I always enjoy listening to the radio around New Year's Eve because I love the countdown programs that play, for example, the top 102 songs of the year or the greatest 97 rock songs of all time. So, in the spirit of those countdown programs, here's a list of the seven most popular ITSMA research documents from 2007:
6. Making the Case for Marketing. This PowerPoint presentation highlights five steps marketers must take to demonstrate marketing's value to senior management.
1.Solutions: Showing Value and Winning Business. This whitepaper outlines three critical steps that solutions providers can take to show the value of their solutions and win more business.
Want to be more plugged into the ITSMA research engine? Please be sure to sign up for our Research Digest and Research Alerts—emails that we send out to inform people of our new publications—at http://www.itsma.com/aspfiles/Press/ezine.asp.
Every marketer wants her company to stand apart from the competition.
In fact, differentiation has been the number-one or number-two priority
of B2B marketers for the past three years, according to ITSMA research.
Traditionally, brand positioning has been the primary means for making
a company stand out. A good brand is a promise to customers that it is
worth considering above all competitors. In an instant of recognition,
a good brand conveys a credible shortcut to a comforting sense of reliability,
trust, value—even emotional attachment. Above all, a good brand reduces
the perception of risk, to the point where customers (as well as investors,
analysts, and trading partners) are willing to pay more—and buy repeatedly—because
the risk of failure in choosing an alternative is perceived to be too
great.
However, we need to change the language of branding. In fact, we need
to stop using the word brand altogether. Nothing conveys the mysticism
of marketing more than a discussion of the company's brand. To those outside
marketing (think CEO, CFO), branding seems like little more than logos
and expensive advertising. On the other hand, a discussion about what
makes companies stand out from the crowd and shortens the sales cycle—in
short, differentiation—gets their attention.
For services providers, differentiation comes through the services experience.
That experience should convey a sense of consistency and reliability.
Customers need to feel comfortable that once they have investigated the
benefits of a brand and invested their trust in it, those benefits will
continue and will not require continual reaffirmation. Therefore, differentiation
requires internal alignment around not just messaging but also operational
issues such as internal processes, quality control, and customer satisfaction.
Increasingly, however, differentiation has also come to rely upon reputation—especially
in the digital era. Indeed, at ITSMA, we believe that differentiation
and reputation have become two sides of the same coin. Differentiation
is what you say about your company, while reputation is what others—not
just customers but also analysts, bloggers, and the media—say about you.
Though reputation traditionally has ranked as a lower priority for marketers
than differentiation, that situation must change. With the rise of the
Internet and increasing customer power, differentiation and reputation
have become equally important and increasingly integrated. Marketers need
to link their traditional differentiation campaigns with new techniques
for monitoring and influencing their companies' reputation among influencers.
Reputation in Crisis
Today, marketing pours most of its energy into differentiation, all but
ignoring reputation—unless, of course, there is a crisis. Then marketers
bring in the PR specialists to communicate damage control messages with
the right spin. A well-orchestrated crisis management plan neutralizes
the negative PR and restores the company's fine reputation.
That approach, however, has become obsolete. As marketers lose control
over the conversations that customers and other influencers are having
about their companies via blogs, social networking sites, online communities,
and other emerging forms of digital collaboration, managing the company's
reputation has become a full-time job. News travels fast today, and bad
news travels even faster. A single opinion can be amplified through interactive
discussion and scaled up through linking and sharing until it wields enormous
influence—in a matter of hours.
No longer does someone need to go to the trouble of organizing a protest
to bring down a company's reputation. Automated online software allows
even the laziest, most mildly annoyed discontent to send a long-winded,
prefabricated rant to companies or to his or her Congressman with the
click of a mouse. Reputation-ranking engines are an integral part of the
purchasing process of electronic commerce sites like eBay. Customers can
also share their opinions without much effort on scores of community Websites
such as Facebook or MySpace that do all the heavy lifting—or they can
post videos on YouTube. It is only a matter of time before the reputations
of B2B companies begin to face the same mercurial, uncontrollable odds
as consumer companies.
Five Steps for Influencing Reputation
Although times have changed and the line between marketing and disingenuousness—at
least in customers' eyes—has become a knife's edge, it is still possible
to have a positive influence on reputation by clearly defining the goals
and methods for doing so across the organization.
The following is a list of five steps you can take to help influence
and shape your company's reputation:
Get aligned internally before going outside. Companies cannot
hope to have a major influence on customers' opinions unless employees
understand and believe in the reputation and points of differentiation
that they are communicating. This is particularly important for services
marketers, given that their reputations rely so heavily on employee
interactions with customers.
Find external advocates. When it comes to differentiating on
the customer experience, customers and their peers are the most effective
marketers. Services providers need to orchestrate a client experience
that creates advocates that will propagate their message in peer interactions—and
then provide opportunities for these advocates to congregate and talk.
Engage the critics. Companies should acknowledge detractors'
issues and solicit feedback. If companies do not respond, their detractors
can become dangerous and emotionally fueled, with seemingly limitless
energy to spread bile. Indeed, reputation management is no longer a
spectator sport. It requires monitoring the conversations about the
company and engaging in them in whatever form they take—from blogs to
social communities and trade shows.
Use influence, not control. Companies can no longer control
what people say, but through their actions they can influence the conversations.
The challenge, of course, is that many people are talking, and marketers
cannot possibly find and monitor them all. That is why it is important
to narrow the field by identifying the key influencers in the industry
and focusing efforts on their conversations. Beyond the usual suspects—analysts,
journalists, and the like—there are new faces on the block: A single
disgruntled customer or influencer with a high social rank can take
out a company's reputation in an instant, which is why it is important
for companies to revisit their list of key influencers frequently.
Amplify the message. After identifying the most important influencers
in the market, companies need to build programs designed to amplify
their messages among those influencers. In particular, ITSMA views word-of-mouth
marketing, case studies and other proof points, Account-Based Marketing,
and idea marketing/thought leadership as highly effective ways of "influencing
the influencers."
New
Thinking
Forget Web 2.0, Try Web 4.0: An Interview with Larry Weber
Larry Weber, chairman and CEO of W2 Group, a marketing services organization
focused on digital constituency management, and author of Marketing
to the Social Web, recently joined us to discuss what's coming
down the pike for marketers and the Web in 2008.
ITSMA: Larry, you've said that you believe that almost half
the money that's currently being spent on television advertising is going
to shift to the Web in 2008. Tell us, why now?
Weber: First, let me give you a little context. I don't believe
we're in Web 2.0—that happened back in 1994 with the advent of the browser.
Really, the first phase of the Web started in the late '80s when Tim Berners-Lee
invented the thing, and then, in '94, we got the browser, which gave birth
to the dot-com companies—the Yahoos, Amazons, and Googles of the world.
Then, in about '97, we entered the third phase: the social Web. Remember
software user groups? They marked the start of the social computing/social
media stage of the Web, which brings together people with similar interests.
Since the '90s, of course, the tools and platforms have gotten richer
and deeper and better, but we've been playing with this stuff for the
better part of a decade now.
The fourth phase of the Web—the emotive Web—is what we're just starting
to enter now: the marriage of broadband and rich media. What makes Web
4.0 emotive are the personal and business sensations, the idea that experiences
offer not only emotions—happiness, curiosity, sadness, etc.—but also a
sense of satisfaction and fulfillment. In terms of the individual's control
of and demand for words, images, and audio, the emotive Web is far beyond
television or anything that has ever existed. So now, with the emergence
of the emotive Web, people with similar interests cannot only come together
on the Web, but they'll become emotionally engaged with the content on
those sites and the people on those sites and the hosts or sponsors of
those sites—you!
So, yeah, I do believe that 2008 will be the year where the ad dollars
really shift to community building and social media. Ultimately, all paid
media is going to drive people to digital sites and digital communities—the
more targeted, the better. My guess is that 80% of the ads aired during
the Super Bowl this year will have no content; their purpose will be to
drive people to a digital destination where the content and the community
live. Email me if I'm wrong.
ITSMA: Where do you see marketing going in the future?
Weber: Marketing today isn't about talking at customers and prospects;
it's about creating and engaging with communities. I'll give you an example.
A pharmaceutical company brought me in a while back to talk about how
they could get going with social media. The product marketing manager
for a new drug for multiple sclerosis (MS) came to me and said that she
had a $50 million budget but didn't seem to be getting much traction with
her advertising in magazines like Cosmo, People, and O,
The Oprah Magazine. So I asked her, "How many people are diagnosed
with MS each year?" and she said 15,000. We did a little math on the back
of an envelope and figured out that, for the money this company was sinking
into advertising this drug, we could buy every woman diagnosed with MS
in this country a new Mercedes and a chauffeur to drive her to a doctor
who would personally answer all her questions about the disease. So why
not set aside a couple million bucks to buy a list of the people who have
MS and then build a thoughtful online community for them that provides
information about and support around their disease? That's how you're
going to engage the people who are material to your success, not with
some ad in a magazine.
So what does the future hold? Within the next couple of years, I believe
that everyone is going to belong to a mix of different online communities.
One person could belong to a religious community, a community for people
with diabetes, one for Red Sox fans, whatever. It's all going to be these
super-focused communities with tons of interactive, rich media and user-generated
content. We won't really talk about marketing as an industry anymore;
media will be the industry, and the best marketers will be the ones creating
the best content.
On
the Job
From Transactional to Trusted Relationships: Satyam's Diamond-Customer Engagement Strategy
Think back to the turn of the millennium. Remember all the anxiety around
Y2K, the software bug that threatened to shut down computer systems at
the stroke of midnight on December 31, 1999? Well, by the time the dust
settled, Satyam—an Indian IT services company that had been founded in
1987—was officially "on the map," boasting more than 7,000 employees and
$300 million in annual revenue. The problem was that customers and prospects
perceived Satyam employees as little more than code crunchers, pigeonholing
the company as a basic, commoditized service provider. The company's skeletal
marketing department was challenged to change people's perception of Satyam
to that of a true trusted advisor while at the same time bridging the
culture gap between India and the rest of the world—all on a bootstrap
marketing budget.
Although marketing and branding had never been the company's top priorities,
the marketing team saw great potential in Satyam's finely tuned, customer
service-oriented culture. Turning to Satyam's most successful customer
relationships, the team conducted exhaustive interviews with both customers
and the Satyam relationship managers that convinced them of the need to
kick things up a notch in four key areas:
Business
Technology
Industry
Culture
The Diamond-Customer Engagement Strategy
To address customer needs in the four key areas it had identified, Satyam's
marketing team designed the Diamond-Customer Engagement Strategy. The
objective was to completely surround clients with high-touch marketing
and relationship programs in each of the four areas, thereby transitioning
transactional relationships to trusted relationships and creating customer
advocates.
From 2001 to 2003, the team systematically reviewed all client plans
and categorized them into four growth-potential levels. Those with the
highest potential were surrounded by Satyam and grown to the next level.
Every marketing initiative had to address at least one of the four key
areas in the Diamond-Customer Engagement Strategy. The following are just
a few of the most compelling initiatives.
Diamond Points: Business and Culture
Messaging. Early research confirmed it was important not to
downplay Satyam's Indian culture but to align the most compelling aspects
of Indian culture with those most admired by American businesses. A
new evergreen tagline was launched: What Business Demands. It telegraphed
a sense of urgency, service, and business savvy—attributes that clients
admired and which aligned well with Indian culture.
Satyam World. In 2001 and 2002, Satyam participated in IT
events that attracted top decision makers, but they soon decided that
Satyam should own the stage. In response, the team allocated a large
portion of its budget to its own annual customer event. For three days,
everything revolves around Satyam customers, carefully selected prospects,
and the Satyam brand.
Diamond Points: Technology and Industry
Geo Sourcing Forums: Cross-Industry Gatherings. In 2003, the
team launched Satyam's Geo Sourcing Forums: small workshop gatherings
that bring together Satyam customers from the same industries to solve
intra-industry problems. Customers select the topics of these events,
and the work that is begun at each forum continues online after the
event. As each forum matures, it becomes its own entity, independent
but underwritten by Satyam.
Customer Boot Camps: Client-Specific Gatherings. Customer boot
camps are serious problem-solving gatherings that solve cross-enterprise
customer challenges. Brainstorming, problem solving, planning, and solution
mapping are the focus. Customer service and intimacy are the benefits.
Diamond Points: Culture and Industry
Location Replication. Satyam replicates select customers'
headquarters at its office in Hyderabad, India. Product display cases,
corporate colors, office furniture—even banners from pro sports teams
are reproduced and displayed! This initiative not only makes customers
feel right at home when they visit Satyam, it also surrounds relevant
Satyam employees with the customer's brand, motivating them to deliver
a truly outstanding customer experience.
Diamond Points: Culture
Customer Appreciation Events. Satyam hosts clients at major
sporting events in the client's home country. Satyam in-country marketing
managers take great time and care preparing Indian managers in the nuances
of the sport itself and cultural mores for relaxed business settings.
The efforts result in successful customer experiences and a closer bond
between Indian and in-country management.
Results
Since launching the Diamond-Customer Engagement program at the beginning
of the decade, Satyam has more than tripled its annual revenues and expanded
its workforce by 30,000 employees. Today, Satyam has a truly global brand
that serves over 558 companies around the world. Its employees are viewed
as much more than "code crunchers," and a large percentage of its customers
look to Satyam for advice, leadership, and business solutions that will
help their companies succeed.
Since its introduction to the world of ICT in the 1970s, the term "convergence"
has come to mean something different to just about everybody you ask:
"fixed and mobile," "voice and data," "access devices," "media and entertainment,"
"unified communications" . . . the list goes on and on. Too many people,
however, consider convergence a technology issue and overlook the wider
business implications—including its impact on marketing and, in particular,
digital marketing. At a recent Inner Circle Meeting in London, ITSMA examined
the commercial and social implications of convergence to better understand
how marketers need to adapt in the face of this trend.
Commercial Implications
At the customer level, convergence will force the CIO to reconsider the
supply chain and the organisation's sourcing strategy. Network- and application-level
convergence will also change the needs and behaviours of the end users,
driving a change in technology requirements.
Suppliers will have to address these changing customer requirements,
but they'll also want to consider:
How to address the doors that have been opened to new entrants—and
new approaches
The increasing need for systems to be interoperable
The CIO's need to address the strategic drive for improved productivity
and cost reduction
Providers will obviously need to be aware of the increasing threat of
new entrants as all technology players make a move for the services space.
Add to this the fact that the digital revolution is fuelling disintermediation
and substitution in all areas, and you'll need to consider what this means
for your portfolio, pricing, and sector strategies. In addition to ensuring
that your value proposition addresses the changing role of the CIO, you
may also have to work much more closely with organisations that are also
or have previously been your competitors.
Some analysts believe that the impact of unified communications will
define the next decade of the communications and IT industry and that,
through the blurring of boundaries between social and commercial behaviour,
we will see the services wrapper adopting a more of a "consumer" approach.
A few examples of this include utility pricing (by desk or by user), service-level
agreements (SLAs) determined by outputs rather than inputs, and subsidised
pricing models (e.g., hardware and devices).
All of these factors will inevitably affect the solutions we develop
and the way in which we position them in the market, but by keeping our
fingers on the pulse of these changes we'll be better placed to stay at
the top of the tree.
Social Implications
Digitally driven changes are affecting behaviour in every area of our
lives, resulting in "cross-pollination" of technology between our home
life and our workplace. As home and mobile working becomes more prevalent,
people will increasingly use social media for business purposes—something
we are already seeing with online B2B communities.
What is clear from these changes is that we must learn to communicate
in a different way. For marketers in the IT sector, this change has implications
on two levels:
The way in which our customers like to be communicated with will change
and therefore we must adapt to meet their needs.
The end users of our technology (our customers' customers) will be
communicating in a different way, and therefore the solutions we offer
must reflect those changing requirements.
At our Inner Circle Meeting on this topic, it was quite clear that people
do not believe that current communications channels will disappear or
that face-to-face communications will be replaced by an entirely online
existence, but the mix—and the different methods of communication that
make up that mix—is changing, and our communications strategies will need
to evolve along with it.
Research Desk
Ask ITSMA: How Can We Measure the Results of Our Word-of-Mouth Marketing Campaigns?
Each month, ITSMA receives a number of queries through Ask ITSMA, a resource designed to give members a quick and easy way to get insight on important services and solutions marketing questions they face. In this column, we will publish some of our favorite questions along with excerpts from our replies.
Question: We've begun some word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing activities to increase our visibility and attract new customers, but we're not sure how to track the results of our campaigns. Do you have any recommendations?
Answer: As you've discovered, measuring WOM is difficult. Based on our research, word-of-mouth marketing management breaks down into four primary components—monitor, engage, manage, and measure—and measuring is certainly a big challenge. But before we tackle the measurement challenge, let's take a closer look at the four components of WOM:
Monitor. Find and track the conversations that are occurring about your company.
Engage. Take an active role in WOM by engaging with influencers in the various forums (commenting on blogs, social networks, etc.) where conversations are taking place.
Manage. Create conversations about your company, brand, offerings, etc.
Measure. Track the results of your efforts.
In addition to being an important component in its own right, monitoring is actually an important factor in being able to measure your WOM initiatives. If you don't know how much WOM your company is getting prior to launching your WOM campaigns, you won't be able to tell how effective those efforts have been. Researchers who cover this space recommend that all marketers at least monitor the following factors:
Company name
Company URL
Public-facing figures
Solution names
Solution URLs
Industry hangouts
Employee activity/blogs
Brand image
Competitors
Conversations
Of course, tracking your company, offerings, and employees won't necessarily reveal all the threads of conversation you should be monitoring. You need to identify the most important influencers in your market and track their conversations.
Once you've figured out the baseline level of WOM activity surrounding your company and have launched your WOM campaigns, you'll move beyond monitoring to measuring. As always, it's important that your metrics are linked with your objectives. A few typical goals for WOM programs include:
Generating awareness and pass-along
Crafting favorable brand perceptions
Cultivating loyalty and advocacy
Diminishing impact of negative WOM
Customer insight and innovation
Northeastern's Walter J. Carl—one of the most visible researchers on WOM—has created a suggested methodology for measuring WOM effectiveness. His methodology depends on being able to track and catalog the entire conversation—or being able to survey participants. (Here's a link if you want to check it out: http://www.atsweb.neu.edu/w.carl/downloads/MeasuringTheRipple.pdf.)
A few other measures Carl suggests include:
Analyzing social media
Tracking conversational reach and outcomes
Linking recommendation rates to revenue growth
Pre-test, post-test
Test market, control market
Do you have a services marketing question? Visit Ask ITSMA to access
our experience, insight, and research results.
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