Alberta Business Marketing

Historically when it has come to b-to-b communications functions an inordinate amount of time and money has been spent on promise-based advertising in an attempt to mold what buyers think and how they should act. However, there are signs of positive change as organizations continue to shift away from mass communications vehicles disconnected from the rest of marketing and sales to strategies that are more innovative, integrated and accountable in nature. In this post, I will review recent data gathered from our 2009 Reputation Management Survey. This survey examined a wide range of issues, including strategy, budget, tactics and measurement. I selected three key issues to focus on here.

1. Integration with demand creation. The last time we conducted our Reputation Survey (mid- 2007), we established that while many organizations understood the need to link reputation and demand creation activities, more than half reported they did not currently do so. In this survey, 49% of respondents reported that formal linkage to demand creation activities is the most important aim of reputation. More specifically, when asked about how often they actively seed demand creation, 33% reported that they do so more than half the time, 42% reported that they do so between 25% and 50% of the time, and the remaining 25% do so less than 25% of the time. While this is certainly a noticeable improvement in the numbers of respondents creating this formal linkage at all, the relatively infrequent percentages indicate there is still significant work to do in terms of more closely aligning communications with field, product and channel marketing functions in an overall campaign structure.

2. Annual audit establishment. It’s as difficult to devise a communications strategy when you have no idea where you stand as it is to ask for directions when you’re unable to tell someone where you are. In 2007, only 37% of survey respondents indicated they had conducted a full audit of communications activities completed over the past 12 months. In 2009, 75% of our sample had done so. The most frequently used approach was through the use of primary research (31%), followed by the use of an outside agency (25%). This large shift in understanding the value of and actually conducting a communications audit is a very positive sign about organization attitudes concerning communications activities; however, it also increases accountability and the need to show results and impact.

3. Social media measurement. With social media becoming more present in the b-to-b world, we asked respondents how they were measuring the impact of these initiatives. The newness of these technologies shows in that roughly 47% of respondents using their internal communications function to measure social media; 45% are not measuring at all; and 8% are using outside agencies. While social media is the flavor of the year right now when it comes to marketing technologies, it won’t be too long before senior management begins to seek a return on any investment made.

A strong, sound reputation is not built on flash; leading b-to-b organizations tie how they communicate directly to improvements in demand creation ability, as well as the productivity of individual sales reps. When functions such as analyst relations, public relations and social media are tightly woven into a framework, the frequency of communications efforts that are distant and disconnected from the remainder of the organization drops sharply, and the consistency with which messages are delivered increases. While there is certainly work left to do – particularly in terms of building discipline and rigor around social media – we are encouraged by the results in our survey this go-around.

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