Forget B2B and B2C — it’s B2E

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Peter Buechler

To judge by their messages, many firms make much of the dichotomy of business to business (B2B) vs. business to consumer (B2C) – be this in marketing, hiring, or packaging. Indeed B2B vs B2C can appear quite dissimilar. For example, in their choice of

  • Channels
  • Pricing
  • Media
  • Business Models

None of these differences is absolute. For marketers B2B vs. B2C is frequently not a useful perspective. Traditional hallmarks of B2B such as a high priced dedicated sales force, long selling cycles, or “rational” vs emotional appeals in branding, could apply to B2C.

Increasingly B2B vs B2C is a distinction without a difference. From the importance of social media to advertising, the two camps seem to be converging. Smart marketers seem to get that ultimately marketing is marketing. This is clearly illustrated by B2B campaigns executed in a distinctly B2C manner.

Consider the campaign from corporate IT services firm CDW. It features the redoubtable Charles Barkley. The commercial has a consumer look and feel but its message of outsourcing IT services to CDW is all business.

 

If CDW isn’t business enough, consider marketing by SAP, the “grey standard” of business to business.

 

In your next campaign, don’t fixate on B2B or B2C. Think about marketing B2E. E as in everybody.

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The Luxury of Privacy

Posted on April 8, 2012 by Peter Buechler

“Privacy is dead, get over it.” Former Sun chairman Scott McNealy, 1999

McNealy’s dark quip may not have been true in 1999. But since then, technologies to collect and manage vast amounts of data about where, when, and what we buy, watch, read, consume and how we spend our time, have become far more powerful and pervasive. Unless you’re a hermit living off the grid, search engines, financial businesses, advertisers, social media and government agencies know a lot about you.

Even if you’re not logged in, surfing the Web is not anonymous. For example, tracking cookies used by ad networks follow your browsing across web sites. Click on an ad on one web site and you may notice ads for the same product follow you as you surf to other sites. Depending on your browsing history, location and whatever else ad networks can infer about you, you may see different ads, offers, and prices.

Apps, whether on mobile devices or embedded in sites like Facebook, may be even more intrusive. Data about you may be revealed, not because of your actions but simply through your social network contacts.

Not all customers are aware or alarmed at how exposed they are – yet. However, a recent survey by Consumer’s Union indicated that a majority of those surveyed are “very concerned about” companies sharing and selling customer data. About 4 in 10 were concerned by personalized ads.

Some of those who are concerned, and they may be like your customers, haven’t “gotten over it.” They will want to something to reclaim their privacy. Firms such as Abine and Ghostery offer tools and services enabling them to do so. These tools reveal what information your organization’s Website is collecting about its visitors.

I’ve been testing these browser add-ons. They reveal a surprising amount of unobtrusive tracking activity. For example, visit CNBC.com and see that Abine’s PrivacySuite reveals 10 separate tracking firms.

What Happens When You Visit cnbc.com

Why give them an unpleasant surprise like this?

Instead of printing a bland “we don’t sell your information” privacy policy on your site, tell your visitors what data you don’t collect. Give them another reason to do business with you by giving them the luxury of privacy.

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A Good Read?

Posted on February 13, 2012 by Peter Buechler

Customers don’t usually curl up by the fireside and devour your collateral. If they look at it at all, they browse it – often while doing other things.

No matter how profound your insights, it makes sense to follow the KISS principal – as in Keep It Simple Stupid. If you’re writing a graduate school thesis, don’t expect anyone but your committee to read it. I’m not recommending that you dumb down your prose. Say what you need to say, but clearly and briefly.

To help make it easier for your potential customers, consider using a measure of readability. Educator Rudolph Flesch, author of Why Johnny Can’t Read and early advocate of phonics, proposed a readability index*. You can get Flesch’s Reading Ease score automatically – it’s built into the spell checker of Microsoft Word. (You may have to turn this feature on, before using it for the first time.) If you don’t use Word, you can use free online sites such as Edit Central.

More readable text has a higher index. Consider an example from an Iowa public health program:

Reading Ease of 48.0:

Babies born to women who are covered by one of Iowa’s health care programs are covered through the month of their first birthday, provided the baby continues to live with the mother and reside in the state of Iowa.

Reading Ease of 80.1:

Are you pregnant? Do you get health coverage from an Iowa program? If you do, your baby will also be covered. Coverage will last until the end of the month of your baby’s first birthday. The baby must live with you in Iowa.

If you were marketing the program, which copy would you use?

As a simple test, I grabbed some copy from websites of major brands. The easiest to read was from Sony Playstation; the most difficult from a consumer publication of the Federal Reserve. In this sample, the firms offering easier reading also tend to be more successful.

 

Ease of reading is, of course, only one ingredient of good copy. Since it’s so easy to test, why not grade your latest masterpiece before pushing the publish button?

* Reading Ease score = 206.835 − (1.015 × ASL) − (84.6 × ASW)

Where: ASL = average sentence length (number of words divided by number of sentences)
ASW = average word length in syllables (number of syllables divided by number of words)

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Out Of Box Experience

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Peter Buechler

cardboard shipping box Apple recently announced another blowout quarter, where sales ($46.3 billion) and profits yet again exceeded analyst’s expectations (how boring). It sells as many iPhones and iPads as it can make and its Mac computers are gaining share with both consumers and businesses.

Apple has become a premium brand – one which avoids the commodity trap and can charge higher prices than competitors such as HP, Samsung, Amazon, Sony, and Nokia. In an era of commoditized technology, how can it continue to do this? More importantly, how can you?

We needed another computer at the office anyway, so we thought we’d see how Apple seemingly defies gravity and what they do that you can too.

Let’s say you just picked up a new product – in our case an iMac. You could struggle with it in any number of ways.The box might be tough to open (clam shell cases), the instructions confusing, the package incomplete (you need special tools or supplies), the website fraught with unnecessary steps, the product too difficult or confusing for a typical customer… The list goes on and on.

If the experience were bad enough, you might return it. If it’s not that bad, you might keep it, but not get another of the same brand. Nor would you recommend it, and you might even pan it. First impressions count, so they should not be left to chance.

Apple has clearly thought long and hard about making a good first impression. Here’s what they do:

Out Of Box Experience

 

You may not be a firm on the scale of  Apple, but at least some of your competition is probably as ham-handed and flat-footed as major manufactures, retailers, and service providers. They find it easier not to bother with the rough edges of being their customers. You don’t have to. What are you going to do to make your out-of-box experience delightful?

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How to Get Less Email in 2012

Posted on January 8, 2012 by Peter Buechler

Unless your New Year’s resolution included getting more email in 2012, especially the kind with large documents attached, you may like file collaboration systems. One that we’ve been using with some success is Box. It works with Macs, PCs, tablets and phones.

Though Box not hard to use, “easy to use” is perhaps too easy to say. Here’s a brief tutorial.

Collaborate with Box

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