California Dreaming: Challenges in Infrastructure and development

While the focus of this blog is primarily b2b marketing and more specifically how it relates to industrial machinery marketing, I would like to digress a little in this post as I am presently in California meeting with our sales team and touring the surrounding industrial areas of Fresno, San Diego and Riverside on a photo shoot focused on our excellent construction products.  Having not been to California from sometime several impressions are what I would like to highlight.  Namely, the heightend erosion and decay of the great highways and byways that seem to be busting at the seams with traffic (read users) in strark contrast to the limited trucking and industrial activity usually seen in past visits.
It appears the need for construction equipment should be at an all time high and that an infrastructural boom would be in the offing due the real and present issues with traffic, but this of course is not the case.  In fact sales to contractors, and construction companies are at near unseen low, right across many competitor brands and suppliers who in past years lead their perspective markets.  Many have speculated as to the root causes from the Democratic debt loads to the mismanagement of key State funds earmarked for roads and infrastructural development over a decade or so in California.  From my limited outsider perspective, there needs to be a chicken before the egg approach to revitalization of public roads and bridges.  Namely, communities need to remember how their roads came into being in the first place.  Development and social pressure for services were driven by core business needs.  Put another way the exact opposite of  'build it and they will come'. Rather they are here and we need to build it approach.  This fact saddly is lost on many municipalities that like households need to decide if shiny Xmas lights and fancy trimming will take priority over more mundane but fundamental needs such as rent/mortages and utility bills.  No one or government can spend their way out of debt but at some point the reality that key assets such as roads and bridges are necessary and ignoring their repair and upgrade will only end badly.

Global Shift in Wealth by 2016: What it means for Business Marketers

According to all major economic think tanks, the economies of China and possibly India are on track to surpass that of the U.S. by 2016.  With the demographic profile of India  as young and educatted middle class combined with English, we will see a growing shift in Wealth in Asia to unprecedented levels since the middle ages.  In fact, there are more billionaires in India than anywhere else except the U.S. with the return of many high level US trained executives to Asia in recent years and the rise of Asia focused MBA programs what will the Marketing world of 2016 possibly look like.
Frankly, with the emergence of web/social media  and soon the semantic web (think a learning web where your choices determine the brands, media and news channels that will be presented to you - as a personal segment of one) the world will be a truly, flat and wired world in lines with Thomas Friedman's well read series of books on the subject.  But I would argue, that with the increased  customization and specialization of information combined with the mega trends towards mobile and real time augmented tools, think a hyper version of google maps, comsumers will more and more fall into electonic tribes with marketing barriers that could be as real as geography and language were just a few decades earlier.
   I believe, as B2B marketers we must prepare to evolve with social media, cross promotional platforms that will strength our messaging, almost akin to a chorus strengthens the power and richness of the human voice.  There will be a continued evolvement of both media platforms and tools but the need to design and implement robust messaging that will engage real people where and when they could realistically evaluate, purchase and use our valued products or service offerings is essential.  The greatest danger I see for the future is complaceny, either in testing new media outlets and tools or ensuring  we are collaborating in the success of those who are using or potentially could use are products and services.  With this in mind the world of 2016 will be Asia focused, young, wired and multifaceted in both economic, cultural and technological needs, but it will be very familiar if we begin today to embrace the possibilities in terms of added consumer input, competitive intelligence and market responsiveness. 

Black Friday: lessons for B2B Marketing

With Thanksgiving Turkey dinner not even fully digested and plenty of leftover still to be eaten thousands have been whipped into a buying frenzy all over the America, hunting irresistible bargains just in time to put them under the Christmas tree.  What is of interest in Canada and elsewhere globally the targeting of discounts by Canadians on line and the rebuttal sales campaigns by Canadian retailers to ensure they made every effort to capture buyer's dollars before they flew south for the winter bargains.  As a marketer whose main focus is international technical mining equipment and other technical products, what lesson does this retail extravaganza have for B2B Marketing? 
Well, in a nut shell it is the ability to affect positive buyer behaviour.  We sadly in the B2B space have in many instances convinced our selves that our markets buy predominantly in technical, reason based factors and are thus immune to emotionally charged calls to action.  The reality is emotionally charged factors are at work in all purchasing decisions whether they are retail or capital in nature, because to put it bluntly we are dealing we real people.  As such, it would be erroneous for B2B marketers to not seek to develop campaigns aimed at charging buying prospects with time based incentives, elegant value adds that are limited to a specific campaign and a sense of high drama when launching or introducing new technical products.  Our customers will by their very nature evaluate comparatively our technical specification and total ROI, but underneath all this left brain thinking the right brain emotional balances will be weighing many of the intangibles that are key to any buy decision making:
-Status and related status affects of ownership
-personal, career risk management and group approval
-reduction of effort and or workload-peace of mind

We need to look at Black Friday, Cyber Monday and many other retail events to see what triggers such as  price and related buyer behaviours can teach us so that we to can ignite positive sales engagement and growth on demand.

5 ways to Create real Value: B2B

What is really needed into todays ever competitve market place is to genuinely provide value for both existing and prospective customers, but the age old question is who is going to do it, pay for it or deliver this added value?  The more refined question is how can we create real value with what is already available, what elegant trade offs can be provided to create real added value to customers.

Here are a list of useful ideas:

1) Industry standards explained:  I don't know how many times I have contracted or commissioned a service only to discover that their where added fees, permits or taxes that only after purchasing turn out to be standard practises  perculiar to this industry such as airport taxes, courtesy fees etc.  Many new clients would appreciate and value having a clear report/brochure outlining such standard practises and reducing unwelcome surprises.
2) Comparison information: Many complex product offerings require near expert level understanding to adequately compare features and benefits.  A simple, direct feature-benefit card or link could assist and inform buyers decision process, which is a real value to busy buyers.
3) How to: Simple direct videos and instructions should be provided already but any stand alone video, even of low production quality that assists a common use or feature is greatly appreciated. Such as crowd sourced video of best way to pack your product for travel, mount on car, etc. Will win friends in the market.
4) How not to videos: Many product suppliers shy away from such negative content but common problems are best explained by reacting what causes the problem to educate customers not to do this.
Timex after their famous 'takes a licking and keeps on ticking' ads of the early 80's had some major warranty issues with consumers who had hit their product with a hammer on purpose, this of course was sorted by a what not to do video ad.
5)Crowd sourcing: Without a doubt this is becoming the best elegant trade off in marketing today, think Wikipedia for your products.  The more you can build a community that is passionate, informed and willing to share insights, answers and suggestions to it product community the more value can be provided with little extra resources.

New Boss in China- Real Branding opportunity for China

Like so many others in the industrial and mining global marketing space, we have been trying to digest the recent one party leadership or succession plan/race in  China.  At first glance, many of the elements of choosing a new leader within the planned communist system have similarities to  engimatic and cloistered procedure for choosing a new Catholic Pontiff.  While, the Politburo decision (25 member council)  is conducted by the directions of the central committee, consisting of 371 seating party members, the choice really rests in the upper echelon of the standing directorate of 9 members.  With a limited two term mandate of five years each this procedure has led to little in the way of surprises in the transmission of one of the most coveted and powerful political positions in the world today.
What is interesting from a B2B marketing perspective is given the enormity of the role and the global attention being directed towards the proceedings in Beijing, its quite puzzling the limited public exposure both locally and internationally about the character, history and temperament of the key candidates. With pundits predicting that Xi Jinping will bag the top seat as President and most likely Li Keqiang the Premiership, the question is who are these guys?
The nature of a one party system and the penchant of Chinese inscrutability its not surprising the limited public profiles on offer in stark comparison to western 'tell all' democratic campaigns.  The internal alliance building strategies of the Chinese Communist party are well known and can account for many of the gaps in our knowledge of the prospective leaders.  Given the global and local influence these men (at least in this round of key delegates) wield it will be a real challenge diplomatically to ensure China's new bosses are positively accepted both locally and internationally.
  As an open mental marketing exercise, I would suggest this challenge could if handled skillfully turnout to be a real opportunity, much like the initial warming to the west that Deng Xiaoping orchestrated in the early 80's after the demise of Mao Zedong.  What seems critical is to fill in many holes in the bios and at the same time to ensure policies related to trade and the environment are maintained, and if change is on the cards that it allows some collaborative elements to the wider global audience.  It would be my deepest hope that given the economic and political rise of China the new faces seek to smile warmly on increased trade and access to local markets.

Innovation is no longer Innovative

Its official the word 'innovative', along with 'unique' and possibly 'green' have become some of the most over used B2B marketing adjectives.  If this is in fact becoming the case, what has contributed to it and honestly can anything substantial be done to fix it in the future.  Everyday we see the birth and death of words and phrases from our common lexicon, and far brighter and educated individuals can explain the vagaries of why we still use 'uncouth' and not 'couth' or how 'cool' became a measure of style over relative temperature.  What is of interest to the tribe of marketing is when has a word, phrase or expression met or passed its sell by date?  Curiously, in the B2C camp of marketing this is far more vitriolic and cut throat topic, having brands rise and fall over a change in phraseology.  The fortunes of Nike in the late 80's with its then newly minted 'Just do it', is not quite capturing the same imaginative space with some of its newer brands, seeking edgier slogans such as 'nothing is impossible'.
 Generally, marketing/advertising/branding 101 theory implies one needs to reposition a campaign/message/brand when customers vote with their feet/eyes/dollars( and Yuan where the case maybe) for a fresher alternative.  However, in the B2B marketing world where quantitative project criteria tend to significantly outweigh emotional ones in buying decisions, many lean toward the product is the message and as such does not need the same marketing efforts as consumer goods.  In my limited opinion, this is a serious misunderstanding of the value of B2B Marketing's role and value.  Words need to reflect thoughts, ideas and ultimately feelings, that can convince, influence and persuade regardless the medium employed, or business sector engaged in.  What is essential is to continue to use well worn/tested words such as innovative, but to frame them in a fresher context.  For example, a statement like,  'this is the most innovative X bearing for Y application', is truly a noise inducing message, a kin to the face book equivalent of, 'i just fed kitty'! Rather, saying, 'X bearing has been producing Z savings/output/etc which is a truly innovative trend in today's bearing sector', might garner more business thought leadership.  While not totally digressing from the well worn one can see that business clients appetite for the regular, and mundane is rapidly diminishing along with the words used to express it.  If we as professional B2B marketers hope to affect change we need to constantly find points of truth and seek to experiment with the words we use to frame them, in order to entice, fascinate and delight our audience. 

US Politics North of the Border and its Global Effect

Whether ones political viewpoint is fundamentally Republican (conservative here in Canada) or Democratic (read Liberal in Canada) the burning business question North and South is what and whom will be good for jobs and business?  Having recently spent the better part of September in Las Vegas at the pre-eminent mining equipment tradeshow Minexpo, several interesting diferences from a marketing perspective dawned on me.  Namely, US media tends to  silo around a left or right wing world view, ala FOX for the right and MSBNC for the left.  Flipping between them as a Canadian I found the dialogue unidimensional and more troubling simplified in the extreme. This is a degree difference from the more layed back Canadian media that atleast on first pass pretends to be balanced in their perspectives.  Secondly, the direct split of business interests along party lines with almost all my U.S. business associates cleary in the Romney camp.  Given the historical benefits to Canadian business exports under past Republican administrations I must admit my personal leanings towards Romney as well, but the point of interest as an outsider and a marketing professional was the clear difference from visiting Mexican, Canadian, Russian and Korean business people I had a chance to discuss global trade and the impact of the upcoming US elections results on possible growth in the mining sector and trade in general. 
The most prevailing opinion amongst non American business people was that regardless of Left or Right leanings the need to reduce debt and stimulate real infrastructural spending was going to determine whether the US and global mineral markets would grow or shrink.  Given the recognition of most educated business people that there is a real need to expand the political debates in the US election and globally to really address the fundamental drivers of prosperity, increased production and cost containment.  As an outsider looking in I can only hope that US business will come together to focus attention on key issues and limit the highjacking of marketing and media channels for fruitless partisan point scoring in the ever connected world.

Outsourcing in a Technical B2B Marketer

 In general marketing terms there are no clear trends toward outsourcing over insourcing of both advertising materials and content development .  A traditional, comparison FMCG (fast moving consumable goods) / retail and b2b marketing usually resulted in the following.  B2C tended to lean toward outsourced Mcomm companies due to large hetrogenous markets and low consumer risk per order.  Alternately, the industrial b2b marketer is faced with several barriers to effective outsourcing, namely highly technical products, small groups of target decision makers and higher levels of risk per order.  As such, many b2b marketers to be effective work in close association with engineering, and technical sales in order to develop content and advertising that express intimate understand of  the specialized requirements of these narrow markets.  Given the recent shift toward crowd sourcing and specific information on demand, many opportunities to recycle databased information now has given rise to the expert outsourced marketer, who while having limited specific sector knowledge develops easy to use interfaces that allow customers in the 'know' to query exactly the information they are seeking.   This is truly a unique approach to marketing in that through robust analytics a mass marketing approach can be effectively outsourced but provide specific, segmented and actionable intel on narrow and specialized b2b markets.

Marketing planning-Put the cart before the horse!

Sometimes the old sayings are the most valuable.  How many times have we heard put the cart before the horse?   Similarly, how many times have we heard when doing our forward marketing planning to focus on strategy before tactics.  While, this seems well worn and blindingly obvious several key issues can cause us to unwittingly muddle tactics with strategy and not even realize our error. 
The most common issue is the limited executive time usually allocated for strategic planning.  In most corporate environments, the senior managers will either go away for weekend or set aside several days for planning.  The lead manager usually the CEO or presidents focus is generally on having built group consensus and hopefully an actionable list /plan for the coming quarter, year or disignated time frame.  As such there is an underlying pressure or tension to limit or eliminate indepth senario discussions based on possible conflicting futures in favor of a single agreed upon or given future outcome. 
The problem is, reality with all its immeasurable variables can rarely be encapsulated into one well defined senario. Any one single plan will naturally be wanting.  Secondarily, as job expertise and experience among manager is almost always grounded in their perspective fields of knowledge; finance, engineering, sales production and marketing, there is little commonly held assumptions that can be used as an unbiased measure of competing business problems and suggested solutions. 
  By and large, the biggest stumbling block for marketers is the failure to clearly define the brand attributes and objective goals as a group.  Failure to determine what their brand's truly unique selling proposition is to the market they serve in particular the difficult to copy intrinsic and extrinsic qualities that make your brand special drives managers to default to tried and tested tactical action lists. 
The danger of this group think tactical planning is that it fails to encompass the potential future gains and to navigate the pitfalls that strategic examination of multiple outcomes could provide.
One of the best solutions is to apply game theory to strategic marketing planning where outcomes could be scored for how many unique permutations the team could develop for a change in one or more internal or external variables.  Simply put if we changed our warranty policy what are all the possible outcomes that could result.  In this way, strategic advantages can be uncovered and a follow on plan or tactics will naturally unfold.  So if you really want to make the most of your marketing planning always put strategic considerations before tactical action plans.

You Need Me!

As traditional marketing would have us believe, our jobs as marketers among other priorities is to persuade our target markets that they need our product, service, or insight to succeed.  Sadly, this model has been exploded by the reality of two way communication that is the new reality of our ever wired world.  The simple fact is customers are not listening, at least not to the standard pitch of features and benefits.  Prospects are more evolved in their likes and dislikes and at the same time  more suspicious of messaging and product and service delivery in general. 
Given the new market space we find ourselves in today as B2B Marketers we need to leverage technology to both transmit and receive timely feedback with regards the type, detail and frequency of the messaging we provide our markets.  I think we would all agree that usable, relevant content is king, but we need to be sensitive to how and when this information is provided to truly make our offering something customer really want and need.

Your Not the Boss of Me!

Your Not the Boss of Me !

Have you ever sat in a meeting or job interview and thought to yourself this isn't where I want to be, in fact even if I get this job, sale or promotion its not what I really want.  Well if that's true why where you trying so hard to get that job , slae or position?
I  most cases the answer is simple, you thought that by doing this you could possibly reach a better situation, and then hopefully be richer or freer to pursue what you really wanted.  But why don't we just go after what we really want in the first place? Again, either fear or ignorance of the final destination that our present direction will lead us makes us unwittingly waste days, weeks or even years seeking things that we know deep down won't make us happy or forfilled.
Perhaps, your hearts desire requires making less money, difficult study and or personal sacrifice, but if you knew for a certainty that you couldn't fail what would you try?
No one on their death bed ever wished their life had been duller, shorter or more predictable.
We default to these life-wasting options on an almost cruel belief that this is the only way, the safest way or the practically accepted way to live.
Without struggle or risk how can there be any growth or glory!  We need to search our hearts and our minds for what will truly make us come alive, no matter what others may think or feel about our choice.  Then we need to be brutally honest with ourselves about what we are willing to do within the boundaries of law and ethics to achieve our goal/s.
We need to imagine the achievement as a present fact and visualize our struggles as recollection of in the future, much like badges of honor that were won in Battles remembered.  Our creative selves will begin to construct a compelling Vision which when consistently focused on can't help but to manifest its power in our daily actions, this direction will result in its final realization.  We need to embrace it nurture it and compel it to tell our old ways  of actions thoughts and doubts that they are not ,'the boss of me'!