Author Archives: Ahmed

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About Ahmed

A scholar of now, reader of the past and student of the future.

Don’t look for what isn’t there. You won’t find it!

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B2B v B2C

B2B v B2C

So, my team and I are merrily rocking along the road to implementing our digital transformation strategy…swatting aside the ney-sayers, pessimists, doubters and layers of bureaucracy, with the full knowledge that my digital strategy is the only suitable strategy for the business.

However, there is one thing that puzzles me, and simply put it is whether there is any difference between a B2C and B2B purchaser. The reason I really want to understand this is because I don’t just want the strategy to work for now, but to adapt and work in 2, 3 and 4 years from now. To ensure this I feel I really need to understand whether I’m articulating a strategy for a specific B2B target, or whether in the very near future there really will just be a person with money to buy something and the channels used, experience expected and content consumed will be the same!

Why does this matter? Well I feel that if there really is a B2B buyer and their behaviour and approach to digital channels is different from that of you and I as a general consumer, then I need to ensure I’m continually feeling for that engagement. Staying abreast of the channels used and even the type of content required. However, if there is more of a merge of the two and a creation of a B2P (Business To Person), then I really need to just follow the latest trends in digital channels and adoption, “videos are in…then lets do videos!”. I like easy, and the latter sounds easier!

My personal belief is that we’re already moving to the B2P world. I really felt mid last year that the B2B consumer suddenly became more like a B2C one, leveraging and trusting more and more content online, and engaging the different and new digital channels as they did so. Will it stay that way. Is the type of product being marketed online going to be the only differentiator between a B2B and a B2C?

 

It’s not what you think, but what ‘they’ think!

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I recently stumbled across a great McKinsey report from 2013 that highlighted what top global B2B companies stated as impactful to their brand theme versus what their customer felt contributed to brand strength. Below is an extract of one of the tables in the report.

Brand strength

You’ll notice in the table that there’s an interesting trend in both graphs, namely on the left column (what B2B’s think was important) is almost completely opposite to that on the right (what customers found contributed to brand strength)!

I’m not sure I’m surprised by this, but it is a reminder that the sometimes corporate over-arching direction and/or messages – “…we’re he market leader”, “…we operate globally…” although may satiate the appetite of the CEO’s of the customers, do little to convince the purchasing power in the customers organisations the value of that vendor. However, engaging candidly and with transparency, delivering on time and having domain expertise does significantly contribute to brand engagement and probably (not stated) loyalty!

It’s a reminder that we all have opinions and views that play heavily on the definition and execution of our strategies, but the need to sense check what we think they want is actually what ‘they‘ want.

Your opinion is irrelevant! (Or living in an adaptable digital age)

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Opinions

Ok, that’s a pretty strong title, and this article may be a tad provocative. However, although not being a career marketer, it consistently surprises me at how slow to change, adopt and acclimatise to new approaches, different styles or bold brand changes marketing organisations are! I find it astonishing that many of my peers across industry have failed to adapt their marketing style for the digital age! Again I’m talking primarily B2B (although I’m sure this runs across all industries!).

I often find myself in discussions and debates about the look and feel of a website, the colour of logo or promo page or the text and font of an article. Why? In this highly technical world, we can change pretty much everything in a matter of moments (IT permitting!) “You don’t like the font, no problem let’s make it ‘Krungthep’ then”, “the image is wrong ok, we’ve changed it.”

It’s my belief this procrastination on appearance, look & feel etc. harps back to the days of print media. Remember those days, where once its in the post it’s too late for changes. You’ve printed your 10,000 brochures and are still not sure of the background colour, tough!

In this modern digital world, and with the digital tools that jangle around in it, adaptability is the key to success! Changes can be made on the fly or over a weekend if you prefer. Tests can be run to see exactly which colour or style or brand message etc. your audience prefers or engages with. We need to adopt the approach of TRY-TEST-REVISE and help our organisations move faster and provide greater connection with our customer base.

Now, lets extend this thought a little broader…what about the creation and execution of the digital strategy itself? Maybe a topic for next time.

It’s all about the numbers!

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Or is it?!

I’ve spent the last 3 months building a transformative digital strategy for my business. Spending the early weeks reviewing articles from the big consultancies jumping to the graphs that say ‘A’ is better than ‘B’, conceiving, executing and analysing my own customer surveys looking for what the customer is doing and where, reviewing articles and info-graphics on ROI’s, KPI’s, and other metrics interrogating the information for insight and relevance, and so on

Having assimilated as much of this information as I possibly could, I discarded the majority of it! There was certainly a lot of data, numbers, reports, surveys, dashboards etc. but what became apparent very quickly was, there is almost no data or benchmarks that can be applied to either what I’m thinking of doing, or even the use of digital in my space! In fact a lot of the data I reviewed could if taken at face value have led to the production of a very myopic strategy, based on what is done today and the prejudices of those that have been in this industry for many many years.

The reason I bring this up is simply because senior leaders and executives often look for data to prove the potential of something. How quickly will I see a change? How quickly will I get my return on investment? How many sales will this lead to? Etc. However in the case of a digital strategy, it’s a theory! Although there may be data that helps support part of a strategy, a strategy in itself should be a unique, untested concept that will be proven out over a period of time. ROI’s, Sales or other KPI’s can be proposed but frankly they’re guesstimates.

So I started to wonder how many truly innovative digital strategies, concepts or ideas have been prematurely killed by the fear of not having a clear line of sight to a metric, or because a guesstimate was inaccurate or datapoint was not achieved on time? I suspect quite a significant number.

How do you get around this, after all this is nothing new? Well I propose 2 things.

The first is for the management teams and is a difficult one, but frankly if you’ve hired a great digital leader or team really shouldn’t be, and that is TRUST! Trust in the leap of faith your employees are proposing. Leave the data blanket alone and just believe in your team.

The second is for those building the strategies and will help with the above point. Keep both the cost and time of execution as low as possible, but without undermining your digital strategy in a way that it impedes the potential success of it. Look for POC’s and Pilots, keep the first set of deliverables manageable, and iterate iterate iterate.

As for my digital strategy, fortunately I have a CEO, CMO and leadership team that don’t mind calculated risks and in fact support leaps of faith! Me, I’m executing on my strategy and I hope many more can convince their leaders and peers that in the digital world, all bets are off!

Its about the customer…but by the customer!

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A number of articles recently have talked about the importance of the customer, and the burgeoning need on suppliers to ensure the focus of marketing activities is around content that delivers value to the customer. A report out this year (The Growing Power of Consumers – published by Deloitte 2014) for example highlights the need for suppliers to (among others) move to informing and educating customers rather than just selling to them.

But is the manufacturer becoming redundant in the provision of value to the customer in the pre-purchase part of the buying journey?

Bear with me, but if I think about when I want to buy a product as a consumer (new tumble dryer as it turns out is need of the moment) it’s the customer reviews of the products that have a gigantic impact on my decision-making process. I then use various comparison sites to get the best price and finally the actual manufacturers site for dimensions etc. (unless of course these were provided earlier in the purchase journey). It seems pretty clear the value I, and others, place on a consumer review as opposed to what the manufacturers site might have to say.

However, the question I’ve not yet quite managed to answer and welcome your thoughts on, is does this carry over to the B2B world? I’m starting to think it does and that in the very very near future, no matter what product is being purchased, my guess is reviews and experience of use by peers, is going to become the single most significant input with which 90% of the buyers will seek out, trust and make a decision on! Whether it’s the final end user or sourcing department, the final decision to purchase will be based on what the collective peer group say about it.

If my musings are right (they may not be) then how many B2B’s are prepared to and looking at building, growing and supporting a site where the good the bad and the ugly is discussed in an open and transparent fashion?

 

Does the tail wag the dog?

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I’ve spent a number of years in industry, and in that time have been involved with a number of projects that revolved around asking the ‘customer’ what they need, only to find out once the project was delivered, that they didn’t use what they said they needed!

Now I’ve also seen numerous examples of where build it and they will come have also failed to deliver, maybe because not enough time was given to the change in habit to get people to adapt to the new ‘thing’ or, it just simply completely missed what the customer needs actually were.

So I now subscribe to the following approach to delivering new concepts:

  1. Trust – Don’t ask! Conceive the idea then sense check with people you respect and trust
  2. Flexibility – Choose a platform/approach that is flexible and adaptable
  3. Speed – Deliver the concept quickly. Go live with the minimum amount of content
  4. Iterate – Talk to a small group of your customers to direct further iterations
  5. Refresh – Flush the concept annually to ensure freshness to the approach