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.

You worked in a traditional agency – how did they view biz dev?

They didn’t really have it – they were reliant on the traditional networks of the founders. The growth was dependent on that and referrals. Some limited efforts to do DM pieces and promotions.

Is that normal?

Yes I think in a lot of cases – agencies are built that way. We did research in 2010 into PR agencies only a small % were blogging. They were trying to provide social media services but weren’t doing it wll for themselves.

Agencies tend to come last and that’s why they haven’t done good biz dev work. Take care of your own needs after everything else. I find that messaging and websites are often outdated and they rely on reputation and networks and RFPs for new business.

In the book you liken your business plan to a football field – Why?

I tend to see everything in a sports metaphor. Whether we are bringing in entry level talent (the draft) versus free agency. When I was trying to figure out how to explain to clients how the [online] market was evolving and how these strategies were integrated and they rely on each other, I tried a Venn diagram and in my mind I started thinking about watching

Drive Charts – showing progression down the field 10-20 yard line. This was an analogy – we have to do each of the phases systematically to eventually get to the end zone or the goal. I also wanted to represent different things at once – audiences (stadium) the brand (a place).  See Paul’s diagram here.

Inbound Marketing Gameplan

How do you manage the agency website internally?

One of the senior consultants is also the agency’s marketing manager and is also the blog editor. In most cases her role is to keep the editorial calendar up to date and the team of the writers – we try to do 1-2 per week.  We also have a premium content strategy – the book started as a 2010 e book; we did “The marketers guide to web design”. We also have plans to do premium content which isn’t paid for but is just high quality. Gated content = lead form to access.

How does she report and on what?

Same as clients – traffic, organic, lead generation, blog subscriber base, social media and how engaged – followers and likes we have.  We do a monthly scorecard – pull the data out of GA and Hubspot and create a spreadsheet thta shows core numbers, assess it and 3 takeaweays – highlights, learning snad what we’ll do next month.

Tomorrow, read Part 2 of the interview with Paul.

In the meantime, why not buy the book [affiliate link] it’s in hardback or Kindle editions.

A neat way of promoting the whole skill base of your agency to interested parties.

20/20 Public Relations Team twitter group

And then having noticed one, we also saw this at the Optimizer HQ

Optimizer HQ twitter group for the team

How to create groups in Twitter

These articles cover off several businesses who offer this service:

• Mashable - How to Create Groups for Twitter
• Twitter Help – How to Use Twitter Lists
• Mashable – 30+ more ways to create groups on Twitter
• Josh Bartlett – How to cut the noise and create groups for friends [more about filtering than group lists]

Read more posts about Step 2 in our Business Development process “2- Marketing communication”

It’s time to stop treating your agency as its most neglected client and promote it to your most important client. It’s time to give the cobbler’s children some new shoes!

How?

Empower your new business director. Give them the clout and resources to get what they need from the agency as if they are the primary contact person for your most important client. Their projects are not put on the back burner when the agency gets busy. Allow them the time, resources and realistic expectations to build a consistent new business pipeline.

Choose your best target audience. Who is your agency’s target audience? That is the first question that needs to be answered. Without it there is no direction for your agency. It’s time to take a rifled approach to your agency’s new business. You can’t stay focused if you don’t have a target identified.

Practice what you preach. Use the tools that you recommend your clients use. Demonstrate their success for your agency. This is especially true when participating in social media. Walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Create a new business program using social media to generate inbound leads for your agency. This doesn’t replace traditional methods for agency new business but refines, enhances and integrates them into a powerful agency new business machine.

Be transparent. The transparency that social media mandates is changing the way agency’s do business, and it is a much needed change. It compels us to lead with benefits instead of capabilities. Everything is now laid out bare on the table, including agency compensation. Perhaps even more performance based agreements. On the client side perhaps replacing our current broken system of pitches and RFPs with something new. Long term relationships should be a mutual goal because it benefits both the client and agency. For that to happen there must be the “win-win” for both and that can’t be done without being transparent.

Be a Leader not a vendor. If you want to stop clients from treating your agency as a vendor you must lead. To be in a position leadership means to have a genuine expertise, a point of differentiation. Your agency can no longer afford to be everything to everybody. So the next question you need to answer, “what is our expertise?” When you answer this question, plant that flag in the ground, this is what we do best, it will command respect, higher premiums and give clients outside your market a reason to do business with your agency. A small agency was recently included in a pitch for a national account because they were willing to say this is who we are, this is how we are different than other agencies, this is our expertise.

This article was originally published here.

Image via Wikipedia

Devising appropriate ways to measure your social media campaign for new business development is key to proving that your work is delivering results.

Today we suggest some ways to measure the success of your work

1. The number of Followers on Twitter
2. The number of Fans on Facebook Fan Pages, Events
3. The number of tweets & RTs on Twitter
4. The number of Shares & Likes on Facebook
5. The ratio between Followers-Friends
6. The authority of the people that follow you
7. The authority of the people that share your content
8. The average quality of your previously shared messages
9. The number of unique mentions/shares (similar to Link Diversity)
10. The rate and the source of links that you share

Moreover search engines are expected to use Social Media buzz to determine:

How fresh a particular post is

If an page is still useful/valid/up-to-date

What are the current trends

Which terms are related to the particular post. They are likely to use the keywords and the hash tags that can be found in the content of the shared messages.

The theme or the topic of expertise of each author.  Users that tend to post high quality messages about a particular topic are likely to be considered as experts.  Bing already uses this feature by recommending users on Twitter.

I was really pleased to read this post from Jeffrey L. Cohen in which he interviews Laurie Ruettimann, an HR Consultant and blogger, about how she would advise an organisation to use social media for recruitment.

If you don’t have time to hear the full 8 minute interview, here are the notes I took from it.

• The biggest single thing to do is to align HR with marketing and sales – your products and services brand should have the same messaging as the HR brand
• Internal social media is also important – have a look at the Sodexo careers – a hub to develop relationships.  It includes a neat job search desktop widget
• Outsourcing has crossed over with technology – Many companies outsource reference checking and use social media and telephone to speak to reference-givers.
• HR is ahead of accounting and finance, and ahead of some marketing and sales depts especially in managing relationships and candidate databases
• “‘Social recruiting’ – the new term for using social media in HR.
• Should I get social media skills?  Everyone benefits with higher skills.  US workers are bifurcating – knowledge class and working class.  Chasm between the two.

• More social media skills are needed in softer ways.  richer and deeper relationships and thoughtful understanding of the world with broader communication skills.  An organisation can then use you in different ways.
• Do companies need a social media director or community manager?  Some firms are hiring them.  It’s a position of luxury now – often they fall under marketing and sales and existing job titles.   The companies of the future are creating these roles and investing in them.

• TIPS:
  • Go on Google and understand what people see when they google you.
  • Grab your name on Twitter and you’ll be ahead of the game.
  • Companies are looking for competency and people who won’t cause law suits (!).

Social Media Changes in B2B HR and Recruiting from Jeffrey L. Cohen on Vimeo.

Reading Jay Baer’s recent post about truth and candour, I think he has got a great point.

The RSS-reading public loves a screw-up – an opportunity to poke fun at hubris and pride brought low.  Domino’s is the most recent example of a long list of internet marketing screw-ups.

He says

I never thought I’d see a day when corporations were the most trustworthy and forthright among us, but it draws nigh.

Wow.

The honest corporation is coming… can’t wait.  And yet, a small part of my brain seems to doubt this.  Many people would love to see honesty triumph over evil manipulators but human nature being what it is makes me think that ‘trying it on’ will continue.  It’ll just take a new form.

But taking the moral high ground and thinking positively – I’d like to set a challenge for you.

What is the worst rumour or gossip about your organisation?

I can’t answer this for you.  If you are party to the senior corporate people, policies, strategies and mess-ups that have happened in the past year in your company – you can answer this.

• What is the one thing that has the potential to most embarrass your organisation if it were leaked to the public?
• Which bit of bad news would cause you the most sleepless nights / stress headaches?
• How would you choose to publicly humiliate your employer?
• What could an employee reveal that would make your share price tumble or clients to resign?

The short, easy answer to all of the situations is to not let it happen in the first place.

Quick fixes

Go read about Crisis PR and get some free or professionally paid for advice on how to handle a situation if true but bad news does hit the headlines.

Check employment contracts for privacy and secrecy statement clauses and enforce them if needed.

But in the medium term, surely it’s better to run a clean ship?

What might you choose to do differently if any of the scenarios above came to public light?

Becoming a trustworthy corporation

Firstly, do you want to be a trustworthy corporation?  What are the benefits?

If yes, go and make a list of things to do differently.  Share it internally and make your own subsequent management decisions about what changes to make.

‘Nuff said.

If you work in a niche environment and want to do some “trend spotting” for the next year, here’s a great idea on how to engage your prospects, clients, staff and key influencers.

1. Start by finding a hot topic of the moment as the focus for your trend spotting.  You could consider using online consumer engagement or  new social media tools for your industry.
2. Decide on the period – 6 months, 1 year or more that you’ll predict .
3. Brainstorm with your internal team about the trends you think might emerge, or change over the period.
4. Draw up a list of clients, prospects and key influencers or industry thought leaders who might be persuaded to take part.
5. Write a briefing document for them explaining what you want, how they can submit their ideas and a timeframe.  I’d suggest asking for 3 to 5 bullet points of trends with a brief explanation of each plus a catchy title.  You will also need their permission to quote them in your final report.
6. You could open this up to a public collaboration as well using regular readers of your blog / FB page as well.  This could be developed into an open forum discussion.  Remember for this to be successful you probably need a large and already-engaged audience and a strong topic for the conversation.
7. Collate all the ideas into a single slide deck, e-book or pdf document and use as the basis for a campaign (email it, download from your site and public sites, create linked content from social media sites and don’t forget to send it to journalists for PR).

Here’s one done by David Armano Rudy de Waele on the future of Mobile trends to 2020 [an ambitious time horizon] with contributions from a wide range of experts.  Note he credits each contributor both in slide 2 and on each page with their ideas.

We've all been members of industry groups and networking events where we meet prospective clients for years….[random aside...I remember getting Edward Erdman to exhibit at the Institute of Logistics and Distribution Management Conference - we were the only estate agent in a room full of potential clients.  In year two there were five others there with us, but we'd had a year of membership to get ahead of them!] 

But online it can be harder to find the right groups to join.  I have found some new ones springing up.

Twitter Groups – Very new – but already some for marketing / social media types

Linked In Groups

Facebook Groups

Google Groups – been around for a while but there are some great ones worth browsing

eCademy Clubs

and so I've just started a Twitter Group for Business Development Professionals #bizdev 

A couple of words of advice

1. read and watch first
2. beware 'professional groupies' all talk and no business activity
3. if you want to run your own group – it takes time but can be a fabulous biz dev / profile raising activity.

Which are the most useful online groups you belong to?

I had a very interesting session working remotely (backstory on remote consulting) with Prosper Consulting and Simon Ibson, the MD.

He is quite new to social media as a business development tool and we discussed the places that I use to promote my blog as a means to help him navigate and research the possible places he could do the same with the new website which isn't quite ready… (Story of my life!)And so I started with the places that my professional profile is listed:
Facebook
Plaxo Pulse
Linked In
FriendFeed/RebeccaCaroe
Twitter

Facebook occupies a curious cross-border place in my toolkit because I principally use it for friends and family but there are some great groups I belong to hosted there which are clearly work not play.  I favour the groups "London Girl Geek Dinners ", "BIMA British Interactive Media Association " and "What I saw at the Direct Marketing Revolution " as really active with new items posted regularly which really interest me.
Plaxo is a surrogate Friendfeed but has more professional contacts in there.  I use Friendfeed to funnel stuff into my Alert Thingy stream which is a great way of posting to Twitter and it has a tinyurl plugin that really works!

And then there are aggregator sites where I can set up the RSS feed from this blog to send stuff over automatically.  This is a fabulous service, if (and only if) the site has got itself a good audience and is well-managed.
UTalkMarketing
Marcom Professional
Marketing Services Talk

Ragan

Of these, MArcom Professional set up by Philip Sheldrake is my favourite.  It has a better range of comment and is less 'managed'.  I used to check in to Ragan a lot but it's very US oriented and mainly aimed at PR folk, which I'm not.  Plus, I loathe the weekly email from Utalk but haven't managed to unsubscribe from it.  Maybe I dream that one day they'll pick up one of my posts to print…

And so how should you work out the places that your profile (corporate or personal) should be online?

My suggestion is to start with Linked In because you really can't go wrong there.  Take a look around the people you know on there and start an active campaign to connect to the ones you know.  If you have the energy, also ask for recommendations for those you've worked for.

In order to find sites that may be helpful for you try this checklist

1. Go to Technorati.com and use a key word search that describes what your company does
2. Read the blogs it lists and sign up to read a few that seem a) prolific b) have good, informed commentary c) post regularly d) score highly on the Technorati Authority score
3. Search Google or Yahoo for the same key word + 'blog' or 'news' (that'll filter out your competitors' websites)
4. Repeat step 2 and find those who write well.  Sign up to read…

As far as the others go, take a month to regularly read what's on them from people you know (ask someone to let you log in to their feed / pulse stream).  You can also ask your trusted colleagues and clients which they use and / or know about. And make your own mind up.

Simon was curious about what copyright I chose to exercise on this blog.  I told him that I publish it all under the Creative Commons license – detail on creative commons.

Simon recommended two books to me. Alan Weiss' "Million Dollar Consulting" and "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug  

Prosper Consulting is a talent acquisition specialist that works hard on building long term relationships with client companies, delivers recruitment solutions and doesn't work on success fees.  And so if you want to hire top talent and don't want to be spending percentages of their salary on the agency, check out Prosper Consulting .