Katherine (Ventres) C
President | marketingFOLIO. Sales-Ready Marketing & Strategy Consultant. Expertise | B2B buyer behavior/decision process
Why should an industrial B2B service provider break the mold and start an expert blog?
If you have any examples of a blog or other social media tactics that have worked with gritty B2B markets--particularly where complex buying processes are involved--, I'd like to hear about them.
If you have an opinion about the value of social media communications aiming to reach executives in the B2B sector, please share it.
Good Answers (2)
Frederik V
User Experience Designer (Usability / Information Architecture / e-marketing / semantic HTML & CSS / SEO)
Best Answers in: E-Commerce (5), Web Development (3), Search Marketing (2), Market Research and Definition (1), Blogging (1), Software Development (1)
A blog for an industrial B2B service provider can be a good choice, if it fits in your total internet strategy.
let me explain:
Your situation:
- All the details & benefits of your product are probably not completely known to the possible customers.
- Your product is probably expensive & probably only bought once (or in limited numbers by one client)
- It's not easy to find good feedback from others about your industry or product. (referrals, testimonials, awards, reviews, guides ....)
- buying your product is not something you decide suddenly, your clients possibly had to do a lot of research.
What you need to do to get leads:
- You have to educate the visitor about your product, what the benefits are, how much work you spent on it, what you all can do with it, ...
- You have to show that you are an expert on the field.
How a blog can help you in the 3 keys of online marketing:
Acquisition : getting people to your website or landing page
- a blog, or an in depth article on the blog generates more links from other industry websites & blogs. --> can result in high quality ongoing traffic.
- RSS feeds: much safer then to subscribe to a newsletter, less aggressive, the visitor sees a list of your articles & chooses which one to read.
Conversion: persuading them to contact you for leads.
- from anxiety to trust: show case studies (which can count as informative client testimonials), show that you are an export & generate trust.
- from confusing to clarity: give details about your work process, you have a chanse to go into detail about all the benefits, you can educate your visitor.
- from alienate to affinity: in case studies you can highlight certain problems that a client had & how you solve them, a lot of visitors will recognize these problems (as they may have them too) & see your product as a valuable solution.
Retention: deepen the relationship and increase its lifetime value
- you can showcase & highlight new functionality, services, ...
- by getting positive comments from other industry leaders, you will get more valued as an expert.
- ....
As you can see, a blog can be very valuable for your business, but be sure to have/do the following:
- make the blog part of your website strategy
- implement the blog nicely in your website (cross linking, from your product details to your blog & from your blog to contextual pages on your website)
- get the necessary call to actions in your blog. (contact us if you want to know more, if you're interested etc ....)
- target your blog for your clients, not the other industry experts. this means that you don't have to use jargon, speak the customers language, try to focus on his problems & your solutions.
This is just a short summary, but I hope it will make things clear for you.
Hi, Katherine,
Pleased to meet you, if virtually. John Edelman forwarded your question my way.
Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems makes the best case for B2B blogging, especially for niche markets (e.g., Java software development for medical devices) where companies are not likely to fund communications through PR, marketing, tradeshows, or advertising.
Sometimes, though, B2B companies follow the "Wrong Tail" with their blog strategies. That is, they figure that if there are 100 million blogs out there, then at *least* two dozen *must* discuss *exactly* that business that the company is in. Nevertheless, the economics of blogging is such that you can inexpensively reach *the* audiences you're going for, but only if you make the blog part of the company's DNA.
When planning a corporate blog, another important thing is to consider is what the company is about (e.g., supply-chain management, logistics, ERP) and what that company is *really* about (e.g., agile corporations, economic competitiveness, globalization). This allows it to serve its niche while opening the door for a slightly broader audience.
I'm at phil(dot)gomes(at)edelman(dot)com if you have any questions.
Best,
/pmg
More Answers (7)
Kent L
President, Anvil Media and Formic Media
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (12), Search Marketing (10), Public Relations (5), Advertising (1), Direct Marketing (1), Guerrilla Marketing (1), Business Analytics (1), Career Management (1), Web Development (1)
I hate to break the bad news, but creating an expert blog for a B2B company is not breaking the mold, but more of jumping on the bandwagon. We helped launch a B2B Web services company, Marqui, via the blogosphere, back in 2004. Due to their innovative approach of paying top-tier bloggers, they received tons of media coverage. We learned a ton on the way of course.
More recently (April 2005) we helped Maxcess International (a manufacturer) create the first expert blog in their industry. It's been very effective at generating awareness, credibility and thought leadership ever since. I've included a link to our Resources section, which includes a handful of article on blogging specifically. Good luck.
Links:
Kindly learn to connect your Business agenda to the real Business marketers
Thanks
Todd S
Expert in e-commerce, internet marketing, social technologies; focused on the motorcycle and powersports industries
Best Answers in: E-Commerce (1), Web Development (1)
I think that the biggest hurdle that you're going to run into is the "chicken and egg" problem.
1) Typically a legitimately recognized expert is a pretty busy person doing "real work"
2) A new blog takes quite a while to build an audience without significant marketing expenses (in the B2B space that can mean a lot of off-line advertising in things like trade journals, etc.)
So now you've got the issue of trying to convince an expert at your disposal to spend a lot of time writing a blog that for quite a while no one is going to even be reading.
Yet without a lot of good, targeted content no one is ever going to find or read the blog!
It's like having someone with the gravitas of Einstein giving a lecture to an empty hall.
So I'd say that if you really want to make it work in a B2B space you need:
1) A writer that people really are going to want to read
2) A significant marketing budget to "prime the pump" until the blog starts catching on it's own.
The good thing about this is that if you are in a very specialized / targeted industry it should not take long for your particular blog/site to start ranking well due to the long-tail, niche nature of what you're writing about.
For instance, I've been involved in e-commerce and internet/next-gen marketing in the motorcycle and powersports space for over 4 years. I've recently started focusing on providing consulting services on a more formal basis.
It's a total B2B play where I'm writing to/for the OEM's, disti's, and retailers/dealers in that space.
Because of the sort of mom-and-pop nature of this market, I have the distinction of currently being sort of one of the only "experts" that's focusing on this niche.
Good news: if you Google "motorcycle e-commerce" my site www.radicalpowersports.com is #1 after only like 8 months in existance
"Bad" news: there's not a lot of people looking for this stuff now. So I sort of feel like I'm talking to an empty room. the upside is however that when someone does stumble across my little site, they are VERY targeted, and VERY interested.
But I also write for the leading offline trade publication for the motorcycle and powersports dealer community so I've got that offline leverage that helps drive qualified traffic.
So, there's some general info from my own experience. Without more specific information on what market you're looking to play in or what your specific goals are with regards to providing the information in question that's about all I can offer now.
If you wanted to provide more information on what you're looking to do specifically you might be able to get some more actionable ideas.
I've provided a link to a pretty good SearchengineLand post on B2B blogging that you might find useful.
Links:
DON'T
Just sit back and watch your competition do it.. :-)
If you’re a vendor, the decision to write blogs depends first of all on whether your customers are actually reading them. Not everybody is riding the same technology wave at the same time. Some of us are into heavy surfing, some are in the shallows, and some are still on the beach, working hard and generally ignoring the hullabaloo. I still meet people in B2B markets who basically use email and little else. Don’t underestimate your customers’ technical savvy, but don’t assume they share your Web 2.0 enthusiasms either.
Joe H
B-to-b ad agency emerging-trends strategist, president, B2B Inc., a full-service ad/marketing agency.
If gritty B2B markets are your focus, get your hands dirty. Social media tactics are just starting to evolve in the b-to-c world, and are on their way in b-to-b. It's a matter of diving in, poking around, finding the blogs you think will be best for you, experimenting, measuring, then fine-tuning. Social media changes every day but you need to simply get started and test, test. And be sure that your bloggers are true experts, and that they stay on it. By the way, blogs are a great way to enhance your SEO.
Katherine, how are you? This is an interesting topic. I haven't seen B2B service providers doing this, but it makes sense if the companies can attract the foot traffic to their blogs.
I hope all is well with you.
Best regards, Zeena
