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For B2C businesses, the benefits of digital marketing and social media marketing were quickly clear. In B2B, marketers have embraced certain aspects of digital marketing more quickly than others.
In 2014 and going forward, B2B businesses must craft an integrated digital approach to stay competitive. To reach new clients and maintain existing relationships, B2B marketers can learn from the digital successes of these three notable B2B brands:
1) Cisco
Cisco’s social and digital marketing efforts have been making “best of” lists for several years, so the company’s 2014 digital marketing success is a continuation of an established pattern.
The most striking element of Cisco’s online presence is how integrated it is. A “Social@Cisco” page seamlessly brings together recent content across channels on Cisco’s own website. The company’s Youtube account has a fully-branded welcome page with a link to a downloadable study and streams of recent Twitter and blog posts. The page can be customized by region and language.
In addition to this coordinated presence across social channels, Cisco has launched their own information-packed pages and content. Working with Wired, the company presented “The Connective,” a digital magazine about the “Internet of Everything.”
2) Canva
Some of the young startups in B2B straddle the B2C/B2B divide with a product that both individuals and business clients can use. Canva, a graphic design platform, fits this description.
Canva encourages the audience of individual users to share their designs on social media. This builds an engaged following — and adds to the emotional draw of the page for business-affiliated visitors. This summer, Canva introduced the “Canva Button,” allowing other brands to easily direct users to Canva anytime they encourage user-generated design content. If successful, this move could dramatically increase the digital footprint of the young brand.
3) Philips
Earlier this year, AdAge wrote about Philips’ digital rebranding and the brand’s effort to become known for its B2B offerings as much as for its more popularly recognized consumer products.
The rebranding has largely taken the form of mini-documentaries, displaying the company’s innovations in a range of settings. Philips has reported viewer sharing above their expectations, and while individual videos have performed at varying levels, the campaign is clearly reaching a significant audience.
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The first three quarters of 2014 brought new insights about the state of digital marketing. A look at some findings from studies of B2B marketers reveal what’s working and what’s not in today’s digital marketing landscape. Consider these insights as you shape a digital marketing strategy to carry your business through the rest of 2014 and into the new year.
The Most Effective Social Media Platforms for B2B
According to “2015 B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets and Trends,” a September 2014 report from The Content Marketing Institute (CMI) and MarketingProfs, B2B marketers rank the following social media platforms as the top five most effective for their purposes:
1. LinkedIn
2. Twitter
3. YouTube
4. Slideshare
5. Vimeo
In paid advertising, B2B marketers rank search engine marketing (SEM), promoted posts on social media and social ads as more effective than either print and offline promotions or traditional banner ads.
Over the past several years, social media has become an established part of marketing. Now, marketers are beginning to understand the importance of crafting platform-specific content. We are beginning to see marketers strategically choose the social platforms most relevant to their business.
In preparation for 2015, B2B marketers must develop focused digital marketing strategies that consider the most effective uses of their content marketing and ad spend. While video is a cost-intensive form of branded content, the above list of top five platforms shows that it can also prove to be a key element in an effective digital marketing strategy.
Numerous Marketing Tactics Must Come Together in One Strategy
According to DemandMetric, “B2B marketers use an average of 12 content marketing tactics.” To analyze the success of those tactics, B2B marketers measure web traffic, sales lead quality and social sharing.
The next step for marketers is to use that data to craft and improve an overall digital strategy. Those many content marketing tactics require a cohesive direction if they are to drive qualified sales leads or build a consistent brand.
Going forward, B2B must tie observed results back to specific tactics. A responsive digital marketing strategy can then respond to what’s working with the goal of true marketing predictability.
Follow our blog throughout October to learn more about how to apply insights from 2014 to shape your ongoing digital marketing strategy.
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Data allows us to both create and measure successful marketing campaigns. It helps drive strategy and optimize effectiveness. Because of this impact, implementing a data-driven approach is important for marketers right now, and will become an absolute necessity in the months ahead.
In September, we covered the need to replace the Old Marketing Value Chain with a New Marketing Value Chain. The “old” way relies on the application of “rules and tools” to attain marketing success, tapping into conventional wisdom, best practices and mastery of tools. Although those inputs work to make the output more predictable, a certain amount of waste was inevitable.
What are the biggest limitations of relying on rules and tools?
Our current marketing landscape is dynamic. With its ever-changing conditions, a rule that works in one instance may not work in another. And with its ever-evolving technology, even the best tools can quickly become outdated.
A data-driven approach is at the core of the New Marketing Value Chain. Thanks to shifts in technology and customer behavior, marketers now have an expansive amount of data at their fingertips. By analyzing that data, drawing out relevant insights and using them to make decisions about strategy, creative and technology, we’re able to further minimize waste and make marketing performance more predictable than ever before.
So what does the future of data hold?
While marketers continue to tap into a rapidly growing amount of data, many of us are still working to determine which types of data are most helpful for specific initiatives and which tools are necessary to analyze and apply the data in an accurate, meaningful way. So much is happening in the field of research and development, and technology is evolving at a breathtaking rate. In the future, as we figure out exactly what data we need, how to best capture it and how to pull out actionable insights, we’ll also more fully experience the true power of data in marketing.
Digging Deeper
This new data-driven approach has already had an impact on marketing plans, both in guiding strategy and optimizing effectiveness. It also has the potential to provide a competitive advantage to marketing organizations that truly leverage data and analytics. But we also need to dig deeper. We need to put analytical skills into practice, integrate multiple data sources, push for more sophisticated modeling tools. Moving forward, data’s impact on marketing will only grow as we gain access to more data, better analytics tools and a greater knowledge of how to use them.
How will you dig deeper into data in the year ahead?
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The past year brought changes to the algorithms in Google’s page ranking, Facebook’s Newsfeed display, and more. These changes have had a major impact on both B2C and B2B marketers, and have forced them to consider new approaches to reach their audiences online.
There is only one constant certainty with these algorithms, and that is that they will continue to change. It seems that as soon as marketers have adjusted to one update to Facebook’s algorithm, a new one is released. Even Twitter is now experimenting with an algorithmically-curated feed.
The takeaway from these changes is clear: marketers must be agile and willing to adapt their strategies as algorithms evolve.
The key to an agile marketing approach is data. To effectively reach clients in 2014, B2B marketers must harvest data, segment it appropriately and put meaningful time into analyzing it to extract meaningful insights. To achieve marketing efficiency, marketers must deploy strategies that effectively respond to what is and is not working. Best practices must be personalized: there is no one-size-fits-all digital strategy.
Google continues to change its ranking algorithm as well, making many SEO promises obsolete. Again, marketing agility is critical. But this also reveals the importance of creating digital content for people, not algorithms. As SEO changes, marketers find themselves playing catch-up to master the new requirements. If website content was written exclusively to please an old algorithm, it may need to be scrapped and replaced. But if old content is essentially useful, it can be repurposed to work with a new algorithm with minimal and superficial changes.
As any marketer knows, algorithms are just one of the many ever-changing pieces of the marketing puzzle. In the month ahead, we’ll take a look back at the first three quarters of 2014, share changes that have taken place this year so far, and discuss what marketers need to consider as they prepare for 2015. Visit our blog every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in October to learn more about the latest marketing evolutions, new best practices and how to employ them going forward.
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If you’re like most marketers, you understand that big data can no longer be ignored. The companies that rise to the top in 2015 and beyond will be those that can both obtain data and process it in smart ways to extract meaningful insights. Still, making major improvements to your data and insights capabilities can seem like a massive task, and you may still be dragging your feet or trying to ignore the need for change.
Do any of these excuses sound familiar?
Excuse 1: “I Don’t Know Where to Begin”
The amount of data available to marketers has grown exponentially in the last few years, and the sheer scale of information can be intimidating. What kind of data should we look for? How can we separate the meaningful metrics from the vanity metrics? What data should we start with, and once we get started, how will I know where to stop?
Our answer: You’re right that getting started with advanced data analysis can be overwhelming, but it’s all about setting smart priorities about the kind of information you want to obtain. We recommend asking your team to answer one simple question: “what do you see as the top three questions about our customer or industry that, if answered, would allow us to meet our biggest, most audacious goal this year?” Then, use their cumulative answers to decide on a short list of insights you’re going to work to obtain, and build backward, finding the right metrics, analytics tools and analysis processes to meet your needs.
Excuse 2: “Big Data Costs Big Bucks”
We simply can’t afford to obtain data and process it the way other companies can.
Our answer: Yes, advanced data analysis comes at a price, but ask yourself: can you afford not to make the investment? Not if your competitors are finding ways to budget for big data.
If budget is a concern, start small. Rather than hiring a data team or experienced data expert to join your team full-time, consider bringing in an agency or independent consultant to help you build a data analysis strategy and system that meets your current needs. As your budget grows, they’ll be able to grow with you.
Excuse 3: “We Don’t Have the Time”
Our team is already busy, and meaningful data analysis takes time. I don’t know how we’d fit it in.
Our answer: Thanks to the advancement of analytics tools in recent years, many of the time-consuming aspects of data analysis are now automated, so the process may be less time-consuming than you expect. Still, extracting meaningful insights from data and applying them to your business does take a time investment. If your current team doesn’t have the bandwidth to handle the task, consider hiring someone who will be exclusively focused on data and insights, or work with a consulting firm that makes data and insights a central part of its approach. You’ll likely find that the return on this investment makes it highly worthwhile.
Yes, there are many reasons to put off getting smart about data, but the drawbacks of waiting far outweigh the benefits.
What will you do this year to start advancing your data and insights capabilities?
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Over the past month, we’ve been talking about the importance of a new data-driven marketing value chain. But we’re not the only ones—the concept of data-driven storytelling and insights is a hot topic in the marketing world right now. As evidence of the support for this approach, we’ve rounded up a few recent articles and posts from around the web with interesting thoughts about the importance and application of data:
Integrated customer data—the best thing to happen to marketing since sliced bread (via Business 2 Community)
Using data to inform marketing plans and measure success has yielded an added benefit: marketing has gained credibility in the C-suite. Data allows marketing to become more efficient and effective, which has a direct impact on the bottom line. Integrated analytics not only improves inputs (customer data) but also outputs (return on investment)—and that translates to better performance, increased cost savings and a greater respect for marketing as a field.
Emotion vs. data-driven marketing: the biggest challenges (via The Next Web and Geckoboard)
While this post calls out the significant impact of data on marketing (in a recent study, more than half of CEOs and CIOs said that “big data was drastically changing their business strategies”), it also highlights the need to balance data and emotion within brand strategy. When it comes to understanding and influencing consumer behavior, how can the “art” of emotion and “science” of data best work together?
5 big data-driven innovations media sites are providing marketers (via iMedia Connection)
With the overwhelming amount of information available, marketers face the challenge of pulling out relevant insights. The good news? Media sites are helping make data more actionable by tapping into tools, identifying insights, and packaging it all for marketers. As a part of that, innovative media companies are currently working to improve demographic profiles, create self-service analytics tools, produce easy-to-digest visuals and graphs, serve up real-time trending information, and offer on-the-go access via custom mobile apps.
How data-driven app marketing will revolutionize user acquisition (via Chief Marketer)
App marketers used to rely on very basic data to make marketing-related decisions. Thanks to Facebook’s more comprehensive audience data, app marketers can now segment and target specific groups, as well as serve up different versions of ad creative. As a result, other platforms—such as Twitter, Google, Yahoo! and AOL—are leveraging their own data to step up their game in the app space.
And just for fun…
How naked baseball players and the power of data inspired Michael Lewis to write “Moneyball” (via GeekWire)
Marketing isn’t the only area to benefit from data-driven insights. Michael Lewis recognized how the Oakland Athletics baseball team used data and analytics to value players, make decisions and ultimately gain great success—a strategy that many professional sports teams have since adopted.
What interesting articles have you read lately about data and insights? Share links in the comments!
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This month, Get There has explored the need to replace the Old Marketing Value Chain with a New Marketing Value Chain.
We covered marketing’s goal throughout the past century: predictability. The more predictable marketing becomes, the better its tangible ROI as well as its intangible benefits will be. The gap between actual and ideal predictability has always been the source of waste and inefficiency.
In today’s global marketplace, efficiency is more crucial than ever.
In marketing, knowing how is no longer enough. To succeed in today’s digital marketing landscape, the savvy brand must know why.
That “why” must be data-driven. Data allows marketers to see the real impact of campaigns and strategies and to adapt accordingly, in real-time. The Old Marketing Value Chain employed a “Rules and Tools” approach. The New Marketing Value Chain relies on insights, strategy and the application of creative work and technology to achieve unprecedented marketing predictability. Data can now both drive marketing strategy and quantify its performance.
This is a time of transition for marketing departments. Many marketers struggle to illustrate the needs of today’s marketing landscape to their executives. Here too, data is key. Prove the impact of new marketing strategies with statistics, like those we presented in an earlier post, “Do This Today to Succeed with the New Marketing Value Chain.”
Reinvention is required, from both established global brands and disruptive newcomers. If you have questions about data optimization and analysis, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
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Many readers may be wondering, at this point, how to create an organization that effectively runs on data-driven insights. The answer? Stop focusing on the “how” of marketing and figure out the “why.” To get there, follow this three-step process:
1. Embrace a path of data analysis and optimization
A scattershot approach to marketing data is no more useful than ignoring it all together. To improve marketing efficiency and predictability, marketing data must be paired with careful analysis and all-around strategy.
Commit your company to a thorough review of marketing data and a true shift of strategy. Make data a driving factor in your new approach.
2. Identify, attract, retain people who can glean meaningful insights from data analysis and are committed to this approach
To make the most of the data you gather, learn to build a team of people who know what to do with that data. Find people with the curiosity to explore all aspects of your findings and the capability to discover valuable insights within data.
This talent may come from other departments within your organization. It may require partnering with a firm or firms that have experience in the field. But whatever it requires, make finding top-notch data analysts a priority. Data points mean little without the skill and drive for interpretation.
3. Partner with a firm who has made real progress with data and insights
If you choose to partner with an outside firm, know how to choose one with the credibility and experience to serve your business well. Ask for case studies explaining past successes. Discuss your goals and ask the firm to discuss a path for getting there. Make sure that this is a firm that recognizes the new marketing landscape and the need for the New Marketing Value Chain.
Today, businesses can’t afford to choose their marketing firm or strategies based on what worked or who was successful even a few years ago. The game has changed. Find a firm that knows today’s challenges and best practices. Only then can you put your brand’s data to its best use and approach true marketing predictability.
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If you’ve been following along with our blog series this month, you probably see the value in new marketing approaches that lead with data. Actually changing your company or department, however, is an entirely different matter. When leaders are accustomed to one approach that’s based in habit, how can marketers convince them change is necessary? The answer is, again, to state your case with data.
Use these statistics to show the importance of data optimization in marketing:
- A recent study of more than 10,000 marketing executives globally about the use of data found that the respondents who said that their organization highly leveraged data and analytics to improve marketing effectiveness grew significantly faster than those that did not.(1)
- Another study showed that companies that use advanced analytics tools enjoy higher win rates. (2).
- In a December 2013 study, Domo found that 87 percent of marketers agree or strongly agree with the statement, “I rely on marketing data to do my job well.” Your competitors are using the power of data, and will pull ahead if you do not follow suit.
- The same report found the 82 percent of marketers “are held accountable for ROI on marketing spend” but only 33 percent had access to the relevant data. The marketers who have, and make use of, data on the outcomes of their work will prove their worth more effectively. On top of this, they will more successfully adapt their future marketing strategies. A gap will quickly emerge and widen between the data-driven marketers and those working by gut feeling.
- According to Adobe, 77 percent of marketers “believe real-time personalization is crucial.” Such personalization requires a rich strategy for analyzing data and putting it to use. Since 60% of marketers “struggle to personalize content in real time,” this is another area in which data-savvy marketers will continue to pull ahead of the competition.
- According to a 2014 CMO survey from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, The American Marketing Association and McKinsey & Company, “spending on marketing analytics [is] expected to increase 73 percent in three years.” Again, marketers must move ahead of the curve to use analytics to inform strategy.
What other stats or personal experiences would you cite when making the case for marketing change?
Return Monday for more guidance on how to reinvent your marketing department for a data-driven world.
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As data-driven strategies become more prevalent, they will increasingly take center stage as a competitive advantage for smart companies. Put simply, the organizations with the most sophisticated use of data will win.
While many organizations will use easily accessible data to become more analytics-focused, the secret lies in using multiple data sources and monitoring them regularly to discover the unfolding stories they hold.
Mastery of data-driven insight will increasingly separate the marketing wheat from the chaff, yet putting these skills into practice has not kept pace with aspirations to do so. Agencies, consultancies and the marketers who hire them have found they cannot simply flip a switch and become analytically proficient. Analytics reports today are often little more than compilations of data readily available from Google.
For marketers to gain the insights that can lead to “eureka” moments, they will need to develop:
- Multiple data sources – both internal and from third-parties.
- Advanced analytics models – hypothesis testing and data mining capabilities are necessary for predicting outcomes.
Few marketing departments possess these tools today.
The most immediate challenge, then, is to create an organization that can effectively do these things.
Our recommendation? Stop focusing on the “how” of marketing and figure out the “why.” Embrace data, yes, but also learn how to identify, attract and retain people with the curiosity to make the valuable discoveries hidden within it.
This talent may well come from other departments in your organization. If it doesn’t, partner with a firm or firms that have made real progress down this road. They can serve as a bridge or an integral part of your team. The important thing is to actually start taking the concrete steps necessary to turn marketing into the science that Claude C. Hopkins promised it could be back in 1923. Then, and only then, will the new marketing value chain deliver real value.
Marketers, how do you use data to discover “eureka” moments that solve problems and drive revenue?
Read our post this Friday to learn more about the importance of data optimization and how to adapt your company or department to the New Marketing Value Chain.
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