Biznology

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Business marketers have much to gain from retention marketing.  Business customers tend to be fewer and more valuable—meaning you can’t afford to lose even one.  But how do you keep your customers active and buying from you, versus the competition?  How do you prevent defection?  Let’s look at the traditional approaches to retention marketing in B2B, plus some new developments in loyalty marketing being adopted by B2B marketers today, including social media and gamification.  Read the remainder of this entry »

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It’s always a good to examine what beliefs we are operating under–if we have false beliefs that are not examined, then we continue to act on them. B2B marketing is no different–what are the myths that we might believe that are possibly guiding our actions in the wrong direction? With a tip of the hat to Bob Bly, whose June article in Target Marketing magazine dispels 7 B2B marketing myths, I’d like to tackle some myth-busting of my own.  Read the remainder of this entry »

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Business marketers have embraced social media with enthusiasm.  One of the reasons social media is working so well in B2B, in my opinion, is that business marketers tend to wear their direct marketing hats when they strategize and plan how to apply social media to their marketing objectives.  So they get a lot of measurable value from social media, and they pull it into their programs as a full-fledged member of the integrated marketing mix.  In B2B, social media and direct marketing have—in other words—met, hit it off, and developed a long-term relationship. Read the remainder of this entry »

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Have you noticed how marketers are focusing on attribution these days?  Which media channel is really driving the sale, they ask.  What touch sequence is most productive?  Where should we assign credit?  There is much confusion and gnashing of teeth on this subject, but I say that in B2B, these are the junior questions, and just a building block to the bigger issues.  Sure, we business marketers want to know where to invest our precious dollars.  But what we really want to know is: 1) How do my prospects buy, and how can I make their journey easier, faster, and more likely to result in a sale for my company?   2) What’s the ROI on the sale, meaning how much sales and marketing investment do I need to close the piece of business?  Read the remainder of this entry »

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Buyers of information technology (IT) are one of the most valued audiences targeted by business marketers.  Globally, these professionals spend $3.6 trillion on hardware, software and technology services.  My colleague Bernice Grossman and I recently investigated the availability of prospecting data available to tech marketers for reaching this desirable group, and we found some surprises.  Read the remainder of this entry »