How many phones do you carry around with you?  After many years, I have now managed to get it down to one.  Admittedly I am very fortunate to have the superb Nexus One (www.youtube.com/user/GoogleNexusOne) which does everything, and in fact lots more than, I could ask of a mobile device.     But the critical application for me is not that it makes and receives calls, oh no, it’s that it has full internet browser capability.  Let me give you an example why.   

I recently spoke at an event which necessitated an overnight stay.  On the morning of the event, I was awoken by the alarm on my phone.  Not unusual, I hear you say.  I then proceeded to check emails, have a couple of IM conversations, send some text messages, check the news and weather on the BBC website, update my Linkedin and Twitter (@RobinsonRG) status, check out my conference venue, access walking directions from my hotel to the conference, use GPS in Google Maps to check that I was going the right way, and at the event itself, micro-blog about the first couple of speakers. All this from my phone.  It wasn’t until mid-morning that I finally used my phone to make a call. 

Perhaps I am not a typical mobile phone user, but I am certainly not an atypical one.  Increasingly, the phone is becoming the internet access device of choice. There are something like 4 billion mobile phone contracts worldwide today, and it is forecast that 38% mobile phones will be smartphones by 2013.  So Internet access via mobile devices will grow exponentially.

I recently had a conversation with a senior marketer in a global technology company.  He rather excitedly told me that they were starting to really step up the advertising and marketing activities, and 2010 was going to be a big year for the company.  He mentioned that airport advertising was going to be a core element of the campaign so my immediate question was: what was his mobile strategy to capture the opportunity this could generate?  He, rather frankly, asked what the hell I was talking about.  I explained that when I am at an airport, I often take notice advertising around me – not being a big shopper, what else is there to do! But after a 5-hour flight I don’t remember the messaging, never mind the call to action, from an ad I saw in a airport lounge.  However, what I am likely to do, if the ad speaks to my needs, is to go online via my mobile phone there and then.  When put in these terms he realised that this was something that he needed to consider.  This holds true not just for airports, but at stations, in taxis and in fact, almost anywhere. 

But mobile can be much more than simply reinforcing brand messages from offline campaigns.  To put the size of the opportunity into perspective,  eBay recently announced that it sold 1.5 million items via mobile handsets during the Christmas period and generated more than $500 million in transactions in 2009. But this is not just a consumer trend. I recently spoke to a B2B insurance company that had policy applications submitted via iPhones. Trust me, it takes some dedication to complete an insurance application form on a 3 inch touch screen!  

So what does this mean when you are planning a marketing campaign?  Well, simply that you need to consider the impact of mobile phone internet usage by your prospects and include a mobile component to your campaigns.  And before you ask, yes this blog was written on my phone.  

Want to hear more about how mobile will impact B2B marketing? Then join me at the IDM B2B Marketing Conference http://bit.ly/bw1Q3l

But it’s perfectly possible to get caught up in discussing tactics and mechanics then go away without ever actually teasing out from the client what the glossy new PR campaign is supposed to be delivering to the business.  But if clear objectives are not identified at the beginning, the results from any campaign are going to be hit and miss. You need to pick your destination before choosing your vehicle.

It doesn’t make sense to start spending any budget before understanding the business needs. It’s only from looking at the heart of the business that it’s possible to properly understand audiences, routes to market, market segmentation and build up a true picture of what is needed to support the brand. And it’s only from these foundations that it’s possible to deliver successfully and build a long term, trusted relationship with a client.  

Maybe there are some agencies that charge off and come back with a neat little proposal without going through this process. It’s perfectly possible to generate pages and pages of nice little press cuttings, but without this doing a thing for the brand or the company. Meaningful results which get in front of the right people at the right time only come from true engagement with the business.

• Professionals Must Decrease Their Purchasing Risk

• Professionals Must Improve Their Knowledge

• Professionals Must Identify Solutions

• Professionals Must Increase Their Business Networks

The current economic conditions are driving our customers to think more about WHAT they sell - what are the top products, what else could we sell to existing customers, etc. Trouble is, that thinking really only operates from an internal perspective.  It's much better to ask why customers buy, how & where they do this, what are their expectations of the service wraparound, etc. In essence, you need to think creatively, albeit Inside the Box of your chosen business environment.

Isn't this obvious?
Now I know this sounds a bit like a "Business 101" lesson. Focus on your customers and all that. However, I still think the day-to-day reality is very different. In the last week I have talked to a number of prospects who, when asked to think about WHY they want to a process to work a certain way, said "it's what we do here".  Their only frame of reference was an internal one - the customer experience was almost entirely missing. Indeed, one business had even gone as far to drawing up how they wanted their CRM screens to look - with almost no  reference to the raison d'etre for having the system in the first place. 

Not seeing the wood for the trees, as someone famous once said.  Or, as Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science notes in his book: "It's more complicated than that"

So, why does this happen?
I was listening to Russell Ackoff talking on Radio 4's In Business a few weeks back - the programme was replaying an earlier interview. I was struck by his comment along the lines of "most managers don't have the knowledge and understanding required to deal with complexity ... they tend to look for simple solutions to problems." I think he is right. Innovation is hard work, especially if your role in a business is to execute & monitor a strategy. So effecting a simple solution that appears to deliver results will often suffice. That is until the results dry up and/or the strategy does not match up to the operating complexity of the real world.

So, what's the answer?
Ackoff advocates a concept of synthetic thinking - which is thinking about and designing systems that derive behaviour of the parts from the functions required of the whole.  At its most basic, that means thinking about your customer's journey through your entire business and aiming for a joined-up approach. This, I believe, is inextricably linked to my previous thoughts on employee engagement. In a knowledge-based econony, your most valuable capital is tied up in employee's heads. They probably have the answers to the intricate details of various stages of the customer journey - joining up these answers will shed light on the complex systems within a business. 

That should allow you to drive innovation from within, delivering a clearer view of the world in which your business operates and how best to focus your efforts.

Where to start?  Anyone who's been watching Mad Men knows women in our industry have come a long way (as Peggy Olson is learning).  When I trained the mantra of (male) creatives was 'The consumer is not an idiot.  She is your wife."  It was meant to be complimentary but seems, in retrospect, somewhat insulting.

Despite that only 1 in 4 FTSE board directors are female, which is leading the Government to talk about legislation to force big business to hire more women.  But I wonder if the problem is not so much that there is still an old boy network or a glass ceiling.  I wonder if it’s because lots of women actually don’t want to work in that way at all.

According the research published at the beginning of the decade by the IPA women in advertising were at least four times as likely to have reached a board position and five times as likely to be in an executive position when  compared to the FTSE 100 companies.   But despite that, the industry was losing talent.

The reason was not because there was a ceiling keeping them down but because they (and men of a certain age too) opt out once they have families.  They didn’t want the pressure or lack of flexibility that comes with working in a very senior position. 

So perhaps before legislating the government should find out what women really really want.

In my view it's new, more flexible ways of working so that we can juggle work, home, family and keep doing it as we get older too.  After all, despite the idea that this industry is a young person's game, the things you get better at as you get older are exactly those which are needed as you get more senior - strategic thinking, talking to other senior people and nurturing people and talent. 

By Ed Weatherall, managing director, Concep

We all complain that our inboxes are busy and that we get too many emails. We spend our time deleting emails rather than opening them. A few years ago I remember people saying even if someone didn’t open your email, the fact they saw your brand name had a positive brand impact. I feel this is no longer the case.

If recipients do not recognise a sender or feel they have not asked for an email they are a) unlikely to open it and b) potentially going to perceive the email as spam. Although they may have registered for something in the past and technically or legally they are not being spammed, the perception is still the same: negative.

Looking at the DMA email benchmarking stats that have been published over the last couple of years, there has been a steady decline in the effectiveness of email as an acquisition tool. Whilst the 15 per cent who do interact in some way can generate some ROI, the potential negative impact on the remaining 85 per cent is often forgotten.

The best way to use email as an acquisition tool is to be introduced into the inbox by someone else – think partners, or strong educational or resource brands. Piggyback their ‘from address’ and provide content that is relevant and persuasive enough for people to sign up to your brand directly.

What I don’t think works is buying a list of prospects and emailing them your latest offer without having introduced yourself to them.

I do think social media is a relevant way to meet people for the first time and collect their data. The key is that they are interacting with your brand directly, and are therefore more likely to recognise you when you email them. This is not the same as when they have registered in one place and all of sudden hear from a completely different brand.

The real value in email is its strength as a relationship tool. Use email to support valuable relationships and build your brand, not as an unwelcome visitor at the front door.

NO – Email continues to be a vital communications tool. The key is to be relevant, and useful

By Zina Manda, director, Mardev

Whilst I sincerely regret the abuse that we all suffer at the hands of the spammers and the downright careless users of email, I do not believe that prospecting via email is dead.

Email continues to be a vital communication tool in my day-to-day life; I therefore have to scan my incoming mail. I don’t just open personal mail; I open everything that looks relevant and interesting. In recent years I have shared my email address with numerous companies and publications that are relevant to my working life. If they are doing something new, I would prefer to be sent an email and consume this news at my leisure than be interrupted with a phone call.

The key to getting me to open an email is to grab my interest with the subject line. If it addresses a current need, I am going to read it. In my business, I need all the intelligence I can get about market trends, developments that might impact our business and tools and products that can support our business processes.

The key to prospecting successfully via email requires you to; a) collect it correctly in the first place. That means achieving the highest possible level of permission. B2B email is subject to opt-out in the UK; we always look to achieve opt-in. It’s also necessary to b) collect as much information as possible about the addressee at first point of contact. If I have offered up information, it is because I am soliciting approaches from companies based on specific needs.

A word of warning: be careful who you work with. Third party email providers should warrant that they have collected their data in line with data protection legislation. There is a list warranty scheme administered by the DMA that they should have signed up to.

Well-written messages that are relevant and targeted will always hit the mark, they will however do even better as part of a multi-touch campaign using a range of media that support the brand and the credibility of the sender.

There are many variables which can cause recession, some of which are unforeseen, such as hidden ‘toxic debt’. This means that there can never be a clear cut predictor (as October’s experience illustrates). However, surveys are a useful indicator.

Economies are based on confidence. Banks lend to companies if they’re confident the loan will be repaid with interest. Companies invest in assets, employees and marketing if they’re confident that profitable sales can be made. Consumers spend if they’re confident their job and home are safe. Remove confidence and you remove economic growth. Surveys are good at measuring confidence which makes them good predictors of economic health. 

An economy can also be seen as a number of microcosms defined by industry sector or specialism. B2B marketing is one such microcosm and we have our own confidence survey in the form of the B2B Barometer conducted by Circle Research, The IDM and ABBA. Good news is that the latest findings are positive:
• 73 per cent of client-side B2B marketers expect their marketing spend to increase over the next 12 months
• 45 per cent of B2B marketing agencies report revenue decline in the last 12 months but 79 per cent anticipate growth over the next 12 months
Time to plan the next party perhaps…

Credit crunch marketing has seen a considerable move in budget over the last 12 months from traditional advertising to lead generation. There are however a large number of lead generation channels and vast array of possible outcomes. How can you ensure that you are generating genuine value for your company from this type of activity?
 
Defining a lead
A marketing-defined lead may recognise a click through on an email, a download of a white paper or registration for a webinar as a lead. Your sales team are likely to disagree: for them a lead is an identified individual with a budget, a need, defined timescales and the authority to make a purchasing decision.

What can you do to bridge this gap? The good news is that the marketing-defined lead is an important starting point for building engagement with a prospective audience. The bad news is that sales is correct; ultimately the prospect needs to be moved along the funnel and marketing have a role to play in making that happen.
 
Valuing a lead
Right now marketers are buying buckets of unqualified B2B leads very cheaply, from £10-£40 a go regardless of the channel that has generated them and without much regard for the value that is being driven out of those leads. I think that we are looking down the wrong end of the telescope!

You need to start by assessing your product and the profit that you generate from each sale together with your production capacity. This will determine how many sales you need to deliver against your company’s objectives.

You will then need to collaborate with sales to gain a full understanding of a typical customer journey and what type of information they need at each stage in the buying process to help them to advance down the funnel. This will help you to create engaging content that fits your customers’ needs.

This approach once tested will be very empowering for the marketer when soliciting funds from the CFO.

Which media channels are best at generating leads?
To deliver the right messages at the right time, you will need to use multiple channels. Search has become invaluable in delivering customers – who are in research mode – to your website, but you will need to use other traffic drivers like email and online advertising to grab the attention of those who are earlier in the buying cycle.
Telemarketing still delivers the highest conversion rates and the best levels of qualification for identifying leads that are further advanced in the funnel. Telemarketing is however expensive and you will need to prequalify and prioritise the targets that should be called.

Where to begin?
Test! Test! Test! You already have a sense of how your audience responds when you email them or call them. You now need to understand how response builds over time when you combine techniques. The effectiveness of your content and frequency of your communications should also be tested.

Don’t forget to size and scope your market before you start, if you need an audience of 100,000 nuclear physicists converting at 0.5 per cent per annum to deliver 500 sales, you may need to review your business plan. Are there 100,000 nuclear physicists out there? Sadly, this elementary mistake does occur.

There are many ways of doing this.  Some brands choose to differentiate visually between their B2B and B2C communications.  Some have the same branding for both and others choose labelling, or sub branding - even going as far as creating a whole new brand for businesses.  But is all this necessary?  Are we underestimating the intelligence of the B2B community to be able to decipher whether a proposition is for them or for a consumer?

We try to simplify things by putting business in our logo - so our customers and prospects can see straight away 'This is for me'  We probably make life easier for our agencies so that they don't have to keep putting the word 'business' in headlines and copy, but do B2B customers really care?  Our own research shows that they do.  76% of large businesses polled said that they thought that they got more value from being a customer of a company that was solely dedicated to businesses.  Labelling is a way of demonstrating this in a very visual way.

What experiences have other marketers had - and is there a holy grail of B2C and B2B living together in harmony?

P.S. I always find it's time to bring a blog to an end when Paul McCartney lyrics start making their way through an addled mind

My observation of B2B marketing in the brief time I have been working in the industry is that it’s comparable to Germanic tourists.

B2B marketing is practical, efficient, and quite happy strolling around London in walking boots, and equally practical yet aesthetically displeasing jackets (well it could rain at any time, then who will have the last laugh).

Creativity in B2B and avoiding clichés is something some agencies pride themselves on, but is it really necessary? Is there anything wrong with being practical yet slightly unfashionable?

B2B seems to be based around needs rather than wants. Based on this it is more practical than its trendy B2C cousin and also less fickle. They can get away with persuading consumers to buy their pretty new products and blind them with a whole lot of creative razzle dazzle.

However too many jazz hands and chorus girls detracts from the ‘seriousness’ of B2B. Is it possible to have fun in B2B or will you loose the respect of your clients and customers?

It would be extremely damaging if your hard earned respected reputation was lost all because of the perception that you couldn’t take yourself or the industry seriously. There is a time for work and a time for play and the two don’t mix that well.

I am not at all suggesting those striving for creativity in our market place are jokers and have forgotten what they are about, I agree it would be nice to see a few less handshake and light bulb images. But perhaps the calls for the industry as a whole to be shaken up are unnecessary. Why force something when there is no real need for change?

What was agreed overall is that companies have reacted differently to this recession.  Rather than laying people off they’ve changed their working conditions (a la Honda).  Rather than closing they’ve sought to diversify. 

Which brings me to the Muffin Man. On Tuesday I also bought some muffins off a stall in Cambridge market.   They were about 4 times as expensive as the ones you can buy in Sainsbury’s.  But they were hand made by the stall holder, who was charming and we had a long discussion about how hungry kids are when they come out of school and how muffins were just right. Trouble is, the children hated his muffins. But, I reflected, as I threw them in the bin, at least I’m keeping the economy going by buying them in the first place.  Although perhaps I should suggest he diversifies  - into aggregates.