B2B Marketing:Reaching Late Adopter Organizations

In a recent post, we revisited the well-known Technology Adoption Life Cycle model (TALC) that slots potential buyers based on their speed to adopt a new technology. When it comes to companies or any other organizations as buyers, is it possible to apply the TALC?

Definitely. What’s more, organizations may be late adopters despite the presence of a reasonable number of early adopted individuals in their ranks. Haven’t you been frustrated with the slow progress at some government departments, despite the presence of a few keenly interested officials?

It is generally understood that innovative technologies reach late adopters through the influence of early adopters and the early majority. In the case of organisations, late adopters may however be influenced not only by early adopters, but in other ways too.

Pushed by competition: This is the classic early to late adopter flow, where competitors gain an edge in customer loyalty, productivity and/or profitability using a new technology. For example, public sector banks in India that were slow to invest in online banking for retail customers have been forced to do so because of private sector banks making it part of the deal. Late adopters soon reach a situation where they may begin losing customers (and profits) if they don’t implement a particular technology. Customer surveys and other kinds of market feedback may help to amplify this.

For instance, if we look at the market for ERP, the adoption rate of SMEs is very slow in India. In a global competitive market however, even SMEs need to upgrade to better processes. One of the reasons for SMEs to adopt ERP has been increased competition from large firms looking to expand beyond their traditional customers, and thus encroaching on SME territory. Software companies have even begun targeting SMEs by changing the design and structure of current ERP tools to suit the needs of the SME market.

Pushed by customers: In the FMCG sector, contract manufacturers had to put in place new packaging technologies such as vacuum-packing, when such technologies were adopted by the brand-name marketers who outsourced to them. Selling the end customer on a new technology can help drive demand faster.

Pushed by regulators:  In the airline industry, aircraft manufacturers and airlines began using TCAS, a collision-avoidance technology, decades after it was originally made available. The reason was mandates from the American aviation authorities following some spectacular mid-air collisions. Regulators are difficult to influence, but at least reaching their awareness helps to put your technology into consideration.

The lesson for the B2B product marketer is that apart from direct bombardment at potential buyers, building traction with other, key players in the ecosystem like analysts, end users, regulators, industry veterans and market researchers may be critical to reaching a wider market.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

 

Going From Customers to Evangelists

At B2B technology firms, getting customers to evangelize for you is a critical component of the marketing team’s role – or, it should be! With high-value, complex products in the reckoning, buyers’ decisions are almost always influenced by their peers in the industry.

For most companies however, customer testimonials rarely go beyond cookie-cutter style case studies. Indeed, such case studies have become routine, and few readers would expect to find anything extraordinary in them. Are we recommending that you stop publishing case studies? No, but they are not the only way you can get your customers to talk about you, nor do they need to stop at ordinary.

Here are a few ways in which B2B firms can work with their customers to build more interesting and impactful stories:

Co-creating content: Co-creating content along with a customer, and co-branding it, is a more powerful testimonial than a customer just talking about the value you delivered to them with a product.

Make Case Studies user-relevant: One reason why case studies have become boring (apart from their ubiquity) is that they’re mostly ‘you’, talking about ‘yourself’. Most case studies are highly inward directed and focus on how you resolved a business problem. Why not focus instead on creating content on subjects users want to know more about? The customer experience with your product could be built in as part of such content.
This takes some getting used to, since conventional case studies place you and your customer at the heart of the subject, but perhaps that is not what potential customers are interested in. This is also an opportunity to build case studies around customers who are not comfortable with their name being used in promotional material.

Being present beyond the sale: Opportunities for customer evangelism are usually strongest in the immediate 3-6 month period after a product sale or project completion; yet, other opportunities may arise by being present beyond the sale. Doubts about a high-value buy or internal restructuring that makes your product redundant within the company are opportunities to identify how you could support the customer in changing circumstances – and win brownie points for doing it efficiently.

Helping customers benefit from testimonials: When customers talk about your product or solution, there’s little in it for them. It’s no wonder that even satisfied customers offer pretty mundane testimonials. Help clients benefit from evangelism by creating media opportunities for them, or keeping their customers center-stage. For example, interesting videos or slideshares that appeal to their target audience as well, and include your brand, are a win-win situation.

Confianzys is a well-known, product management, customer Management, product marketing, market research company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing. For more information please visit. http://www.confianzys.com

 

The Market Plan And The Marketing Plan

Here’s a simple exercise for you: Google for ‘Market Plan’. All 10 results are likely to be definitions of a marketing plan, information on creating a marketing plan or examples of marketing plans. Like everybody else, Google too is unable to distinguish between a Market Plan and a Marketing Plan!

A Market Plan is a critical document in the product planning process, that encapsulates a team’s understanding of a particular market (size, opportunity, characteristics), of different customer segments within that market (geographical, demographic, behavioural), of key entities in the ecosystem (customers, competitors regulators) and of relevant problems in the market (product, technology or customer problems). It also looks at the company or business unit’s competencies for addressing specific customer segments and problems, in a SWOT analysis, and identifies goals in that market for the company to tackle.

In summary, the market plan helps the team move from a vague idea of a “promising market” to a more specific assessment of exactly how promising it is, and what makes it promising (and challenging).

What it is not: a map for capturing the promise of that market. That is where the Marketing Plan comes in. The marketing plan begins where the market plan ends – with business goals relevant to a particular market. It is meant to be a highly actionable plan with key strategies to address the goals, the budget needed to implement those strategies, the programs to be carried out as part of those strategies as well as how the product is to be presented to potential customers (positioning plan and key marketing messages).

Confusing one for the other is not an academic problem. It means that in practice, you’re likely putting the horse before the cart – carrying out marketing programs without a clear enough understanding of the market. Some teams can’t wait to get on with the “real work” of capturing the market – short term profitability pressures and company structures often reward the doing rather than the thinking. But, rushing to address the market without knowing what it needs, is a recipe for disaster, as companies have found often.

In early 2010, we at Confianzys undertook an assignment for one of our clients to construct a market plan and marketing plan for their Enterprise Software Product. The initiative was triggered by the failure of the product to consistently meet market-needs and generate revenues in the existing markets during the last six years of its existence (the focus markets were East/West Asian). The peaks and troughs were hurting the entity and expansion to new markets was a major challenge. The knowledge of market problems, opportunity, competition, buying drivers and other key criteria were sub-optimal and mostly relied on Sales feedback.

The next big Sales goal for the company was to expand to the APAC market, but this time around, only after thoroughly understanding the challenges / requirements of the market they planned to serve. A mix of 15-20 prospects (across all segments: Enterprise, Mid Market and SME) were interviewed before building the Market Plan and this led to identifying the right Value proposition and addressing the problems faced by the Customers in that market. The same was well communicated through a sustained marketing campaign.

Confianzys is a well known business consulting, product management, customer Management Company India, providing training in effective marketing research, customer management and product marketing.

 

Blackblot Product Management Seminar Modules

Strategic Product Management™ (SPM) – this two-day core seminar provides attendees with the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively plan and market technology products and services. Product management is a domain that holds two disciplines: product planning and product marketing. Accordingly, this seminar is based on the Blackblot Product Manager’s Toolkit™ (PMTK) and PMTK Action Model – a comprehensive set of product planning and product marketing work templates, and accompanying process methodology, that illustrate notable best practices and processes (used by top technology companies) to create successful market-driven products.

Procedural Requirements Management™ (PRM) – this one-day advanced seminar provides attendees with the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively identify and articulate market requirements. Ambiguous market requirements lead to flawed products and dissatisfied customers, but well-defined market requirements are the basis for a smooth development process and marketplace success. This seminar demonstrates effective practices that clearly identify and articulate market requirements. The outcome is a whole “Market Requirements Document” (MRD) that represents an intelligent commitment to customers.

Business and Market Planning™ (BMP) – this one-day advanced seminar provides attendees with the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively contribute to business and market planning activities. Companies operate in dynamic and complex environments that impact their ability to be profitable. Consequently, it only makes sense to pre-plan the direction of a business so that the products and services it provides meet the overall business objectives. This seminar explores key concepts and processes used in formulating plans that evaluate market opportunities and shape the resulting marketing efforts; i.e., business cases and market plans.

Market-Value Pricing™ (MVP) – this one-day advanced seminar provides attendees with the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively contribute to product pricing activities. Pricing is immensely complex, multi-varied, and driven by numerous conjoint considerations with far reaching consequences. This seminar delineates useful concepts, models and processes that aid the making of actual pricing decisions.

Interactivity and Communication™ (IC) – this one-day advanced seminar provides attendees with the knowledge, skills and tools to effectively communicate with diverse audiences and individuals encountered in the course of a product manager’s job. Soft skills are non-technical business skills that often impact the success of development projects more than technological skills. The need for specific soft skills has become imperative to product managers’ job performance, as nowadays many of their activities are outbound oriented. This seminar explores crucial soft skills, specifically in the context of a product manager’s line of work.