Ready or not B2B marketers, including industrial marketers, will need to be ready to embrace, real-time marketing, social media, blogging, and online PR sooner rather than later. Watch just the first 3 minutes of this video presentation by David Meerman Scott and you will get a quick idea of what real-time marketing is all about.

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David Meerman Scott keynote at BMA 2009 national conference from David Meerman Scott on Vimeo.

by Bob Grant

Bob Grant

A recent white paper by Frost and Sullivan distributed through GlobalSpec  addresses how and why the marketing landscape has been shifting from traditional methods of marketing to online marketing methods, and  the process buyers and engineers currently  use to locate suppliers and make purchasing decisions.

While I agree with the paper’s premise that looking for products and vendors online has lagged behind how consumers use the Internet to make purchasing decisions and purchases, the mental process of industrial buying has not changed for decades. The buyer or specifying engineer, when determining that he or she has a need for a product, would begin a search for the right product and company. For years most manufacturing companies invested in sales people, manufacturer reps, trade shows, and advertising, to generate sales. However, once industrial buyers recognized a need, the buyer sought out the seller. This is the selling premise that Thomas Register, now Thomasnet, was built on since 1905. That is 115 years ago. At one point, Thomas Register had more than 20,000 manufacturers marketing this way. So, what has changed is not so much the process, but the medium.

Buyers can now search more easily for manufactured products on Google, Yahoo, Bing, or more vertical industrial sites like Thomasnet and GlobalSpec. Thousands of manufacturers are aware of the importance of the Internet to the buying process. What separates the successful from the not so successful manufacturing marketer is the content of the website and the visibility on the Internet.  Industrial buyers need information and they want to be able to retrieve that information quickly and efficiently. Companies with websites that grab attention and provide resources and content to solve the buyer’s needs are more likely to get the order.

The next advance in industrial marketing will be social media. Like the Internet, consumers are leading the way in social media, and it is almost a requirement that online and offline merchandisers must provide a platform and community for consumers to review, compare, and comment on products. I think we will see a growth of online social media networks for industrial and b2b buyers over the next several years.

According to a recent Business.com study,

• B2B marketers most often turn to social media for Web site traffic (77%) lead generation (67%) and improved search results (57%)
• B2B marketers using specific metrics are seeing positive impact in the form of search optimization
• Significant differences exist seen a positive impact in their social-to-search usage between those who have seen a positive impact in their social media efforts on search (The Best) and those who are not measuring, (The Rest).
• The Best use social media techniques to enhance their paid search marketing efforts 67% more often than The Rest
• 74% of marketers in The Best have seen an increase in Web site traffic since the inception of their social media program

The Current Social Media Landscape

Business.com’s  study of more than 450 B2B marketers found the majority of respondents use at least one social media channel for business, with B2B marketers, on average, using 4.5 social media resources.  More than half of B2B marketers favor the use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, webinars and company blogs as social media channels.

Although the majority of marketers currently devote 10% or less of their online marketing budget to social media, many are looking to increase overall social media efforts in the coming year. This echoes a recent Forrester Research study that shows social media spend to reach more than $3 Billion by 2014.

B2B marketers need to continue to experiment with social media if for no other reason that it may have a positive effect on their search engine optimization. While the debate continues on whether or not social media should be part of a B2B marketer’s interactive marketing plan, there is no debate on the desire for better search engine optimization results.

For some positive b2b social media results, See Facebook: The latest b-o-b frontier? At BtoB magazine.

http://www.btobonline.com/article/20101011/FREE/101009913/facebook-the-latest-b-to-b-frontier

Seems like marketers are all a-twitter about social media these days. Is social media a threat to companies, a place where customers and employees can voice their dissatisfaction of poor quality, poor customer service, and corporate arrogance? Or is it an opportunity for companies to spread the news about new products, new services, and a forum to respond to consumers perceptions of how well they are being serviced by these companies?

It is probably all of the above. Take customer feedback. Large corporations used to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on research to discover what consumers thought of as a product or service. The explosion of Consumer Generated Media (CGM) has allowed consumers a constant dialog on how well they are being served by companies. This has prompted companies like Domino Pizza, who was damaged by the release of disgusting video on You Tube by a couple of employees, to take notice of the importance of social media and proactively to take action to satisfy consumer demands. See social-media-baptism-for-dominos-pizza/
Companies like Southwest Airlines, Volvo, and Intuit have established their own Twitter and Facebook accounts to not only monitor the daily buzz from their consumers, but to also use this media as a part of a larger marketing campaign. Volvo is promoting its new XC60 through snail mail, email, web site, and YouTube, but also directing visitors to the Volvo Twitter page where consumers can comment and follow the activities of Volvo.

While large B2C companies will no doubt take the lead on using social media to monitor consumer response, amass fans to its brand, and use as an extension of traditional marketing efforts, smaller companies, and B2B companies will, I believe, find relevance in this social media space and use it to maintain customer loyalty and enhance their corporate brands.

Before you Tweet, do a little research:
1.    Search your own company on Google Search to see if there are any unsolicited comments about your company.
2.    Search www.twitter.com for your products, your services, your competition, and your market keywords.
3.    Do the same on www.facebook.com and www.linkedin.com
4.    Register on some of these social media networks. Post information that you would only want the public to see and keep it professional.
5.    User names on social networks are very much like domain names, so grab your company name and main keywords now, before it is too late.

Need further help? contact us at info@grantmarketing.com