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.

“Voice of Industry” is originally a term Michael Best, David Hoskin, Thomas Webster and I invented as an umbrella description for a company’s communication activities whenever the company deploys industry-level messaging rather than pushing its products and services in more traditional, direct ways. While we may have come up with the term itself as a descriptor, the phenomenon of Voice of Industry is already a well established part of the new breed of B2B buyer’s information-gathering practices.

A great example is to be found in the myriad of industry-specific or technology-specific sites out there today. In my own work, I like to tap into sites like Food Navigator, Science Daily or TechCrunch, reading the information they present on their websites and/or checking their regular newsletters or bulletins as they arrive in my email.

Here I get access to information that, while it may have been initiated by a company, a somewhat biased trade journalist or an analyst keen on getting his or her name in lights, has a greater degree of credibility than a company website where I know that every piece of information has been produced in an effort to sell to me or someone like me. The publisher is generally not a manufacturer, but an information-oriented party such as a magazine publisher, a research company, an academic institution or similar. Or perhaps an industry professional such as Vancouver-based Twitch Image’s Mitch Joel or myself, for that matter, who actually do have a product or service to sell in appropriate contexts, but are genuinely interested in sharing their domain knowledge with others.

The extra credibility offered by releasing the company’s messages in a Voice of Industry context is important in today’s B2B buying process. And it needs to be an integral part of your B2B marketing and communication efforts. As you start using the term “Voice of Industry” internally, you’ll find others rapidly adopt the idea, helping to smooth the way to a new approach to your customers and prospects.