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Think branding is more important for consumer marketing than for B2B? Think again. Brands are highly valuable assets for B2B companies, and the facts exist to prove it.
According to Interbrand and Business Week’s 2011 ranking of the top 100 global brands by value, Intel, GE and IBM, three largely B2B-focused brands targeting sophisticated, “technical buyers”, are among the most valuable brands. In fact, they ranked number two, number five and number seven, respectively. This is no coincidence. All three companies have an intangible asset of “goodwill” that drives billions of dollars in value and market capitalization. They have strong brands, comprised of tangibles and intangibles, rational and emotive equities, that are their differentiators and competitive advantages.
Need more proof that branding matters in B2B? Siemens (a former client of Movéo) was ranked the 39th most valuable brand in Interbrand’s study in 2004 following a massive investment in corporate brand building. In 2003, they weren’t even in the top 100.
Emotive propositions resonate in B2B whether customers admit it or not. People say they aren’t influenced by ads, but data and client spending suggest otherwise. IBM did not have superior systems, functionality or pricing in the 1980s. “Big Blue,” however, became the enterprise systems market leader because you never got fired for buying IBM. IT Directors “bought” a relationship, company, reputation, service, people, assurance; that is, goodwill or brand.
So what makes for a strong B2B brand? That’s a question we’ll aim to tackle next week here on Getting There.
Note: This post is adapted from Kevin’s Randall’s “It’s a Fact: Strong Brands Drive B2B Markets.” Want more? Check out his full article here.
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Whether you’re a fan of Valentine’s Day or are just happy it’s over, one thing is certain: Valentine’s Day is a marketing-driven holiday. This year, as always, marketers capitalized on our needs to shower our loved ones with flowers, candy and cards on February 14th. While Valentine’s Day is typically thought of as an occasion for consumer spending, there are a few things B2B marketers can learn from yesterday’s holiday. For example:
- Emotions matter. Think of all the emotions that play into the average Valentine’s Day customer’s purchasing decision–things like uncertainty, nervousness, frustration and maybe even love. If you turned on your TV at all this week, you undoubtedly saw several Valentine’s Day ads depicting surprised girlfriends and happy couples. These ads play to the emotions of the holiday, and they work. According to Time Magazine, American consumers are expected to spend $17.6 billion dollars on Valentine’s Day this year when all is said and done (up 6.1% from 2011). While B2B customers are commonly considered far more rational and less emotional than the average consumer, it has become clear that emotions do matter in B2B marketing. We could all take a lesson from Valentine’s Day marketers on the value of developing emotional ties to our products and services.
- Email marketing can be more effective at off-peak times. As with most holidays, Valentine’s Day presents an opportunity to marketers to blast out emails offering special promotions and deals. In fact, according to a study from Experian CheetahMail (via Marketing Profs) Valentine’s Day is one of the holidays with the highest volume of promotional emails next to the Christmas shopping “holidays” (black Friday, Cyber Monday etc.). Interestingly, though, the holidays with the highest volume of promotional email do not drive more transactions. Instead, Memorial Day, one of the lower email holidays, drives the highest number of transactions (.31% of Memorial Day emails result in transactions vs. .20% on both Valentine’s Day and Black Friday). So what does this mean for B2B marketers? It seems to indicate that people become overwhelmed when they receive too many promotional emails over a short period of time, and that they’re more likely to make purchases as a result of emails received during off-peak times. B2B marketers should identify peak promotional times in their specific industries, and then consider decreasing or eliminating promotional emails during those times.
- Holidays aren’t just for consumer marketing. Sure, Valentines day lends itself more to consumer marketers, but with a little creativity, B2B marketers can find a way to get in on the action. Take PricewaterhouseCoopers, for example. According to Smarta, the accounting firm is using the holiday as a recruitment opportunity. PwC representatives visited campuses in the UK in the week leading up to Valentine’s Day with PWC-branded heart-shaped balloons that they hoped students would carry around throughout the day. While Valentine’s Day might not be a fit for every B2B brand, holidays certainly can present marketing opportunities, and B2B marketers should take notice.
Tell us, are you learning any other valuable B2B marketing lessons this Valentine’s Day?
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Welcome to our brand new Movéo blog, Get There! We’re excited to take fresh approach to sharing content with the new blog, and are committed to bringing you our thoughts and opinions on the hottest topics in B2B marketing.
Here’s what you can expect: each week, we’ll add our voice to the discussion on B2B marketing with posts on topics like lead generation, social media, marketing automation and branding. As a leading integrated branding agency serving B2B clients like Molex, CareerBuilder and Abbott, we’re well versed in the making of successful B2B marketing, and we love to talk about it. We’re also a curious bunch that enjoys following industry news and adding our own point of view. Get There will feature posts from across our agency — from Managing Partner Brian Davies to Director of Brand Strategy and Research, Kevin Randall.
We hope you’ll add your own voice to the discussion as well. Please feel free to join in by commenting here, tweeting @moveo or visiting us on Facebook, and subscribe to our RSS feed to keep us close by.
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Some conventional wisdom…
1. The healthcare industry fared better than most during the recent recession.
2. The healthcare field continues to be less advanced, savvy and competent versus others when it comes to technology, marketing and customer focus.
3. The practice of cultivating existing customers is far more profitable and productive today – or at any time – than seeking new ones.
While the first assertion (the healthcare industry is healthier) is true, providers and hospitals are not immune from the effects of the current economic condition. Higher unemployment means fewer people are insured, resulting in fewer admissions for non-emergency procedures – not to mention an increase in provider costs for non-covered, indigent care. Nurses are being laid off. Philanthropic donations and state Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements are declining, according to the American Hospital Association.
The second assertion (the healthcare field is less advanced) is also a fact; but this means now there is a great opportunity for the progressive hospital to stand out and gain competitive advantage in the market. The third assertion (it is better to focus on current customers) is correct, too, and relates to that opportunity.
How to compete and drive results
What can a hospital facing some strong headwinds do in order to improve marketing effectiveness and patient retention? What can a provider do in the short term to drive desired results and in the long term to increase customer loyalty, brand competitiveness and strength?
Today many hospital marketing heads have been forced by CEOs to cut marketing and communications budgets. Many are now focused on immediate, quarterly based, measurable direct and e-marketing tactics. Few may be considering market research, as patient and community studies do not actively generate revenue and there are often issues with speed of execution and actionability.
But a simple, powerful research metric – the Net Promoter Score® (NPS®)* – has emerged, which a notable few providers are employing. NPS shows a strong linkage between survey results and the bottom line — hospital profitability, customer loyalty and brand value.
The static, status-quo hospital research
Actually, most hospitals have been conducting patient and stakeholder satisfaction surveys for a long time. But how have they been applying the results? Toward building patient brand loyalty? Improving the care or service? The reality is that very few provider marketers or staff know how – or if – the survey information is applied.
Much of the impetus for patient satisfaction surveying is driven by the federal government’s quality mandate and establishment (HCAPS). Moreover, enterprising satisfaction survey research companies have taken full advantage of the need for hospital compliance to successfully sell ongoing survey products (not consulting) to providers – in effect creating client loyalty to the patient satisfaction survey process. But few employees in a hospital (including marketers and executives) really know how the complex survey reports, tables and data symbols are used or who within the organization owns the program. Does the hospital’s CEO regularly keep tabs on the ratings? Are strategic marketing or customer service plans created based on the feedback? Doubtful.
NPS may even have greater relevance in the hospital, where the customer experience is defined by so many intangibles, touch points over time and people. So a provider that can successfully apply NPS will have a good chance of standing out in the market, driving needed change and building powerful stakeholder loyalty … creating real economic and brand value.
*Net Promoter, Net Promoter Score, and NPS are trademarks of Satmetrix Systems, Inc., Bain & Company, Inc., and Fred Reichheld.
By Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research Movéo Integrated Branding
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image credit: And so it goes in Shreveport
Proximity and word-of-mouth have always been influential (if not the most influential) factors in choosing a hospital or doctor. I recall hearing my mom mention that she often used doctors that her sisters had visited. She also took my siblings and I to the same doctors that my cousins saw.
Location was always important as well. If one was short on recommendations, they could pick up a trusty old phone book and find a provider nearby.
This is still true today as it was in the past. But in a different way. “Word-of-mouth” recommendations now include comments from Online communities and social media contacts. And younger generations are more likely to check local listings Online with a Google search or local site like Yelp or YellowPages.com.
Both of these methods are related to local search, which is why it’s important providers pay attention. It should be a priority for doctors and hospitals to manage their local listings. You’ll want to make sure first and foremost that you have a listing and that it is accurate. Much of the data provided for local listings is pulled from data providers like Localeze and infoUSA, so make sure to check with them first. If they get an address or phone number wrong, it could be shared with dozens of other sites, including Google.
Somewhere along the line, you’ll also want to monitor any ratings or reviews associated with your listing. Clearly, negative reviews can have a large impact on whether prospective customers take the next step in contacting you. It’s a good idea to ask satisfied patients to leave a review for you.. Sometimes a nudge is all it takes. And if you do have negative reviews, use them to improve the way you do business. These can be valuable insights into how people view you from an outside perspective.
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Integrated branding requires delivering a consistent message across all marketing channels. An incomplete local listing (think Google Maps, Yelp, Yahoo Local, Yellow Pages, etc.) not only decreases your visibility in search results, but it sends a less than satisfactory message to users about your brand. And sometimes the listings are inaccurate.
I can speak from experience. One of my clients – through no fault of their own – had an incorrect address in infoUSA’s database. It so happens that infoUSA supplies data to many Online players, so the incorrect address was listed all over the Internet. After a friendly chat with infoUSA, we were able to correct the problem, which in turn updated the listings of everyone they supply data to.
Users expect to see complete and accurate listings when they are searching. If any information is missing, they may not be able to contact you. And even if they find another way, you’ve provided a difficult user experience for them. To combat this, make sure to check your listings in all major directories. If you don’t have a listing, create one. If you do, make sure the listing is complete and consistent with the format of other listings.
This can be a tedious task as you’ll likely have to create an account on each Site, but is well worth the time. Here is a list of local directories to get started: https://www.localseoguide.com/how-to-update-your-internet-yellow-pages-listings-for-free/
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Internet access provides consumers with endless amounts of information at their fingertips. To put this in perspective, let’s compare our process of collecting information today to that of 15 years ago. Imagine a grade school student in mid-90’s. If this person needed information they would probably start out by asking their parents or another family member. If that proved insufficient, the next stop would an encyclopedia or perhaps a trip to local library.
Now compare that to today. You want to know how to tie a knot, cancer research, book reviews, etc. – it’s all a search and a click away. And since this information has become available, we have become much smarter consumers. We care more about what’s in our food, what effect our actions have on the environment and so on. If a brand is unethical in any way, we are going to hear about it and hear about it fast. It’s the new word-of-mouth and it’s much more accessible and viral.
This is why brand transparency has become increasingly important. Brands can’t hide behind walls and tell us who they are. We decide who they are by how they act and the quality of their product. Our purchasing decisions will be made with more information at hand. To succeed brands will have to be open and part of the discussion so that consumers are aware of the value their brand has on issues we care about.
We’ve always been social, we just have the technology now to easily connect with others on a massive scale. Word-of mouth has never traveled so fast. Brands need to remember that with every decision they make.
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1. Tweet. Find people who are interested in your topic by searching conversations on search.twitter.com. Reach out by following them and sending them a personalized message. You’ll be surprised by how many follow back or find you by searching through conversations. Once you’ve built a following. Share your important announcements and hopefully some of your followers will Retweet it to their followers.
Just make sure that you’re not only tweeting about yourself. Converse with your followers by answering or asking questions that pertain to them. Be active within your online community.
2. Create a Facebook page. Add your cause to Facebook and Causes.com and share your story. Make sure to let your Twitter followers and others that you have a Facebook page.
3. Rich media. Create videos and upload them to YouTube. Take pictures and add them to Flickr. Not only are these sites search engines in their own right, but can easily integrate with other social media platforms. You might embed a video or slideshow on your homepage or provide links as references in a tweet or Facebook post. Content is critical when it comes to social media, so never stop creating it or sharing it.
Once you’ve mastered these tactics, you can look into some additional ways to get involved. Make sure others can easily share your content with the click of a button, no matter where it is located. You might even contact a popular blog or social media guru and ask them for an interview concerning your cause. Getting visibility on a site like Mashable or Digg can turn a campaign viral in the blink of an eye.
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If you’re running a geo-specific AdWords campaign you may have wondered why you sometimes receive, and thus pay, for clicks outside of the area you are targeting.
For example, you may be running a campaign for a local business in downtown Chicago. And to make sure that your ads only reach local searchers, you’ve indicated exactly which ZIP codes you want associated with your ads. However, when you sift through the analytics, you see that some of the users that are clicking on your ads are from outside the pre-determined ZIP’s. They might be coming from New York or San Diego or a nearby town in Illinois.
The reason for this is query parsing. Google explains query parsing well in their AdWords Help forum, but we’ll attempt to explain it here as well. The best way to do so is by demonstrating what it does.
If you are bidding on “chicago grocery stores,” someone
in Oklahoma could see your ad, even if you targeted the campaign toward
people living in Chicago. This is query parsing. Google looks at this searcher in Oklahoma as if they were in Chicago because of their intention with the search.
Query parsing is part of Google AdWord’s algorithm for matching searches with relevant ads and you cannot control it. It makes sense, as someone in a different city could certainly be looking for products or services in Chicago for any number of reasons.
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Many brand-building efforts begin with development of the strategy and then proceed directly to an external launch. The most important step is ignored — communicating the essence and relevance of the brand among all internal stakeholders — making it the fabric of the organization.
The most successful organizations understand that if employees are aligned with the brand strategy, including the brand promise, they will deliver a consistent expression of the brand to its customers.
Powerhouse brands such as Mayo Clinic and GE are prime examples. Each has dedicated itself to helping its employees understand the power of the brand and have reaped the benefits of a consistent brand expression delivered at every touch point.
Building a brand-based culture is not about creating short-term “buzz.” It is about developing a genuine and ongoing commitment. To create a brand-centric environment, you have to ensure that employees are living the brand consistently on a daily basis.
Developing a vibrant brand-based culture requires the organization team members to go through three stages:
1. Merely being aware of the brand and what it stands for (“Hearing It”)
2. Understand their role in delivering against the brand promise (“Believing it”)
3. Becoming passionate advocates for the brand (“Living It”)
If the employees are not living this brand every day, it will fundamentally impede the growth and success of the organization. In fact, studies have shown that up to 86% of employees who interface with customers, are communicating inaccurate or incomplete vital information.
How well aligned is your organization with your brand?
