I looked at my marketing text books one last good time – the pages seemed fairly crisp, but most examples cited in the book seemed obsolete. It seemed like between 2008 and now, marketing had undergone a transformation and the textbook couldn’t keep pace with it. So what happened to the classical marketer – the one whose world circled around the 4Ps? The answer to this question lies in the evolving nature of marketing.

Earlier this year, MLC surveyed a group of 30 leading CMOs on 15 dimensions that they think will influence marketing in the future. The results suggest only one theme – marketing is becoming a smarter function. Some of the top things CMOs identified as value creators for marketing in the future include:

• End-to-end experience management
• Agile planning
• Advanced analytics
• Insight-based marketing
• Enhanced listening capabilities

As marketing’s role is expanding in the face of changing economics and evolving technology, marketer’s roles must evolve too. So what does a next generation marketer look like? Here’s what we heard from our CMOs: Read More »

A picture can say a thousand words – it does sound clichéd.  Marketers who engage in visual marketing realize the fact that images are more impactful at conveying information than elaborate messaging. So how can marketers use the power of imagery to further their marketing objectives? Presented below are four lessons on how companies can leverage the power of visual marketing to their advantage: Read More »

Has consumer-led insights helped you design better products? Not all marketers would agree, but then not all would disagree either. At the Marketing Leadership Council, we love to debate and discuss the most hotly contested topics in Marketing, this being one of them. Are products developed in partnership with lead users more profitable or less? We’ll present both sides of the thought, but would definitely like to know your opinion.

Former Apple Inc. CEO, Steve Jobs was a firm proponent of the view that companies do not benefit from lead-user product insight. He said that the future of companies cannot be designed through focus groups. Jobs, like many of his counterparts believed that consumers often do not know what they want, and even if they do know what they want, they may not be able to articulate it. Scary enough for a company relying on consumer-led insights on product design, isn’t it?

So if not through consumer-insights, then how do companies like Apple design such successful products as the iPad, or the iPhone? They sell solutions, rather than products. Here’s how – Read More »

Around Valentine’s Day, what could be worse than unreciprocated love? For many marketers, this seems to be a year-round pain – the leads they so painstakingly manage to generate do not convert to actual purchases. MLC research shows, on an average only 25% of marketing-generated leads result in desired follow up and results. It is but natural that marketers would try to enhance the quantity and quality of leads they generate, to result in higher conversion.

MLC’s resource center on Lead Generation is a rich source of resources on lead generation for marketers. I’ve collated a couple of best-in-class lead generation strategies that can help you generate more and better qualified leads: Read More »

It’s almost time to say goodbye to 2011, and to things that worried us this year. Judging from our conversations, many of you spent the year tweaking your customer segmentation strategies. If only segmenting was as simple as they teach in Marketing 101! The problem marketers face with textbook-ish methods of segmentation is that they’re, well, suited to the textbook world.

While segmentation can be approached in many ways, some of MLC’s members have evolved best-in-class winning segmentation strategies that have propelled them to success. Presented below are a couple of strategies our members have used for customer segmentation and consumer segmentation. The key take-away, as you read through these examples is that these are simple to enforce, yet innovatively different ways to segments your customers and consumers. Read More »

How would you feel if you were served a dish which you never ordered, instead of the one that you really wanted? I can imagine feelings of shock and disappointment. Switch gears to marketing. Many B2B customers today find themselves unpleasantly surprised, when companies design offerings for them that they never asked for. Customers complain that companies claim to design products “just like they wanted”, except that they never wanted it!

Which brings up the question – how can B2B companies get better at customer understanding and at serving their customers? We’ve gathered some of MLC’s research over time to help marketers identify what their customers want. The following will help marketers gain an insight into their customers’ mind: Read More »

“How can you make my company better?” – a question that customers are increasingly asking B2B marketers. Armed with information, and given increasing purchase accountability, growth-minded customers are making strategic purchases to improve their capabilities. Marketers, on the other hand, are finding it increasingly difficult to muse customers about how they’re uniquely positioned to solve their current problems. Here’s how one MLC member answered the question. Read More »

Click it, type it or just ask Siri – today information is available as never before. Given their information choices today, the ability to process it is becoming a limiting factor for consumers. The result – a lot of marketing messaging is wasteful, as consumers pay no attention to it – not because they don’t want to, but because they cannot. So should marketers shout louder to grab attention? Absolutely not.

Focused on expanding the share of voice, marketers may be guilty of paying very little attention to streamlining the information path for their consumers. In a noisy marketplace, consumers today are faced with analysis-paralysis, and increasing marketing messaging has done nothing, but confused them. This has resulted in delayed or reduced responsiveness to marketing messages. So what should marketers do? Read More »

Picture this – you have a great product, and you’re pitching it to a client. You talk about how your product will help their business grow. And just as you speak, the client throws back a number of statistics at you and in turn convinces you that your product isn’t suitable for their firm. Does this sound familiar?

Armed with unprecedented market information, buyers today are harder to impress than before. So is it impossible for B2B marketers exhibit the real value of their products to today’s empowered customers? Absolutely not – as we learned from MLC members FedEx.

FedEx realized that the primary reason clients don’t understand solution ROI is because it is hard for them to quantify it. So instead of quantifying solution value to their clients, FedEx created ValuePoint – an online calculator that allows clients to enter their own assumptions and customize value calculations. Read More »

Marketing Strategy - Manufacturing

We recently heard from a couple of our members in the B2B manufacturing space about their saturation with product marketing, and increasing noise from competition in their industry domain. Many of them were chasing the ever-eluding differentiator against their competitors.

Our advice to them has been to read our work on influencing the empowered customer that predicts a larger role for B2B marketing in the sales process. B2B marketing must tag-team with sales to diagnose and respond to customer needs drive urgency toward the purchase. At the same time as they need to play a larger role in sales, B2B marketers are used to segmenting based on who customers are and what they are buying. They must now move a step further and address why customers are buying and how they can differentiate and adapt to the evolving buying process.

Presented here are our learnings from our B2B MarComm Awards Showcase, on what B2B manufacturing companies can do to make their marketing campaigns differentiated, and successful:

• Own a higher-order need: Conventional B2B manufacturers maybe tempted to talk more about the unparalleled efficacy of their product, but the product differences can be less obvious to the buyers. Companies can benefit from a positioning differentiation, by positioning themselves as fulfillers of the overarching needs their product caters to. For example, AEL Mining introduced electronic explosives with a focus on safety and well-being of miners, rather than product attribute. The campaign got an average of 10,000 visitors a month.
• If you’re a leader, flaunt it: This might sound clichéd, but companies must emphatically claim leadership in categories in which they enjoy a sustained competitive advantage. When Siemens ran its impact campaign, it positioned itself as the only true partner for American lawmakers to answer the Nation’s toughest questions. This reduced the risk perception of the company and led to impressive gains for the brand in customer loyalty, consideration and purchase.
• Break communication conventions: Let’s admit it, manufacturing companies are often guilty of creating marketing collateral with uninspiring copy and dull imagery. Cummins realized that in their industry, the ads are usually conventional with trucking equipment and parts photos shown. The company stepped over the acceptable bounds and norms with their big and bold, Cummins red identity in their “Hard to Miss” campaign. They made message the king – 1-800-DIESELS got a lot of recollection and recognition.
• Market internally first: Since the B2B sales and marketing processes rely heavily on each other, any marketing campaign must be sold internally first. Sales reps must be made aware of the strategic objectives of the campaign, and given tactical guidance on achieving the objective. Like Emerson, prepare internally facing marketing collateral before you market externally.

MLC members can register for our upcoming Webinar on the Best of B2B MarComm Awards 2011, which will feature the winning entries of this year’s B2B MarComm Awards to be held at The Sales and Marketing Summit in Las Vegas.