More Reasons that Small Businesses Excel at Social Media

After my last posting on small business and social media, Chris Brogan was kind enough to tweet my blog and attract some savvy writers.

At the same time, Ann Handley was a welcome visitor to ye old blog.

A surprise for me: all of the comments were positive and relevant (except for the guy trying to sell me on doing business on Costa Rica).

Before we take a closer look at some of the comments, I wanted to share with you the question that I asked during the Forrester webinar and Laura Ramos` interesting response.

Q: Robert Lesser: It appears that smaller B2B companies are more successful with their social media marketing than large B2B marketers. Is this showing up in the data? If yes, why?

A: Laura Ramos: We have not looked at the data from this perspective, but it is possible to do so if interested in exploring this further. Anecdotally, we have seen social media and online tactics favor smaller companies in general because small companies are more agile, less constrained by legacy, and able to "look bigger" than they are in the digital realm (emphasis provided).

So it seems that we all are in agreement, at least at a conceptual level, on why small businesses are excelling at social media.

And now let`s feature some of the top reasons submitted from those who read the blog:

• Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer, MarketingProfs
  "Got passion? (Actually, this could be considered a part of the "megaphone" and "sweat equity" reasons, too.) But so many small business owners have real passion for what they are doing, and that converts into the energy and authenticity necessary to commit to doing social media right."


• Ann Kingman, Blogger, Books on the Night Stand CEOs are the Public Face - "In most small businesses, the founder/CEO *is* the company, or there are a few key employees who play that role, and so it's much easier to put a human face on the organization than if it were a huge multinational corporation.
  

• Giles Crouch, Partner & CEO, MediaBadger / Blogger, Webconomist
  "Building Loyalty: Small biz can engage customers more directly, leading to product innovations and increased loyalty through conversations."

Top 10 Reasons Small Businesses Excel at Social Media

Today I attended Forrester's Webinar "Defining Your B2B Social Media Strategy" with Vice President and Principal Analyst, Laura Ramos, and Vice President of Tech Industry Consulting, Dan Klein.

The seminar was chock full of interesting facts on social media usage by B2B marketers and by B2B decision-makers.

For both B2B vendors and the buyers of those solutions, social media is considered a second tier marketing medium.

Last month, Laura Ramos released a report entitled: How to Derive Value from B2B Blogging. A survey of 189 Forrester customers revealed the number of blogs started by these B2B organizations `plummeted` in 2007 from 2006 as the results from these blogs did not meet expectations.

Laura attributes part of this to using `warmed-over press releases` on blogs.

Another attendee and I leveraged the WebEx chat to ask questions on how the usage of social media varied by the size of the organization.

Anu Venkitaraman, Managing Partner of ReThink Marketing of Addison,TX and I, conducted a private chat discussing why small B2B marketers have embraced social media in a stronger way than their bigger B2B sisters and brothers.

Here are our top 10 (in no particular order and actually there are only 8):

1. Give me a Megaphone - For B2B start-ups evangelizing is a way of life to attract the attention of investors, partners and customers.
2. Talking about My Generation - Younger professionals are already well-versed in social networking and have a huge appetite for expressing themselves.
3. A Clean Slate - With little to no marketing infrastructure, a small B2B marketer can leapfrog to a web presence that includes social media. Witness the number of firms that use blogs as their website backbone.
4. The Big Squeeze - Hard dollars are in short supply for small firms. The cost of entry for social media in hard budget dollars is close to zero.
5. Sweat Equity - The greatest resource for a small firm is the hard labor that staff will invest to make their equity real. The production of relevant social media content requires this dedication and investment.
6. Risk / Reward - The small B2B marketer recognizes that the rewards associated with engaging in public customer dialog outweigh the risk of losing control of the marketing message.
7. Inverse Relationship of Press Releases - the number of parties who must approve a press release is inversely related to that organization`s embrace of social media. In other words, the more bureaucracy associated with marketing communications, the less likelihood that the wild west of social media will be approved by senior executives.
8. Let`s fail and try again - Smaller organizations are more likely to experiment with marketing media and social media is another option to test.
   

Are there any other reasons? Help me round off the number to 10!

Moment of Truth in B2B Demand Generation

As we consider the full breadth of our demand generation programs, there are weak links that can torpedo our efforts.

Great efforts are underway by our organizations to better align sales and marketing department in pursuit of the common goal of closing more sales.

Although it is clear that a core player in all complex sale demand generation programs is the sales person, I would like to pay specific attention to the hand off from marketing to sales.

This key `moment of truth` is realized when the prospect responds and then looks to the vendor for a live discussion or when the prospect expects the vendor to reach out to them.

As more and more responses move online, the buyer`s expectations have changed.

Have our sales teams modified their approach to engaging online responders?

In future postings, I would like to discuss a number of key areas for vendors to better address the needs of online buyers but two stand out today:

1. Responding to buyer inquiries in a timely and consistent manner.
2. Providing value to prospects.

Do you remember when companies started publishing an email address on their website and the first time that you sent an email to sales? Like most of us, you were probably dismayed when your inquiry remained unaddressed and reluctantly you returned to the telephone to get the job done.

In that same vein, let`s take a closer look at this moment of truth.

What to make of the new Oracle.

You may have caught Kate Maddox of BtoB Online covering the recent Business Marketing Association conference.

According to Kate, the candor of Judith Sim, VP-CMO of Oracle, during her keynote at the BMA conference was quite surprising. Judith stated that Oracle has increased its return on marketing despite declining budgets. That budget is 1.7% of revenue versus more than 5% a decade ago.

From my perspective, we have seen drastic changes to technology publications over the past year (e.g. CMP's elimination of some its print publications). However, it was startling to be exposed to the magnitude of Oracle's drop in print advertising: from 55% of of its ad budget last year to 9% in the upcoming year.

Conversely, online advertising has increased to 36% of Oracle's ad budget this year substantially up from 22% last year.

Judith Sim also discussed Oracle's use of social news releases that has helped cut Oracle's PR budget in half and the posting of videos, blogs and forums on the Oracle website.

I couldn't help but think of the impact on Oracle's messaging in this massive change from offline to online communications and lead generation.

How well will the hard-hitting and competitive print ads from Oracle make the transition to the world of online media and user-generated content?

In the spirit of online camaraderie, I would like to present to Oracle my recommendation.

Let's pit Oracle and against its arch-rival SAP and compare their core websites head-to-head on Web 2.0 media.

• Employee Blogs - Oracle: 162, SAP:0 - The busy bees at Oracle win hands-down.
• Non-Employee Blogs - both websites host many - Let's call this a tie.
• Forums & Wikis - both websites offer robust forums and Wikis - Again a tie.
• Corporate Podcast Shows - Oracle:8, SAP:0 - A slam for Oracle
  
• Digg-style ranking site - Bonus points for Oracle on creating the Oracle Mix beta site
  

There you have it....even in the online world, Oracle can claim superiority!

P.S. I have recently moved my blog to Blogger. Check out the new blog and some of my coverage on the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and the SiriusDecisions Sales & Marketing Summit.

MarketingProfs Panel Discussion at B2B Forum

On the second day of the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, I greatly enjoyed the opportunity to sit on a panel led by Roy Young, President of MarketingProfs and including online marketing experts Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology of CrossTech Media and Joel Granoff, Co-founder and CEO of Be Greeted.

We presented highlights from our recent research on how B2B marketers were using online media.

We discussed how webinars, search and email were widely deployed by B2B marketers (see chart `Lead Generation Goal by Medium`).

Although Chris was somewhat surprised that 49% of respondents are using blogs for lead generation, I noted that this in sync with other surveys. B2B marketers have leveraged blogging to boost their organic or natural search rankings. Higher rankings translate to more web inquiries.

Traditional content such as newsletters, press releases and case studies ranked highly for lead generation.

This chart pertains to a question asking marketers about content residing on their website.


Although media such as blogs, video and podcasts are ranked much lower, their ranking is signifcant given their newness.

Although these results were similar to previous studies, some marketers were confused by the findings. See Mike Stelzner`s blog for some comments.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum Small World Stories

Some of my random encounters in Boston had me shaking my head in disbelief at the hidden connections we have with acquaintances.

Two years ago, Ruth Stevens conducted an interview with me on our research on LeadGen Tools. Ruth was kind enough to cite our research in her article in DIRECT Magazine. Ruth is an author, writer and consultant extraordinaire residing in New York. You may know her through her work with the DMA.

I was delighted to meet Ruth at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum and discuss some of her research initiatives.

As we were chatting, the conversation turned to the neighbourhood in Toronto where my family lives: the Beach.

Wham – Surprise #1! Not only does Ruth's best friend live on my street but her brother lived across from my house up until last year!

My office is on the second floor of a 100 year old brick & beam warehouse in old Toronto.

One of our neighbours is Idée who moved into their office across the street at about the same time as us in 2000.

Co-founders Leila Boujnane and Paul Bloore have developed a fascinating technology that identifies the fingerprint of an image and then identifies matches by crawling the web. Unlike Google or the other search engines which rely on image text tags, Idée uses hundreds of criteria to categorize and unique identify an image.

I ran into Leila and Paul in the cramped and run-down Air Canada terminal at Logan. They had just finished a round of meetings with the Boston VC Community looking for the $10M+ of expansion capital.

Think of the photographer who publishes her image on the web but wants to ensure that unscrupulous website owners disregard her rights to that image. This technology allows that photographer to troll the web for copycats.

Wham – Surprise #2! A member of Idée's board also hails from my hometown of Hamilton and whose father was the best friend of my father.

MarketingProfs B2B Forum 2008 - Day 1 Highlights

Here are a couple of highlights from the first day at the MarketingProfs B2B Marketing Forum 2008 in Boston:

Leveraging New Media – Greg Verdino
When I spoke with Greg Verdino, Chief Strategy Office, Crayon, at the speakers` cocktail reception the night prior to the conference, I was surprised to find a very jovial Greg - quite the contrast to his sombre online persona.

I had met Greg Verdino twice prior to his presentation on leveraging new technology. I was suitably impressed with his choice of T-shirts and flip flops and wondered what thought leaders like Greg would wear for their presentation.

Greg`s choice of basic black worked well with his dry wit. A super presenter, Greg smoothly presented complex technologies in easy-to-understand choice phrases.

With a generation reared on social networks and online gaming, there are a host of technologies that businesses should explore to collaborate, communicate and build their business.

There were some interesting examples of B2B companies that were using new media. CDW, a reseller of technology products, offers a social network to its clients and uses this as an advisory board.

IBM engages prospects with a call, chat or should the prospect wish, a meeting in a virtual world.

Deloitte offers a deep selection of content through blogs and podcasts. In pursuing a thought leadership strategy, Deloitte has `greased the skids` by giving away valuable information.

Greg gave an example of how he leveraged his social networks including LinkedIn to prepare a presentation for Cisco. Senior marketers from IBM, Forrester and SAP came forth with suggestions.

Greg believes that knowledge is a commodity and connections are the differentiators. New ideas are often created when linked two existing ideas.

Unlocking Customer Behavior...How to Understand and Profit from Predictably Irrational Customers

The keynote was given by Dan Ariely, Alfred P. Sloan Profession of Behavioral Economics at MIT, Author of best-selling book Predictably Irrational.

Dan delivered a slam-dunk of a keynote drawing numerous examples of how we make irrational decisions.

Dan`s research indicates that we are susceptible to irrational behaviour and that our intuitions on behaviors are often wrong.

Dan made a very strong case for marketers to test. Marketers must conduct experiments rather than rely on our intuition. He added that it is only natural for a marketer to give an offer to everybody if the original offer worked.