B2B. Marketing, Strategy, and Results.
No doubt you recall the personal computing (PC) era? Well, unified communications has changed the way we think about that era, transforming “PC” into the personal cloud era. Continue reading “Life Before Mobility: UC Is Changing The Way We Do Business”
Business transformation and innovation are embedded in the DNA of UPMC (formerly University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), one of the country’s largest integrated healthcare companies. Continue reading “UPMC – Technology Enabled Business Transformation”
Lets be honest, there is nothing new about predicting the year ahead. By now you’ve no doubt encountered many projections for how our industry will evolve between now and December.
In the spirit of full disclosure, the goal of my commentary is to commit my own thoughts “for the record” so that I can return to these strategy KPI benchmarks later for measurement. Too many times have I said to myself “I predicted that” but had nothing in writing to validate my internal boasts. Enough said. Here is my list:
Google+ will gain serious momentum as an important B2B social channel
Omit Google+ at your own peril. As Google continues to refine search algorithms with emphasis on defining and empowering the semantic web, Google+ will emerge as a key channel for B2B research, digital conversations and audience engagement. It will fill the gap between personal conversations on Facebook and professional engagement on LinkedIn.
Organizations will begin to recognize the need to restructure for digital content creation and multi-channel delivery
Execution of digital marketing message, content and program strategies require more integrated team planning and execution. Traditional twentieth century organization structures were designed to market via non-digital processes and media. These legacy org structures represent silos and obstacles to capitalize on new tools, media and channels and blended digital strategies. The emphasis on measurement and improved marketing ROI will force organizations to recognize the need for structural re-alignment. Not much change will occur in 2014 but the conversation will escalate.
The document-first approach to content creation will begin its decline as the content strategies adopt a content engineering approach to optimize for multiple channels and media
Creating a white paper and then having a discussion about additional ways to leverage or “repurpose” the document is not enough. Repurposing of flagship documents, webinars, etc. will be replaced by a process that strategically plans and designs for multi-channel digital distribution rather than retro-development of a single tactic. While this won’t yet gain significant momentum, the conversation will evolve away from repurposing to strategic multi-purposing and execution in the planning stage.
Momentum for the Marketing Technologist and Data Scientist will soar
The importance of technology and user experience in any digital engagement cannot be ignored. As technology is now the delivery path for content, services and applications, achieving meaningful, audience-valued interactions will require greater collaboration and alignment between IT, marketing and other groups. Combined with the need to capture business value from volumes of data and continued pressure for meaningful marketing metrics, these two roles will be instrumental in the maturity of these goals while acting as liaisons between the traditional CMO v. CIO non-conversation.
Video will receive a greater percentage of marketing budget and will grow as a preferred communication media.
Video has reached the precipice of business acceptance. It is recognized as a powerful communications tool, but it has yet to be leveraged in practice. Barriers limiting daily video use such as the networks ability to deliver quality video, ease of adoption and creation, and user experience are falling. Video as the “killer app” is ready to assume a dominant role in business communications in ways most do not yet see.
APIs and digital platform consolidation will emerge as vital to content strategy
Context and rationalization of content aligned with both audience personas and the sales cycle are important competitive differentiators for business. To connect ‘the right’ resources that bring contextual value to the marketing mix will place increased emphasis on APIs. Consolidation of disconnected information and content sources will take time but the trend will be to recognize the need and begin a process of integration not previously acknowledged.
Curation will grow, but successful integration within messaging and content will remain dormant
There is too much content to manage and consume. Period. Automation of the process has matured and gained momentum, but only a very small minority will go the extra mile to truly optimize and integrate it within their content creation and delivery strategies.
Social listening will become a budget line item
Business is social. Social listening will soon be deemed a requirement, not an option. Recognizing that peer-to-peer conversations impact every target audience and with the integration of social into customer service platforms, listening will be emphasized. The challenge for B2B will be timely response due to lack of strategy and structure.
Apps will proliferate and have a significant impact on experience design and will influence web interface design
I see this everywhere already so maybe it’s not a fair prediction, but mobile apps have forced digital designers to jump out of their interface design box. This is long over-due and I’m thankful to mobile for a better user experience and more visual delivery of digital content. Many thanks to Apple and Ideo in particular for igniting this evolution.
Engagement goals will lead to more B2B focus and emphasis on brand communities.
Business has recognized the value of social channels and is now committed to respond. Two trends are inevitable – brand community growth and increased emphasis on measurable KPIs of this activity.
Branded communities will be the natural strategy for most mid-sized and large B2Bs. Why? Because most these brands find it hard not to focus on themselves and because it will be easier for them to manage KPIs in communities they control. The majority will not gain much traction however, because users will gravitate to communities of interest and not communities of brand.
What do you think? please share thoughts and comments.
Jim Davis is the global marketing chief of technology vendor SAS. Davis is also a former CIO. In a recent CMO.com interview he makes a strong case for data-driven marketing and why marketing needs to “think more like a technologist.” He also suggests that IT needs to adopt a more strategic understanding of the business and collaborate more effectively across organizational teams to deliver solutions that align with the business objectives they support.
It is an interesting read and his fundamental message is that marketing needs a better understanding of what’s in the technology box, and how they can use it. Davis believes that to succeed in the digital age, technology is such an important foundation to marketing success that ultimately the CMO and CIO roles should be interchangeable. I don’t completely support that position but he makes some compelling points that highlight a dramatic evolution in the marketing landscape
Here are 10 important points from the interview with Jim Davis by Nadia Cameron:
Marketing delivery and response has become much more quantifiable. New tools, new channels and new tactics demand that we rethink our approach to execution. In the never ending digital evolution, marketing and IT will become increasingly dependent upon one another. But I have a very difficult time accepting that they will become interchangeable.
Marketing has become seduced by technology at the expense of its true mission – story and message. We have become increasingly focused on automation, SEO, and Google rankings at the expense of creativity and content. For marketing there has been no other choice, technology has added new overhead to the process without a matched increase in resources, many in fact working with less.
As a discipline, marketing has been forever altered by digital technologies, turned upside down in many ways. Is it science? Not in my view. Delivery and analytics is heading in that direction and technology is a powerful tool-set, but let’s not forget about what we are delivering through those tools.
Lets not forget about story and message – it remains the true mission of marketing.
Video has been an important advertising content format for business since the dawn of television. While remarkably powerful, the reach of video as a business communication tool was limited however to broadcast advertising, infomercials and internal training until the mid 1990’s.
Like the impact to the music industry, news and other business models, the Internet is a disruptive force that will forever change how we use and consume video, including “traditional” broadcast television.
YouTube, while the most visible example of the shift in video creation and distribution, is also an important illustration of the shift in the content itself. Like most other content forms delivered via the Internet, it reflects the extreme ADD (attention deficit disorder) of the audience. Do you glance to the timeline once you click to see how long the video is, thus making a decision to watch or close? It is also an important barometer of the growing micro-segmentation of content.
Why this observation is important is because most B2B video content creators don’t really understand how to adapt to this shift. They have the tools and the desire to leverage it, and every marketing VP wishes they could produce a “viral hit”, but they see video creation with an “old school” perspective. Create a script, read and record the script, edit and publish. But like your website, just because you build it does not mean your audience will find it or even consume it.
This is the foundation of what I will write about in the video section of The-Content-Strategist. Video is a business tool that is far more powerful than anyone realizes and not just in the role of advertising, training or marketing. Video will change how we perceive, create, define and manage “content”. It will become a positive yet disruptive force within the business world.
The shift that we are about to witness in video creation and consumption models, including traditional broadcast television will be as dramatic as iTunes and the mp3 format was to the music industry.