up lost arrivals at the airport and persuading them to take a taxi to their destination.  But now there are Olympic volunteers in the airport who can explain objectively to the visitor that they could more cheaply take the train or the bus.  As a result, the taxis are losing business.  WHSmith sell maps and “Time Out” magazine.  But now there are Olympic volunteers at the airport giving out copies of the same and offering free advice on how to get to a visitors’ chosen destination.  These small market changes were predictable and canny organisations could have taken advantage of them.  For example, O2 left some pre-paid mobile SIM cards with the Olympic volunteers to give out if visitors needed help here.

    The lesson to take back to work is to keep on top of even small changes in your market, because they can have big effects.  You need to keep constant vigilance if you are to react to them in time.

    4.  You can use social media to manage your public relations crisis.  The Olympic volunteers were invited to rehearsals for the Opening Ceremony in the week before the Games started.  In the Twitter age, the organisers faced the very real risk that rehearsal spectators would give away the secrets of what they had seen on Twitter well in advance of the launch event.  And so very cleverly, they used Twitter to stop people from giving away Olympic secrets on Twitter.  Organisers gave all attendees a special Twitter hashtag to use: #savethe surprise.  And on using the hashtag, tweeters were joined by London 2012 advocates who urged them not to pass on the show’s secrets.  As such the pressures of the group stopped people from giving up what they had seen.  This even spread out from social networking into other channels.  Attendees refused to give away secrets to the press waiting outside of the stadium, for example.  So the secrets of the opening ceremony were preserved.

    It is worth considering a similar approach with your employees in your next PR crisis.

    5.  The useability of your website is all.  Not everything about London 2012 has been a success.  The most frequent complaint that visitors to the volunteers’ stand have made to me has been about the London 2012 website and how difficult it is to use.  Particularly frustrating has been the site’s tendency to announce that Olympic tickets are available only for users to find that the position has changed by the time that that have pressed the “commit” button.  The web designers have a difficult job to do here.  There are only a few thousand tickets available but there are millions of vistiors seeking to purchase.  But a simple reservation process for each ticket where a ticket can be reserved for a prospective buyer until they have entered all of their payment details would make all the difference.  With this system, there would have been no complaints for people were complaining about the web system not ticket availability.

    Web user experience matters.  Invest in the useability of your website otherwise the perception of your product offering will fall.

    These are the five lessons that I shall take back to my work-place when the Olympic party is over…  But for now, back to the airport…

  • Social media marketing is not an Olympic sport


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    There’s a wonderful carnival atmosphere in London right now as people from all over the world flock to watch the extraordinary performances of athletes at the peak of their fitness striving to make years of training and commitment pay off at the Olympic Games.

    Who can fail to have been inspired to see the artistry of USA gymnast Gabrielle Douglas, the diving success of China’s Qin Kai and Luo Yutong, or the convincing domination of the women’s heptathlon by Great Britain’s Jessica Ennis?  Amazing feats of athleticism geared towards the maximum accumulation of points.

    Social media marketing is not an Olympic sport.  It is not about the accumulation of points.

    But many many marketers seem to be treating it as such.

    The dimensions of social media encourage marketers to see it as a game of point-scoring.  Our work on www.twitter.com is focused around the number of followers we can accumulate or the number of tweets we can send out; on www.facebook.com we worry about the number of friends we can seek out; or on www.linkedin.com it’s all about the connections stupid!  And all of these sites offer prominent sections counting up our successes here and inspiring us ever onward!  Just as gymnastics scores are given by a panel of judges, taking into account the degree of difficulty and the quality of the execution; so marketers have the likes of www.klout.com to measure the true reach, amplification, and network impact of our efforts.  We derive a score out of 100 that we train ourslves to improve.  And we’ve developed industry tools like www.hootsuite.com to help to manage our performance by cleaning up non-reciprocating followers and machine gun-firing broadcast marketing messages at optimal times of the day.

    I think we have this all wrong.

    And the clue’s in the name.  Social media.  Social.  There’s a reason why we distinguish the social channel from that of PR and mass advertising.  For in social media, we have a tool that enables marketers to interact with customers, prospects, advocates, and critics.  That’s a really precious thing.  For we have something that enables us to do more than broadcast messages.  Marketing should be about building relationships with people.  And relationships are two-way.  We can use social media to read what our audience is saying, to understand, and to respond.

    And of course we need followers, friends, and connections to do that.  And of course we need reach, amplification, and impact.  And of course we need to schedule our messages.  And all of the tools I’ve mentioned above are great ways of doing that.  But they’re not the end in themselves.

    The end is a relationship.  And every now and again, we marketers need a prod to remember that.

    Prod.

  • How to use Twitter to keep a secret


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    And so the 2012 Olympic Games have begun and I’m delighted to say that the British have finally come around to embracing it.  There’s a festival atmosphere across the country right now.  The cynical Brits have got an optimistic spring in our steps.  And it feels lovely.

    There are probably a few factors involved in turning things around.  The weather has improved at last and there’s nothing like a bit of Vitamin D to perk us all up.  An arrogant Republican presidential candidate has popped over the pond to hurl abuse at our organisational skills, so we’ve all gone on the defensive.  And of course there was the little matter of yesterday’s rather marvellous – grand yet intimate – Opening Ceremony.

    This is the first Games of the social media era and London 2012 embraced it.  The Opening Ceremony featured mobile phone calls, text messaging, and social networking and a wonderful star appearance by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

    But what was especially interesting to me as a B2B marketer was the effort that the London Organising Committee (LOCOG) went to to use social media and e-marketing behind the scenes.

    Crowds at the dress rehearsals for the Opening Ceremony (http://pinterest.com/davestevensnow/london-2012-images/) were encouraged not to tell anyone about what they’d seen.  So far, so straightforward.   The ceremony depends much for its interest on the intrigue around torch-bearers, special guests, and so on.

    But what was remarkable – and seemingly counter-intuitive – was that at the same time as being told to keep mum, the audience was given a special Twitter hash-tag to use to “save the surprise”.  On this chain,  there sat a few strategically placed posters to advocate the secrecy message and to apply peer pressure on fellow posters.  But that was all that was required.

    So, Twitter was successfully used to stop people social networking about what they’d seen.  There was a social stigma created around anyone who considered blog blagging.

    And the spirit soon spread.  Attendees refused to tell waiting journalists what they’d seen.  The surprise wasn’t spoiled.  Twitter was used to prevent tweeting.  That’s a very clever – and new age – approach to keeping a secret.

  • Guaranteed! Your Marketing questions not answered here…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    I don’t think online B2B marketing discussion groups are good for my health.  I check into some of the LinkedIn groups, for example, on a daily basis and I read the latest marketing posts.  I feel my heart begin to race.  My breathing quickens.  My muscles tighten.  If I had a blood pressure monitor, it would flash red or whatever blood pressure monitors do to indicate rising levels.

    And it’s all because the questions that seem to be highest on web posters’ minds are those that seem to seek a single truth from a discipline that can provide anything but.

    Posters ask:- “What are the strategies to use in B2B marketing?”  “What is the best approach for lead generation?”  “Does Twitter work in B2B marketing?”  “What’s cool in marketing?”  “Which social media channels are best?”  And so on.

    There is no simple answer to any of these questions.  In all cases, the answer has to be “it depends!”

    There is, though, a simple marketing tool-kit that all of these posters should be applying rather than spending their time on an online forum.  They need to conduct a marketing audit to assess their current environment, its advantages and disadvantages.  They need to develop some SMARTT marketing objectives based upon their business objectives and strategy.  They need to conduct some segmentation, targeting, and positioning on their marketing objectives.  And then – and only then – can they ask their question.  And they can work out their answer for themselves.

    Because that’s the art of marketing.  There are no easy answers.  No quick fixes.  You have to work at it.  Systematically.  Consistently.  Professionally.

    There isn’t a bluffer’s guide to marketing.  There is no gift horse.  And the answer to the marketing mix is most definitely not 42.

    And you know what?  The profession of marketing is all the more rewarding because of that.

  • Why the power of brand makes queuing a joy…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    I headed on down to City Hall on the South Bank on Thursday to pick up my gear for the Olympics.  Nothing to do with athletic prowess you understand – I’m older than the oldest member of the GB team – but I’m volunteering for London 2012 as a guide (and to see what all the best-dressed London 2012 volunteers are wearing, take a look at http://pinterest.com/davestevensnow/olympic-ambassadors/.  Boris says that the colours will get us noticed).

    It was a hot and (unusually) dry afternoon and it was even warmer in the basement of City Hall.  I got to the building just before 6.30pm to join a queue of about 40 other volunteers.  The hand-out of the materials we needed was being conducted by four other volunteers and each interaction took about fifteen minutes.  So I was still waiting my turn at 7.30pm.

    There was no air-conditioning in the bare-walled room where we were queuing.  There were no distractions – no wi-fi and, in the basement, no mobile signal.  Frequently the gear that we were provided with was not what we needed and so there was some bustle to sort ourselves out.  The volunteers looking after us had been on shift since lunch-time and were looking tired and hungry.

    In short, there were many reasons why any one of the 44 people in the room could have been unhappy.

    What’s interesting is that no one complained.  People were cheery.  They cracked jokes.  They were happy to queue.  They were okay if the kit they were initially given was incorrect.

    And this was no British cultural thing about accepting the mediocre.  This was a group of people who were proud to be part of the association of two great brands – London and the Olympic Games.  Just happy to be part of something that meant alot to them.

    That’s the power of a strong brand name.  Whether that name is a city, a sporting movement, or a bar of mint soap, people will stick with you through the bad times and the good if they feel strongly enough.

    I was reading a great article this week in strategy+business on the social life of brands (http://www.strategy-business.com/article/00118?pg=0).  It tells how companies can foster those strong brand relationships through a process of social learning – basically reframing, understanding, listening, and engagement.  Four tools that every marketer should think about…

  • Why a business gift can lose you a customer…


    By Dave Stevens
    Google+

    I’ve just engaged a supplier organisation to provide some good marketing training to my troops.  I’m really excited about getting this supplier on board – they’re bright, creative, and seem to be fun to work with.  It took me an age to find them – but the wait seems to have been worth it.

    I’ve met the supplier on a couple of occasions, connected with the account leads on LinkedIn, exchanged business cards, held a couple of introductory meetings.  Things seem to be going well.

    I arrived into the office last Wednesday to find that the supplier had sent me a welcome gift.  I didn’t have time to study the parcel but I saw the label of the sender and noted that it was bottle of wine-sized and shaped like a bottle of wine in a box and it was well-wrapped as if it contained glass.  It was probably a bottle of wine.

    To be honest, I’m not one for supplier gifts.  The proof of a decent supplier lies in how they do on the task you’ve set them not in how many presents they can send you in an attempt to buy future custom.  But hey I won’t quibble with a bottle of wine.  Nice thought.  Yes, I probably felt some kind things about the supplier that Wednesday.

    And I got on with my day.

    Hours pass.  The sun sets.  Meetings end.  I get back to my desk.  And finally I get to open my parcel.

    I pick it up and immediately notice my mistake.  It’s too light to be a bottle of wine.  It turns out to be a green plastic phone hand-set made in China that I can connect to my smartphone head-set socket.  So no real practical use then.  Probably intended to be quirky.  But any sense of quirkiness is just overwhelmed by my sense of disappointment that the gift could have been something more!

    So as a welcome gift – this has back-fired for the supplier.  I’m now questioning whether this supplier was the right choice for the job after all.  Doubt has crept in.  If they can get something like this wrong, then what else?

    A word to marketers who offer such gifts then.  Think through the full customer experience of your gift-sending to your target audience before sending out your welcome gift.  You might just be investing to lose your customer’s loyalty.