Laura Ramos on B2B Marketing Trends

Laura Ramos runs Forrester's B2B Marketing programme. I follow her research closely as, although it's US-centric, it produces some fascinating data on what B2B decision-makers do. Laura's latest comments focuses on B2B Marketing Trends. Pretty much consistent with what we see in the UK - the highlights are (with my notes):

• Commoditisation leading to a lack of differentiation, which leads to marketing all sounding the same (so true);
• B2B buyers buying like consumers. Using peer reviews and social media as decision making inputs (perhaps less true in the UK?);
• Ad avoidance and sales call avoidance - using web sources to delay contact with vendors (I think there is generic 'marketing avoidance' going on);
• Globalisation. Uh huh.

Laura suggests that the outcome of these trends will be the death of B2B Marketing. I agree, at least insofar as B2B marketing can't exist in the way it does. The justification that marketing "creates demand" is slammed by Laura as a cop-out. It needs to be more measurable in sales terms and more aligned with sales.

I'm looking forward to Part 2 of Laura's comments...

Influence in SMBs

Barbara has picked up on the new CMB Sage Market Pulse study, which shows who SMBs use in making IT decisions. A high dependence on independent consultants and peers, followed by (whisper it) vendors' sales reps.

The influence of vendors on their own markets is typically understated. A typical buying pattern of an SMB is: get quotes from three vendors. A consultant or systems integrator or VAR may provide this quote gathering and assessment service by proxy. But that's pretty much all there is to it in the supply chain.

Little analyst penetration at this price point. But what's stranger is the absence of journalists and bloggers, much of whose information and opinion is widely available and free. And where are the other sources of advice, such as industry associations, government agencies and other influencers not in the supply chain. Was this an omission in the survey?

Anyway, the survey supports Forrester's own study last year, which found similar sources of influence, though in a slightly different order.

The main point is that SMBs are influenced by different folk than larger organisations. Indeed, SMBs are not a contiguous group, and there are many variations in influence dynamics within segments of the broad SMB space. So watch out if you're targeting firms other than enterprise size - you may be surprised who pop up in the influence ecosystem.

Forrester reports on “Hidden Influencers”

I’ve just received a copy of Forrester’s new report on influencers. Written by Michael Speyer, it’s called Identifying IT Buyers’ Hidden Influencers. The report is available here (free for Forrester clients; available for purchase by non-clients).

You should read this report, if you’re at all interested in influencers. While you track down your Forrester password or fumble for your credit card, let me give a quick overview of the report’s findings:

• The key recommendation is that Influencer Management begins with knowing who the influencers are. No news here except that, as the report title suggest, many influencers are hidden. Most firms just examine their sales channels, and tack on press and analysts.
• According to the report, SIs and VARs have the biggest impact on sales. Again, this may seem obvious, but I’ve had a battle in the past with (a few) folks that position analysts as the most important influencers. Not so, according Forrester, the analyst firm. In fact, Speyer states that “While they (analysts) are easily identified and reached, the impact of their advice and perceived value is highly variable.”
• Ranking of influencers is critical. The report says that ranking “will allow vendors to understand the value of any given influencer to a buyer, which can be used to prioritize influencer management spending.” I agree. Speyer proposes several dimensions for ranking purposes, which is pretty close to Influencer50’s.

There are other important points in the report, which is in all an excellent summary of the subject.

The only slight beef I have is that the report refers to influencers in the context of SMBs. I assume that this is because Speyer usually researches the SMB market. But the report conclusions are equally applicable to enterprise-level buyers too. Indeed much of the research input and explanatory text refer to both enterprise and SMB buyers. I hope this point isn't lost on the readership.

Disclaimer: I was interviewed by Michael for the report and Influencer50 is listed as a source, along with Cisco Systems/Linksys, Citrix Systems, EMC, IBM, Microsoft and Symantec.

More marketing madness

On my occasional “Insanity of Marketing” theme, spot the non sequeter in these two sentences:

- “On aggregate, (marketing) agencies score a dismal Net Promoter rating of -21%.”
- “Agencies still wield a great degree of influence in the marketing organization.”

According to a new Forrester report - Help Wanted: 21st Century Agency – in-house marketers are extremely unlikely to recommend their agency to a peer or colleague (as measured by NPS). This is due to agencies’ weaknesses in emerging digital channels, over-estimation of their own importance, and lack of accountability in their performance.

A jaw-dropping 76% of marketers do not measure the ROI of their lead agency. 69% think ROI is too hard to measure.

Why is this situation allowed to continue? If we were talking about IT the CIO would have been fired and the CFO installed as overseer of spend. Indeed this was the case in the 1999-2002 period.

Sadly, says Forrester, “Although marketers claim they are unwilling to recommend agency services, few alternatives exist. Marketers need as much help as they can get to reach customers who increasingly tune out marketing communications.”

In other words, marketers know they are being screwed by agencies, yet feel powerless to do anything about it. Is marketing insane, or just deeply depressed?

Forrester points to “left brain” tactics to implement marketing metrics as part of the solution. I suspect this is only half the story – once metrics are used we’ll find out that much of traditional marketing is considerably less effective than agencies have us believe.