Today Google launched Chrome, its new beta browser. Chrome is designed specifically to run applications rather than just display pages. As such, it’s ideal for running SaaS applications such as salesforce.com, sugar crm, SAP BusinessByDesign, Oracle CRM OnDemand etc.

Nicholas G Carr on his blog today argues that “the real goal of Chrome, embedded in [its] open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications.” The web as a computing platform continues its relentless march.

As SaaS gains increasing popularity, the way businesses are buying applications is changing. SaaS apps are proving easier and quicker to buy. The average business unit head is very comfortable with the web – it doesn’t hold the fear and pain of “going through IT” to get something done. If you can sign up for FT.com to get your news with the company credit card – why not a CRM tool too?

But the fact/illusion that you can simply “sign up over the internet” is having real impact on the decision-making cycles B2B marketers are used to. Sales cycles are shorter, traditional due diligence is being shortcut. Many more decisions are being made on the basis of politics, ambition, emotion and frustration. Often IT is being left out of SaaS purchase processes entirely.

Nick Booth’s article last week for Computer Weekly highlights a study by Gartner research which showed that 75% of all SaaS is bought by business unit managers, rather than IT managers. Gartner warns CIOs to get involved in the decision-making, saying: “It’s happening in your organisation anyway, whether you like it or not.”

All this adds up to interesting times ahead for B2B marketers. If browser technology is evolving to make applications easier to run and access to the latest software is a click away, what does that mean for our marketing efforts? Should we look to the publishing world or the gaming world for models? Is the SaaS subscriber model bringing a “throwaway” culture to organisational IT buying?

IT decision-making power is shifting rapidly, and the perception of organisational IT is changing with it. Take a good look at what it means for your programmes.

I recently interviewed the marketing director at one of the UK’s largest systems integrators about her views on the marketing she receives. Her “most memorable” was a mailing containing a box of tissues and the headline “crying into your sales forecast?”.

She couldn’t remember who sent it, why, or what they were selling. She recalled it – for all the wrong reasons – and no-one got an appointment or a sale out of it.

These attention-grabbing techniques are often agency-inspired. They happen when agencies can’t or don’t understand the proposition. ”But it got a 57% recall rate” shrieks the agency. “Yes, but did it generate any leads?” we should ask! The recipient is a real person with real challenges. They want information to help them do their jobs better, not balloons, trowels or tissues.

The same is even truer online. People vote with their feet. If the content is interesting and useful, it grows legs. If it doesn’t, it dies.

A derth of good, relevant, valuable and honest content has been the B2B marketing world’s challenge for decades. For years buyers have been asking for “warts and all” stories but few companies have the stomach to provide them. (It’s why shows like Top Gear are so successful in B2C – they tell it like it is with a strong opinion and bags of personality.) But is a change on the horizon for B2B? Is the web 2.0 phenomenon finally forcing B2B marketers to change their ways?

Consider whether you would rather read a private diary from someone actually using the multi-million pound software product you are considering purchasing, or a corporate brochure describing its features? The brochure will probably be skimmed through but you can imagine the diary getting read thoroughly. As increased truth and interaction is being demanded by web 2.0, a new era is dawning for B2B marcomms functions.

Going from decades of broadcasting brochureware to something more akin to crafting diaries and narratives (and being prepared for a good amount of criticism along the way) is going to require quite a shift for the traditional B2B marketing department.

The upside is war stories, honesty, interest, more pull-able and usable content. It’s what buyers have been screaming for. The trade-off is less editorial control and a necessity that the content-generators themeselves are better informed and involved in their products’ or services’ world.

I have to say, I had my reservations up until fairly recently. Do senior decision makers at major organisations really read blogs and join online communities? Well, the answer is that some do (minority) and some don’t (majority) – but either way it’s missing the point. Why? Because web 2.0 techniques are all about helping people find information they want, rather than interrupting what they are already doing.

Whilst the majority of people might not join online communities, or actively post on blogs, I can pretty much guarantee that they are out there right now looking for information from the internet. Newsletters, blogs, websites, podcasts, white papers – all being rifled through by members of your target audience trying to make presentations, back up business cases and find statistics to help them make decisions. And web 2.0 techniques are a great way of making sure your content is found and circulated.

One of the major influences in changing my mind has been David Meerman Scott’s excellent book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”.  He talks a lot of sense and applies classic marketing practice to a new channel.

As a quick way into his book and his thinking, it’s worth downloading his free ebook on viral marketing from his blog.

I wanted to highlight a new set of tools that are posted at http://www.themarketingpractice.com/practices/account-based-marketing.php.

It is fairly easy to buy into the theory behind account-based marketing (ABM): companies can make a lot more out of their existing clients, and marketing has a major role to play in driving this revenue.

But every project needs to start somewhere. Which accounts to focus on? How to gather intelligence on them? How to convert this intelligence into actionable marketing activities that support sales? My favourite tool is the ‘wheel of death’ that highlights the range of options available for companies looking to pursue account-based marketing all the way from profiling target organisations and decision-makers, through selecting the relevant propositions, to 7 different kinds of communication activity.

One piece of advice: don’t stop with gathering intelligence on target accounts (the more theoretical approach to account-based marketing). The real results from ABM come when marketing actively gets in touch with decision-makers.

“Why?” you’re asking. Well, according to recently published research The 2008 Annual Decision Maker Index, 78% of the respondents (IT decision-makers in large organisations) felt marketing approaches made by new IT suppliers were poorly targeted.

The respondents said they felt like they were just being approached as part of a low cost, low effort campaign that wasn’t in any way personalised to them.

Across all marketing communications, the Index shows that less than a quarter were seen as relevant. And given, in an average week, a decision-maker receives an average of:

• 20 direct mail pieces,
• 145 emails,
• 25 calls,
• And 5 event invitations,

of all the communications they are likely to receive, decision-makers are most likely to see event invitations as of interest (see my earlier post on getting this right). But even for these, less than a third are classed as relevant. If you want to make your marketing communications stand out, you have to make them compelling and relevant. There are plenty of factors that show why no single communication piece can deliver the full potential in a market. For one, credibility is as much a result of sustained communication as it is something that a single piece can demonstrate. Interestingly, the audience themselves also acknowledge the importance of timing: an issue may be irrelevant one month and top of the agenda the next.

This Market Scan document, published quarterly by The Marketing Practice, provides excellent insight into what kind of messages and campaigns IBM, CapGemini, EDS, Sun and Accenture are currently running.

It runs through the big themes they are covering, and what communications approaches they are taking. Fasinating stuff.

As it contains many visuals, it’s a big PowerPoint, so has been zipped here to increase download speed.

The next Market Scan is due in October 08 and I’ll link to it as soon as it’s available.

The AIDA (Attention/awareness, Interest, Desire, Action) model has been taught on marketing courses for a generation. But when it comes to B2B marketing, I’m convinced it just doesn’t work.

A better model might be “IIIIA” Interest, Interest, Interest, Interest, Action! Does it help Xerox to have people be aware of it? Not unless they are recognised for providing something useful, or doing or saying something really interesting.

The AIDA model suggests B2C marketers should work towards building desire because consumers buy on instinct, for pleasure, or to create and affirm their identity. I just had to buy those new boots, that new phone… often the consumer may not be fully aware of any desire until it has been stimulated by marketing tactics. Demand – in this environment – can be generated. But for enterprise-level B2B solutions, the decision to buy should be based on logical and as-objective-as-possible analysis.

Purchase decisions are often driven by fear, rather than desire. We’ve got to ask whether AIDA is fit-for-purpose, we shouldn’t be using a tool designed for an emotive B2C environment to guide our B2B thinking. I’d like to suggest the following as a more precise model. It focuses on understanding the business pressures decision makers are under. It also maps to the B2B sales cycle. We have called it LEADS:

Locate: In a B2B environment, leads are found, not made. Your first challenge is to locate a business need or goal and to accurately identify the decision makers and influencers in an organisation based on an educated understanding of the market and organisational pressures in play.

Empathise: The catalyst to interest for enterprise level solutions is likely to be either a business problem (eg high customer churn) or business goal (eg, improved customer profitability). It is not enough simply to catch the attention of the decision makers. We must show that we understand their business challenges/goals and articulate clearly how the solution could help address them.

Articulate: The messaging must be firmly grounded in business-led argument. There are examples where emotive language may work to good effect – inspiring fear or aspiration amongst individual targets whose decision to act as sponsor to a solution might affect their career. (ie. no-one ever got fired for buying IBM”) But even in this case, any support for a solution will be based on a rational belief that it will directly benefit the business. Aspirational or fear-based messaging can therefore only be used successfully if it builds on objective argument.

Direct: It is also important to draw a distinction between B2C and enterprise-level B2B marketing when it comes to the call to action. In a B2C scenario, the action is likely to be simple – a one or two step path to purchase. For an enterprise level B2B solution, any decision to purchase is likely to be a lengthy process involving a number of interactions with the suppliers’ marketing and sales teams. It is crucial therefore, that you can illustrate clearly how any solution could be implemented with minimal impact on the target business.

Support: the longer the sales cycle, the greater the need for information at each stage. You need to work with the sales team to support them throughout the process and provide ready access to all the information needed at every stage.

Ponder this question for a moment. If the marketing department isn’t helping to sell more, then what is it doing?

Wikipedia says that marketing is “essentially…the process of creating or directing an organization to be successful in selling a product or service that people not only desire, but are willing to buy.”

If we think about the above, then we assume that all marketing departments, especially those of companies who sell multi-million pound systems or services, will be central to the business and at the forefront of the go-to-market process.

But the reality is often far from this. Too often the marketing department is seen as an adjunct to the business. A situation it often exacerbates by focusing on the wrong things. Sometimes the marketing department become the corporate catch-all for tasks that are more of a distraction than delivering strategic impact.

These reasons and many more distract the marketing department from its biggest challenge of all: corporate alignment. 

What does every corporation have in common? In simple terms, they want to grow, they want to increase profitability. How they do this will vary from company to company, but the goals themselves are the foundations of modern business.

So all companies want (need) to increase sales. And this is therefore very high on the CEO’s agenda. IDC’s 2008 survey found that the top two CEO concerns were “Sales Productivity” and “Customer Care”.

So why is selling so often seen as the sole challenge of the sales department?

In my view great marketing departments fully engage with, and often help to drive, the business plan.

The business has to make money. Unless we, as the marketers, know how much money we need to support the generation of, and from where, we can’t create a sensible marketing plan.

I am constantly amazed at the number of people who kick off campaigns to generate leads with no idea how much revenue needs to be generated.

As B2B marketers our main job of work is to support the business’ sales. To be the closest ally of the sales department and draw a direct line from the corporate objectives to our own marketing plans. It’s also a good recipe for an indispensable marketing department.

So the aim of this blog is simple. To champion the cause of marketers taking the long view in their approach, to promote world-class enterprise B2B marketing and to provide tools and commentary to support those attempting it.