B2B Engagement Marketing: It's Not All About You Anymore

SilverpopFrom First Click to Lifetime Customer
WHITE PAPER
B2B Engagement
Marketing:
It's Not All About
You Anymore
Engagement Marketing SolutionsSilverpopEngagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER
B2B ENGAGEMENT MARKETING:
It's not all about you anymore
Introduction
2B marketers, like their B2C colleagues, have diligently worked at perfecting the art of shaping customer and prospect perceptions. BThey have years of experience developing precisely targeted communications comprised of finely tuned content directed at the specific audiences they want to influence. Traditional brand marketing requires the engineering of messages that engender the right impressions about the company's products in the marketplace. The traditional art of branding has grown and flourished for many years. But that's all begun to change.
Brands, whether B2B or B2C, are no longer defined by marketers. Instead, difficulty developing an online dialogue. Some marketers wrongly believe they are now characterized by the very people marketers hope to influence- that sales are ultimately driven by the sales force alone. But in today's customers and prospects. But a new opportunity is emerging that will catapult interactive word, buyers are seeking as much information about new marketing to an even higher level of effectiveness and influence. This new products and services as they can obtain. They want to do business with world of marketing takes advantage of the Web 2.0 phenomenon by allowing companies that are willing to have conversations with them and form more marketers to participate in the dialogues and forums occurring in the market- of a partnership, rather than limit interaction to a selling opportunity. place that are undermining the traditional approaches to branding. Establishing customer loyalty and prospect respect through marketing This new world is called engagement marketing. programs that fully engage with the marketplace will become increasingly important to remain competitive. This white paper provides strategies and Engagement marketing is all about developing a two-way dialogue between tactics for B2B marketers to implement programs that create dialogue organizations and their markets. And B2B marketers, especially those closely with customers and prospects, build brand value and customer loyalty, and aligned with their sales forces, fully understand the vital importance of listen- help drive revenue. ing to the customer. B2B engagement marketers have imbedded in their DNA the need to not only sell but to listen, understand and react.
They know that business buyers have just as many choices regarding, for example, the kind of printer ink cartridges they buy for their offices as do consumers. Business buyers just buy more. A whole lot more. And so busi-ness buyers of ink cartridges will seek out more information before making a purchase decision than will a typical consumer. Consequently, B2B marketers are quite familiar with the growing expectations on the part of customers and prospects to be treated as a partner as opposed to a lead.
B2B engagement marketing calls upon buyers to not only voice their opinions about the brand, but to actually help enhance it?to participate in the brand's evolution. Rather than looking at customers and pros-pects as passive receivers of messages, B2B engagement marketers believe that both the marketplace and the brand are best served when communication and understanding flow freely from one to the other. So when the office manager suggests to his or her vendor's sales rep that ink cartridges should be packaged by the dozen, the manufacturer listens.
Interestingly, in some cases organizations with a very strong sales focus struggle to implement engagement marketing. Some B2B companies that have traditionally relied upon a strong and aggressive sales force can have
www.silverpop.com 1-866-SILVPOP (745-8767) © 2009 Copyright Silverpop. All rights reserved. The Silverpop logo is a registered trademark of Silverpop Systems Inc. 2SilverpopEngagement Marketing Solutions WHITE PAPER
Defining Engagement Marketing waters. And while a difficult economic environment is a good reason to start listening more closely to customers and prospects, the benefits of engagement While studies find that marketers recognize the importance of customer marketing will continue long after t... [download for more]