In a recent post at the Reputation to Revenue blog, Rob Leavitt questions the value of B2B companies putting so much energy into ‘advertising and collateral’. Nothing new. A Sales and Marketing Association survey (2006) showed that 85% of brand decision-making and loyalty is driven by the field and generated at the point of sales contact with a customer.
But interestingly, Leavitt points out that instead, Marketing should focus on four engines that all B2B firms need to have running smoothly to ensure short- and longer-term Business success. Indeed, the role of marketing has changed dramatically and I couldn’t agree more with him. Here is a summary of Leavitt’s 4 engines:
1. The Content Engine. Leavitt explains the importance of ‘consistently producing compelling content for every stage of the buying cycle’, through (among others):
- Thought leadership content to help build reputation and interest
- Educational content to support lead generation
- Solutions and customer-success content to support sales
I fully agree that these are the most important types of content to fire up any company’s marketing engine today. Synchronized as I am with The Buying Clock™, I would like to highlight the importance of all above mentioned types of content to be aligned with the buyer. Buyer aligned messaging allows to load the lips of sales with customer ready, value based messages adapted to prospects’ readiness to buy.
2. The Relationship Engine. B2B marketing rises and falls on the strength of the company’s relationships with stakeholders:
- Suspects and prospects
- Customers
- Partners
- Market influencers
From my experience, building and maintaining relationships with suspects and prospects is most cost effectively achieved through a consistent flow of educational (non commercial) content. Again, don’t forget to tune your messages on the readiness to buy. Aim to reach all stakeholders by working across areas such as account development (not management), events, trade fairs, web activities, etc.
3. The Lead-Development Engine. No longer can we focus on just the early stages of generating leads and then throw them over the wall to sales. More and more, we need to stay in the game with longer term programs to develop and sustain opportunities in close coordination with sales.
Indeed, marketing needs to develop leads until they become qualified. But most important to oil the lead-development engine is sales and marketing integration. Both teams must work closely together towards common targets and learn to speak the same language. For example, sales and marketing need to agree on the criteria for a qualified lead. Sales from their side must learn to qualify leads in an early stage, at disqualification rendering them back to marketing for further development ‘in an overall system for lead development, including qualification, scoring, nurturing, and assessment’ as Leavitt puts it.
4. The Solutions Development Engine. The result is a need for higher value solutions that respond more specifically to individual customer needs. Marketing needs to:
- Guide and support the field in determining top priorities for new offer development
- Craft the right value propositions
- Routinize the process with the right stage gates and metrics
As to reinforcing the strength of their unique value propositions, I advise customers offering cross industry vertical solutions to implement pain-based segmentation. Industry vertical solutions are better off with product-market couples. And as Leavitt points out, measuring and continuously improving effectiveness of the Solutions Development Engine is key for boosting effectiveness and results.
These 4 B2B Marketing Engines for sure don’t cover all aspects of B2B marketing but will definately boost results.
How are your marketing engines running?