http://www.jwpm.com.au

Brand Perception

2010-04-28T23:40:00.000-07:00

The perception of your organisation’s brand amongst your current and prospective clients can have an enormous impact upon the success of your business. Most organisations have their own perception of the business’s brand and blindly believe this is the same as everyone’s. Most of the time however, this is not the case.

To discover what your brand perception within the market is, a good place to start is with your current and former customers. Customer feedback surveys are a good way of finding out what your customer’s true opinion of your organisation is.

Whilst conducting customer feedback surveys here at JWPM, we found results to be much more accurate if the survey was conducted as anonymously as possible.
Results showed that opinions were swayed if the respondents knew who we were calling on behalf of prior to answering any questions. This was also true if the person conducting the survey was from the organisation in question. Survey respondents feel much more comfortable speaking openly to someone who they don’t have to deal with directly at a later date.

Once survey results are collated, organisations have a better idea of how they are actually perceived in the market. This knowledge is extremely powerful, as businesses can see where their strengths and weaknesses lie and begin to formulate an action plan.

All businesses in any industry should routinely conduct a brand perception audit to ensure they know exactly where they are placed in the minds of consumers.

Comment on my 12 Tips for getting the sales force out selling

2010-03-03T02:25:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, have a look here http://www.jwpm.com.au/PDFs/Get-your-sales-force-out-selling.pdf where I have listed 12 tips for improving b2b sales. It's slightly controversial with statements like "a sales rep at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force." but overall I have recieved excellent comments. Let me know what you think. I would really like to see a discussion on this topic.

Applying social media to marketing

2010-02-20T20:38:00.000-08:00

My particular interest is about social media and trends in newspaper publishing. The face of Newspaper Publishing is changing and adapting to the web. The internet is simply a new publishing medium. The challenge when publishing is, and always has been, readership. To build readership you need circulation and content (yes, content!).

Every time a new technology is introduced (like radio, TV, and the Internet) everyone temporarily believes that the rules have changed; “Gee Whiz!” takes over for a while. Then when everyone has embraced it, played with it, and understands how it works; they return to fundamentals; “how is this new technology really going to help?”

When new ways to publish are invented its enough just to wonder at it. Like when colour television arrived; even “I love Lucy” was amazing. However, people soon get used to it; at the cinema computer graphics are no longer enough to compensate for poor acting, poor direction, or an obvious plot.

The technical aspect of publishing (i.e printing presses and later broadcast technology) has reduced dramatically in cost because of the Internet; it’s not that hard to publish on the web (it was hard in the early days because web technicians briefly enjoyed witchdoctor status until now, they are dime-a-dozen).

The hard bit remains content. To publish quality takes resources. Traditional publishers hire teams of journalists, writers, editors, art directors, illustrators, and photographers to build content overnight. Few web publishers do the same.

Social media:

But, there is now a new witchdoctor; welcome the social media on-line marketing guru. It’s an intriguing proposition; people developing on-line relationships, writing to each other, flirting with brands, engaging in on-line dialogue, presumably consummating the relationship with an on-line purchase or two. I think that’s how it works.

This reminds me of the direct marketing/data base marketing revolution (fad?) in the 1980’s where another breed of guru’s swept through the world talking about “building a relationship with your customer.” Personalised letters, response devices, calls to action, and carefully selected fancy printing stocks were all part of the tool kit. It has its place but do any of us really feel like we are having a meaningful relationship with a company because we were the recipient of a personalised letter?

Despite my misgivings I have seen it work (i.e. created sales) but only when we treated it like any other marketing communications and didn’t treat the customer like an idiot “Dear Mr. Wearne, we are writing to you because we really care” yeah sure, care about sales.

The problem with using social networking sites for marketing purposes is that social networking sites only work because people have a genuine social motive for making a contribution. Once there is a commercial motive then the credibility of what is written drops and people are no longer interested. The big lesson from the internet is that people crave integrity; don’t pretend that you are something that you are not.

Back to content:

You can only read discussion sites for so long before you hanker for some well written, well edited, well laid out, on-topic, entertaining content. People don’t have time to sift through a lot of crap to find the pearls.

And the days of relying on contributors to interactively write the content for you are coming to end; internet readers are becoming savvy and are looking for quality not spontaneous regurgitations.

The competition is heating-up: the daily news-rooms of the world are heading on-line. They bring with them content building expertise and brands. This is the way of the future. Newspaper publishers recognise the Internet as just the latest printing technology only better and television broadcasters have always understood the small screen, it’s just taken them a little while to see it “hey guys, it looks like a TV maybe the techs can patch us in”. Yes, there are some new technological bells and whistles in the new media but its still show business and the traditional publishers and broadcasters have pedigree.

Back to us Fred Bloggs and our on-line offerings. If we want readership we will have to start providing regularly updated quality content. If we don’t want readers (of any significant numbers) then why are we bothering?

Pure and applied:

Because I am a B2B marketer I also like to think in terms of the relevance of social media to B2B. I “get” Linked-In, I sort of “get” Face-Book, but I am really struggling with Twitter. Nobody I want to do business with has time to read Tweets or write Tweets. May be it has B2C application, may be I am not thinking hard enough.

However, to draw analogy, back at university we had pure maths and applied maths. Pure maths was explained to us as math’s that has no application in the real world. You can’t use it to model anything, you can’t design bridges with it, can’t build electronic circuits with it, and it cannot be used to solve real world problems. So what is the point to it?

The answer is that all applied math’s started out life as pure maths. Without people playing with pure maths for the hell of it, no applied maths would be developed.

I have taken the same approach with social media. I have no idea how we are going to apply it as a serious marketing tool, but I am going to keep playing with it just in case I find a purpose.

It’s about trying to find application; eventually a solution will emerge. But let’s not forget – content is king.

The importance of CRMs

2010-02-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months I have been helping some of our clients with their Client Relationship Management (CRM) needs. Whilst doing this I noticed what seems to be a very common problem in many businesses - no CRM or poor CRM management.

A CRM is one of the most vital systems within a business. If a business's directors are its heart and the clients are its lungs, then the CRM is the circulatory system that connects all the vital parts.

Effective CRMs should be well organised and contain current and useful information. The data should be updated immediately upon the completion or update of an action, so anyone who opens the file can get a full overview of the client.

Now CRMs do come in a variety of different formats, be it a custom built Access database, a financial MYOB integrated system, or a cloud format like Salesforce. But no matter which format your company uses or how many clients you have, it is essential that a CRM be in place. If not, yours will be like many companies out there, who try to keep track through Excel spreadsheets and past mailing lists, and end up losing many of their clients through the cracks...

How to get your sales force out selling

2010-02-12T13:42:00.000-08:00

One of my most popular white papers is my top 12 twelve tips for getting the sales force out selling again.
http://www.jwpm.com.au/White-Papers.html
I would be interested to hear your feedback about this topic.

Welcome to the Industrial Strength Marketing blog!

2010-02-11T21:02:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this blog site is to explore the topic of industrial marketing along the main themes of…

Strategy and marketing advice
Market research and analysis
Sales force engineering
Brand development
Tenders and proposals
Marketing communications

…and anything else essential to the topic of improving business outcomes for firms engaged in B2B activities.
We are interested to build networks with people who are real life practitioners of industrial marketing and building an informative forum.
Although we are based in Australia we see huge value in developing a global perspective; so please participate where ever you are.
I invite you to make a comment about my general theory of industrial marketing and on any of the themes. Let’s keep the debate robust and lively and see if we can develop some real insights into industrial marketing.

Best regards,
Justin Wearne
JWPM Industrial Strength Marketing