They realised that the landscape of personal data availability online has changed hugely in a very short time and despite hysterical outcries about Facebook privacy settings, it is an important area that both brands and consumers should be knowledgable about.

Their concept of “personal data stores” is a really interesting concept that is being built out – imagine you, the consumer, setting the ‘terms and conditions’ for a brand to access your personal information?

It’s called Vendor Relationship Management read more here and here.

But see their great Personal Data infographic published in full with a brief snapshot below showing the 2012 situation…it describes the landscape for legislation, technology, entrepreneurs, corporates and consumers and looks forward in scenarios for each to 2017.

Ctrl-Shift the Personal Data Landscape future

Staying current with procurement purchasing and how to assess a supplier of web design can be short-circuited by reading Lance Wiggs’ excellent quick assessment of the local market.

If you’re not from his locale, still read it.

• The points he makes about Pricing for services in the Buyers Guide section is instructive.  Many agencies are still charging by the hour and it’s clear that over-charging still exists.
• Intermediation or sub-contracting is part of the process and this affects both buyers and sellers.  Transparency and honesty are the best approach here.
• The attributes of a “good client” are excellent.  Being clear about your role as the buyer is important.
• The Agency Sellers Guide has some great points.  Too many agencies rely on word of mouth promotion.
• The attributes of a “good seller” are important.  Know thyself.

And finally, the comments.  I was the first (*) but there will be many more.

Here’s my penny’s worth of commentary

Lance, great, incisive analysis as ever. Thanks for taking the time to do this work on behalf of the whole industry. I’m a newcomer to Auckland and my agency doesn’t do web design but I will comment on the two parts of your piece that are not wrong, but may mis-represent the way part of the industry is changing.

I am writing a series of blog posts called “The Creative Agency of the Future” #FutureAgency in which I’m collating examples from the business operations practices of agencies who are challenging the status quo and looking for improved ways of delivering excellent marketing services to their clients.http://creativeagencysecrets.com/category/creative-business/future-agency/
Here are two ways that leading agencies are different from the ones you researched:

1 – charging. Some agencies are moving away from time/hour charging basis and onto a fee wholly based on results, or partly based on outcomes.
2 – business development. This is my specialism. It makes me cry that marketing agencies can’t market themselves successfully. Many whine about “procurement” or “RFPs” or “pitching and coming second” but the underlying fact is that a planned approach to HOW you win new business tends to deliver MORE new business. If you don’t do it yourself, outsource. It’s the lifeblood of your agency and as you say yourself, relying on word of mouth may not be sufficient for your business survival.

easy.  Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post.  Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy.

How to get customer community integrated into your marketing

Three things we read and discussed coincided this week:

1. Planning with the Silver Fern Farms marketing team
2. Reading The B2B Social Media Book
3. Commenting on Confused of Calcutta’s blog post – Musings about communities and prices

Start with the blog post - there are three main points: Everyone in the community is a customer; Communities expect a range of prices for each product or service; A connected community converges to act as a single, composite customer.  

Take the range of prices – some customers are happy to read free offerings; others will contribute to comments or test purchase items while others are avid fans.  The Silver Fern Farms team were discussing how to organise messaging across different geographical marketplaces – not all their range is sold in each country. [They sell lamb and venison in supermarkets.]

Treating all the customers and prospects as a single, composite customer enables us to deliver into separate marketplaces with variable messaging.  Yes, we do not use the same message to each group.  BUT we know the customer is smart and can read.  Being clear about what products are available in which supermarkets matters.  It builds awareness of the wider product range and helps customers appreciate the global nature of the Silver Fern Farms business.

Is B2B any different for online?

Slant these ideas into the business to business B2B world. This is where I find clients have the greatest problems “coping” with a singular community.  And ironically, this is where the greatest opportunities exist for B2B.

Read this quote from the Book

Most B2B companies live with fear. The fear of giving away too much information, saying something wrong, giving competitors an advantage.

But I know B2B companies have another fear. Integrated messaging.

This is perceived as hard to do.  Mainly because of the territoriality of the agencies and staff who service the brand.

Each market, each customer, each group of buyers fits into a hierarchy of customer-types. From the inquirer who wants to read for free but not participate up through to the possible purchaser.  Your brand needs to set up its marketing to allow and

enable each customer type to engage at the participation level the customer chooses.

I wrote that in bold because this principle is the key to your strategic marketing plan.

How does engagement work in practice?

Set up a range of marketing activities that allow any customer from the vast pool of possibles to enable customers to get what they need.

Think of it as a staircase, each step has an increasing level of engagement and possibly a higher price.

When planning your online messaging think of your brand’s online presence as if it were a niche magazine.  You should aim to be the best ‘trade journal’ magazine you possibly can be.  Dominate your niche and the customer will figure out which of your offerings (from free to paid) she wants and where/how to acquire for herself.

What’s in the series?

• 8 steps you can do today for improved lead generation
• 5 ways to focus on your targets
• 2 improvements for a compelling offer

Short, easily digestible advice delivered to your in-box in five installments.

Interested?  

We got a great set of four questions in the mail today.

4 Questions for customer insight

1. Why did you (sign up to our mailing list)?
2. What made you nearly not (sign up)?
3. What would make you spend more with us?
4. What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)?

What an awesome list.

Why these questions are golden

Why did you sign up? – give you real understanding about what the customer thinks drove them to click that button.  Remember, you can cross check this against your stats to see if this aligns.  And you might learn a lot from what the customer thinks drove them…

What made you nearly not (sign up)? – again, understand the principal thing that nearly stopped your desired action happening.  Can you affect that or influence it in future?  You betcha – this could be the insight that leads to the biggest improvement in your CTR.

What would make you spend more with us? rather a forward question – but you never know.  Some people may just need a tiny nudge.  Or they may perceive your pricing versus features incorrectly.  It may not be a matter of switching budgets or reducing your price.  Listen hard to these answers.

What’s your biggest question about (our product or service)? Great insights come here from your user because this shows where mis-understanding or mis-communication has occurred.  Could also give you ideas for new features or products for the future.

Do this for your brand

Don’t use a check box or pick list for this.  Free text answers will give you the best insights.

Adapt the questions to suit your situation.  The words I’ve put in brackets can be adjusted to suit your situation.

And figure out the best place to do the work… on the blog, in a newsletter, when someone unsubscribes or subscribes…. Let us know how you get on.

POPP employs specialists who are good communicators, technology talented, process disciplined and thankful for the opportunity to serve you.

Doesn’t that just make you want to sign up and pay them money to serve you?

Image by glennharper via Flickr

Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?

There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.

Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them  just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.

Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome.  The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze  and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.

Wow – the good life just arrived.

How did he make it happen?

I have no doubt that this really happened.  Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.

But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:

1. Track record expertise in marketing brands
2. A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
3. The client was ready to buy
4. Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
5. Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.

Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.

Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal.  Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace.  We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more.  The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened.  Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.

Why did this new client relationship happen?

Because of the four points listed above.

So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology

1 – state your business

4 – profile raising

5 – relationship development

Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client!  Well done Srini, we applaud you.

I was reminded of this by a recent follow request from StrewIt.  I have no idea what the service is but if you “visit them and start Strewing!!!” apparently all will become clear.  Not.

Twitter biography

So much for them.

Well to take our own medicine, we created the Creative Agency Secrets Linked In company page.

Other places where  your personal and company information could be kept up to date:

• Facebook page
• Skype
• Delicious [topical right now]
• Website about page
• Industry specialist directories
• Techcrunch directory
• Industry magazine website listings

Why not add in a new calendar item for yourself every few months – to update your online profiles?  Set a reminder as a task or a diary date so you don’t forget.  Include in the task the list of sites to check and add in any new ones that have become important in the intervening period.

What I like about it is

1. it sets a deadline (the counter is clocking down all the time)
2. it still says what the company does – USP – so the holding page continues to sell the brand
3. contact details are still there
4. there’s an invitation to subscribe to notifications about the re-launch

Does your brand demand a launch date that can’t be changed?

Website holding page for BrandGlue

It’s virtually impossible to find a client who has actually delivered a new site on time, when expected.

So why is this?

What makes a corporate website so hard to deliver?  Why can’t redesigns be launched on time?  What holds back large projects?

I have two answers – which may not account for every situation – but in my experience covers the majority 80% reasons why corporate website launches are delayed.

1. Perfectionism
2. Lack of urgency

Perfectionism is a personal standard, attitude or philosophy that demands perfection and rejects anything less.

Urgency is the quality or condition of being urgent; pressing importance

Perfectionism is not a reason for delay

Everyone wants a project delivered to a high design standard and on-time-within-budget.  But in today’s 24/7 world, when many new products and services are described as “always in beta” I believe there are two things that allow you to relax your standards

1. If the fundamental part of your site (service description, shop, product information, payment system etc) is present, correct and working then customers will forgive small design flaws.
2. You will certainly be revising the site ongoing after launch (this should be a normal part of your business marketing) and so some of the higher functions and features can be delivered after the launch date.

Now to anticipate critics – yes these can be seen as excuses for late delivery.  But your business has to continue working and a non-functioning website or a holding page is a serious detriment to anyone’s online profile today.

Better to deliver and then improve than delay.

Lack of urgency is not a reason to delay

If you know that your website relaunch date is looming and likely to be missed, answer this question.

How important is your company website?

How important is your company website to these departments/teams: sales, marketing, customer service, procurement, new product development

Just answer in points out of 10.

Now ask the same questions again and add

“How important is your company website compared to the other high priority jobs you are working on?”

Anything that out-scores the website work will cause staff to choose to work on that instead of delivering the website.

This gives you an insight into their sense of prioritisation.

Use what you learn from the answers to these questions to work with the team and either create the urgency or find another way round the problem.  Usually to speed up a job you need either to add more manpower, more money or more time.

If the website redesign isn’t important enough to warrant additional manpower/cash/time – why are you working so hard on it?