Those who’ve read our book, The Death of Propaganda, will know that we’re staunch advocates of honesty in advertising. Specifically, we advocate a more direct delivery of the facts, albeit in a helpful way, when it comes to talking about a company’s own products or those of its competitors. But how far can that honesty thing go? Continue reading
What B2B companies wishing to update their marketing plan should be looking for is a simple, low-cost way to produce interactive brochures in-house. Here’s my take on the state of the play right now: Continue reading
If you’re embarking on a Three Voices™ strategic project, there’s something that might make you a little uncomfortable – but relax, get used to it, it’s part of a new way of working that demands more of your supplier relations but which will also provide much more value at the end of the day. Continue reading
In a conversation two days ago with social media veteran Jomar Reyes, one of the people who inspired us to write The Death of Propaganda, he spoke enthusiastically about the role of storytelling in B2B marketing and communication—and emphasized that, in his view, storytelling was a key component of any Three Voices™ strategy. Continue reading
One difficulty we’ve noticed companies running into as they make the transition to meet the needs and preferences of today’s B2B buyer concerns the ability to hit the right tone and style of a Voice of Industry. If your marketing and communications departments have become used to churning out company-oriented, product-based texts, videos and events, it can be tough to break the habit. What’s required is a more neutral, “journalistic” style, varied depending on the type of message being communicated. We all meet this style almost every day—when we read Voice of Industry publications for our own industries or when catching up with national and international news commentary. So really, you would think it wasn’t that hard to copy this more neutral style – if you are using professional writers, that is. Breaking long-established practices within the corporation, however, may require a complete change of content supplier and editor. You may also find it necessary to educate upper management on the new Voice to change editing and review practices from the top down.
One example of an owned-media Voice of Industry activity is Adobe, Inc.’s CMO.com (www.cmo.com). Branded discretely with a small Adobe logo in the top right corner, the site offers “digital marketing insight for chief marketing officers”, including news items, trend articles, announcements, information about marketing analytics, resources and marketing-specific web sites, blog marketing, and other information about key players in the digital marketing space. The site carries articles, reports, surveys, statistics and commentary from industry experts and other digital marketing resources with a relatively long “shelf life”. Continue reading
As the authors of The Death of Propaganda, which expounds the Three Voices™ framework, in our opinion, while its principles provide useful insights for companies of all kinds, a Three Voices™ approach is best suited to knowledge-intensive companies—in particular, those whose key audiences are strongly involved with the company’s product or service area. Take the example of Adobe Inc.’s Voice of Industry site CMO.com, Adobe’s audience is highly interested (or should be!) in ways of optimizing their marketing activities via information systems. So done right, it’s not a especially difficult to get decision-makers, at least those in larger companies who can afford Adobe’s marketing automation system, regularly involved with the subject matter.
On the other hand, we’ve tried to imagine whether, for example, a manufacturer of stainless steel screws could benefit from implementing a Three Voices™ strategy. The answer, we concluded, was “unlikely”. We may be wrong, but we find it hard to envision regular, meaningful discussions or user communities thriving in company-owned or sponsored Voice of Industry contexts around the topic of screws. Few things please us more, however, than to have our views challenged and our eyes opened to new applications of this framework.
More and more, knowledge-intensive companies are beginning to talk about a comparatively new competitive parameter—at least in a marketing rather than a product delivery context. “Thought leadership” is business jargon for an entity that is recognized for having innovative ideas. The term is said to have been coined in 1994 by Joel Kurtzman, editor-in-chief of the Booz Allen Hamilton magazine, Strategy & Business, but hasn’t been widely used in B2B contexts beyond the publications of professional consulting firms. And it seems there’s money in it, too. IBM believes so strongly in the benefits of thought leadership that it established the Institute for Business Value (IBV), comprised of more than 50 consultants who conduct research and analysis across multiple industries and functional disciplines. In our own industry, we’ve noticed IBV publications such as the 2011 Global CMO Study turning up on the desks of our clients and being widely referenced in online Voice of Customer and Voice of Industry contexts, proving perhaps, that high-quality, credible content reaches far indeed.
We believe that thought leadership lies at the heart of a Three Voices™ strategy for knowledge-intensive companies, and that Voice of Industry activities are the prime vehicle for promoting your company as a thought leader.
The book “The Death of Propaganda – B2B Buyer Behavior Has Changed. Now it’s Your Turn.” co-authored by me, Michael Best and David Hoskin, talks about three concepts that are absolutely vital for B2B marketers to grasp: Voice of the Company; Voice of the Industry; and Voice of Customer. Communicating with all three of these voices is mandatory if you want to fully address the needs of the new breed of B2B buyer.
Experienced marketers may feel a little confused about our use of the already established term “Voice of Customer”. Voice of the Customer is a term that has traditionally been used to describe special programs for involving customers in core corporate activities such as product development and the design of customer-facing functions. Such activities usually involve inviting key accounts or a cross-section of customers to special, offline events where they can provide direct input and feedback to management.
Today, this type of Voice of Customer program is basically a dinosaur. A relic. An outdated idea that was only ever useful as a far-too-small plaster on a gaping wound in the way businesses were interacting with their markets. Enlightened B2B marketers now look past this type of program to get customer input on customers’ terms rather than those of the company.
So, for the purposes of our Three Voices strategic model, we took over the old terminology and gave it a make-over, re-positioning “Voice of Customer” as the all-important conversations going on between B2B prospects and buyers about which solutions, and which brands, should be on their short lists. We recommend our B2B clients to have their ears firmly to the ground wherever such conversations are taking place – both online and offline – and to be ready to respond to salient topics and opportunities as they surface. “The Death of Propaganda” has much more to say on the subject, and I’ll try to make the new direction of Voice of Customer as a term even clearer in posts to follow.
If you’ve read my earlier post on Voice of Industry – what is it and why is it important? you now understand what the concept is basically about: figuring out how your company’s marketing and communications messages can be delivered in a more engaging way via industry channels that carry more credibility than your corporate website or marketing materials.
Imagine the following scenario. An HR manager for a company you would really like to have on your client list is cruising her favorite industry news and resource sites. She’s looking for a solution just like the one you provide. And no, she didn’t go to your company’s website as a starting point for her search. Instead, her initial aim is to gather broad knowledge about the latest solutions, their advantages and disadvantages – before visiting the websites or calling the salespeople of a few select vendors whose solutions look the most promising. In particular, she is exploring those industry news and resource sites to get hints, tips and recommendations from experts or users. Not to hear propaganda-like messages from someone or something focused on making a sale (i.e. your company).
This is where your Voice of the Industry strategy comes into play. For many B2B vendors, the best strategy is also the most challenging (and rewarding). And that involves going one step further than merely trying to place your company’s content on existing industry news and resource sites. Own and operate the site yourself!
So what might a company-owned and operated Voice of the Industry site look like? To start with, it has its own name. For example, a manufacturer of commercial life rafts could call its Voice of the Industry site something like “Which Life Raft?” (okay, not a great name, but no one’s paying me for this). The highly successful trading bank Saxo Bank, for example, owns and operates a site called Tradingfloor.com, which bears the fine print signature “powered by Saxo Bank”. Monthly visits to the site number in the tens of thousands.
Back to our life raft example. Which Life Raft? could be a shipping industry-specific site containing articles, videos, guest columns and similar designed to help shipowners navigate the world of life rafts. From a wide variety of sources both internal and external to the manufacturer itself. Topics could include trends, technical developments, products, maintenance and service. In contrast to the relaxed dialog you expect in a Voice of the Customer (social network) context, content is polished and well presented. Articles have been professionally edited. Opinions presented are those of industry experts, some of whom may be, for example, R&D employees from within the company. Other of whom come from outside the company – adding extra credibility given their arms-length status. There are interviews, some of which could be in the form of audio and/or video podcasts.
Which Life Raft? is entirely managed by the manufacturer itself. Which means, quite simply, that despite there being a great deal of input from sources external to the company, the manufacturer gets to choose which content gets pride of place. Such as articles that might support the need for the manufacturer’s own products, for example. Or videos where the manufacturer’s products appear, although the video itself is about a relatively unrelated event.
The aim is, of course, to build a massive audience of people who visit your site on a regular basis either as members, via search engines or as the result of a shared link. That’s why you should also plan to fuel the site with membership drives in many of your other marketing and communication activities – and why your Voice of the Industry site really does need to have a regular newsletter that strengthens the relationship between the site and its visitors.
The degree to which your company’s brand and products appear on such a site and whether this level of visible presence is appropriate will depend on the type of product or service you offer. As long as you don’t try to hide completely! Saxo Bank has chosen to appear with an almost equal amount of branding present on both its Voice of the Industry content site (www.tradingfloor.com) and its company website (www.saxobank.com). The essential difference is what content goes where is to be found in the way Saxo Bank makes its messages more useful, usable and enjoyable on tradingfloor.com than on its corporate website.
A Voice of the Industry site of this nature is a highly useful tool for persuading the new breed of B2B buyer. Perhaps the key reason is its greater credibility than propaganda-like company materials. But there’s another upside for B2B companies, one which has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. And that’s the effect on the culture of the company itself. Owning and operating such a site seems to open the minds of both management and employees to new possibilities. It creates new partnerships between the company and, for example, external industry experts. And it involves the company in a mission that helps to promote the industry as a whole – which is good for everybody. So what are you waiting for? Oh, for your IT department to approve the project? Good luck with that.