Social Media Will Force Integrated B2B Marketing
By Kipp Bodnar
Mon, Dec 7, 2009
One of B2B marketing’s biggest failures has been what I call the “bolt it on” approach. This approach refers to a lack of integrated marketing and the tendency to bolt on new marketing disciplines such as e-mail, social media, etc. Organizations tend to figure out how they can use these new disciplines and even how to use new specialist employees or agencies to help manage this new marketing opportunity. However, most organizations fail to do the one important thing: ask how these efforts integrate with the work they are already doing.
Why? Lots of answers to this question. They think they “old” stuff works and they are still testing the new stuff. They don’t understand new forms of digital marketing and leave them to specialists that do. They don’t want to change how the business has always done things. Most importantly it seems that internal marketers, agencies, and consultants fail to take the time to understand the other marketing disciplines, regardless if they are old or new. This lack of understanding prohibits integration. B2B marketers need to know how to put the puzzle together.
Social Media Will Force Business-To-Business Marketing Integration
If integration hasn’t happened up to this point, what makes me so certain that social media can finally be the right catalyst? The short answer is that social media changes business communications, and as a result, it impacts many organizational functions, rather than isolating the changes to one person in the marketing department.
The overall marketing impacts of social media can include:
1. Facilitating customer dialogue through two-way real-time communications platforms.
2. Lead generation
3. Influence on search engine marketing
4. Awareness to improve response to paid advertising and direct mail
5. Media and influencer engagement
6. Data gathering for CRM platform and sales team.
When It Comes To Marketing ROI The Sum Is Worth Much More Than Its Parts
The other reason that social media will force integration, is that it is emerging in a economic climate where B2B companies are focused on measuring return on investment across the sales funnel and marketing department. If you look at my list above, many of those points are the goals of many traditional marketing and communications disciplines. Social media can directly improve the impact of each of those marketing functions, but it is critical to understand that traditional marketing such as direct response, print advertising, etc. have an important role in improving the impact and effectiveness of social media strategies.
Understanding how the different marketing efforts overlap to create a complete story to the customer is where the true opportunities lie for CMOs and other marketing leadership looking to maximize ROI in these current business conditions.
Ideas To Help Integrate Marketing
The first thing to always do it is to research and try to find a company that has successfully integrated their marketing. Then ask them how they did it or try to reverse engineer their strategy. If you can’t find a company that you think is doing it right, then I would recommend starting out asking the marketing department and/or agencies these questions:
1. Are all public relations, social media and direct marketing working together to achieve the same search engine optimization goals?
2. Is social media integrated into sales materials, direct mail, and advertising?
3. Are strategies being developed with all disciplines in mind?
4. What marketing functions function as “bolt on” solutions right now?
5. What functions are currently measuring ROI?
6. How can we best reign in marketing staff to understand the full range of communications opportunities in the department?
Do you see social media forcing integrated marketing in your organization? What other points support integration?
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Tags: B2B marketing, B2B Social Media, Integrated Marketing, Social Media Integration
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So true, Kip. Not only will social media force integrated B2B marketing, but also integrated marketing within the organization. Social media is quickly becoming a cross functional responsiblity… not just marketing. For example, sales, tech support and customer service are becoming more integrated with social media programs that may have originated in marketing. Even the accounting department is getting drawn into social media conversations when a customer has a question about an invoice.
As more B2B companies engage with clients and prospects via social media, the expectation is that they can get information and answers to their questions, which may not just be marketing-related. Social media is quickly becoming a company-wide initiative and marketing departments in 2010 should plan on integrating other departments into the social media program. This will ensure good social media practices and brand experience standards.
Happy Holidays!
Joan
@copywriter4u
Joan,
Thanks for your comments and your additions. Everyone reading these comments should follow you on Twitter. You share some good stuff!
Great stuff. The need to measure results and a heightened focus on analytics will be the main driver in forcing integration. Social media may change communications, and eventually, how more businesses operate, but metrics and results are what make companies really take note and decide to act.
Like you mentioned, it doesn’t make sense to take the “bolt it on” approach.