B2B Researched Marketing Truths.
The Institute for the Study of Business Markets celebrated its 25th anniversary this summer, with a two-day conference probing the current and future state of business marketing practice.
How many of these “indelible truths” apply to your business?
Understand, quantify, demonstrate and document customer value. When both seller and buyer focus on creating value and sharing its benefits, everyone wins.
Look beyond what customers say. Finding customers’ real hot buttons, and understanding how different purchasing influencers work together on buying teams, are keys to successful selling to business.
Your customers can develop valuable new offerings for you if you let them. Customer co-development programs and studying how your most innovative and unusual customers use your product will spur innovation in market-oriented directions.
Take a long- as well as a short-term view of markets. Even in times of economic recession, marketing is a necessary investment.
Implement STP. Following the discipline and logic of “segmenting,” “targeting,” and “positioning” ensures marketing efficiency and focus.
Never doubt the power of brands in business markets. A brand name built and nurtured to connote value opens business customer doors and impresses buying decision makers.
Keep the right customers; lose the wrong customers.
Communications are no longer from “us” to “them.” The communications models of the 20th century don’t describe a digitally networked world.
Cost and price have never had a fundamental relationship. Effective segmentation goes beyond the obvious ways of categorizing customers, such as industry, size, or location.
In B2B, customers are a scarce resource. Many times you know all of them. “Go deeper” with customers you have, to create and capture additional value.
