Evidence shows that patients often forego treatment that could save their lives

The implication, although not explicitly tied to this finding, was that better engagement would increase the likelihood that patients would be less likely to foregoing life-extending surgery.  (The article references an earlier AMA study that showed that 1/3 of patient people diagnosed with early-stage non-small cell lung cancer opted not to have surgery that would extend their lives by 400%–from one year to four years.)

Would B2B marketing strategies, for the complex sale, apply to health care?

Assuming engagement matters, which one intuitively would believe it does, what was missing from the post were details about effective engagement.  In short, it begs the questions who, what, when, where, and how–the questions that business-to-business marketers focus on daily as they aim to change behavior in complex sales situations.

5 questions B2B marketers might ask before determining how to influence patient behavior

According to last year’s Pew study, the number one and number two sources people turn to for health counsel are their physicians and their social circle.  Follow up questions to the study cited in yesterday’s article (or at least the post about the study) include:

1) Who must communicate the information to increase the likelihood of engagement? The patient’s health care providers?  If so, should the communication be with the specialist, the primary care provider or another clinician?  Or, is it more important that family and friends engage with the patient?

2) When must communication occur? On the day of diagnosis?  A week later?  On an ongoing basis?

3) What communication is most effective? Statistics about health outcomes?  Recommendations as to how to proceed? Explanations of what to expect before, during, and after treatment?

4) How should communicators relay the information for maximum impact? In person?  Over the phone?  Some form of less personal communication?

5) What would make the communication more credible and powerful? Reprints of articles with information that patients may find useful? Videos of others’ experiences with the same condition?  Family members’ concerns about the impact it will have on their lives?  A Q and A session with the clinician–or the clinical team?

What’s the best way to influence patient behavior?

Have you seen other studies that address these questions?  If so, are B2B marketing techniques helpful when it comes to aiding patients (who are really consumers) make the complex decisions associated with choosing appropriate medical care?

Related posts:

1. Motivating Behavior Change: Where the rubber hits the road in health care and sustainability
2. How will Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) improve quality and reduce costs?
3. Enabling health care delivery in the community
4. Health care IT: Lives depend on good design

This post discusses what Dave sees as the four steps to digital marketing:  Segmentation, Integration, Automation, and Optimization.  In it, I will tie together all three posts, and return to the questions I raised on behalf of B2B marketers at small companies at the beginning of the first post.

Segmentation

As I mentioned in the last post, Dave recommends on focusing on one segment at a time to help better discern patterns.  In that post, I wrote about how Dave’s marketing team focused on the segment of prospects that helped it achieve a particular marketing goal.

The team then worked backward from the achievement of the goal to identify the behaviors that led to those actions.  In so doing, they identified ways to improve marketing performance.

Integration

To improve the efficacy of your marketing efforts, it can be helpful to integrate multiple marketing tools. In an integrated marketing campaign, he calls “waking the dead”, Dave integrated his CRM system, email marketing, and web analytics to identify which of 40,000 inactive prospects were the most promising.

Dave used the CRM system to identify the inactive prospects.  He used email marketing to send them coupons that provided an incentive to try the company’s services.  He used web analytics to determine which prospects clicked on the coupon,  thereby demonstrating an interest in the company’s services.

Another example of integration is sending prospects personalized email.  In this case, you might use your CRM system to group your customers by products they’ve bought in the past, your analytics to determine the types of offers that motivated these individuals to buy before, and different versions of your email newsletter to reach each group with the offer he or she is likely to find most compelling.

A third example of integration is using social listening to develop your editorial calendar.  You might use Tweetdeck to identify what people care about, or who is active in complementary areas, by searching on terms related to your space.  You can then specify content that addresses frequently asked questions or increase your reach by asking professionals who are active in complementary areas to write a guest post for your blog.

Automation

The next step to is automating a part or all of the process to scale your efforts and/or reduce the time you’re investing in digital marketing.  You may get email-marketing software that shows you open and click-through rates.  You may get sales enablement software that provides a better view into prospects’ behavior,  or a tool that automatically extracts the data you require from your CRM system to prepare your campaigns.

Optimization

The final step is optimization.  Optimization refers to the ongoing experimentation that digital marketers perform, to identify the best combination of marketing strategies and tactics for achieving their goals.

What are the implications for solo or small B2B marketing departments

As I mentioned in the first post, Dave asserts that savvy small B2B marketing departments can use digital marketing to gain competitive advantage, because so few companies are doing it well.  He observes that from an analytics perspective, their marketers can become professionally useful in a matter of months.  He also notes that they can accomplish a lot just using free tools like Google Analytics and Tweetdeck.

Another of my concerns was whether small companies accumulate enough visits in a year to obtain meaningful data.  Dave pointed out that while they may not have enough data to reach statistically significant conclusions, their analytics will tell them what’s broken and provide directional signals that tell them if they are positively affecting performance.

Talent beats tools

Finally, I wonder about how these marketers using free tools, and a lot of manual labor, will compete with larger organizations.  Here, Dave responds that talent beats tools every time.  He concludes by saying that the most successful marketers will be generalists who are creative, expert at analytics, possess strong writing skills, and have a large personal following.

I’d be interested in any thoughts you have about digital marketing.  What are you doing?  How’s it going?  What advice do you have to offer solo or small B2B marketing departments?

Related posts:

1. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to improve their performance against goals
2. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to pick the best marketing strategies
3. Will marketing consultants and agencies switch places with in-house staff in a digital world?
4. Drip campaigns keep your company top of mind: 5 steps for success + an example

B2B transactions are “bet the company” decisions

As I was reading, however, it occurred to me that the characteristics that both Paul and I ascribe to B2B businesses may be a function of scale and complexity, rather than just the target audience.  After all, most consumer acquisitions are not “bet the company decisions”.  Notable exceptions include real estate, new jobs, mates, and the most major of surgeries.  In each of these situations, individuals’ buying behavior is more like that of businesses than consumers.

Nevertheless, I still think the points that Paul outlines are what distinguishes most B2B from most B2C transactions.  Even those B2B purchases that are not “bet the company” decisions, occur in the spotlight, are ones for which the buyer is held accountable by others, and are therefore “bet the job” decisions.

Long sales cycles are expensive

Of the points Paul mentioned, my own focus as a B2B marketing consultant has always been on shortening the sales cycle.  As he notes, B2B sales cycles stretch out because success depends on addressing the needs of multiple people at multiples stages of the buying process, each of which have different priorities.

Long sales cycles are expensive.  Ironically, any time that salespeople spend on prospecting for new business, building relationships, pointing out the benefits of the company’s wares, or ensuring that each stakeholder gets satisfactory answers to the questions she or he has is relatively unproductive.  The company only makes money when its salespeople are closing deals or negotiating their terms.  Any time spent on the activities leading up to a sale has a huge opportunity cost, because that’s time that the salesperson isn’t closing other deals.

Advance preparation is the secret to accelerating the sale

Advance preparation is the secret to shortening the sales cycle.  Salespeople tend to only have messages for a few of the audiences that they need to reach.  Because they are under pressure to close the transaction, salespeople don’t have the time it takes to research and prepare the nuanced responses that others who influence the buying decision often require.  Consequently, their communications are not as powerful as they could be–and the sales cycle stretches out as prospects continue to shop.

This is where B2B marketers, and B2B marketing consultants like me, make their greatest contribution.  Our job is to anticipate who will be involved in the buying process, what they’ll need at each stage, and how they prefer that the company meet these needs–with the goal of developing targeted communications and tools well before Sales needs them.

B2B marketers are at a disadvantage

Unfortunately, we can’t take advantage of many of the tools that B2C marketers have at their disposal.  They get reams of data gathered through surveys and via scanners at the point-of purchase.  They also have many media in which they can cost-effectively place highly-targeted ads.

Our audiences are smaller and buy less frequently.  They are also less homogenous both due to the greater complexity of the B2B buying decision–and because our total available markets aren’t generally large enough to divide into sizable segments.

It’s, therefore, hard for us to get relevant survey data.  For one, it’s hard to capture the nuances of complex buying decisions in a survey that’s limited to forced choice answers.  For another, there aren’t enough of us, targeting any given market segment, to justify third-party investments in any but the most general survey data.

Historically, our best alternative, for getting at the heart of the buying process, has been to gather information from decision makers through one-to-one interviews, or in small groups.  Doing so requires special skills to avoid predetermining the answers by the way we pose our questions.  Moreover, because the available data collection methods were expensive, we could only speak with relatively small samples of the population.

From a communications perspective, we’ve never had a cost-effective media.  As Paul notes, our goal is to reach multiple audiences that buy relatively infrequently–and whose needs vary depending on where they are in the buying process.  If we purchase spots in broadcast media, we’re paying to reach too many people we don’t care about.  On the other hand, direct marketing, which allows for more targeted messaging is also expensive–since we still don’t know which prospects will be receptive to our messages at any point in time.

Search and social media promise to be a tremendous boon

Search and social media have the potential to make us both more efficient and more cost-effective.  They promise to improve both the quality and quantity of the information we can obtain.

By searching on germane keywords, we can find out what prospects have to say, unaided, on relevant topics.  This information will add value, since discussants are likely speaking about what matters to them– rather than just responding to questions about the dimensions that we think to ask about.  Search and social media also provide access to the crowd, decreasing our reliance on the insights of a few available individuals.

The news is even better from a communications perspective.  Organic search and pay per click dramatically reduce our costs.  One is free and the other only requires us to pay for audiences that are likely receptive to our messages.  We also can reach members of our target audience through social media via the online peer groups in which they participate or the lists members make of their peers using tools such as Listorious.

The availability of better tools is a double-edged sword

The good news is that search and social media have made getting the right message to the right person at the right time easier and less expensive than ever–and should enable us to significantly shrink the sales cycle.  The bad news is that customers will be less forgiving of companies whose marketing messages still  do not anticipate and address their needs.

Thinking about using social media? Learn how to make the most of your social media investments.

Related posts:

1. Social media for B2B Marketers via Paul Gillin
2. Shorten the sales cycle: one marketing message at a time
3. The search and social media paradox
4. Shorten the sales cycle next year: Year end marketing planning

This is perhaps the main reason I was looking forward to Paul Gillin’s breakfast seminar at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council last week. The other reason is that Paul has an uncanny ability to connect the dots in ways that add new meaning to any topic that he addresses.

B2B Marketing differs from B2C marketing

Paul distinguished between B2B marketing and B2C marketing by noting that because B2B purchases are often bigger, more complex, and ultimately “bet the company” decisions.  Therefore, the focus is on value, and then service and support.

Most buyers have a rigorous process for ascertaining value because they know that they will have to live with their decisions for a long time.   This process includes seeking expert advice.

Winning depends on influencing the experts

As validated by a 2008 Marketing Research study that Paul cites, the experts they rely on include employees who have experience with the product or vendor, analysts, and peers in that order.  Although the decision makers don’t ignore vendors’ marketing materials, personal recommendations carry much greater authority.

Winning therefore depends on building relationships with the experts–and those that influence them.  Today, much of that influence is happening through social media, so that’s where vendors need to be.

Strategies for determining who is influential and what interests them

Paul outlined a number of strategies for figuring out who wields the most social influence and what will engage them.  He recommended turning to peer validation sites such as Technorati to identify candidates and then looking to sources such as presence in the mainstream media, traffic rank, number of inbound links, Hubspot’s website and Twitter graders, and the number and quality of Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections to assess each individual’s level of influence. To learn what interests them most, Paul suggested checking their blog rolls and tag clouds.

It’s about engagement, not merely circulation

As Paul points out, it’s all about engagement, not merely circulation.  Once you’ve identified whom you need to reach you’ll want to treat them like reporters and reach out to them with news that they’ll find interesting.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that they’re not the reporters of old–and therefore will have different questions and concerns.  Paul provided a number of examples of engineers that blogged on their technical specialties, CEOs that blog about the issues that face their organization, and others who are passionate about the niches they cover.

Case studies, tips, and more!

Then there were case studies to illustrate each point.  Paul showed examples of how companies used social media to attract attention, save money, get rid of excess inventory, and generate revenues.  He also discussed which social media tactics work best at each stage of the sales cycle.  It will come as no surprise to readers of his earlier book The New Influencers that blogging remains a favorite.

Next were tips for would-be publishers.  Chief among them was the importance of having clear business goals and a strategy for achieving them–at every stage of the sales cycle.  Paul noted that he feels that small business can really excel at social media because they know their niche, are nimble, and are less likely to get caught up in politics.

Another important piece of advice was to “fish where the fish are”.  With Twitter and posts on group discussions linking to blogs–and Facebook’s new “Like” button–the walls around each platform are continuing to come down.

Find out where your audiences congregate and go there to communicate.  Answer questions on LinkedIn.  Post presentations on SlideShare.  Then, you can link back to your site so the engaged can learn more about you and your company.

Finally, recycle and extend.  The same content can serve as a foundation for a blog, a podcast, and even a video.  You can reference it in a LinkedIn group on Twitter or in a comment on someone else’s post.

Read the book

Lots of good advice–but this blog post is just a teaser.  To get the full scoop, you’ll need to wait for the book–due out next January.  For a sneak preview, see Paul’s slideshow entitled B-to-B Social Media–Really.

Get the social media primer

In the meantime, find out how your company can derive the greatest value from social media.  Download the primer: Social media:  Creating value for you and your prospects.

Related posts:

1. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.
2. Social Media Marketing for Job Search
3. Social media adoption: How will marketing spending patterns change?
4. Social Media Overload–How to make sense of it all

What happened to the focus on the customer?

The irony is that gaining deeper insights into customer, or prospect needs, rarely shows up as a priority, let alone a high priority. Why not?

Is it because investments in gaining customer knowledge are not of interest to those doing the surveys? Or, do researchers assume that everyone knows all they need to know about customers?

Or, is the assumption that some form of marketing research, win/loss analysis, or customer data mining is an integral part of any marketing campaign–and therefore does not need singling out? Or, do researchers know from past experience, that while everyone realizes gaining customer insights is important, it’s not a primary focus or one in which companies invest heavily?

I don’t know the answer. I do know that while many companies do invest in learning more about their customers, others feel that they know enough–and/or cannot afford to learn more. The question is can any of us afford not to delve deeper into what matters most to those we depend on for revenues?

Isn’t customer knowledge power?

The devil is often in the details–and nuances in capabilities and/or messaging can make a tremendous difference. That’s why it’s not uncommon for consumer goods marketers, the messaging masters, to invest 10% of the anticipated cost of any marketing campaign in upfront marketing research.

Moreover, we all know of “first movers” that lost the race because they didn’t move down the learning curve. Instead, competitors pulled ahead by making slight, but significant modifications to the core offering or message.

Is everyone focused solely on lead gen?

From reading the marketing trade press, one gets the impression that a lot of companies do believe that deep customer insights drive sales.  These companies are investing in:

• Data mining tools that will help them pinpoint their most promising prospects and understand exactly what helped win their business
• Social communities that help assess the desirability of products and marketing messages before committing to their delivery
• Usability testing to find and remove product design elements that get in customers’ way
• Social media listening tools that enable marketers to determine where audiences turn for information–and what communications resonate most with them–before jumping in the fray
• Marketing campaign software that includes the ability to monitor conversions and determine what worked–and what didn’t
• Sales enablement solutions that make it easy to create and test responses to alternative lists, messages, and offers

Gaining deep customer insights doesn’t need to be expensive

Investments in increasing customer intimacy are not limited to large companies.  While many smaller companies may not have the financial or human resources to invest in the automated listening tools listed above, they have other options at their disposal.

Many of our clients gain deep insights by easy-to-administer programs such as:

• Using free social media listening tools to monitor market trends, conversations about the need for the solutions their companies offer, and any mention of their name and/or their competition’s
• Interviewing customers and prospects to learn about the steps these individuals took before making a recent purchase decision–and what triggered these actions
• Developing case studies about the benefits that satisfied customers derived from their solutions
• Following customers, and those who influence decisions about their products and services, on Twitter

The question, however, isn’t what others are doing, but what you’re doing. Will this be the year of the customer for your business?

Ready to start today? Test your customer IQ now!

Related posts:

1. Customer research makes gains in 2010