Shortly after this presentation, the product marketers, strategy and management folks were quickly trying to think up packages of solutions to help address the current situation. 

A big thanks needs to go to Jason Brett, the founder of PCamp ATL, who spent his weekends over the past year traveling around to see how things are done at other product camps (Product Camp SoCal and Austin) around the country in an effort to make this one even better.

Need some more information about what a ProductCamp is? Take a look at Paul Young’s overview.

So here are the details of the event:

When: August 21, 2010 from 9 AM -5PM, but breakfast starts at 8:30 AM

Where: GTRI Conference Center, 250 14th Street NW Atlanta, GA 30318

I look forward to seeing you there!

“Old, linear forms of storytelling are like going on a date and not letting the other person talk.”

-Nicke Bergström

As marketers, we have have always been storytellers whether it was looking to get alignment on your strategic roadmap , engaging your the people which buyer your product or looking for more effective ways to influence new markets or buyers.

Year in and year out marketers are equipping sales to tell stories and in general creating content to influence folks and the change in how people consume data and share data means we need to move from novels to nuggets with our story telling.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been tasked with going to new markets or are part of this whole tough economy thing,  new stories for the market are needed.   Mel Exon from BBH Labs proposes that the emergence of hypersocialbility is a critical consideration and I agree.

How is hypersocialbility going to change your stories?

note: while the examples are B2C marketing examples, slide 47 provides an overview which clearly is relevant to B2B marketers.

1. Ivan @ The Productologist: www.theproductologist.com
2. Cranky: www.crankypm.com
3. Stewart @ Strategic Product Manager: www.strategicproductmanager.com
4. Paul: www.productbeautiful.com
5. Steve @ Product Marketing – www.productmarketing.com
6. @sehlhorst: www.tynerblain.com
7. CC @ www.christophercummings.com
8. Cottmeyer @ www.leadingagile.com
9. David: www.launchclinic.com
10. Duncan @ www.arandomjog.com
11. Dr.: www.outsideinview.com
12. Bob Corrigan: www.thebobcorrigan.com
13. Dunford: www.rocketwatcher.com
14. @jbrett – www.jasonbrett.me
15. Meerman @ Web Ink Now: www.webinknow.com
16. Web Product Blog: www.webproductblog.com
17. Carfi: www.socialcustomer.com
18. DH: www.salesgrok.com
19. Agile Executive Guys: www.theagileexecutive.com

There are some other resources you can use to find which may be relevant to you as a product management/marketing manager which you may or may not already be aware of:

• Alltop: Product Management and Product Marketing: product-management.alltop.com
• Alltop: Agile Product Management and Development: agile.alltop.com
• Alltop: Branding: branding.alltop.com
• Alltop: Marketing: marketing.alltop.com
• Product Management @  www.PostRank.com
• Alltop: Tech: tech.alltop.com
• Technorati Top 100 Blogs

As I continue to look at the 7 Expectations of a Buyer, I’m thought I’d take some time and look at  #2 on the list of things buyers expect from brands, companies and marketers:

I want you to understand how I buy.

Another way to look at this might be that they don’t want to be sold to, which is echoed in the image above.  So while I’m sure all of us marketers are doing what we can to support our internal sales processes, what are we doing to support the buying process?  What insights do we have into how they buy?  Why they really buy one product or another?  Below are a couple of questions that might help understand the difference between supporting the sales force and the market.

• How many people are involved in a buying process for your product?
• What information, if any, is required for your buyer to justify buying your solution from a budget perspective?
• What is the average length of a buying cycle from research, approval of the budget and selection?
• What are the cost implications of doing nothing for the buyer?
• Does the buyer really want to change from the current situation?
• Is the buyer’s business ready to change their current situation?

Ultimately, if we can understand the needs of the buyer and typical process a buyer goes through it would be easier to develop content and materials which would be REALLY used in the decision cycle. It’s possible most of us already have it, but we haven’t made it available online or it’s hidden behind from registration page which your buyer can readily find.

With so many social options out there for buyers, the sourcing for products/solutions is different and so is the expectations of the availability of information and offers.  Remember when the RFP or the trade show was the best way to source options?  Those day are gone for many of us B2B technology marketers.  Buyers want information on their time lines (or at least their managers).  So as I think more about the expectations of buyers, I’m going to write a little more detail on each of the 7 items buyers expect and maybe even change them a little bit over time as I write, but as of now here is where I am when thinking out buyers and their expectations:

7 Expectations of a Buyer

1. I want offers and promotions which are valuable to me
2. I want you to understand how I buy
3. I don’t want mass communications and generic content
4. I want to buy on my own time line, no matter when your quarter ends
5. I want to tell you when you suck and when you don’t
6. I want to do business with folks which include me in their processes
7. I want to recommend products and companies to others I know.

So as we look at how each of us engages our marketplace and buyers with promotions, it is important we utilize as much data as possible to position “best fit offers” into existing customers, but also potential customers.  Sometime we should be asking why things work, why things don’t work and in general why our buyers are even in the market to better address the needs of the buyer to better position offers and promotions which are actually compelling/valuable.

Our daily life is cluttered with shotgun/spray and pray offers just – check your inbox/spam folder, Twitter stream and Facebook walls for messages that don’t resonate with you as a buyer.   Our online and offline existence as consumers in both a B2B and B2C context is filled with “missed the mark” marketing campaigns and social engagement which we either ignore or earns someone a block or unfollow.     The approach to marketing for many marketers or self-proclaimed marketers is “I have an email list, so let’s play the numbers.”

This approach might work for some companies/products/industries — providing you have a big enough list, a low enough set of expectations and a corporate misson to pursue the random transactions there could be fruit in a legacy marketing path, but overtime opt-outs, inbox rules and spam filter enhancements will limit the productivity of your campaigns, if they haven’t already.   Did you know that up to 20% of all emails, even non-spam, aren’t delivered?  So you just might want a different approach based on technology hurdles which exist, but also the fact that most of us just don’t have the time or attention to deal with poorly crafted messages and targeted promotions.

This attention issue isn’t just an email phenomenon… the same issue exists in all mediums… we all flip past ads in magazines, ignore Google Ads and TV commercials which have no relevance to us and with the shrinking attention span of buyers/consumers, it is theorized that we only have 9 seconds to get their attention as marketers or they are off to the next article, webpage or search term.

So what can we do as marketers to enhance our effectiveness and outreach to our target buyer personas?  Here is a couple of ideas of how to improve engagement:

• Know what your buyer cares about: Understand their goals, their problems and speak to them in their vocabulary, don’t know what your buyers care about? Ask them.
• Actually use the information you have about your buyers: Don’t have enough data on a given customer? a whole customer segment? Buy some extended data to round out your understanding of your customers from a systematic perspective for better targeting your messages and offers.  Better yet provide folks an opportunity to provide more information, most folks will provide it so long as you use it wisely.  Cisco has a great B2B example of how to collect extended customer profile information.
• Treat existing customers as new buyers with every engagement: Don’t assume since someone has does business with you that they will buy again because of a discount or pending holiday. Social engagement is just different and is impacting loyalty overall.
• Buyers often care more about community feedback than anything you can tell them: Provide easy access to what the community is saying about you, your products and your service directly from your website. Make buyers feel included the community immediately.
  
• Think about how you engage your buyer as a platform for developing a relationship, not generating transactions: Develop the right strategies and goals for your business and your partners  (customers/buyers/business partners), then worry about your internal processes and systems. Too many marketers and companies see current processes, systems and internal data requirements as core requirements and typically buyers aren’t interested in what YOU need, just what they need.

I can’t say enough good things about the stuff I bought from eBags, the initial buying process online and the flawless fulfillment, but I definitely have a little bit of an issue with how many emails they have sent me in the last month or so.  My inbox is typically “chock full” of spam and typically I just prefer to just delete/add to blocked senders list – it’s quicker.   That being said, I’m not sure why the barrage of emails from eBags stand out, but they have and I’ve actually had conversations with some of their other customers who are a little put off on this as well.  Incidentally, these folks have received the exact same emails I did.

I’m not sure why this specific vendor’s emails are off putting — Maybe it’s because of the positive perception I’ve developed of their brand, maybe it’s my VRM leanings or it could just be that as a buyer I’ve decided that mass email programs just aren’t working for me.  It’s not like they ever really have, but communications from random spammers on discount prescriptions and acai berry elixirs are on a different level, than an organization who has information on me and an established transactional relationship which they could leverage to better target messages and offers to me.

So after saving up the emails for a month since my initial transaction with eBags and thinking about this experience a little bit, I’ve opted out from future communications.   This whole experience reminded me of Chris Carfi’s Social Customer Manifesto which states in fairly clear language the expectations of a social customer.

So with a little bit of a semantic spin, I think B2C buyers need an updated set of considerations in the marketplace from marketers.

Expectations of a Social Buyer

1. I want offers and promotions which are valuable to me
2. I want you to understand how I buy
3. I don’t want mass and generic communications
4. I want to buy on my own time line, no matter what holiday is coming up
5. I want to tell you when you’re screwing up. Conversely, I’m happy to tell you the things that you are doing well.
6. I want to do business with brands and companies which maximizes the use of the data they have about me
7. I want to recommend products and companies to others I know, so be patient.

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