The techniques of traditional B2B marketing have changed with increasing reliance on the Internet. Instead of simply pushing messages, marketers are now engaging the decision makers in dialog. Learn how the the on-demand needs of the online audience call for a rethinking of the goals of marketing (Part 1 of 5).
Thank you Sarah. It's a pleasure to be with you all today, and I'm looking forward to having this conversation with you about a topic that I think we all care about right now. And that topic is understanding what impact has the Internet had on marketing and B2B, and how do we best leverage that impact and accomplish better results for our companies. First thing I'd like to do is talk about the way things used to be. I think it's always a good way to start. It gives us a good foundation for the rest of the discussion.
The way we use to work in marketing is the seller really had a lot of the control and the power during the process. The seller would create messages that they thought were relevant about their products and services and value, and direct those messages out to the buyer through a variety of tactics and mediums that have existed for a long time.
The odds of reaching the buyer effectively and efficiently when the buyer was in the market were actually quite low. And, in fact, the odds of the right buyer and seller getting together are lower because the person who has the requirements and needs most clearly defined might not have actually been driving the process. But that's the model most of us have operated under in a traditional marketing world.
As the Internet came along, as you'll see in the next model we have, the buyer has now moved to the front of the process and has gained all of the control. The buyer now has a platform, the Internet, where they can go through their buying process and their decision process much more effectively, with more information being made available to them, more support for their decision process. Just a greater transparency about the things they need to know as they make their decision.
And the buyer in this case, just to be clear on what I'm saying here, is a general category. It's all the parts of the buying process within a company. So it might be the person that determines that there is a problem and a need. It might be the person that acts upon that need and begins to specify a solution. And it might be the actual decision maker with financial authority. Or it might be the actual purchasing agent who is going to execute the buy. So by buyer, I'm referring to all of those groups of individuals.
The seller has a choice in this changed model because of the Internet. They can stay where they always were, and hope to continue to push messages at the buyer. I think that will be relatively ineffective because the buyer is already moving in their process and with their capabilities.
On the other hand the seller, which is what we recommend, can actually move and become a part of that buyer's process. They can become a helper to that process and become highly relevant to that. So whether the buyer is in research mode or is in negotiation mode, the seller wants to be relevant to that and a helper to that.
This is where the web environment really plays out for B2B marketers. There are websites, there are search engines, there are environments like SupplyFrame that are bringing buyers together and providing a value to them somewhere along this process. Obviously, different based on the environment, the type of content, transactions, and tools they are providing.
So an understanding of how your buyers behave as they are going through their buying process... Which environments do they use, when? How do they use those environments? What will they want to be at your website? What will they want to be doing there? You need an understanding of that, and then you need to get yourself in sync with their process and really become relevant and helpful to them.
The other box that's on this chart is the community. And this is a reflection of something that's certainly been there always, and that is the fact that people have relied on peers, word of mouth, and others to influence their buying decisions. But this is certainly a growing thing that's occurring because of the web.
As you'll see in the next chart, I've decreased the size of the seller boxes and increased the size of the community box, because what's happening is the Internet is providing much more networking capability and almost a megaphone to the influencers and the peers that are out there, for the buyers. So they may look to the community as a higher profile place of influence than they might even look to the sellers.
So I think, as a seller, we need to be really smart about how we get in the path in a smart way, a helpful way, in a very rich way. But we also have to participate in that community and be a part of that so that the voice of our company and our value is also received via the community.
Another reason to understand this switch of the power going from the seller to the buyer is that it creates an environment where buyers who are offline and had been in the past traditionally doing their research and doing their consideration offline have realized that there is so much more value to doing it online because of all of the services and the transparency. So there are more buyers online today in all stages of the buying cycle.
I think a recognition of that movement is very important for marketers. Two things. They are moving online because of the value of doing your shopping consideration pass there. Perhaps not the transaction itself, perhaps not the actual purchase - that may occur offline. But it's a much richer environment for the buyer to do the research process online.
So they're there. They're moving, and in fact the environment is quite different than a push environment might have been traditionally for a seller. It's now the buyers pulling that set of information through to them when they'd like it.
My belief is that, in the long run, this will be a more efficient system for everybody. The buyer should end up with better products and services that are suited to their needs because they've been much more of a driver in the process and have much more control over it. The seller, in the long run, will benefit from this because they will have a more efficient ability to get in front of buyers who are active and need what they sell.
I think also finding buyers who are the right ones and will be profitable customers, verses maybe mismatches where the value really wasn't a good match. And that usually just results in a dissatisfied customer, or a lack of profitability.
So what does this mean for marketers in B2B? It means the mentality really needs to shift. And that would be the first step, then the programs and the things that you do will shift. But the mentality needs to shift from "I'm in control of this and it's all about my sales and marketing cycles" to "It's all about them, and it's about their buying cycles." And we need to anticipate needs that they then have through this process, and understand how we can create active conversations around those activities that they're pursuing online.
Buyers are going to want to do this list of things and it's not an exhaustive list, just an example of some of them. But as they start to educate themselves or identify and research various solutions, or locate who can provide them the actual product and what's the availability of the product, all the way through we have to understand where they are doing these things and how are we most relevant to these things, and be out in front of that.
And that is what online marketing and B2B is about. So hopefully this has been helpful to just giving you a vision to what's changed, what's different, and where we need to go with our thinking and our vision for this. And in the next session, we'll pick up from where we left off, and we're going to talk more specifically about how a website plays into this. And how does lead generation and the things that B2B marketers want to accomplish online for their businesses play into this capability?
Thank you very much. And I'm going to turn it back to Sarah.
