What Google’s Acquisition of Motorola Mobility Means for Marketers

Filed under Discussion, Uncategorized by on 17 August 2011 at 14:33 {2 comments}

Much has already been written about how Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility might shake up the mobile device market, reshape the Apple vs. Android battle or even redefine the patent landscape.

Courtesy Google

To me, it’s a signal to marketers, including B2B marketers, that it is most definitely time to have a mobile strategy.

Google is offering, what, $12.5 billion in CASH. If the folks in the Googleplex are willing to risk that much in liquid assets, it’s because they expect A LOT of people to do a lot more with mobile devices than they’re even doing already.

By coincidence, last Thursday, I got to hear Dan Grigsby, the founding partner of Drivetrain, and Anders Davidson, the CEO of MobileOn Services, speak to our local Business Marketing Association meeting about mobile marketing. Grigsby was a Minneapolis-St. Paul “40 Under 40,” was one of “MPLS/St. Paul Magazine’s 75 Best Brains,” and his firm just developed the (Minneapolis) Star Tribune’s new iPad app.

Grigsby compares where we’re at with mobile right now to the early days of the Web. The companies that were really leveraging the Web were inherently Internet-driven outfits like Netscape or Cisco or Yahoo.  But now, every single company needs to be on the Web in some capacity. We’re now just starting to enter that mass adoption phase for mobile.  And increasingly, that means tablets, not just phones. In fact, Grigsby claims that by the end of the year, there will be more iPads in the U.S. than iPhones.

Courtesy Apple

Davidson’s firm developed a platform called BuildAnApp that is designed to make it easy and affordable for small businesses and non-profits to develop their own mobile applications. He observes that nearly 50 percent of companies today have neither a mobile site nor a mobile app. His message? Your mobile device “may be a small computer, but it’s not a mini-PC.” As you start to think about just how you’ll participate in the mobile web, remember that people don’t use these devices the same way.

For example, people tend to be more task-oriented on their mobile devices. “Nobody cares about your ‘About Us’ section in the mobile app, or your company history,” he observes. They’re looking to get something done.

Another suggestion: Find the right tool for the right objectives. Davidson offered a B2C example: If you’re a pizza place targeting travelers near the airport, you’re going to want a mobile website. If you’re a pizza joint targeting neighborhood regulars, you just might consider an app.

Grigsby reminded the audience that your customers may already be assuming you have a mobile app, and that might well drive your prioritization. He said 1,000 people downloaded the new Star Tribune app from the iTunes App Store before they even announced it was available. Those 1,000 people simply assumed there was one.  Which means the day before that, 1,000 other people tried and failed to find one, and the week before that, 7,000 people tried and failed to find one. What do your customers expect from you?

Given the richer relationships B2B marketers are often seeking with customers than their more typically  high-volume B2C counterparts, I see lots of mobile app opportunities here and I also see a need for greater personalization. There’s certainly more to be done than simply outfitting the sales force with iPad-friendly presentation decks. More to come, I’m sure.

How do you reach the guy with the wallet?

Filed under Application by on 5 August 2011 at 12:35 {3 comments}

When you market in the B2B space through social channels, a large part of your audience can often times be non-decision makers.  I had a client who works in the production/post-production technology industry for the film, advertising and broadcast verticals – straight B2B transaction-  ask me what the benefits were of using tools like Twitter were for selling a product that’s tens of thousands of dollars directly to a production house or film team.

My answer, simply put? Finding the users of that product/service, highlighting the pain point and our solution, creating a buzz and a demand from the bottom up.

FIND THE PRODUCT/SERVICE USERS

Using this example, when an extensive piece of technology is implemented across a large enterprise, the decision to do so doesn’t usually involve all the users, but a handful of decision-makers that head IT, Finance and maybe a few other departments. In other words, most of the users of the product/service have little say in the purchase of the product/service, but they’re the ones most affected by the implementation.

These users are the ones who’s daily processes will be changed and improved by said technology implementation.

HIGHLIGHT THE PAIN POINT AND YOUR SOLUTION

Because these users are the ones who’s lives you’ll be ideally improving, you’ll want to make them directly feel their existing pain point, and communicate to them that you have the solution.

CREATE BUZZ AND DEMAND FROM THE BOTTOM UP

Now that they know you have the solution, part of the process of you reaching the decision-makers comes from upward pressure from the users.  In part, the decision-makers pain point becomes the users – their employees – clamoring for a solution to their own pain point (which they’ve found from you).  If you’re top-of-mind for the users, it’s likely this will reach the decision-makers.

It’s a simplified model, and only part of the sales and marketing process that goes into the equation, but something to think about as you’re contemplating the ways social media can help your B2B marketing.

B2B Companies Discovering the Value of an Intangible Asset

Filed under Soap Box by on 10 July 2011 at 23:17 {one comment}

I’ve been getting a lot of interest in “branding” lately from B2B clients – coincidence? To some degree I’m taking it as a sign of a better economy (sluggish economy seems to be hurting B2B companies much less). These organizations are thinking about extending their offerings into new markets and to capitalize on new opportunities, and not just about selling more of the same to the same people.  That’s strategically riskier but it’s also the best way forward for significant growth. Imagine where Apple would be had it stopped with the iMac!

But about that risky part: These established organizations, some mid-sized, some large and global, are all nevertheless established, with a loyal customer base.  Their brands have come to mean something very real for those customers.  A quality brand is a precious asset – IBM’s brand is worth an estimated $60 billion. It needs to be treated with care.

And yet the fact is many B2B companies don’t have a clear understanding of what their brand really means. It’s not that they’re not collecting insights about their companies or products from customers. It’s usually more that they’re not bridging from the attributes customers like in their products to what the higher level benefits are that transcend products and have proven timeless.

What’s a brand? A brand is not spin. In fact, it’s authentically what customers believe about you. It’s what opens doors to new customers. It’s what makes the company sustainably distinctive even while it is getting harder and harder to differentiate on product attributes alone.

At Weber Shandwick, we develop Strategic Brand Frameworks to help clients clearly articulate their brand positioning. We recommend our clients spend some time articulating what their aspirations are for their brand. We call that defining the Brand Vision and it’s always the starting point. It gets at why you are undertaking this branding initiative at this point in time.

But at that point, you need to do some external research and have some discussions with customers and prospects. You should include your channel if it’s applicable (dealers, for instance). The purpose is to g to collect insights into both the functional and the emotional benefits your customers receive from your products and services. Functional attributes tend to be easier to deliver and therefore less differentiating and less motivating as message drivers. Emotional benefits are harder to deliver and, therefore, more differentiating and more motivating as message drivers. We need both, because the reality is they are related: You can plot these functional and emotional benefits on a “benefits ladder” and see how the functional attributes ladder up to emotional benefits.  From these benefits we can craft a brand positioning statement that lead to the central brand idea that is the basis for slogans, logos, campaigns and other creative expressions of the brand.

Especially for well-established brands, we then recommend quantitative research testing to ensure the brand positioning is optimized. And then you’re ready for the second half of the challenge, which is effectively communicating this freshly articulated brand and brand expression. But that’s a topic for another post.

In the meantime, here’s a fun and insightful video from Google’s Dan Cobley on how branding is like physics, from a TED talk:

YouTube Preview Image

We’re All Publishers Now

Filed under Soap Box by on 4 October 2010 at 19:04 {no comments}

Well the advertising and PR worlds are abuzz with the news of Forbes’ new AdVoice offering, which enables corporations and other organizations to blog under the Forbes banner under some sort of paid arrangement.  The two primary takes by industry watchers so far are that the sky is falling and this is the end of journalism and a great journalism brand or that this is nothing more than an incremental variation on advertorials.

Pontificating on whether this spells the doom of journalism and forever tarnishes the Forbes brand is probably a little outside the scope of this blog but I will say that it is hard to see much of a fundamental difference in principle from advertorials. Moreover, in many ways, Forbes is not the first publisher to take this step. We have noticed our clients getting increasing requests to blog on trade media sites already, and those publications aren’t even asking for compensation!  (Though there is a presumption that we’ll avoid overt production promotion in the blogs.)

Photo Courtesy Matt Miller, Flickr

Similarly, let’s take what’s probably the top and most respected consortium of enterprise tech bloggers, the Enterprise Irregulars. Sure, many of them are industry analysts and other traditional pundits. But Anshu Sharma, VP of Force.com platform product management at salesforce.com is also an Irregular, as is Craig Cmehil, senior product specialist at SAP AG.

In other words, the bigger observation for B2B marketers is that AdVoice reinforces what’s been a growing trend towards companies becoming media publishers. The fact is that in the social media world, good content is good content as long as there is transparency around conflicts of interest and who the real authors of that content are. It doesn’t have to come only from members of the professional journalism community.

Former Financial Times reporter Tom Foremski writes about Silicon Valley business trends and the intersection of technology and media. An excerpt from his post at www.EveryCompanyIsaMediaCompany.com:

Our media has also become much more complicated — more fragmented. We used to have “mass media” where a small set of media companies and channels, in TV, radio, newspapers, trade press — hosted much of our media communications.

Those days are gone. The reality is we now live in a multi-platform, multi-channel, micro- media world, and the trend is moving towards ever greater media fragmentation — vidcasts, podcasts, blogs, micro-blogging, Twitter, etc.

It is no longer possible to operate a business the old way — such as sending out a news release on Businesswire and briefing a handful of journalists, and sitting back.

Today you need to do that … and more, much more. Every company needs to master these media technologies, and the best media practices, of a rapidly fragmenting media world.

Traditional media relations opportunities are ever-fewer, especially for smaller or niche brands.  Yet conversely, the Web creates compelling long-tail opportunities to connect specialized audiences with specialized content in exciting ways, with video, slideshows, podcasts, tweetchats, e-books and blogs.  If you’re Apple or Google, you might not have to do this – though you should. If you’re almost anyone else and you want to connect effectively and consistently with your target audiences, you must consider yourself a media publisher.

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Customer References: What’s In It For Them?

Filed under Discussion by on 2 August 2010 at 16:46 {one comment}

I don’t think I’ve ever had a client without a customer reference problem.  Let me know if you’re an exception – I’d love to know how you found the path to reference nirvana.

Let’s face it, it’s not going to be easy. At the same time, nurturing customer references might be the most important part of your marketing program. Every study I’ve ever read about what influences B2B business buyers puts the personal recommendations of peers and colleagues at No. 1, and it’s not even close. So let’s just roll up our sleeves and accept we’re going to have to work at this.

from jasonkeath on Flickr

My theory is that customer references are more sustainable and have more influence on your prospects if there’s something in it for the reference. But it’s not just the obvious. Yes, a thank you in the form of a dinner or a gift is a nice gesture.  But for your best references, it’s ultimately about access and networking:  access to your senior leadership and experts, and networking with peers.

Well this is exactly what you should want!  If you want to maximize the ability of your best customers to help create new ones, they need to know more than just the details of their own project. They need to know your strategy and where you’re headed. Their conception of that strategy may be two years out of date (valid when they originally bought your product or service). That means they may very well be spreading the word about a company strategy or product direction that’s no longer valid and that may as a result attract the wrong prospects and deflect the right ones. More than that, senior-level decision makers in particular know that the most valuable commodity they and your leaders have is time, and investing it tells both parties they are important to each other and breeds loyalty.

Your customers value access to peers to network and learn. It can be difficult to form those relationships, especially when those organizations are separated by thousands of miles and every day seems so busy it’s just about survival. You bring a lot of value when you creating opportunities to bring these individuals together in interactive settings. (And by the way, by interactive, I don’t mean to suggest that this can be a webex or conference call – there’s a place for some virtual engagement but it’s face-to-face that cements relationships.)

Of course, some customers, for whatever reason, won’t be particularly interested in participating in your program even if their experience with your product has been positive.  That’s okay. Keep them happy – because they may find they get their voice back as a badvocate – but move on to others to be the lead customer advocates for your company.

That’s the relationship side of the success equation.  There’s also the process side, which is equally important.  You’ll need someone to manage all this.  Check out Kyle Flaherty on his Dances With Strangers blog for more on that: “These programs are important.  They are the lifeblood of supporting numerous sales and marketing activities, plan accordingly and have someone dedicated to making sure that things are done right. “  Technology tools are helpful, like Boulder Logic’s customer reference program add-on for Salesforce.com.

Best wishes.  As long as this is going to be a significant undertaking, let’s try to get the best possible customer engaged in the program.

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Meet Your Future B2B Customers

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by on 3 May 2010 at 15:40 {3 comments}

Last week I read through a recent study by The Kaiser Family Foundation on media habits of 8 to 18-year olds. You can read a great summary of the study over at Wall St. Cheat Sheet.  The study is clearly aimed at parents (me) and how kids are interacting with various media (my kids — all under the age of 8 — clearly prefer the iPhone, Leapster and Internet over TV).  However, there are some very salient points here from a marketing perspective to examine, which I did make and sent to our web, research and product marketing directors.

So let me give you some thoughts on this study and why this matters to B2B communicators. Here are my three key takeaways:

  1. Total consumption of TV is growing, but it’s all growing online — iPod (soon the iPad), Internet and mobile devices. As communicators we need to be able to consider developing the strategy and tactics to reach this audience in the near future. Will you outsource video? Do you bring it in-house and hire a team? How will you share video content or better yet, how will you let others take and share your content?
  2. Nearly 60% of their time on the Internet is spent on social networking sites (25%), playing games (19%) or using instant messenger (13%). This next generation of customers already is well adapted to interacting, sharing and having very active conversations online. They will expect this from you as well so is your business ready to make the shift to having B2B conversations? Is your web site ready for the future?
  3. Reading is on the decline. In fact, the drop in newspaper readership among this age group is enormous — from 42% saying they read a newspaper in 1999 to 24% in 2009. Magazine readership is maybe “less worse” dropping from 55% to 35%. This is yet another indication that we will need to reach future generations by less traditional methods, not through print ad campaigns or media relations.

You can also watch the video “Profiles of Generation M2″ here:

YouTube Preview Image

That’s my perspective, but I’d like to hear from you. What is your organization doing to prepare for your next generation of customers? Was this helpful or is it still too focused on B2C communication?

Social Media Won’t Kill Your Brand – Just Be Strategic

Filed under Discussion by on 4 March 2010 at 21:07 {3 comments}
I wanted to respond to this video from Loren Feldman at 1938 Media, at least from a B2B marketing standpoint. It’s provocatively titled, “Social Media Will Kill Your Brand,” though that isn’t quite what he says.  His premise, however self-serving, actually seems to be that a) social media is only a tool, and b) if you’re driving traffic to Facebook or some other place, you’re not driving traffic to the web site your brand owns, and therefore you’re letting that social network control your brand.

To be sure, Loren is right that social media is overhyped. I suspected we’d see the social media bubble pop a little in 2010 and in fact early signs give me confidence in that prediction. He contends that these various social network channels are just tools.  This is unquestionably true. We have not found a silver bullet to neverending sales and marketing nirvana, to solve all our customer relations challenges, to connect with all potential buyers through the magical bonds of Internet conversation. Yet read the breathless tweets and blog posts of many social media experts, and you’d think it were not so. Suddenly, the 4 Ps of marketing – product, promotion, place and price – have been replaced, as I’ve read, simply by People. It’s kind of an interesting concept (and 4 Ps as a concept is simplistic itself) but it isn’t true.

There’s no silver bullet, my friends.  Especially in business-to-business marketing, accept that different communications sources, different tools, each play a role in moving someone from need awareness through brand awareness and interest, through purchase, and hopefully brand advocate. Twitter might play a role somewhere along that journey, but Twitter isn’t a marketing strategy. A blog isn’t a sales strategy.  You need to start with a strategic assessment of your market opportunity and your competitive position and creatively arrive at an approach that will help you capitalize on that opportunity, and it’s at least conceivable that there’s no social media component.

But I doubt it, and this is where the video rant goes too far.

The fact is that social media should probably find its way into most B2B marketing programs in some way or another. Loren says, “If you are focusing so much on social media, you are making a big, big mistake.”  Now how does he know?  Just because it’s not a silver bullet doesn’t mean social media can  be discounted as a potentially critical component of the communications mix.   

I’m kind of skeptical of Facebook for most B2B environments because Facebook has generally become a place for personal and consumer conversations (though anyone doing B2C should note a real sales corrolation in this Harvard Business Review study resulting from a Facebook site). But it’s not because Facebook destroys brands. New BPO analyst firm Horses for Sources was able to launch itself this week in part because of its powerful 9,000 member forum of BPO experts and executives called The BPO and Offshoring Best Practices Forum.  It’s hard to see how using social media to better listen to your customer needs will send your brand off course.

Twitter is a little different in that it isn’t really a destination and, in my opinion, shouldn’t really be compared to Facebook. It’s a network of people exchanging information via scores of user interfaces and devices. They may not want to go to your web site. But they’re also not so cynical that you can’t establish trusted relationships with them through social media channels.  In fact, taking Loren’s argument to its logical extreme – that you should only work to drive people to your web site – it’s therefore a waste of time to secure a New York Times feature story profiling one of your customers because the traffic goes to NYTimes.com.

Here’s the big issue the video misses, I think: You don’t really own your brand anyway. A colleague of mine reminded me that it’s really customers and employees who own the brand. It’s true, and they can build it up, reinforce it, grow it, or tear it apart and show it to be lacking in integrity or value. Coming up with a brand message doesn’t make it true. Making a cool web site doesn’t mean your customer service is any good. If your employees think your ad campaign is full of crap, their silent abstention from supporting your big mega marketing campaign online will be deafeningly obvious. But if it rings true to them and to your customers, they will heartily, voluntarily reinforce it. Without even asking.

So let’s get over our breathless excitement over social media as marketing messiah, fine. But make no mistake, we can listen to customers and other stakeholders better than ever before, faster, less expensively. Customers can unleash their own power as advocates – or badvocates – far easier than ever before. That’s not something email marketing or Google Adwords campaigns can do.

Toro Pioneers Influencer Relations to Grow Commercial Business

Filed under Case Study by on 30 October 2009 at 10:06 {2 comments}

“We like to joke that we make tall grass short,” says Michael Happe, vice president and general manager of the Commercial Division at Toro Co.

In fact, caring for turf is a lot more complicated than that – and critically important – when you’re a golf course or a stadium. These commercial customers seem to recognize that and reward Toro with about a 10 percent premium for many of Toro’s products because they appreciate the ways Toro can help make their turf just a little bit better and deliver better TCO. Happe told members of the Business Marketing Association here in Minneapolis this week that such customer loyalty has ultimately been created through strong multidimensional relationships built over many decades.

Clearly, “social networking” predates Twitter and Facebook.

Toro equipment at St. Andrews - courtesy Toro Co.

Toro equipment at St. Andrews - courtesy Toro Co.

Happe considers People to be the “mysterious fifth P” of marketing but it’s clear that it’s not just a trite saying. I was actually rather fascinated to learn the degree to which Toro leverages influencer networks to grow their business. My firm, Weber Shandwick, has partnered with Community Analytics to help clients quickly identify influencers that matter, but Toro has nurtured its own

network over a long period of time, and it’s delivered business results.

Golf is Toro’s biggest business and they’ve been serving it since courses motorized horse-pulled reel motors in the 1920’s. Through the decades, the company has invested a tremendous amount of effort creating advocates from individuals that have never bought their products.

These influencers are people like golf course architects, irrigation designers, consultants, universities and associations. Toro has a corporate accounts person who spends nearly all of his time just on these influencers. They are an integral part of the Voice of the Customer process, with their own Toro-sponsored events, meetings and networking opportunities. As a result, when customers call trusted advisors for advice, inevitably these people tell them they can trust Toro.

Influencer relations for Toro is also about unleashing Toro experts to do more than selling. Some of the most important business development employees at Toro don’t sell equipment. Like Dr. Jim Watson, who became a go-to guy for Toro for nearly six decades whenever customers had turf problems. He helped the Chicago Parks Department solve an emergency turf issue at Soldier Field in the early ‘90s when they needed to lay new sod over sand without roots, two weeks before the first Chicago Bears game of the year. He advised the Chicago Parks Department that they could get through the season by cutting the sod several inches thick so it would stay in place during football play despite the lack of roots.

Or John Singleton, a Toro employee who for decades became the go-to-guy for irrigation issues for golf architects like Robert Trent Jones, and put this comprehensive service ahead of selling. They were successful because of their relationships.

Channel partners, ad agencies, market researchers – the way Toro engages with all these groups reflects the high value they put on deep, interdependent relationships.

Today, Toro has a leading share in the golf industry. The recession has been difficult and they’ve had to cut back on some of these efforts to make it through, but Toro’s CEO has been with the company for 32 years, knows what sustainable success requires, and has instilled it in the culture of the company. It’s a good reminder of the limits of quarter-to-quarter business management.

If the World’s So Flat, Why Are We So Local?

Filed under Discussion by on 21 August 2009 at 14:54 {no comments}

It’s interesting that in this flat world, with the Internet, social media and other digital technologies bringing us together like never before, our strongest relationships often remain the result, to a significant degree, of face-to-face interaction. They’re local.

It’s true. Research shows that our most trusted business relationships are primarily local, with people we can see personally. For example, Community Analytics (disclosure: We have a partnership with them) found that more than 75 percent of decision-makers’ critical business relationships are local.

Now clearly, we’re getting value out of going online for information – product reviews, webinars, even virtual trade shows – and marketing dollars just as clearly need to be intensively focused on these channels for many B2B product categories. But I think there’s also a powerful opportunity to go local, with a strong offline component. It’s actually not really contrarian thinking, but more about being complementary. I believe that online social media works best when accompanied by offline social engagement.

breakfastmtg

Gord Hotchkiss, a search engine marketing expert of all things, hit on two issues in a recent blog post that work better in person – building trust and establishing empathy, which I would suggest are intertwined. Empathy speaks to sharing and understanding another’s emotions, which means we appreciate and connect with each other. We often note that 90 percent of communications is non-verbal – things like facial expressions, gestures, and tone of voice. Emoticons notwithstanding, establishing empathy is simply a more straightforward process face-to-face, at least until some sort of post-Singularity, high-def virtual reality world. And I would argue that empathy is a requirement for trust – an understanding that you can count on me, and I can count on you, for advice, for getting the job done, for delivering on promises.

The reason why we’re racing online with our programs is to find efficiency. I can reach so many more people online who might be relevant to what I have to say – or sell – so much more frequently. And I can also deliver more kinds of information more easily. Online is great for discovering people and it’s great for maintaining relationships. We have to do this and do it creatively.

But I would suggest taking a hard look at face-to-face channels for cementing key relationships. It shouldn’t be hard to cost-justify, considering that the net present value of a lifetime of expensive sales to a business customer can easily reach hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars. So bring that customer advisory board together offline once or twice a year and continue conversations with the board online. Let’s help them strengthen those ties with peers. And hold those regional conferences or seminars, but then be deliberate about using Twitter and other social utilities so in-person attendees are encouraged to share with those who can’t be present, and to encourage conversations to continue after the formal conference ends.

In contrast, big faceless trade shows and mega conferences are the endangered channels, at least in their current form. If in-person gatherings don’t foster one-on-one relationship-building and conversations (and I can imagine how larger events can be reshaped to do that), then they deliver no trust-building and no efficiency and they must go. But I think we’re going to be shaking hands with peers and colleagues for some time.

Other Voices: Ellis Booker, Editor, BtoB magazine and BtoB’s Media Business

Filed under Other Voices Interview by on 13 May 2009 at 15:24 {no comments}

I had the pleasure of meeting Ellis Booker at the Chicago Social Media Club event in March 2009. As the editor for BtoB magazine, Ellis oversees content for the only publication devoted exclusively to the intersection of business marketing and business strategy. He also is editor of BtoB Media Business, the Magazine for Business Publishing Executives.ublished monthly by Crain Communications Inc., the publication reaches an audience of more than 45,000 readers. In addition to the print edition, BtoB offers online content and a weekly e-mail newsletter. Prior to joining BtoB Ellis was Editor at Large for CMP’s Internet Week, Senior Editor for Mecklermedia’s Web Week, and Senior Editor for Computerworld. He graduated from Oberlin College with a B.A. in English and Philosophy. You can find Ellis on Twitter at @ellisbooker.

Q: What changes in B2B marketing and communications have you seen since you’ve been at the magazine?

A: Two things. First has been the embrace of marketing metrics. It’s significant, I think, that during this latest downturn, marketing continues, albeit at reduced budgets. In other words, marketers have succeeded in demonstrating their value to the business bottom line. There will be no going back to “let’s throw it out there” campaigns. Even newfangled viral executions are being monitored closely, and modified if they are not meeting some pre-determined success metric. The second thing, I’d say, is how much more playful and creative the executions have become in the nine years I’ve been editor of BtoB. I would credit Ogilvy’s brilliant work for long-time client IBM as helping to create this new, creative landscape.

Q: The economy has obviously been under a tremendous amount of stress lately. How do you see B2B communicators coping?

A: It’s sector by sector, as you’d expect. What will be interesting is how the hardest hit areas, such as construction and financial services, find their voice in the recovery. And how the survivors, many in merged situations, handle their merged brands.

Q: How do you see B2B companies embracing social media?

A: Cautiously. But they need to engage these new channels, at the very least as listening posts for how their products and brands are being discussed by customers and prospects. Another healthy outcome of social media is that it is forcing companies to look at how their customers consume media. The old assumptions about target audiences–the trade magazines they read, shows they watch, conferences they attend, etc.–are being considered with fresh eyes. Also, the smart companies are giving their young employees more and

more responsibility for setting the strategy for these channels, which are consumed by young professionals like themselves.

Q: With all the press about print diminishing, how do B2B companies feel about print advertising? And how is BtoB dealing with this?

A: We’ve had a multi-page NetMarketing section in BtoB since relaunching the title in 2000. So Internet topics are not new to us. We also have a standing section on business media, which provides very insightful coverage of media companies. Regarding the future, what I think you’ll see is the media print brands in each category surviving and growing integrated print-Web-event-data businesses. The second- and third-place media properties are on the bubble, unfortunately.

Q: What marketing programs are they doing for brand retention and awareness?

A: Answering this slightly differently… one of the things that has concerned me is marketers being too myopic about, if you will, transaction-based campaigns and having less patience for long-haul, multi-year efforts that build brands. This problem is magnified in the current economy, of course.

Q: Where are B2B companies investing most of their marketing dollars?

A: No surprise here. Online is still growing at double digits, although far less than a couple years ago. Within that online spending, paid search and search engine optimization take the lions share.

Q: If you could give advice to B2B communicators, what three things would you tell them they need for being successful?

A: First, I’d say communicators must learn to listen before they can talk. And by “listen” I mean listen across all channels, using analytic technology to make informed decisions. Second, they need to coordinate their efforts. It’s simply not acceptable these days to have online and offline efforts out of sync. Third, they should be ready to adapt, and adapt quickly. Companies that adopt the right technologies to listen, monitor and manage their messaging should be able to modify these efforts quickly when the data indicates X or Y

isn’t working.

Q: Finally, what’s really the best way to pitch a story to you these days and what are you looking for?

A: The best way is e-mail. I live on e-mail. But before sending me a pitch, please read BtoB (and our many, subject-focused e-mail products) to see how we organize our coverage. That’ll give you the best idea of what we’re interested in. And on last thing. Despite my many comments about enabling technology, our focus here is about how marketers, practioners, are using these tools. We don’t do product reviews. We want to talk to users.

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