B2B Social Technographics: How Technology Buyers Participate Socially

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

On Friday, Forrester published new research on one of the most active groups of people ever seen when it comes to social participation -- buyers of technology products in the business-to-business (B2B) sector.

I teamed up with Oliver Young to write the report, "The Social Technographics of Business Buyers," based on a survey conducted online between December 2008 and January 2009; you can access the full report if you're a Forrester client, or arrange to buy it if you are not. You can also register to download the slides or hear the replay of our Webinar on the topic.

I very much like how Josh Bernoff summarizes our approach to this research in his recent post: "Just as Forrester surveys consumers, we also survey business buyers. We use the POST method and the same Social Technographics Profile to review buyers' behavior -- in this case it's over 1200 buyers in American and European countries. But the difference here is, we can ask, not just how people participate in these social technologies, but whether they use them to make buying decisions.

The results were startling, to say the least."

When we started thinking about this survey, we believed that technology buyers (a techie-sophisticated crowd on their own) would show a greater propensity to engage in social activity.  We were surprised, pleasantly so -- after an initial double take, to see that business buyers at all levels, executive on down, participate in a wide range of social activity on a monthly basis or more often.

What does this mean for B2B marketers? I'll echo what Josh had to say first, "If you're a B2B marketer and you're not using social technologies in your marketing, this report means you're late. We've seen a lot of excellent activity here from the likes of Dell and National Instruments (both won Forrester Groundswell awards) but a lot of the blogs, communities, and other social outreach from business to business companies is less than mature, to say the least. This is your chance to stand out. Take this report and show it to your boss to convince her that it's time to get started."

You can visit my blog where I outline three main reasons why B2B marketers should care about this data. Oliver Young is also blogging about this research; he delves deeper into the differences between social participation while working versus for personal use. We see this as evidence of how social activity as a lifestyle trend will continue to bleed over into the business world.

I've already heard from a couple of press folks -- and have been avidly watching the twitters -- about this research.  Hope to hear from you too. Comment away or contact me at Forrester; either way I hope to hear your reactions and impressions.

Tags: B2B marketing, social media, buyer behavior :: Add to del.icio.us

How Do B2B Buyers Participate Socially?

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

My colleague Josh Bernoff lit the social computing world on fire last year when Forrester published Groundswell, which Josh co-authored with Charlene Li, now heading up Altimeter Group. Groundswell introduces marketers, community managers, and social enthusiasts to Social Technographics - a method for describing describe a population according to its participation in social activity. You can interact with our online tool on the Groundswell site to learn more about how this profiling works.

B2B marketers see this and ask, "Does this behavior translate into the working world?" Interactive marketers want to know how truly engaged business buyers are in social activity to gauge how much time, effort, and commitment they need to put in emerging social media versus other, more traditional marketing tactics. We analysts at Forrester can help by drawing analogies using our knowledge of consumer behavior, but we didn't have the data to profile exactly how business buyers participate socially.

Until now.

Tomorrow (Feb 12 at 11:30 am ET), Oliver Young and I will preview the results of Forrester research into the social participaton of B2B buyers -- folks involved in technology decision making at firms with 100 employees or more, in 5 major geographic regions, and across 7 major industry groups. The Webinar will touch on the results from over 1200 survey responses showing B2B buyers lead active social lives and a good portion -- but not all -- of this behavior happens while on the job.

If you'd like to learn more, register here.  Feel free to pass this offer along to your friends and colleagues too. It's free and open to non-Forrester clients. Space is limited however.

Watch this space, and my blog for B2B marketers, for more on this as we unveil the accompanying research report and start talking more about how marketers can use this information to inform their social media strategy and marketing mix.

Tags: B2B marketing, social media, buyer behavior :: Add to del.icio.us

How To Avoid Becoming Obsolete (Part Final)

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Two things before I start: 1) A big "Thank You' to everyone who commented on my blog posts, emailed me, or spoke to me by phone about the research called "How To Avoid B2B Marketing Obsolescence", and 2) No, I really don't believe B2B marketers will become obsolete.  That was just a title that would get you to read further!

I wanted to conclude the multipart blog series I started last year with a few comments about the research that resulted.  Published yesterday, the report recommends B2B marketers, particulary those who work in the Interactive area, focus on the following four areas to avoid becoming obsolete in their executives' eyes. Focusing simply on new campaigns, clever advertising, and delving into social media will only paper over problems. Turning up the heat on conventional marketing activities won't spur the profound changes required. To avoid obsolescence, B2B marketers should undertake four transformative steps:

1) Build a marketing-only database to capture buyer insight.
Today, stalking prospects with outbound, undifferentiated messages yields unpredictable results. But this is what happens when marketers rely primarily on list providers, database marketing services, or other sources of information for targeting buyers. To make campaigns pay off, marketers need to collect and analyze more information about what separates their best customers from the others. Build a marketing database to do this. Big firms may need to look at something from Aprimo or Unica, smaller firms can get by with less. But get a handle on your prospect data in 2009.

2) Shift from simply generating demand to managing it.
When marketing delivers a new batch of leads, sales wants to know exactly which ones have the most potential, regardless of whether marketing outsources the leads or not. To convince sales that marketing-qualified leads are worth pursuing, marketing must execute multifaceted campaigns that engage — and qualify —prospects while extending marketing's responsibility further along the sales pipeline. Top marketers focus on managing demand, not generating it. They also score their leads numerically, systematically.  I've talked about this before, but you can see how you rate here.

3) Combine digital and traditional tactics to build dialogue around needs and motivations.
Business buying cycles are long, and marketers use this to their advantage when they weave together digital and physical channels to engage buyers emotionally, deliver brand experiences, and form ongoing relationships. Integrated marketing success in B2B depends on leveraging the strengths of different channels to build an ongoing conversation with buyers. To do this well requires organizational alignment, an outcome-based strategy, deep customer insight, analytic planning, and consistent measurement. Find out how you stack up here.

4) Embrace the groundswell and community marketing principles.
As Social Computing moves into the business world, B2B marketers dial down on acquisition and step up to community marketing. To set community marketing strategy successfully, marketers must know whether target customers willingly participate in social activity on the job.  We have data to share with you about how buyers behave socially while working. Come preview it at our teleconference.They also need to set social objectives that align with business outcomes, and evaluate tactical and technology choices last.

What other advice would you offer to B2B marketers to avoid obsolescence in 2009, particulary in light of the recession?  Let me know...

Tags: B2B marketing, demand management, marketing trends :: Add to del.icio.us

How Are 2009 Marketing Budgets Shaping Up?

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Happy New Year, Everyone! Looking over my holiday and Christmas greetings this year, I was struck by the change in tone from 2007 and how everyone's wishes for a "happy" new year seemed more sincere and profound in light of the current economy.

In our Predictions 2009 research, published December 23, Forrester analysts who cover B2B and technology marketing predict that marketing budgets will take big hits early in 2009, with typical decreases in the 15% to 25% range. To investigate whether this prediction is tracking current experience and to look at the impact of the economy on this year's B2B marketing spending, Forrester teamed up with MarketingProfs to field a survey that explores 2009 budget plans and looks back at 2008 effectiveness.  Interactive marketers who work at firms who sell primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) to businesses will find participating in this research relevant because we explore a number of online and social tactics along with the conventional.

The survey is currently in the field.  If you would like to participate, please click on this link. We have over 400 responses thus far, so please feel free to add your input and opinions. Reply to this post with thoughts and feedback about the survey and I'll address anything that comes up. All participants (who supply their email addresses) will receive a copy of the results.

Here's wishing you a more prosperous new year.

Tags: B2B marketing, marketing budgets, budget survey :: Add to del.icio.us

Customer Reference Programs Survey Link

For those of you frustrated by the survey tool at which I pointed my last post, I would like to apologize for wasting your time and missing the opportunity to engage you when you were most interested.

Merv and I are are providing expertise and contributing the Forrester brand name to the Customer Reference Forum for this survey.  We are not  working directly with the survey execution team. The CRF has been terrific to work with, but I did not check a few of the small details on survey access parameters before posting this and now those details have bitten me as links that don't work or make the survey look closed when it is not.  This is also why I haven't replied in Web 2.0-time to your posts pointing out the problem.

I think the area of research will prove very interesting as we bring it out early next year.  For those of you still willing to participate -- thank you so much for your patience! -- you can find the survey link here.

Again, thanks for your patience and support on this.

Customer Reference Programs: Going Social?

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Great customer references fuel great B2B marketing. But getting customers to testify or submit case studies is challenging. Good references require investment. But how do you keep customers from feeling like shills for their vendor firms? By involving them in communities of like-minded advocates! That is one hypothesis I plan to explore further in 2009 -- investigating the connection between social activity and greater customer advocacy.

Toward this end, my long-time Forrester colleague, Merv Adrian, and I have teamed up with the Customer Reference Forum to sponsor a survey (this link works!!) about the latest trends in customer reference management. Besides the typical questions about organizational structure, size, budget, and structure of the programs, we will explore whether social media is making an impact on how marketers engage with referenceable customers. We will present these findings, and our preditions and advice, at the Customer Reference Forum conference, February 18, 2009 in Berkeley California. If you'd like to particpate in the research, click through here.

As the economy heads towards a recession, many B2B firms find their existing customer base remains on of the best sources of continued growth. It is also less costly to retain an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Both facts point to growing interest in customer loyalty and reference management. I thought I would share Merv's comments on this subject -- which we also discussed with the Boston chapter of the Customer Reference Forum last Friday.  Read it and let me know your thoughts about using customer testimonial to support sales and marketing.  Take it away, Merv:

"Effective management of the Customer Reference (CR) management function – in some cases, simply the creation of a formal organization to manage these important assets – is on the critical path to both sustained business from the base and growth in new accounts. Sales uses references to nail deals down, Marketing develops reference stories for campaigns and events, and Analyst Relations uses them to support information requests from influencers.

That conclusion is no mystery to the firms that participated in the Customer Reference Forum event in February 2008 at California’s Claremontresort. And the list of attendees read like a who’s-who of the industry’s leaders. They have created, staffed, and begun to measure teams that manage their sourcing, development and distribution of customer references in a way that has begin to reap substantial benefits. They have improved their sourcing development of referenceable accounts, made better use of them for selling and marketing, reduced redundant and often conflicting programs, and grown a cadre of professionals who are learning to measure and mange the delivery of substantial value from their programs.

Forrester found the customer reference professionals at the event to be a highly motivated, increasingly well funded, and thoughtful group who were often seeking more visibility, support and resources despite their early successes. We were struck by the growth of an industry of products and services to support the CR professional: creative services, hosting, management tools and full consultative outsourcing were all in evidence.

The Customer Reference Forum event is a valuable gathering place for those involved in CR programs who seek to learn about best practices and share with their peers. It has also served as a focal point for an ongoing survey designed to document common practice in the industry, and the sponsors of the survey have several years of data tracking the emergence and growth of CR management as a discipline. They have learned that successful teams usually result from a Sales-Marketing partnership, with agreements forged to use references wisely, manage conflicts about ownership and overuse, and assure a steady stream of fresh stories to support corporate goals.

Forrester is excited to be partnering with the Forum team on the 2008 survey, developing some new avenues of investigation, and sustaining the existing data elements, which document team size, reporting relationships, management styles, and more. We’ll be joining in the 2009 conference, delivering a keynote address that will include data from the survey as well as other ongoing Forrester research. Since our discussions of this important corporate function with our clients began following the 2008 event, we’ve had a steady stream of inquiries and discussions with them that will provide us with additional ideas to share. And our ongoing research onto the effective uses of social computing supplements and extends this work. We look forward to networking with the pioneers and the new arrivals alike – we hope to see you there!"

Tags: B2B marketing, social media, customer references :: Add to del.icio.us

B2B Marketing Obsolete, Really? (Part III)

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

At the end of October, Rebekah Donaldson, founder of Business Communications Group LLC, joined me for an informal discussion during a Forrester Teleconference about the future of the business-to-business marketing profession. We received some great questions from the audience after our talk. Earlier this week, I spoke again on this subject when MarketBright VP of Sales, Mike Pilcher, asked me to join Eric Rogge, VP of Marketing at Exalead, to talk about the future of both sales and marketing.

While Mike and I did our best to prophesy a grim future for our respective professions, Eric -- as Rebekah did about two weeks earlier -- helped to illuminate a way forward. In the end Mike, Eric, and I agreed that technology will be a key element (but not if applied indiscriminantly) to help marketing and sales shift from obnoxious bullhorn to respectful partner. Eric made three points worth underlining:

1) For marketing to evolve, we need to learn to listen more than we talk. We need to create listening posts throughout the Web that reveal what the market wants, prospects find interesting, and which problems are worth solving. Technology can help us do this, but not without human brains behind it to filter out the noise and tell us what's important.

2) Qualifying leads means more than answering the BANT questions. Early online interactions should prove to buyers that we are interested in doing business together, not just in hooking prospects and tossing them over to sales. Techology helps by tying lead scores to behavioral (as well as factual) information, but marketing has to be smart about where to take the conversation next.

3) Move fast, especially when you get it wrong. As Eric said, one "aw heck" can overcome 10 "attaboys", so it's important for marketers to move beyond the front of the pipeline to make sure customers are overwhelmingly satisfied -- and that sales doesn't take bad business. Great customer insight, fed by marketing-specific database information, helps marketers do this efficiently.

I wanted to thank Eric for providing this great insight and hope he doesn't mind my paraphrasing his contribution to the Webinar. Bottomline: the road out of marketing obsolescence is paved with open, truthful conversations and a true concern for our customers' future success. Technology will smooth the path, but not shorten the journey.

Tags: B2B marketing, social media, demand management :: Add to del.icio.us

Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? (Part II)

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Wow.  I am overwhelmed by the response I received from my first post on this subject. Looks like I hit a nerve and inspired some great commentary.  In particular, I'd like to call attention to the thoughful response from Arthur Einstein, who is the VP of Marketing at Loyalty Builders. I wanted to comment briefly on what I am hearing from all of you so far. To avoid obsolescence, readers believe B2B marketers must focus on:

1) Improving customer insight. Business buyers are people, not faceless companies. Rational decisions get clouded by emotions, motivations, and desires. B2B marketers must stop pushing out communications and start listening to what buyers need. Customer research, segmentation, understanding the buying process, and creating relevant information that engages prospects in conversations -- and ultimately long-lasting relationships -- all require marketers to understand their customers deeply. This includes gathering and analyzing factual, behavioral, and social information.  Most marketing organizations are woefully underinvested in the technology, processes, and skills needed to do this right.

2) Managing demand, not just trying to generate it. B2B marketing and selling involves supplier teams interacting with buyer teams. This means fostering multiple interactions that evolve in a nonlinear fashion to build relationships and success. It require sales and marketing to work together to give buyers the unvarnished information they need to make a well-considered selection.  This also means all parts of the selling organization need to get more involved in educating and nurturing demand. When marketers deliver fewer, but more qualified leads that sales can act upon, then marketing's value becomes tangible and strategic to the business. Bottomline: there isn't an unlimited amount of demand out there to draw upon, so marketers need to figure out which ones to invest in to grow into a relationship.

3) Embracing the social groundswell. Buyers have turned to peers for advice for 100 years; social computing simply extends and supports this behavior. Buyers also mistrust advertising and messaging because marketing has been too focused on feeds, speeds, and fluffy claims -- not on value, evidence, and real solutions. Good news: Readers are optimistic that social media, and Web 2.0 tools, offer new opportunities for marketers to correct these past mistakes and use social activity to build relationships that are essential to effective B2B marketing.

To this list, I would also say B2B marketers must learn how to: 4) integrate online and offline communication to better create dialogue and learn more about customer needs and 5) use technology to quantitatively measure, test, and report on marketing activity and the progress of building relationships. Automation will drive the efficiency that wards off obsolesence.

Rebekah Donaldson, CEO and Founder of Business Communications Group, will join me next Wednesday, October 29th, at 8 am Pacific/ 11 am Eastern to talk more about this subject as Forrester hosts a teleconference for our clients and readers. Feel free to join us by registering today.

And stay tuned for Part III of exploring how B2B marketers can avoid obsolesence...

Tags: B2B marketing, marketing trends, marketing forecast :: Add to del.icio.us

Will B2B Marketing Become Obsolete? (Part I)

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

Today marks the beginning of my 8^th year at Forrester and my 4^th year researching B2B marketing.

I’d like to use this anniversary to start a blog conversation about what I see happening in B2B marketing and to think about what’s next. And, frankly, I am concerned about the future of the business marketing profession.  In particular, for those of us marketing high technology products and services.

First of all, I see four macro trends working against increasing marketing's future value.  In brief they are:

1) Commoditization: software as a service, open source, service-oriented architectures and a number of similar trends make it easier to enter a market and more difficult to differentiate products on features and capabilities alone. As a result, marketers need to work harder to understand, attract, and engage an audience. And it takes multiple touches to involve prospects in conversation and figure out if they are ready for sales to contact.

2) Consumerism and the social groundswell: Buyers are more likely to use information from associates than from institutional sources, like marketing messages and sales people, when purchasing. We found proof of this recently at Forrester when we surveyed business decision makers this year and found 36% of the 2187 who buy networking products and 34% of the 2148 who buy security solutions turn to peers (word of mouth) when researching what to buy. Peers were the #1information source picked in both survey samples. Social computing also establishes more open and authentic communication that will fundamentally change how marketing works – no longer will marketers be able to “spin” product problems or customers concerns away. Look at Dell or Comcast for examples of this.

3) Ad avoidance translates to sales call avoidance. Consumers are really good at avoiding ads. Technology only helps them do this. Tivo lets prospects skip commercials, spam blockers keep email clean, and pop-up blockers keep online ads away. This behavior spills over into the business world where busy buyers turn to the Web to get information while avoiding phone and sales calls until they are further in the buying process.

4) Globalization: Besides needing to address customers in fragmented regional markets, marketers are beginning to face offshore skill competition. Not only do marketers outsource their brains to interactive, ad, and PR agencies, but now outsourcing practices like lead generation and telemarketing are starting to bleed over into core campaign design and execution functions.

Unfortunately, I see marketers focus take a narrow view that causes them to miss seeing the impact of these trends looming ahead. When I ask B2B marketers, “What is marketing’s charter or mission at your company?,” most often I hear “We generate demand.”  This goal is very hard to measure. Why? Because most B2B products are highly-considered sales involving a sales force or indirect channel where marketing gets caught in the middle or brushed to the side. Marketers who simply want to know which tactics work best and which statistics matter fail to see beyond the front of the funnel. Without this broader perspective, marketing will become obsolete as the Web, blogosphere, and social networks let businesses connect buyers directly with product development and bypass marketing all together.

So what should marketers do to avoid this fate?  I’d like to hear from you on this topic.  Feel free to comment or contact me. I will be posting more thoughts on this topic over the next couple of weeks. (Hint: managing demand, not generating it, is a key discipline B2B marketers must improve.)  But I’d like your thoughts first.  What should B2B marketers do to become more relevant to the business and avoid becoming obsolete?

Tags: B2B marketing, marketing trends, marketing forecast :: Add to del.icio.us

Demandbase: A New Twist In The Lead Management Automation Market

[Posted by Laura Ramos]

In a recent survey of over 2100 IT professionals who buy or recommend telecom and networking solutions, we found buyers turn to peers and colleagues first, followed by vendor, industry trade, or professional Web sites, to inform their purchase decisions. In fact, 88% said Web sites were important in helping them decide what to buy. However, many tech buyers visit vendor Web sites many times to learn about and compare products, yet few register or leave evidence of their activity.

B2B marketers looking for ways to turn their Web sites into demand generation tools have some new solutions to consider.  Yesterday, Demandbase announced a new software suite to help marketers harvest passive traffic visiting Web sites. As part of a broader lead generation, on-demand platform, Demandbase offers a free, downloadable Web application built on Adobe AIR (one of 3 investors in an $8M round they also announced.) Demand Stream™ includes a Web widget that shows sales and marketing the names of companies visiting the Web site in near real-time.  Users can query this widget to find out more about these visitors and decide if they want to purchase full business contact information. I think the idea of an iTunes™ -like interface — and pay-as-you-go pricing structure — for viewing, sorting, and selecting B2B contacts is intriguing.  I worry that this tool only ends up helping sales pick out cold calls to make, and is not used by marketers enough to segment, collect, and improve their prospecting databases. The technology appears useful at both ends of this spectrum.

The lead management automation market, about which I blogged previously, continues to attract new players at a rapid rate. The main problems targeted are keeping the pipeline full of marketing-qualified leads and automating the process of nurturing demand not yet ready to buy.  One side of the supply helps firms generate demand — acquire leads in a sales-led “push” model, one that feels more focused on outbound communication. I would put Demandbase here along with firms like Active Conversion, Hubspot, iHance, Leadlander, Sales Genius, and Zoominfo. (I’m sure I forgot a few. Feel free to chime in if I did. Or disagree with the list…) 

On the other side, I see solutions more oriented toward marketing and enabling a “pull” model, one focused on letting prospects engage at their own pace.  I would put the lead management automation crop here: Eloqua, Loopfuse, Manticore Technologies, Market2Lead, Marketo, and Vtrenz.  I would also put another group — one more focused on helping marketing align with, support, and enable sales: firms like BrightMarket, einsof, Longwood Software, and Salesforce.com with their Saleforce Content offering, to name a few. 

When evaluating any technology to help manage demand, the short list of features should look something like:

1) Prospect data acquisition — helps with targeting, list building, list management, and data quality. Starting to see providers team up with data aggregators (Jigsaw’s name comes up here) to provide new sources of business contacts. Reverse IP look up appears to be the new thing here.

2) Online lead generation — provides or connects with email delivery, online advertising, search marketing adword tools, landing pages, registration/information capture, and offer testing. Among other stuff.

3) Online activity analytics — rather than examine overall site traffic and usage patterns like Omniture and WebTrends, these tools focus more on tracking what one individual or opportunity is doing.  Analytics include Web site visits, return visits, email opens, and click-throughs with an emphasis on letting marketing, insides sales, or account managers know when these activities happen.

4) Lead scoring — in a prior post, I make the case for quantitative scoring. And for including explicit (words) and implicit (deeds) information in the algorithm. I believe this is a key capability.

5) Routing/reporting — automation to help close the loop with sales and give marketing visibility into the sales pipeline. Must include some sort of dashboard for everyone to access internally.

6) SFA integration — ditto the above. Synchronizing prospect and opportunity databases is key. The data has to flow back and forth and not dirty up the pipeline with raw leads.

7) Lead nurturing —  automates follow up communication, is drip or event-triggered, and allows marketing to educate, persuade, and accelerate buyers as they move through the purchase process to the point where they become “sales ready.”

For those needing more capabilities to help with sales enablement or account-based communication, I would add:

8) Sales/marketing portal or workspace — includes account spaces/threaded discussions, sales call/activity prep, libraries for marketing content, task lists.

9) Collaboration — capabilities like wikis, sales-contributed content, voting and tagging.  Just makes it easier to manage all the stuff. Social networking stuff fits here too.

10) eLearning — checklists, directed sales tools, self-serve courses, quizzes, certifications, etc.  Stuff to help sales management get the new guys/gals up to speed.

Ok, that’s enough for now. I’m sure this post will generate its fair share of comments, outrage, and controversy. All thoughts are welcome!  I’m gearing up to write a market overview about this space, so hearing from you early in the process will help to shape that research.

Tags: B2B marketing, lead management, marketing technology :: Add to del.icio.us