The Marketing Options Blog

Marketing Options International has ranked in the Top 20 B2B Marcomms Agencies,  the annual agency survey from B2B Marketing.

Commenting on the results, Joel Harrison, editor at B2B Marketing said, “There may be further grief and tough times ahead for all business functions, not least marketing. But the good news is the B2B marketers have undergone a digital revolution, often fundamentally transforming themselves in the process, and are now fitter, leaner, more focused and better able to tackle the impending challenges and obstacles.”

For the first time the survey is the basis of a benchmarking report in association with Circle Research, The Marcomms Agencies Benchmarking Report is due to be released late October. To view the full details click here (http://www.b2bmarketing.net/news/archive/agency-news-top-b2b-marcomms-agencies-revealed)

When it comes to brand-building, most of us instinctively look towards the ‘superbrands’ to see what we can learn from them. But are we looking in the wrong place?

The superbrands excel at using their exceptional levels of awareness and loyalty – advantages that the majority of B2B tech businesses can’t take for granted. But in trying to emulate them, all too often mid-size B2B brands end up focusing on the generic and the bland. Values such as reliability and flexibility are important, but today they’re ultimately hygiene factors: would you really expect any tech company not to proclaim its products or solutions are reliable?

So to achieve that all important stand-out, a richer source of inspiration could be the world of the start-up. Start-ups are almost by definition energetic and passionate. They’re clear about what they do and why it matters, and they express themselves creatively.

But most importantly of all, the start-up brands that succeed are those that are honest and real – in terms of the way they capture and reflect what customers experience when dealing with them. This is essential in today’s multichannel world, where businesses no longer have full control of their brand. If there’s a gap between what you say and what you do, it will be quickly exposed by customers, most obviously via social media channels.

The challenge for those responsible for the mid-size B2B tech brand, therefore, is to capture what your people are passionate about – because that ultimately will be what makes you unique. And if your people are passionate about being reliable… well, take a look at Volkswagen.

For more insights into how to build brand mindshare in a busy marketplace, visit the Mindshare Cafe, the online home of Technology Marketing In Mind, a unique peer-to-peer information-sharing programme offering real-life opinions, insight and advice from some of the most experienced B2B technology marketers in the UK.

If you’re like most B2B technology marketers, you’re probably already using social media as an integrated part of your marketing strategy. But with so many platforms and so many different ways you can use them, it can be hard to decide where to focus your budget and resources.

As part of our series of bite-size videos exploring current B2B technology marketing best practice, we asked senior marketers from some leading B2B tech brands to give us their hints and tips on getting the best value from social media.

Five key points stood out for us:

1. Know What You Want to Achieve:  Lots of organisations still jump on to Twitter or Facebook because they’re worried they’ll miss out on opportunities if they’re not. But just having an account on every platform won’t in itself have any impact. The key is to define very clearly what you want to get out of social media, and then build your strategy around that.

“Don’t start a Twitter account or a blog just because your sponsor, your manager, your director says we need one. Ask yourself why you need it.”
Zoe Sands, Head of Digital Marketing EMEA, Juniper Networks

2. Be Selective: Unless you have limitless budget and infinite resources, you won’t be able to use every single platform to its full potential.  Understanding which platforms and activities deliver the most value to your organisation, and focusing on just one, two or a handful of key ones, will get better results than trying to be everywhere.

3. Match Your Content to Your Audience:  Social media is great for sharing content – but it’ll only pay off if what you create is what your audience wants.  If your audience really needs practical installation guides, sharing your latest Downfall parody video isn’t going to help. Find out what your target market needs, then meet that need with useful, tailored content.

“The content needs to be refreshing and engaging – you can’t push the same content out week after week, you can’t recycle it. You’ve got to present new content and talk about different things in different ways.”
Madeleine Hudson, Consultant Online Marketing Manager, Microsoft

4. Measure The Right Things: Social media gives you lots of data to analyse, but not all of it is useful. Without a firm grasp of the metrics that are important for your organisation, you may end up wasting time and money on reports that don’t tell you very much, or give you an unrepresentative view of your customers.  Understand what metrics are useful for your business and ignore the rest.

5. Be Realistic: There are lots of great things you can do with social media that you couldn’t with traditional marketing.  But ‘doing social media’ doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to be inundated with thousands of hot leads and customer advocates. Just like any marketing activity, it takes time, effort, planning and a lot of testing – and quite a lot of failing – to discover what really works.

“It’s about time and effort to make things happen regularly. If you don’t bring out one or two blogs a week, if you don’t tweet every day, if you’re not posting regularly, then you’re not there.”
Ceri Jones, Senior Marketing Consultant

For the inside track on how brands like Microsoft, Juniper Networks, Oracle and Cisco are successfully using social media for marketing, hop over to Mindshare Café and watch our Social Media Best Practice video series.

We’d love to know what you think, too. What social media approaches have worked for you, and what didn’t go so well? Let us know in the comments.

The next in the series of mini-videos from Technology Marketing In Mind – Rethinking the Art of Lead Generation – has now been released. We’ve pulled together some of the expert insights the videos contain and created a bite-sized guide to lead gen in 2012. (You can watch all three brand new videos here).

1. Times are changing, fast

The pace of change in the B2B technology industry has never been quicker. While this provides the switched on marketer with plenty of new opportunities, it also puts the onus on all of us to stay well ahead of the curve. As Eloqua’s Sylvia Jensen observes:

“Things are changing so quickly in B2B marketing [...] that you really do have to reassess every quarter, if not more often, what channels are available and how they can help.”

But the proliferation of marketing channels shouldn’t necessarily mean a proliferation of marketing messages. As multi-channel becomes the norm, Microsoft’s Allister Frost explains what he sees as underpinning the most successful campaigns:

“You need one big idea. Don’t try to change that [big idea] for every channel, but try to make that big idea come alive in as many channels as you possibly can.”

2. Targeting is getting tighter

With so many new channels and tools, we’re also enjoying a greater ability to target our lead generation activity. The B2B tech experts see a tight focus as central to success in 2012:

“In the next 12 to 18 months technology marketing needs to become very specific. You need to be targeting groups of 50, groups of 30, groups of 10.” Andrew Barraclough, Progress Software

Barraclough’s sentiment is echoed by CompTIA’s Lisa Archer, who highlights the value of identifying which “organisations you absolutely want your organisation – in some way, shape or form – to engage with, and what that level of engagement [should be].” As Barraclough goes on to discuss, if you’re engaging with organisations of a certain size, there’s often a huge opportunity generate brand new leads within your existing accounts.

3. It’s a fine line between nurturing and stalking

Lead nurturing may be much more of a subtle art than an exact science, but there are still plenty of strategies and best practices that could have a concrete effect on your conversion rate in the new year.

Claranet’s Richard Moore drives home the importance of keeping a consistent and well-managed CRM database. As he states, if you lose track of your touches, “You lose track of all of your nurturing”.

And those careful to keep this information are finding it’s proving ever more useful. Lisa Archer believes there’s a great opportunity for increasingly personalised communication – for recognising exactly how each lead has come into contact with your organisation, and for refining your nurturing activity to the lightest of well-timed touches:

“More often than not you’re marketing to a very intelligent audience. They know where you are, they know you’ve delivered materials. Treat them with respect – understand that they need time to digest that information.”

4. Quality is king

Research has shown that improving lead quality is a clear priority for B2B tech marketers in 2012. But how can quality be practically defined? And measured? Ian Baxter, Marketing Director, EMEA at Saba Software, is critical of artificial lead scoring systems. Instead, he outlines the three questions he sees as crucial to quality determination:

•  How complete is your information on the lead?
• How relevant is the lead to your business?
• How willingly will the lead enter into a dialogue with you?

But as Andrew Barraclough explains, quality will always mean different things to different people. He suggests that defining quality must ultimately be a matter of sales and marketing engagement, and that a firm definition should be agreed in one to one talks with sales before a campaign begins.

Lisa Archer also notes the importance of thinking about sales when planning lead generation activities. Challenging the notion that lead quality should be every marketer’s goal in 2012, Archer argues convincingly that the result of any quality vs. quantity debate must, in fact, depend on the sales infrastructure your organisation has ready to service the leads you produce.

All three short videos are now available to watch for free, so why not take a few moments to listen to her make the case herself?

Don’t be shy about telling us what you think – what do you see as the prevailing trends in lead generation over the next 12 to 18 months? How do you think marketers should define and measure lead quality? What nuggets of lead nurturing wisdom are you able to share?

Author: Vanessa Cheal, Marketing Options International

As social media makes the B2B technology marketplace busier, noisier and more crowded, the ability to stand out has never been more crucial — or more valuable.

But with so many vendors offering solutions to similar business problems, how can B2B technology companies create a brand that’s really distinct?

That’s the question being discussed by some of the UK’s top technology marketers in the second instalment of Technology Marketing in Mind, the video series that explores solutions to the key challenges facing the industry today.

The two videos are available to watch now, but here’s a quick peek at what each one has in store:

1. The Core Values of a Captivating Tech Brand

Every B2B technology brand wants to be thought of as reliable, flexible and responsive. But as Claranet’s Richard Moore explains, this creates a problem in terms of differentiation: if everyone strives to be seen as reliable, reliability won’t help you stand out from the crowd. He argues that companies must focus on developing brand values that aren’t merely rational, but are aspirational and emotionally resonant – and that can be a rallying point for the organisation as a whole.

So, can you simply research the values the market most desires, and claim them to be your own? Not according to IBM’s Pete Jakob, who shares what he believes to be the foundation of any successful brand communication:

• Truth
• Honesty
• Authenticity
• Respect

As he succinctly puts it, ‘You can’t game branding’.

This is a sentiment echoed by Progress Software’s Andrew Barraclough, as he highlights the phenomenon of smaller brands attempting to mimic the language of larger ones.

Barraclough argues that if smaller organisations and start-ups can learn to be true to their own voices (as Jakob claims is essential) and cultivate a more individual, niche appeal (as Moore suggests they must), there are incredible opportunities waiting to be seized over the coming months.

2. Building Brand Mindshare in a Busy Marketplace

You’ve looked into your brand’s soul and identified the real values that make it engaging, exciting and unique. The next challenge is to communicate those values in an increasingly busy marketplace.

CompTIA’s Lisa Archer identifies the power of sparking interest and conversations on Twitter, encouraging others to share your brand’s message (and values) on your behalf. While social media has made brands more accountable, it’s also levelled the playing field when it comes to raising brand awareness – having limitless imagination is now just as important as having a limitless budget.

Some traditional channels, however, remain vital. Silver Lining Solutions’ Mike Havard asserts the continuing power of industry analysts to help you get your brand inside the minds (and long term spending plans) of CIOs.

For the most established brands, the challenges associated with mindshare can be quite different. As Celine Naude admits, Microsoft has already completed much of the hard work of fixing its brand in the collective consciousness. She offers advice instead on managing the mindshare balance between an overarching, company brand, and the brands of its most memorable products.

Click here to watch the videos — then let us know what you think. Are there crucial points you feel have been overlooked? How is your organisation planning to approach brand development in 2012?

Author: Vanessa Cheal, Marketing Options International

On Thursday 24^th November, Marketing Options International (MOI) was awarded Best Marketing Event at the 2011 B2B Marketing Awards, the annual showpiece event for the B2B marketing industry.

The award was won for a series of Customer Services events showcasing Oracle Corporation’s unique support proposition. MOI organised 13 highly engaging live events across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and managed to smash the registration target by 81%, delivering a staggering return on investment on the campaign budget.

Gareth Scragg, Director, Services Marketing, EMEA at Oracle Corporation, said “Oracle works hard to promote its support services offering, hence the extent and wide geographic reach of the campaign. It means a great deal to us to receive industry recognition for this and we’re thrilled with the win.”

MOI also achieved runner-up for Best International Campaign for its work on Oracle Corporation’s Power Days webcast programme. The 15 webcasts, successfully rolled out across 40 countries in three different languages, resulted in a phenomenal volume of leads for Oracle and highlighted MOI’s expert knowledge of local country marketing and their international campaign management expertise.

“We are proud and honoured to win the Best B2B Marketing Event award. It is a real testament to our team’s incredible hard work and commitment to delivering event marketing excellence” said Vanessa Cheal, Managing Director, MOI.

The B2B Marketing Awards were launched in association with Information Arts in 2005, and have since grown to become the must-attend event in the B2B marketing calendar.

Author: Laura Nolan, Marketing Options International

What happened to your marketing plans over the last 18 months? If you’re anything like the 100+ B2B technology marketers who took part in our recent specially commissioned survey into the changing landscape of B2B technology marketing, then the chances are your priorities had to shift pretty fast. It’s a perfect indication of the turbulent times we’ve been through and the difficulties marketers have had in developing and sticking to long-term plans during a global downturn. But as the survey also revealed, it wasn’t just economic factors that our sector had to contend with: the cloud became mainstream, and social media emerged as a vital B2B tool. In fact, looking back it’s actually hard to believe that those two developments have only really hit in the last eighteen months.

The survey was conducted for us by Circle Research and complements perfectly our series of video interviews with senior markets. But where the survey really comes into its own is the insight it provides into where B2B technology marketing is going in the next 18 months. Responses indicate a re-emergence of brand marketing, and increased emphasis on content and social media – all of which fit within the wider picture of a greater focus on maintaining client relationships.

To find out more – including why lead quality is now more important than quantity, and what channels B2B technology marketers expect to focus on in 2012 – download the free research report.

Author: Vanessa Cheal, Marketing Options International

These are thrilling yet difficult times for B2B technology marketers. The end of 2011 finds us in a buyer’s market, having to work harder and smarter to encourage sustainable customer loyalty and brand advocacy – but also having a wealth of new tools and channels to help us achieve our goals.

With so many opportunities and so much to learn, it’s always great to get advice from others in the industry. Technology Marketing in Mind, a new, year-long video series from Marketing Options International and the IDM, features senior UK technology marketers sharing their insights and advice on some of the key challenges facing the industry today.

Available to view now, the first three videos focus on understanding and connecting with technology buyers in today’s tough marketplace. Here’s a quick flavour of what you’ll see in each one:

1. Understanding Today’s Technology Buyer

What motivates buyers? And how can we appeal to them in ways that make our brand and products stand out?

Old questions maybe, but still crucial as we head into 2012. Autodesk’s Miikka Arala offers some powerful answers, saying that naïve interest in new technology is long gone, and that in the light of the economic downturn, three basic motivations are driving most technology buying decisions:

• Cut costs

• Gain competitive advantage

• Increase revenue

But appealing to reason is only one factor in the equation. Most of the marketers interviewed focus on the importance of addressing a buyer’s emotional side too. After all, people buy from people.

Microsoft’s Allister Frost adds some compelling evidence to the case for appealing to buyers as rounded human beings, highlighting the current ‘consumerisation of IT’ – our desire to take the technologies that make our home lives easier, and apply them in our place of work.

2. Communicating the Value of Complex Technology

With customer decision-making teams now including non-technical executives (CFOs, LOB heads, even the CEO in some cases), this video looks at how marketers can find stronger, simpler and more compelling ways to communicate product benefits.

IBM’s Pete Jakob explains how benefits must always be articulated in terms of what’s on the customer’s mind, rather than product features and functions:

“Our clients do not care about our products. They care about their issues, their own challenges…. we have to speak to them in terms, in language and at frequencies… that are relevant, pertinent and respectful…”

Silver Lining Solutions’ Mike Havard offers some practical advice on what those terms, languages and frequencies might be, outlining four top tips for making complex propositions simple:

• Tell stories to bring a product’s benefits to life

• Sell the vision, not just the specific solution

• Get your customers communicating for you, sharing their positive experiences in their own words, through user groups and forums

• Push the idea that investing in your product will promote ‘connectedness’ – helping the customer’s existing IT investments work together better

3. Building Relationships and Loyalty

Buying cycles in the technology industry are notoriously long and complex, and marketers need to understand where a customer is in the cycle in order to build productive and lasting relationships.

In this short video, Progress Software’s Andrew Barraclough suggests tactics for marketing around licencse renewal times, while Saba’s Ian Baxter looks at how the cloud enables software customers to switch vendors more easily – and what marketers can do to encourage them to stay loyal.

Meanwhile Cisco’s Tony Hart explores the value of really understanding a customer’s business, and CompTIA’s Lisa Archer shares practical strategies for building stronger inter-organisational ties.

You can watch all three videos here – and we’d love to know what you think. Whose observations most accurately reflect your own experience? And are there important points and considerations you feel the featured marketers have missed?

Author: Laura Nolan, Marketing Options International

Marketing Options International has worked in partnership with the Institute of Digital and Direct Marketing (IDM), to produce a year-long programme of digital content showcasing real-life opinions, insight and advice from some of the UK’s most experienced B2B technology marketers. This programme, aptly named ‘Technology Marketing in Mind’ will launch in November 2011.

Across 20+ video episodes 25 senior marketing executives from companies including Oracle, IBM, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft and Autodesk will reveal their biggest challenges, brightest ideas and top tips for marketing success in this complex and challenging industry. Speakers include:

• Pete Jakob, Brand Manager, UK and Ireland, IBM
• Paul Collier, EMEA Marketing Director, Dell
• Steve Walker, VP, Corporate Communications EMEA, Oracle
• Allister Frost, Head of Digital Marketing Strategy, Microsoft

Technology Marketing in Mind will explore B2B technology marketers’ challenges, priorities and aspirations in areas including sales & marketing alignment; quality lead generation; new marketing channels and technologies like social media, mobile and marketing automation; brand awareness; content marketing; channel marketing and marketing leadership.

Vanessa Cheal, Managing Director, Marketing Options International, commented: “There are lots of great resources out there for B2B marketers, but nothing dedicated to the unique challenges of the B2B technology sector. We have created Technology Marketing in Mind as a specialist source of knowledge to help B2B technology marketers get a better return on their marketing investment.”

Edward Weatherall, Commercial Director, Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing, said: “The IDM have always been committed to supporting marketers through practical education and knowledge, so we are really excited about Technology Marketing in Mind. It will act as a great resource to help technology marketers share, understand and hopefully tackle, the challenges they face today. There is no better group of people to learn from, than leaders in your industry. “

As well as over 20 peer-to-peer video interviews, Technology Marketing In Mind will offer exclusive new research, ‘how-to’ guides, a quarterly e-zine and guest blog posts from industry leaders – all delivered in bite-size installments designed to slot into even the fastest-moving schedule. Additional content partners include Circle Research, B2B Marketing and the SuperBrands Council.

Technology Marketing in Mind will launch in November 2011 but B2B technology marketers can get a sneak peek of what’s in store by watching this short video.

Author: Laura Nolan, Marketing Options International

Marketing Options International (MOI), an international business-to-business (B2B) technology marketing agency headquartered in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, has been shortlisted in three categories at the 2011 B2B Marketing Awards, the annual showpiece event for the B2B marketing industry.

MOI was shortlisted for Best International Campaign and Best Lead Nurturing Campaign for its work on Oracle Corporation’s Power Days webcast programme.  The 15 webcasts, successfully rolled out across 40 countries in three different languages, resulted in a phenomenal volume of leads for Oracle and highlighted MOI’s expert knowledge of local country marketing and their international campaign management expertise.

A series of Customer Services events showcasing Oracle’s unique support proposition was shortlisted for Best Marketing Event. MOI organised 13 highly engaging live events across Europe, the Middle East and Africa and managed to smash the registration target by 81%, delivering a staggering return on investment on the campaign budget.

Vanessa Cheal, Managing Director of MOI, said, “We are extremely proud to be finalists in this year’s B2B Marketing Awards.  Oracle is one of the true B2B technology superbrands and an amazing client to work with. It’s fantastic that two of our Oracle campaigns have been recognised by the judges.”

Established in 2005, the B2B Marketing Awards are enjoying their biggest ever year, with 30% more entries than in 2010. “Being shortlisted in three categories amid intense competition shows just how hard our international team works to deliver campaign results for our clients,” said Vanessa Cheal.

The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Thursday 24th November at the HAC in Central London.