Survey: What’s working in B2B digital channels?

In The recent study conducted by Omobono, in partnership with The Marketing Society and Circle Research, B2B marketers gave digital channels a resounding thumbs up*. This was both in terms of their overall importance in delivering marketing priorities and in terms of their effectiveness in doing so. No surprises here; we live in a digital world, with colleagues and customers spread throughout the UK and across the globe. Digital channels, in all forms, are now essential for communication. The challenge has now become: ‘How can we use digital channels to reach our audiences appropriately?’ At its best, the online space becomes an extension of the actual experience of the company. As Mark Terry, digital development manager of Edenred, puts it: ‘We’re becoming an online company in terms of our service delivery. Our digital marketing activity has to mirror the company’s excellence in this field, and is seen as critical from senior management down.’ At its worst, the digital world can be detrimental to a business, according to Stuart Newland, global offer development manager at Castrol. He suggests that in B2B marketing ‘too many businesses use digital channels in an attempt to “be something to everybody”, which is more of a B2C thought process. In B2B we can’t spend time with everybody.’

lack of benchmarks

The question that B2B marketers frequently face, however, is that sometimes it’s hard to know what From Francesca Brosan b2b excellence, or even best in class, looks like. While case studies abound for consumercentric digital marketing, a constant cry from the B2B marketing community is how difficult it is to find out what others are doing. Perhaps this is unsurprising as so much B2B activity is either heavily reliant on industry-specific channels or is selective in its targeting and closely guarded for fear of competition. But the upshot is that marketers find it hard to benchmark their activities, know if they are doing the right thing, or if there is something else that might work better. It’s a constant challenge for all levels. ‘Even big businesses like Castrol struggle to know whether we are doing the right thing,’ according to Newland. The report, What Works Where in B2B Digital Marketing, sets out to establish what the marketing priorities were for senior B2B marketers, and how they were spending their time and money in pursuit of common goals. It also explored how effective the chosen digital channels were felt to be, as well as the ways in which success was measured. Finally, respondents were asked to articulate the significant barriers faced in achieving their goals.

Three top channel priorities

The first finding is that there are huge similarities in terms of behaviour. Most B2B marketers are investing the bulk of their budgets and time in three core areas – website development, email marketing and social media. Websites. This is no surprise. The significant amounts of money invested in corporate websites (more than 30% of budgets and nearly the same percentage in time) reflect the central importance of having an engaging web presence that adequately reflects the company’s skills and expertise. Email marketing. Although the bane of the recipient’s life, this still allows a level of targeting accuracy and timing not available from other channels. Mark Terry views email as underrated, but admits that it’s important to look at the inbox from an audience’s perspective. He says: ‘Email is great for blasting out a message quickly but is often misused, due to its relative ease, with too much content and far too much volume. All too often people don’t think about whether the messages coming from a company are consistent.’

Social media.

The appearance of social media very near the top of the list confirms how far this channel has established its role in B2B, an area that has traditionally lagged behind B2C in terms of new marketing activities. It is felt to be the third most effective medium in terms of budget allocated, reflecting how the world has changed in recent years. More of a surprise was its performance when judged against specific marketing priorities. It tops the poll for effectiveness in terms of ‘raising brand awareness’ but lags behind email for ‘deepening customer relationships’. This result is somewhat unexpected given the immediacy of social media and its capability for conversation versus the structure of an outgoing ‘donot- reply’ email campaign. This highlights one of the interesting discoveries stemming from the research: while channels have changed, their use still seems to be based on established behaviours.

Mobile lacks appeal

One other unexpected finding from the survey was that mobile is not yet seen as providing real value. Despite the fact that every year that passes is ‘mobile’s year’ according to the media, B2B marketers look unconvinced. A tiny proportion of their budget and time is being allocated and perceptions of effectiveness are weak. SMS and MMS in particular are not felt to be suitable channels for B2B marketing messaging.

marketing priorities

The report reveals that customer engagement is critical, with nearly 80% of respondents putting ‘deepening customer relationships’ as one of their top three. Also within the top three, ‘building thought leadership and developing the brand positioning’ rank highly. Interestingly, the channels seen as being of ‘lesser importance’ – online video, podcasts and webinars – are perceived as performing strongly against many of the top priorities, particularly thought leadership. Given that a far smaller proportion of digital marketing budgets are allocated to these channels, along with microsites (smaller sites dedicated to a particular initiative, campaign, topic or business relationship), they are one of the areas in which B2B marketers might do well to invest further. The report suggests that ‘getting buy-in internally’ and ‘lack of resources’ are significant issues for B2B marketers. It’s perhaps the case that ‘newer’ methods are seen as key tools in B2B but, until a technology is more established in the marketer’s toolkit, justifying an ROI internally is much harder. This is echoed by the fact that email marketing and website development, both rather ‘old’ technologies now, are getting more of marketers’ budgets. The longer-standing techniques are perhaps more accepted by stakeholders, finance and the C-suite.

‘Living the brand’ is low priority

As a marketing priority, ‘Ensuring the organisation is living the brand’ came lowest of all, with only 13% of respondents marking it as a priority, and no one putting it first. Given the apparent importance of building customer relationships and brand awareness, it seems contradictory that such low importance was given to engaging the internal audience with the business. Perhaps marketers are struggling with budget and resource issues, and one of the impacts is that they simply cannot cover all the bases. The marketing effort does not join up the external and the internal. This leaves a disconnect between the business and marketing goals, which should align. Ruth Rowan, UK marketing director of BT Global Services, says the most important thing that Global Services marketing has been doing is working with the sales force, supporting their conversation with the end client. For her, linking marketing and sales is critical to success.

insufficient attention to relationships

The deepening of customer relationships isn’t always reflected in channel behaviour. There is more evidence that marketers are continuing to push messages at their customers rather than enabling them to explore and access the information themselves.

Joined-up marketing Still lacking

So it looks like the challenges for digital B2B marketers are not the digital channels themselves. They are using a range of tactics, maintaining a sane balance of time and budget and have clarity over what’s working – at least in terms of being able to track analytics and leads generated. The real challenge is that marketers are struggling to deliver joined-up marketing that links top-line objectives with corporate behaviour.

conclusion

Not surprisingly, time and money are at the top of the list of barriers to success. But what is surprising is that the most important priority for B2B marketing – getting internal alignment – is not a top priority. As Caroline Taylor, vice-president of marketing, communications and citizenship at IBM UK suggested at the inaugural Marketing Society B2B event: ‘B2B marketing should be holistic, align your marketing goals with your business goals.’ If B2B marketers work alongside those people in control of the purse strings toward the same goals, then lack of resources and coordination should be far less of an issue.

 * What Works Where in B2B Digital Marketing was conducted with more than 70 senior B2B marketers, with responsibility for more than £33m budget in April 2011 by Circle Research and in partnership with The Marketing Society. Available from http:// omob.co/hZzG82

 Francesca Brosan is chairman and head of strategic planning at Omobono. [email protected]