Big Ed’s 2009 B2B Marketing Trends (Gee, I wish I’d said it.)

I really should get around more, but last year’s broken shoulder really put a crimp in my blog exploration. But that was last year. I’m now cured, and vow that I’ll stay on the lookout for excellence in marketing blogs (and maybe even update our list of excellent marketing blogs).

Anyway, over on Marketing-Gimbal, Ed has an excellent 2008 year-end post on what’s in store for B2B marketing in 2009.

You should absolutely go read the piece in its entirety - this guy can think and write - but I wanted to add my own capsule commentary, from the perspective of B2B technology marketing, to his very savvy trend-spotting.

1. Database Marketing Takes Center Stage: In this day and age, with e-mail marketing and the availability of small quantity print on demand, there’s no reason not to fine tune your messaging and approach to met the needs of different constituents in your target market. This means that you will need to capture the data you need for segmentation in your customer and prospect data bases, which is not so “duh” obvious as it seems. I’m working with a client with a large and generally information-rich customer database. Unfortunately, one of the items they don’t capture in it is a customer’s industry - which means that our vertical programs are hitting a speed bump every time we want to reach out to a new vertical. Nothing that’s giving those vertical programs flat tires - we’ve come up with a workaround. But it sure would be easier to be able to just make a simple query to get all the customer in, say, healthcare. (Our slightly clumsy workaround? We search on all the key words we can think of that pertain to the vertical, and have the database group pull all the records that contain those words. We then have to eyeball the list for the obvious duds - Acme Doll Hospital ain’t what we’re after. The process would be simpler if they’d just entered the industry to begin with.)

2. The Tipping Point for Virtual Events: As Ed notes, most of us have incorporated webinars into our kit bags. They are, after all, supremely cost-effective for both the company running the webinar, and for the attendees. No more stale donuts at breakfast seminars, I’m afraid! Virtual trade shows are replacing physical events, and with cost pressures this year, we can expect to see more and more of that. Ed also sees the demise of the user conference - something I’ll be sad to see go. Even with improved telepresence technology, I don’t think that anything replaces the experience of meeting someone in person, and this is especially true when it comes to user conferences, where solidifying relationships - with users, and among users -  often happens on social time. Still, expense and productivity issues are such that fewer and fewer companies will make the time and out-of-pocket commitment to send folks to user conferences - especially when so much of the real knowledge swapping can easily be done in a virtual setting. (And, of course, the rising generation is very used to developing relationships that are 100% virtual. Have my avatar call your avatar, why don’t we.)

3. Social Media Takes Hold in B2B Marketing: I think the trick here will getting smaller companies, with both fewer customers and prospects, and fewer folks in-house, to contribute to the content pool, to make a social media commitment that they can follow through on. Nothing says “so what” like having a one and only blog post that’s 7 months old and has no one commenting on it. Social media means more of a commitment, not just on the part of marketing, but on the part of those in the company who hold the intellectual property under their skulls. Marketing will need to know how to get those with something to say to say it. (Not that marketing won’t have something to say themselves, but, let’s face it, many companies lack the technical and product marketing types who truly understand the products, technology trends, industry, etc., with enough depth to truly hold forth on it. Maybe this will “the year of the product marketer”!)

4. Content Marketing is the Differentiating Factor: As a product marketing content junky, nothing makes me happier than seeing content rise to the fore. No, content doesn’t always mean a dense, info-packed white paper, but it’s nice to see that rich content will matter. And, for both this point and the one just prior, all the content doesn’t have to be located on your site (other than linked, of course). Online technology publications are always looking for contributors with an interesting viewpoint and ability to get an idea across. So go get some by-lines for your head techies. And, while you’re at it, if there are blogs or other forums that have already created a following in your field, make sure that you have a presence on them. This, along with the by-lined articles online, are an excellent way of raising awareness, and don’t require extraordinary effort - so they’re especially good for smaller companies.

5. Marketing Automation Continues to Make Inroads: This is not my bailiwick, so I’ll just take Ed’s word here.

6. No Inquiry Left Behind: When - after years in product management - I first found myself in marketing, it was under rather adverse circumstances. My company had just downsized - dramatically - and the entire marketing department was done away with. Since I could write, the CEO made me the Director of Marketing. Maybe a year after I took the job, I was going through some cartons in the old marketing area, and what did I find but thousands of out of date leads that were the result of our product having been named a PC Magazine Product of the Month. Is the moral here to open all those boxes in marketing? Well, you probably won’t find thousands of bounce-back cards (so yesterday), but inquiries should be seriously followed up on. This is not to say that all inquiries will lead to leads. But it doesn’t hurt to at least take the initial step towards qualifying or dis-qualifying every inquiry. You never know.

7. The Death of Print Advertising: If this isn’t the year for the last print version of a technology publication, then 2010 will be. These books have been getting thinner and thinner, while the print-version readers get sparser and sparser. Throwing an ad in a consumer print book is one thing; wasting any of your precious budget on a print ad in a B2B tech publication is quite another. The exception I would make would be if you’re in an industry that still has a viable print publication - and I’m sure that there are still a few niche markets that do - but this would be one exceptional exception.

8. Sales Optimization: “The best marketing in the world doesn’t matter if your sales force can’t convert.” (Those are Ed’s words. Remember, up top, I said I’d wished I’d said it?) So remember, this is not the year to keep up your Hatfield-McCoy feud between sales and marketing. Bi-partisanship is called for, and marketing has to work closely with sales to make sure you’re all in lock-step on what goes where during the sales cycle.

9. Focus on Installed Base Marketing: In my last full-time job, I worked for a hosting company. If ever there were an industry that you’d think would pay careful attention to making sure that it maintained its installed base, you’d have thunk it was hosting. Not us. Marketing came up with a brilliant - if I do say so myself - plan for preserving and growing our installed base, but sales could not be bothered. That’s because the real money, honey, went to sales folks who brought in new names. My last year there was like bailing out a leaky boat with a bottomless can. Our churn rate meant that we had to bring more and more new customers in, and that cost more and more in terms of sales and marketing spend. The point here: installed base marketing is a wonderful thing, but if you expect sales to play any role in cross-selling, upselling, and securing the homeland, make sure that the compensation scheme is in line.

10. Green Is In:  Green is good and, as Ed points out, there are things that many technology companies can do to promote it, both in how they operate internally and in how they develop their products. Just make sure that when you go green, it’s not faux green. Changing the corporate color scheme to forest and lime is not going green, I’m afraid. But most people are looking for authentic ways to promote better care and feeding of the environment, and if you’ve got any up your green sleeve, you should be promoting them.

Now, go read Ed in full. (And thanks, Ed, for a good and timely post.)

---

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically each day to your feed reader. If you don't have a feed reader, you can always have these articles delivered to your email inbox every day. Click here to sign up.

The Opinionated Marketers | Powered by WordPress | ElegantBlue is a custom theme by Nathan Rice