Posts Tagged ‘b2b social media’
B2B Marketplaces: A New Breed Takes On an Old Problem
Monday, July 19th, 2010Since the early days of the Internet, b2b purchasing has seemed like an area ripe for the efficiency and transparency improvements the web could bring. The theory has been that b2b buying processes are labor-intensive and inefficient, with heavy reliance on phone calls, emails and even face to face meetings. Large purchases, and often even small ones, involved negotiations conducted with imperfect and limited information, leaving both sides wondering if they really got the best deal. Web-based systems could improve transparency and efficiency, significantly and simultaneously reducing both procurement costs for buyers and selling costs for vendors.
However, problems with this theory quickly became apparent. While online marketplaces worked well for commodity purchases like office and maintenance supplies, they were viewed skeptically by buyers and sellers alike for more strategic purchases. Vendors didn’t want to reveal pricing and specifications to their competitors, and in many cases buyers didn’t want their own competitors to be aware of what they were buying (as it could tip off competitors to new product designs or process improvements) or even the terms they were getting.
As a result, the dramatic forecasts for b2b ecommerce revenue growth from Gartner and other analyst groups never materialized. Some of the market pioneers flamed out: Commerce One, founded in 1994, went public in 1999 and saw it’s stock price soar from $20 to more than $600 per share before the dot-com bust. It filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2004, and the remains of the company were sold off in 2006. VerticalNet, founded just a year after Commerce One, was another classic dot-com-boom-to-bust story. Though the company was never profitable, revenue grew rapidly and the company’s market cap topped $12 billion in early 2000 on revenues of just over $100 million. The company was acquired by an Italian cement maker in 2007 for $15 million.
Ariba is one of the few b2b ecommerce survivors from the dot-com era. Though the company has fallen a long way from its dot-com era $40 billion market capitalization, it’s still in business, posting respectable revenue and modest profits.
But today, a new breed of vendors is determined to leave behind the hype-to-bust path of early b2b ecommerce and online marketplace trailblazers and improve b2b purchasing practices through social media and other Web 2.0 technologies. Here are five companies that exemplify these new approaches.
TradeKey b2b marketplace: sort of a web-based version of a bazaar or street market, TradeKey is an online, global b2b marketplace which connects traders to wholesalers, buyers, importers & exporters, manufacturers and distributors in over 220 countries. With 27 categories from agricultural to transportation products and nearly 10 12 million visitors per month, TradeKey connects an incredible range of buyers and sellers. Looking to buy commercial carpeting or USB drives? Want to offload some extra fishing lures or folding doors? This is the place to do it. TradeKey is sort of the b2b version of eBay or craigslist, with the closest analogues on the b2b side being sites like Alibaba or VertMarkets. But the site’s busy though highly visual design sets it apart, and TradeKey was the first online b2b marketplace to earn ISO 9001 Quality Management System and ISO 27001 Information Security System certifications.
FYIndOut.com b2b social media hub: billing itself as “the central place to find and promote business information, applications, and services,” FYIndOut.com provides an environment where b2b vendors can list their products and services for free (they pay only for interested leads) and interact with prospects, while buyers can research sellers and post their own reviews. The site covers a broad array of products and services from accounting software to web conferencing services, and was among the first b2b sites to introduce social review elements similar to Angie’s List or Yelp on the consumer side.
ChoiceVendor business-to-business vendor reviews: similar to FYIndOut.com but with a different business model—rather than generating revenue from providers, ChoiceVendor’s revenue plan is to “offer certain features by subscription to users who are seeking vendors.” Both sites enable b2b vendors to register and list their products for free, and buyers to review at least some of this information at no charge. So whether you’re a b2b seller or a buyer researching vendors through social signals, the best site to use between FYIndOut.com and ChoiceVendor is…both!
GetApp.com business software portal: unlike broad-based b2b market sites, GetApp.com is focused on a specific niche—business software, SaaS and cloud-based applications. The company’s goal is to become a global online channel for SaaS and PaaS (platform as a service) b2b application providers. GetApp.com is more like (though more broadly based than) SaleForce.com’s AppXchange or the recently launched Google App Marketplace than a general b2b marketplace. The site got some nice coverage from TechCrunch earlier this year, which stated that buyers can “find, compare and select from a wide range of business applications, organized into categories by IT and business need and by industry. The search functionality is pretty powerful and allows visitors to filter results down to a single vendor or enterprise-grade application. To assist buyers from a neutral point of view, GetApp offers user-generated reviews and a free personalized assessment
tool as well as a number of guides on the subject.”
Resource Nation business resource marketplace: this site connects business buyers with providers of a wide range of common b2b products and services, from email maketing and payroll outsourcing to phone systems, laser printers and steel buildings. Rather than relying on social signals, all vendors are pre-screened by credit reporting agency Experian. The website also includes useful articles and guides for buyers. Approved vendors receive qualified leads for a fee. Resource Nation is somewhat similar to BuyerZone, but with less of a focus on price as the sole purchase criteria. This works well for commodity-type procurement (e.g. CD/DVD duplication or mailing services) but shouldn’t be relied upon as the sole source for more involved, strategic purchases like enterprise software or a PR agency.
Despite the challenges of online b2b commerce (e.g. will customers really share honest opinions in an open forum?) and past failures, a new breed of online b2b marketplace sites is determined to make it work. They bring to the task unique approaches and mindfulness of what worked, and what didn’t, for the groundbreakers in this space. The key will be to provide value to b2b purchasers. Vendors will flock to any site that is embraced by buyers.
Disclosure: I’m an unpaid advisor to FYIndOut.com and a (so far) unpaid affiliate of Resource Nation (just recently signed on). As for the other vendors highlighted here, I just think they are doing very interesting things in this space.
Social Media is Simpler Than You Think
Monday, March 29th, 2010With the tidal wave of how-to articles, jargon and self-proclaimed “social media experts” hitting the online world, it’s easy for marketers and business executives to view social media as something akin to the unexplored regions of the earth as presented on medieval maps—”here be dragons.” Potentially fascinating, but dangerous, mysterious and scary.
Social Media Demystified
In reality, social media marketing is simpler than you’ve probably been led to believe. At its core, social media is not about doing new things, but about doing things you’ve always done as a business person differently. Specifically, social media marketing involves five common, very traditional business activities. It provides a rich new toolset and set of techniques for carrying out these processes, but the processes themselves are familiar: listening, networking, interacting, information sharing, and promoting.
Social Media Listening
Think about “listening” in the broadest sense of the term, encompassing all of the things you do to keep abreast of what’s happening in your industry and your market. What are your competitors up to? What are the trends? What new products and services might help you operate your business more effectively and efficiently? What’s happening with prices? And most importantly: are your customers talking about you? And if so, what are they saying?
Business people have always had to do this, and have used a variety of tools: trade publications, direct conversations with vendors and customers, analyst reports, seminars and other events, trade associations newsletters and other sources. Social media doesn’t change the fact that you do this, but it does do two key things: it makes it easier for people to talk about your business, and it gives you new tools for listening to your market.
Social media reduces the friction of customer communications. Writing and mailing a letter to a company to complain about or praise their products or services is a lot of work. But expressing your opinion on Yelp, epinions, Twitter, Facebook or any social site is easy and takes only a few minutes—and your words reach a far larger audience.
Tools for social media monitoring (listening) range from free (Google Alerts, SM2 Freemium) to low-cost (uberVU) to sophisticated (Vocus, Cision). The brilliant Dan Schawbel of Mashable has written more about free social media monitoring tools and tools worth paying for.
Networking
From the dawn of commerce, business people have always used networking to meet new people and establish new relationships with suppliers, potential partners, industry experts, and most importantly sales prospects. Historically, most of this activity was done face-to-face, at trade shows, conferences, seminars and other industry events.
Physical networking at such events is still important. But social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo and tools like Twitter enable you to put this activity on steroids, building online relationships not only with people you’ve physically met but also with smart, interesting people literally across the globe who you’d unlikely ever meet in other contexts. The etiquette is similar (introduce yourself, ask questions, have something interesting to say, don’t immediately go into “hard sell” mode) but the tools are far more powerful and far-reaching than traditional networking.
Interacting
Interacting is simply the conversations that typically follow networking—following up, gathering more information, and asking and answering questions. Again, this is a traditional business activity that’s commonly been done by phone and for most of the last 20 years also via email. For confidential or highly specific communications, these mediums are still ideal.
But again, social media enables you to take interactions to an entirely new level. What about answering common customer or prospect questions? Social media makes it easy to answer such questions online not only for a specific prospect, or even all the prospects you’re aware of, but also for potential prospects not even yet on your radar. Your answer is not only available immediately to a larger group of people, but indexed and globally searchable (so you better have good answers!).
Social networking sites are among the key tools for social interaction, but such conversations can happen almost anywhere on the social web where people are talking about your brand, asking questions about products or services, or simply discussing what’s happening in your industry, including review sites, blogs, wikis and forums.
Information Sharing
Before the internet, sharing an interesting industry news article, how-to guide, coverage of a company or your own thought-leadership content was a tedious task involving copying and then physically mailing or faxing a document to selected recipients. Email made the process much easier, but distribution was still limited to known contacts.
As with listening and responding, social media has dramatically reduced the friction of such information sharing and dramatically expanded the audience. One can now post a link to and short description of interesting information to a LinkedIn group, Facebook page or Twitter stream in seconds and reach an audience of hundreds or thousands of interested individuals. Blog posts, news articles, product reviews, reports, images, videos, customer interviews, presentations and other information can be distributed to large groups with a few mouse clicks. And again, distribution isn’t limited to those you know, but also includes interested parties you’re not yet aware of—this enables prospective buyers to find you, exactly when they are looking for what you have to offer, instead of you having to use expensive, interruptive marketing techniques in the hope of hitting the right buyer at the right time.
Promoting
In terms of advertising, social media is much like other, more traditional online mediums. It’s as easy to place an ad on Facebook as on an industry publication website.
But the power of social media lies in its interactivity, in participation. In this respect, companies need to handle direct promotion carefully. While direct promotion through social media can work well for certain types of businesses (e.g. a restaurant owner tweeting about today’s lunch specials, or a retailer offering special discounts available only to fans on Facebook), it’s a delicate balance for most companies. Particularly in the b2b world, indirect promotion works best. That is, rather than trying use social media to tell people how wonderful your products and services are, it’s much more effective to demonstrate your knowledge by answering questions, sharing interesting and pertinent information, and highlighting third-party endorsements in the form of favorable reviews, blog coverage or customer comments.
Participation in social media is no longer optional for most companies. Customers, pundits and others are already talking about your industry and quite likely your company on these sites. Ignoring such conversations amounts to tacitly endorsing whatever is being said about your firm, your people, and your products or services. Understanding that social media doesn’t involve doing entirely new things as much as doing things you’ve always done, but in new and more powerful ways, should take some of the mystery and fear out of social media engagement.
How to Avoid Social Media Mistakes
Monday, March 15th, 2010Despite the widespread adoption of social media in the marketing mix, many companies still use this medium less than effectively. This is perhaps not surprising given that, according to recent research by Business.com, 40% of b2b marketers have been using social media as a marketing tool for less than a year, and 60% spend less than 20% of their time on it. This lack of experience can lead to several common, but avoidable mistakes.
One of the most common mistakes is expecting instant results. While the current tough economy is forcing marketers to do more with less and focus on productivity, social media isn’t like advertising: it requires a sustained commitment over time to build an online reputation as a helpful, knowledgeable resource, the kind of company your prospective customers will want to do business with. Giving short shrift to social media activities now, because it may not have an immediate impact on the bottom line, is short sighted. B2b companies that build a social media presence now will be best positioned for growth once the economy rebounds.
An even bigger mistake is ignoring the synergies between different forms and types of social media. Media sharing sites, social networking profiles, blogs and online reputation management tools are all part of a larger strategy of web presence optimization, maximizing your online presence through various forms of media and most importantly, interlinking these points of presence to maximize your company’s visibility in search.
For more guidance on maximizing the impact social media marketing can have for your organization, see 8 Common Mistakes in Social Media Marketing on the HubSpot blog. Avoiding these mistakes will help improve your organization’s online presence and website traffic now, and position it well to thrive once the economy turns around.
The One Effective Use of Facebook for B2B Marketing
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010You’ve seen the eye-popping statistics: Facebook now has more than 350 million active users. If it were a country, it would be the third most-populous on earth, behind only China and India. TechCrunch predicts that “by this summer (2010) well over half of all Internet users will likely visit Facebook each month.” It’s now the second most-visited site on the web, behind only Google.
Given that level of popularity and traffic, it’s no wonder that marketers have embraced Facebook in a big way. What’s curious, however, is that of the top 50 brands on Facebook according to Slate magazine, not one is a b2b vendor. Not even close. And as Mark Schaefer has noted, b2b Facebook success stories are notoriously hard to come by (he found one).
With a mammoth audience and the acceptance, even embrace, of brands there, why is Facebook success so elusive for b2b marketers? It isn’t demographics. Granted, the potential pool of customers for most b2b companies is minute compared to that for major consumer brands, but given the sheer size and ubiquity of Facebook, there are still a lot of b2b buyers using it.
The challenge rather lies in the way Facebook fan pages are used. I’ve heard countless people, within the b2b community, express the sentiment that “LinkedIn is for business, Facebook is for friends and family.” As such, it’s not surprisingly that many of the entries on Slate’s top Facebook list are lifestyle brands. If you buy a new Audi, you might use Facebook to show it off to your friends, but if you’re part if a buying team that just acquired a new enterprise software system—eh, not so much so. And as one more bit of anecdotal evidence, I have my Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook badges all displayed in the left column of this blog. I pick up a lot of new Twitter followers here, and a fair number of LinkedIn connection requests, but rarely a Facebook invitation.
Still, this doesn’t mean that Facebook can’t serve any purpose for b2b marketing. It can serve one helpful role: humanizing a company. As a very wise b2b sales executive said to me several years ago, “people don’t buy from companies. They buy from people.” With the emergence of social media as a marketing tool, that sentiment is arguably even more true today.
Because of the intimate, informal nature of Facebook, it is the ideal venue to showcase personal content related to your company that may not be appropriate on a corporate website or even a LinkedIn profile. Many employees within b2b companies have email communication with customers and prospects, but never actually talk to them. Or they have phone conversations but never meet face to face. Facebook provides an excellent means for sharing photos and even (limited) personal information, to help put a human face on an organization, and “put a face with the name” or voice of an employee for customers and prospects.
Just a few examples of content that work better on Facebook than in more formal settings are:
- • Photos of employees in casual office settings;
- • Photos of employees and customers interacting, or casual shots of a customer using a product (with permission, of course);
- • Trade show photos;
- • Pictures of employees working on community service projects;
- • Company executives speaking, accepting awards, meeting with VIPs, etc.;
- • Photos of production facilities (for manufactured products);
- • Photos taken with resellers or channel partners;
- • Informal or even humorous videos, such as HubSpot’s spoof of The Office or Resco’s “border battle” video shot before last season’s first Vikings-Packers game;
- • And of course, interaction! Most customers and prospects probably won’t want to interact with your brand on Facebook, but for those who do, it’s important to engage them through this channel.
In short, Facebook provides a place to show the human side of your company, to cut loose just a bit and have some fun. While it may produce a lead now and then, it isn’t a very effective lead generation vehicle. Instead, by humanizing your company and giving a glimpse inside, it’s business value lies primarily in lead nurturing—helping move leads through the buying process. It’s more about making current sales cycles more productive than about generating new potential business.
Because the ROI is likely to be difficult to measure with precision, it’s best to keep the “I” fairly modest. Still, with realistic expectations, using Facebook as a means to put a human face (or faces) on a B2B brand can be one effective component of an overall social media marketing strategy.
