Brand

1 May 2012

Building a B2B Customer Community

A client mentioned to me recently the pressing need to deliver, “strong results, quickly,” from the community engagement programme I was being asked to deliver. I’ve been asked for that before of course. Almost every time a client or prospect sticks their hand in the air it’s to ask for the required strong results in a timeframe that almost always equates to the specifics or generalities of, ‘quickly’.

So, once and for all, the desire to build and manage an online community of brand evangelists is admirable. Well done. That’s the right path. Customers have moved online and you want to communicate with them on their terms within their online environments. Good news. But. (You knew there was a ‘but’ coming, right?)

But, you can’t snap your fingers and build an engaged community. You can’t bitch and moan and delay and procrastinate and squeeze costs and when you finally take an incremental step forward (usually a small one) expect the miraculous creation of a venerated online citadel overnight. It doesn’t work that way – for all the reasons that you originally agreed to. It’s the customer’s community. Unless and until you prove otherwise, your brand is the guest. Whether your brand is a welcome guest, a tolerated one or a toothless, flatulent aunt who sups tea out of a saucer, depends in no small part on how ‘quickly’ you press for ‘strong results’. Rome wasn’t built in a day. No one in the history of the world has ever delivered a website on time. So why is there the expectation that social community building is a switch-on, switch-off commodity?

It’s the opposite. Online communities need beliefs and principals on which they can be built. They need nurturing and inspiring. Content needs to be created and crafted and curated and shared and distributed. Personalities need to be identified. Influencers and influences need to be moderated, adjusted, supported. There’s a whole world of pain you’re about to switch on and you are clueless because you’re still treating it like a mailing campaign from the late ‘80s.

There was a certain comfort in the tactical campaign delivery of yesteryear – design it, print it, mail it. Achieve a predictable response from a predictable channel and then do it all over again. But community engagement isn’t a tactical play. It’s strategic. Building online relationships requires a fundamental shift in marketing perspective. It’s not promotional, or lead generating, or conducted at arms length. It’s attitudinal. It’s behavioural – how an organization feels about customers and prospective customers – and it’s conducted up close and personal for the whole world to see and engage with. Or not.

Either way, on the subject of Community Engagement, you’re no longer allowed to ask me to ‘deliver strong results quickly’ – not unless you have the first clue about quickly delivering strong, integrated, digital, social and content strategies to sit alongside them. Quickly is the decision you should have made five years ago. Quickly is the speed at which news travels within your competitors’ established online communities. Quickly is how our meeting’s going to end.

The results may come quickly, or they may not. At which point, you have a choice – tactically try to put the genie back in the bottle, or, strategically, make a longer term investment in the needs of your customer instead of the short term needs of the quarter end figures. Whatever you decide, at least you know how to attach some urgency to the matter now. Move quickly? Yes. Deliver strong results? Absolutely. In the same sentence? Forget it. From now on, ah izz juss gonna take mah time…

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 20 7323 6666

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Digital

30 August 2011

The Yellow Lines | B2B Marketing Awards Finalist 2011 | Best use of Social Media

Social Media Campaign for Cobalt Telephone Technologies | RingGo

Birddog was appointed to build a dynamic, engaging, creative awareness campaign to protect RingGo’s position as the premier supplier of car-parking support services whilst influencing industry decison makers and regulators alike. Following significant revisions to major contract allocations immediate action was required, to minimise misleading third-party information surrounding the changes to parking payment service provisions in the South-West of England.

The Strategy:

Within 24 hours, Birddog created and launched ‘The Yellow Lines’, a blog-based user community sponsored by RingGo, but managed and run independently. The urgency of the campaign required a hard-hitting launch, utilising the speed of both email marketing and Twitter to support its messages. Central blog articles became the focus for user comment, concerns and discussion.

The strategy was to focus users of the RingGo brand into a single online community where customer opinion could be shared, thereby influencing business decision makers. Core content would direct the conversation, but the social and transparent functionality (comments/feedback) allowed contributors freedom to both redirect the conversation and, more importantly, provide the right of reply. Community response, positive or negative to the RingGo brand, was permitted.

With only 2 weeks before planned service changes, any attempt to overturn decisions that had already been made was unrealistic. It was therefore essential that the strategy offered long term value beyond the initial launch period. Value would be achieved from the strategy by creating a community of active, passionate (and independent) RingGo users who would not s imply complain about changes to car parking support services, but advocate RingGo’s mobile parking solution generally.

Establishing the best social channels was imperative to the success of the campaign. With extremely tight time and budget constraints it was essential to develop a campaign that could resonate and engage with the community on various levels.

The social aspect of the campaign allowed users to engage with the blog content and share posts and comments through other associated channels (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). This helped content reach new audiences quickly, widening campaign reach and overall engagement. Working alongside the blog and Twitter, email marketing was used to activate the initial core audience and throughout the campaign as a call-to-action channel.

The Results:

Within 14 days ‘The Yellow Lines’ had received over 22,000 unique visits, over 800 comments, and had achieved a positive sentiment value of 99.8%. Birddog had created a community based marketing asset that continued to grow, clearly distinguishing and highlighting RingGo’s unique product offering and competitive advantage.

Community building/ Raising awareness

  • Over 22,000 unique visits and over 800 comments
  • Over 800 comments in the critical first two weeks
  • 99.8% positive sentiment
  • Local Media Newspaper Coverage
  • BBC Radio Coverage

Long-Term

  • Independent searchable customer reference site
  • Ongoing/ growing digital asset
  • Proven competitive advantage on key elements of operations: trust, innovation, service support and security

What did Birddog do?

  • Social Media Consultancy
  • WordPress Blogging Platform Design & Creation
  • Twitter Profile Design & Creation
  • Content Strategy & Planning
  • Blogging & Content Creation
  • Cross-Platform Community Engagement and Management
  • Analytics Measurement & Reporting
  • Digital Asset Transfer (end of project)

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Best Social Media Beaver TYL B2B Finalist3

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Rant

26 May 2009

B2B Corporate Hospitality. Is It Worth It?

Corporate Hospitality. Is it going to flourish as companies try to secure the loyalty of their clients in the face of difficult economic conditions, or is it going to die a horrible and painful death as budgets are cut and redirected to the tried, tested and instantly measurable?

I’ve never really been big on accepting corporate hospitality. I don’t have the slightest idea how cricket works for instance – they’re in, they’re out, they’re not out, they play for days, then draw. Mmmm… no. I have a similar problem with the ‘Corporate Golf Days’. Take a stick, a little white ball and acres of nothingness then spend the day thwacking the little white ball with the stick to put it in a hole (where it clearly doesn’t want to go). And then do it again another seventeen times before you’re allowed a beer. I don’t think so.

So either I’m not personable enough to be invited on corporate hospitality days – harsh, but possibly fair – or I avoid them because they get in the way of, god forbid, getting on with some work. But that’s just me. Or at least, that was me. I’ve changed my mind. Not about cricket or golf which are just plain silly, but I’ve had cause to reconsider hospitality as a marketing ‘tool’ from both sides – as the provider and as the recipient.

Providing the hospitality, I took a whoop of clients to the Caldesi Italian Cookery School in Marylebone .The client reaction when we sent out the invitations was good. “What? It’s not a golf day? What happened to the golf day?” “Look, I thought we’d try something different – d’you want to come or not?” “Oh, ehh, actually, yeah – sounds great…” So then I worried that everyone was being polite and they wouldn’t turn up. Actually, it was a full house – 100% attendance. That’s never happened before. We all had a jolly good time. A bunch of senior executives wearing pinnies and covered is flour is the perfect recipe for a jolly good time. I was pleasantly surprised – not just with the day itself, but with the post-event camaraderie and the feeling that we all knew each other a bit better – and it’s just good to ‘know’ who you’re doing business with. I don’t think you can or need to put a ROI figure on that, it’s invaluable.

On the flip side, I was recently invited to a day of motor racing at the Jonathan Palmer Autodrome near Bedford. I think I can safely say that it was the best ‘work-day’ I have ever had. Ever, ever, ever. My host had invited about 100 guests for the day and we all thrashed the bollocks off Porsches, Jaguars, Renaults, Caterhams and even Land Rovers under race conditions. I suspect the cost of the day would have been moderately in excess of the National Debt, which, let’s face it, is considerable these days. Not that I cared of course. I was just pleased to have been invited and unashamedly delighted that it wasn’t golf or cricket.

But how do you measure the ROI? The simple answer appears to be that all those concerned do their very best not to. “It’s a ‘thank you’ for the value we have already had from the client…”, and, “It’s slow burn for key prospects we’re hoping to develop…” In other words, bullshit. It reminded me of the many conversations I’ve had with clients about their trade show attendances and what, if anything, they achieve out of them. “Not really sure, but we absolutely need to be there…”

I suspect that with both recession and new forms of digital communication appearing daily, budget spending on events like these might be reconsidered in favour of the more tangibly measured lead generators. I think that’s a shame. However hard it may be to measure the short term impact of corporate hospitality, we still need to keep a weather eye on the longer term future of client and prospect relationships. And there’s really nothing quite like the parp and squelch of your buttocks going into the hairpin bend at 150mph to remind you that life is more important than ROI.

Scot McKee
Managing Director
Birddog Ltd.
+44 (0)20 7323 6666

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