Our new InfluencerCommunities subscription service

InfluencerCommunities.com, Influencer Communities, Influencer50, Nick Hayes, The Buyerside Journey.comWe’ve recently launched our new InfluencerCommunities subscription service. Here’s why. There’s a massive disconnect between the importance of an industry sector’s most important influencer communities, both online & offline, and the attention paid to them by vendors’ marketing depts.

According to InformationWeek, special interest communities featured in the top five most likely sources of vendor information for prospective purchasers (both at initial problem scoping and at vendor choice stages).

And while over three-quarters of B2B industry marketing heads rate their industry sector’s main forums & communities (both online and offline) as very important in influencing their prospects, less than one-third are confident their company has ongoing, proactive relationships with those top communities.

So companies really need to know which online & offline communities are the most influential in their sector. Which they should monitor, which to ignore and which maybe to join. Where are their industry’s most important conversations going on and who’s instigating them?

And it’s not just about which communities have the most members. Are their members those people moving & shaking the sector or are they just … followers? Which of their sector’s top influencers are members? And what should they do to engage with those people once they’ve identified the most important ones?

Our new Influencer Communities subscription service answers all of the above and more. We expect it to become one of our most popular services.

 

 

Google’s ‘Winning the Zero Moment of Truth’ – with mobile, more relevant today than ever

Screen Shot 2015-07-31 at 7.02.49 AMThinking about how the customer journey is changing as buyers increasingly move to their mobile phones, I’m brought back to Google’s Jim Lecinski’s ‘Winning the Zero Moment of Truth’ 2011 eBook.

The title comes from Proctor & Gamble’s analysis that they have to win the ‘First’ moment of truth – when the consumer first sees the array of goods in a supermarket and has to decide which to choose – plus the ‘Second’ moment – when the buyer takes their choice home, uses the product and decides from their experience whether they’re happy with the choice they made. Google then added a ‘Zero’ moment – the initial online search for that product or product category.

Over the past few days I’ve re-read the eBook and think few companies even now have caught up with the insights uncovered within it.

I’d 100% recommend you to download it from Google’s site if you haven’t a copy already.

https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/research-studies/2011-winning-zmot-ebook.html

 

Every purchasing decision features a series of little understood ‘micro-moments’.

Buyerside Journey, Influencer50, Influencer MarketingWhen I look at how Google is investing in analyzing the online buyer’s journey – breaking it down into a series of what it called ‘micro-moments’ – little understood inflection points when the buyer reaches each mini-decision stage – I wonder why most enterprise vendors aren’t doing the same.

I remember talking with the marketing VP of a well-known accounting software co. a few years back and his belief that the only stand-out decision points for buyers of his software were simply “does it have the functionality I need?” and “can I easily integrate it into my existing processes?”. He felt that if they could tick both of those boxes – and the buyer was aware of his firm’s software – then the sale was all but certain. His view was that his audience would be idiots not to choose his software. He was leaving a lot to chance.

Every purchase has micro-moments. If I think back to recent purchases I’ve made, they certainly occurred, even if I hadn’t planned them. With online and mobile purchasing there are now many more than we were used to a decade ago. But they’ve always existed. How many vendors today have really spent time breaking down the steps in their buyer’s journey? I think remarkably few. Respect to Google.

The marketing VP I mentioned clearly didn’t believe in any ‘micro-moments’. I should check if he’s still employed there.

As mobile search overtakes desktop, is personality becoming irrelevant for the enterprise salesperson?

iphone-377887Enterprise salespeople have talked for many years about the critical points in their customer’s buying process. For most it incorporates some combination of the following: the initial realization that a problem exists, the scoping of the challenge, the search for an internal budget champion, the visualization of a solution, the long-listing of possible solutions, the early outreach to potential suppliers, their shortlisting, the internal proof-of-concept, the cost/benefit analysis, the final bake-off, the deal negotiation, and finally the sign-off.

When large sections of this process moved online a decade or more ago, many aspects changed. The timescales, the increasing number of long-listed suppliers, the lack of face-to-face time allowed for the salespeople, the fact that sales were only aware of the prospect’s interest far later in the process, etc. For ten years the majority of salespeople have struggled to adopt to this new way of working. And now the goalposts have moved again.

As online search has increasingly moved from desktop to mobile, so the buying process too has changed. Search results appear very differently on a mobile – the attention span is shorter, the search terms briefer, the convenience and immediacy more important. Online contextual text chat more relevant. Relevance and Immediacy have become watchwords. The right content, personalized, in real-time. The skills required of a salesperson are changing again.

I have a friend who’s worked as an enterprise salesperson for many years. She’s very hard-working, diligent, very engaging personality and always willing to travel. She says her skills are less valued than they once were – what’s the point of a great personality when your opportunities to display it are so reduced? When early-stage decisions have already been made on a mobile screen, only those shortlisted suppliers are now even getting to introduce themselves to the prospect. By then, impressions have already been cast – and that’s not ideal for any salesperson.

What vendors are now looking for are banks of prospect analysts, those who can watch a series of online queries and predict, then instantly supply, the information most likely to be of direct help to that enquiry. Sometimes its a real-world conversation, sometimes a relevant case study, sometimes a competitor comparison and at other times a business RoI argument. Offering the wrong option can kill the opportunity – with little hope of getting it back because you don’t know who’s doing the asking.

Mobile is certainly changing what triggers interest (and disinterest) among would-be buyers. And I think the salesperson will increasingly struggle to find a satisfying role.

Proof of the power of Peer Reviews. Some “used as blackmail”.

Buyer side Journey, Peer Reviews, Influencer Marketing, Influencer50

Fascinating news story on the BBC site about just how influential Peer Review sites can be. Plenty of ethical issues brought up by the counter-arguments in this. Should those being reviewed have the right to equal visibility replies? Should reviews with clear factual mistakes be removed? Should review sites be able to choose not to publish extreme reviews?

According to the BBC article, written by Kevin Peachey, “Businesses are ambushing rivals with fake reviews and customers are using the threat of online criticism to win discounts, research has found.

Allegations have been made of people “blackmailing” firms with poor reviews to get money off, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said.

Review sites may leave negative commentary unpublished to allow firms to resolve complaints, the CMA added.

Consumers could be unaware that some endorsements in blogs were paid for.”

For the full story, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33184207

 

Reblog: Your customer’s buying process doesn’t have to be a mystery

Screen Shot 2015-02-11 at 9.01.27 AMAnother great post from Bob Apollo (@bobapollo) at Inflexion-Point. Quoting Gartner research he suggests buyers may be quite willing to help most salespeople better understand their buying process.

“It seems like a self-evident truth, doesn’t it? One of the consistently effective b2b sales strategies is to sell the way your customers want to buy. All you need to do is to understand their buying decision process.

According to research published last year by Hank Barnes of Gartner, your prospects may be more willing than you think to help you understand how they go about making purchase decisions. Not unexpectedly, a quarter said that they view that sort of information as confidential.

But to varying degrees, and depending on how they were asked and on the quality of their relationship with the the vendor and their representative, the remaining three-quarters of the clients Gartner surveyed expressed some degree of willingness to share the information with a sales person…”

http://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/your-customers-buying-process-doesnt-have-to-be-a-mystery

 

New Influencer50 White Paper: ‘Where’s the evidence for investing in B2B ‘social influencers’?’

HomepageBanner.WP#19Influencer50 has issued the latest in its series of White Papers this week, WP#19, ‘Where’s the evidence for investing in B2B ‘social influencers’?’. It asks why Heads of Marketing in B2B organisations are still believing that social media outreach will reach those people most influencing their sales prospects, when there’s little to no supporting evidence.

It quotes recent research from the American Marketing Association, Neilsen Online, ad agency RSW/US and Influencer50 itself to question the logic of assuming ‘social influencers’ are a legitimate target audience. It may not be what many of those in marketing roles want to hear right now – but it’s a compelling argument.

Available for download at: http://influencer50.com/library/white-papers/

 

Are vendors even looking for the connection between ‘social’ and ‘influence’?

In preparation for an upcoming White Paper this week I’ve been speaking with three B2B marketing directors, two based in the U.S., the third in mainland Europe. I’ve been asking why they continue to invest in social outreach when there’s so little evidence that B2B buyers are being influenced by social media.

The first is a VP, Marketing for a mid-size web hosting provider in North Carolina. “It’s less a case of proving our social outreach is working, and more a case that we’ve proved previous approaches don’t! So we’re allowing ourselves a longer period to figure this one out. We can’t claim to have mapped that link (between social outreach and increasing sales) yet. Fortunately we’re not yet being expected to.”

The second, a group marketing director at a PAAS (platform-as-a-service) vendor based in Texas, adds, “I’ve recently inherited the existing group budget allocation so we’re just seeing how that performs before pulling anything. We’re aiming for better awareness through our social outreach – I don’t think we’re expecting a direct link to sales this year.”

The third is a CMO for a billion-dollar-plus revenue business outsourcing provider. “We’re investing in marketing for the long-term. You can’t expect to see a sales blip short-term. We’re about three years into our social outreach, and we’re changing the mix each year so it’s difficult to compare success rates. I think it will work out and help our sales prospects – but I wouldn’t like to put a timescale on showing that.”

This just further confuses me why some B2B companies are investing in ‘social influencers’ – when there’s no proven connection between ‘social’ and ‘influence’. At least, not to the bottom-line. Don’t tell me they don’t care about that.

Salespeople focus on knowing the buyer, but why not those influencing the buyer?

I’ve never known a vendor salesperson claim to know who his customer’s influencers are. Not in any detail at least. The majority I’ve spoken to – and it must now be in the high hundreds – might say “the finance boss”, “her line manager” or, even more vaguely, “usually those in the business unit”, but it’s never definite, precise or much thought about.

Salespeople do undoubtedly have a far greater understanding of the prospect themselves. They’ll likely know who are the eventual decision-makers, many of those who could potentially throw a spanner in the works and those who are likely just tire-kickers. By asking a few questions they’ll know soon enough whether the incoming enquiry has the support of the company’s bosses or not. And they’ll know with whom to start their initial cold-calling. Experience will have told them who they should be engaging with. But they still wont know who behind the scenes is influencing the eventual choice.

When I ask these salespeople why they don’t invest much effort into understanding the real influencers I’m told, “we just don’t get the time”, “buyers like to keep that quiet”, “it’s always changing” and “you never know until the decision’s made”. Salespeople clearly don’t expect much help from their marketing depts.

There has to be a better way. Using data not anecdotes. Now that’s the direction Influencer Marketing should be moving in.

How will the ‘social influence platforms’ justify their business after this week’s Buyersphere 2015 report?

B2B Marketing mag, BaseOne, Buyersphere Report 2015,, Influencer Marketing, Influencer50, The Buyerside Journey.comI’m looking forward to seeing if, and how, the Twitter-trawling ‘social influence platforms’ react to this week’s Buyersphere 2015 report from B2B Marketing & BaseOne. I wrote about it yesterday.

The standout finding was that 50% of all B2B purchasing decision-makers didn’t use social media at all to shape their buying decisions and that just 5% of the >200 respondents said they referred to Twitter at any stage for help in their decision-making process. This was the second-lowest score, just edging out the 4% who used Pinterest.

So when agencies trawl Twitter for the noisiest people on particular subjects, and then sell that information to vendors / brands claiming them to be the key market influencers, perhaps the vendors will start to think again. How can they still back up that claim?

http://www.b2bmarketing.net/resources/buyersphere-report-2015