For marketers who walk the walk

These are thrilling yet difficult times for B2B technology marketers. The end of 2011 finds us in a buyer’s market, having to work harder and smarter to encourage sustainable customer loyalty and brand advocacy – but also having a wealth of new tools and channels to help us achieve our goals. Guest blogger, Laura Nolan, Director at Marketing Options International introduces a great new video series.

With so many opportunities and so much to learn, it’s always great to get advice from others in the industry. Technology Marketing in Mind, a new, year-long video series from Marketing Options International and the IDM, features senior UK technology marketers sharing their insights and advice on some of the key challenges facing the industry today.

Available to view now, the first three videos focus on understanding and connecting with technology buyers in today’s tough marketplace. Here’s a quick flavour of what you’ll see in each one:

1. Understanding Today’s Technology Buyer
What motivates buyers? And how can we appeal to them in ways that make our brand and products stand out?

Old questions maybe, but still crucial as we head into 2012. Autodesk’s Miikka Arala offers some powerful answers, saying that naïve interest in new technology is long gone, and that in the light of the economic downturn, three basic motivations are driving most technology buying decisions:

• Cut costs
• Gain competitive advantage
• Increase revenue

 But appealing to reason is only one factor in the equation. Most of the marketers interviewed focus on the importance of addressing a buyer’s emotional side too. After all, people buy from people.

Microsoft’s Allister Frost adds some compelling evidence to the case for appealing to buyers as rounded human beings, highlighting the current ‘consumerisation of IT’ – our desire to take the technologies that make our home lives easier, and apply them in our place of work.

2. Communicating the Value of Complex Technology
With customer decision-making teams now including non-technical executives (CFOs, LOB heads, even the CEO in some cases), this video looks at how marketers can find stronger, simpler and more compelling ways to communicate product benefits.

IBM’s Pete Jakob explains how benefits must always be articulated in terms of what’s on the customer’s mind, rather than product features and functions:

“Our clients do not care about our products. They care about their issues, their own challenges…. we have to speak to them in terms, in language and at frequencies… that are relevant, pertinent and respectful…”

Silver Lining Solutions’ Mike Havard offers some practical advice on what those terms, languages and frequencies might be, outlining four top tips for making complex propositions simple:

• Tell stories to bring a product’s benefits to life
• Sell the vision, not just the specific solution
• Get your customers communicating for you, sharing their positive experiences in their own words, through user groups and forums
• Push the idea that investing in your product will promote ‘connectedness’ – helping the customer’s existing IT investments work together better

3. Building Relationships and Loyalty
Buying cycles in the technology industry are notoriously long and complex, and marketers need to understand where a customer is in the cycle in order to build productive and lasting relationships.

In this short video, Progress Software’s Andrew Barraclough suggests tactics for marketing around licence renewal times, while Saba’s Ian Baxter looks at how the cloud enables software customers to switch vendors more easily – and what marketers can do to encourage them to stay loyal.

Meanwhile Cisco’s Tony Hart explores the value of really understanding a customer’s business, and CompTIA’s Lisa Archer shares practical strategies for building stronger inter-organisational ties.

You can watch all three videos here – and we’d love to know what you think. Whose observations most accurately reflect your own experience? And are there important points and considerations you feel the featured marketers have missed?

Post a comment