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Building a New Public Relations Model for the Special Needs of B2B Marketers
From ADV Magazine and ADVMag.com
By Jeanne Russo
When I graduated from college, I felt confident that my education had well-prepared me for a career in public relations. After all, I was graduating from a top PR program – one that stressed both the theoretical and practical applications of the discipline and included internship experience. Integrated marketing communications (IMC) was just taking off, and thanks to my cutting-edge professors, I was one of the graduates at the time with an IMC background.
When I joined a business-to-business (B2B) public relations agency, I soon discovered that much of what I learned – including IMC – didn’t exactly fit the B2B landscape. I decided to devour books and industry articles on B2B PR but was astounded to come up empty-handed in my search for relevant material. Unfortunately, little has changed since then. Few colleges and universities teach even one course in B2B PR. No graduate or practitioner has been formally trained in it. And I’ve yet to find a single book devoted to it.
Why is this? I believe the academic and professional communities have neglected the special requirements of B2B, because they are operating under the assumption that B2B buyers behave more or less like "consumers at work." However, something magical happens once consumers pass through the office door. They become transformed from emotional, indulgent, and impulsive buyers to sophisticated, rational beings who realize that someone "up there" is judging their every purchase decision.
Consumer and B2B marketing are two very different creatures. Each has its own objectives, unique marketing problems, and vastly different audiences – and these differences have a profound effect on results. So why are we expected to use the same communication model for both?
Rather than criticize or look backwards, this article will define and examine these differences to demonstrate how the traditional one-message-through-multiple-channels IMC approach (which works well in the consumer market) just isn’t as effective for B2B. It will also introduce a new B2B marketing model and show how PR is the most powerful weapon in B2B communication arsenal.
Viva La Difference!
It’s time to embrace, rather than ignore, the important distinctions between consumer and B2B marketing. Taking the time to fully understand these differences will enable us to effectively utilize a B2B communication model capable of delivering the improved PR performance today’s B2B companies are demanding.
So many messages, so little time
Traditional IMC calls for the delivery of one consistent message through different marketing communication (marcom) channels. This approach drives the consumer purchase, which typically is an immediate, impulsive personal action. It does not fit B2B, because B2B purchasing activities operate at multiple levels that are nonexistent in the consumer world. B2B buyers go through a long, complex sales cycle that requires agreement among numerous decision-makers, each with his/her own buying motivations, objectives, and concerns.
B2B PR must address and communicate specific, targeted messages to each and every decision-maker and decision-influencer. As decision-influencers, the engineers with the technical problems are the ones who begin the buying process by writing the technical specifications. They want to receive problem/solution, feature/benefit information. Moving up the corporate ladder, the executive approving the final purchase is going to respond to a company’s brand image and does not want to be bogged down by technical jargon.
Buying behavior – in B2B, it’s not personal
Consumers purchase for personal satisfaction and peer approval and typically buy items they do not need. In contrast, B2B buyers purchase for professional satisfaction and approval. They have to buy; it’s part of their job.
B2B buyers make considered purchases with the potential for professional risk. They take their time and make the decision as a group, because their purchases can make or break careers. Imagine if you were involved in purchasing a very expensive information processing system for your entire corporation – and then implementation is a disaster. Heads are going to roll, and yours could be one of them.
Mohammed and the mountain
Consumers go to the point of sale and buy, whereas in B2B, the sales representatives go to the business buyer and sell. Personal selling, the stalwart of B2B marketing, virtually does not exist in consumer marketing. Can you imagine the Coca Cola® Company handing sales reps 100 leads identifying people who have shown a potential interest in buying a Coke? Of course not – consumers simply do not buy that way. While consumers may be business buyers at home, business buyers are not merely consumers at work.
Where’s the brand?
Consumers favor product brands, while B2B buyers prefer company brands. Who makes Tide detergent? What about Cheerios? As consumers, we might not know or even care (in case you’re curious, Procter & Gamble manufactures Tide, and Cheerios come to us courtesy of General Mills).
B2B buyers, however, are purchasing more than the actual product. They are buying what we call an "enhanced product" – the actual product enhanced by the company’s service, support, reputation, stability, technology expertise, and sales team. Of course, some consumer companies do brand their company names (Nike immediately comes to mind), but the reputation of the company takes on a more important role in B2B. If that computer system that turned out to be a bear was an IBM, you’ll undergo less second-guessing from management than if it had come from an unfamiliar or less-established company. It’s been said a thousand times…no one is ever fired for buying an IBM.
In B2B, PR is king of the world!
B2B’s unique marketing characteristics require the construction of a new communication model – a model in which PR plays a leading role. PR is the only marketing communication channel capable of cost-effectively handling the complex task of delivering multiple messages to multiple audiences reading multiple publications.
Let’s say that you’re an Information Technology (IT) solutions provider targeting prospective clients in numerous and diverse niche industries, including financial, healthcare, government, and retail. For each industry, you need to communicate with the IT engineers; the CIO, CFO, and CEO; and all levels of management in between. Each group is reading a different set of trade publications and is responding to a different kind of message – technical for the engineer, bottom-line for the CEO. Now, multiply these publications and messages exponentially by the number of different industries that you’re targeting. The costs of creating and placing all of these messages as advertisements in the different publications would be astronomical. PR, however, allows you to successfully and cost-effectively hit everyone.
As this example shows, the B2B PR landscape encompasses a dizzying array of thousands of vertical niche-market and horizontal trade/business publications appealing to varying business or technical audience interests. More than 100 publications could have a direct bearing on a B2B company’s market. It is this sheer number and variety of editorial opportunities and market interests that gives PR its powerful advantage over advertising.
The high placement cost of advertising requires B2B marketers to be extremely selective, and this selectivity, by definition, adversely restricts both reach and frequency. Financial limitations force the advertiser to broaden (dilute) its message to appeal to as many buyer decision-makers as possible. These restrictions, however, do not exist in our PR world. PR can discriminate to send engineers the technical details that "turn them on" and deliver the business messages that appeal to the executives. PR can match the message to each publication’s audience.
PR also provides that third-party credibility that makes it more than an AD. The authority of a third-party editorial endorsement becomes extremely important in B2B, due to the accountability that accompanies the B2B purchase. After all, if you are the engineer recommending the IT solutions provider to your CIO, which would you choose as evidence to support your case? A case-study article in a respected trade journal detailing how the firm you’re recommending was able to reduce a company’s costs by 43%? Or an advertisement containing the company’s own brag and boast claims?
The PR Tower that fits B2B to a "T"
While grappling with the complex realities of B2B marketing, B2B companies have tried to incorporate each consumer marketing theory as they came into vogue. But no one took the time to really figure out what part of or how the "Image of the Brand," or "Unique Selling Proposition" or "Positioning" applied to B2B marketing.
The truth is, like IMC, each of these end-all approaches is too simplistic for B2B marketing. In B2B, they are all relevant at the same time. Together, they comprise the multi-level communication approach that B2B’s different target audiences demand.
The B2B PR Tower™ models below define four distinct B2B audiences. They are: 1) customers, 2) prospects, 3) the market niche, and 4) the total market. Each demands a separate communication activity. These corresponding activities are: 1) personal selling, 2) promoting product feature/benefits, 3) company positioning, and 4) branding. Each of these levels must be supported by a balanced B2B PR program. [See opposite page]
This four-level model can be divided into halves. Levels 1 and 2 (Personal Selling and Product Promotion) promote a company’s products and create buying action to generate revenue – the income companies need to stay in business. Levels 3 and 4 (Positioning and Branding) focus on differentiating and promoting the company (rather than the product) to create brand awareness. Brand preference creates pull and drives profits.
Levels 1 and 2
The Personal Selling Level focuses on overcoming the alternate choices bombarding customers every day. The goals here are to close orders and build customer loyalty. One of the easiest and best places to find sales is among existing customers, but most companies’ sales forces are too small to sustain frequent contact with each customer. PR can help fill this gap by maintaining consistent communication.
The Product Promotion Level expands this audience to include prospects, your soon-to-be customers. Communication at this level should focus on solving specific technical or product problems to create buyer action. PR should offer product feature/benefit communication messages to generate sales leads.
Levels 3 and 4
Positioning a B2B company as the leader in its market niche is the quickest, most direct way to differentiate your company and cut through the noise. Building on a position of strength in a narrow industry niche results in more business, not less. The key is to find a market need/issue that is currently unmet and promote your company as the one that can solve it.
Branding builds your company image and gives your total market a clear sense of who you are. A branding message focuses on the entire market’s values; it helps build trust and gives B2B buyers the confidence to buy your product or service.
To better understand how PR works in this B2B Performance Marketing model, let’s use a specialty chemical manufacturer as an example.
1) Personal Selling – PR can help maintain customer loyalty for repeat business through quarterly newsletters, press releases (either mailed to the customers or read by them in trade journals), updates to the Web site motivating customers to visit, and article reprints hand-delivered by the sales representative.
2) Product Feature/Benefit Promotion – PR promotes product feature/benefits to the technical people (chemists) whose problems the manufacturer can solve. These messages can be delivered through press releases and articles in technical niche publications, such as Journal of Coatings Technology.
3) Positioning – Publishing an article/case study about a new technology application using its custom-tailored chemicals, in a niche publication like Paint & Coatings Industry, would help position the manufacturer as the leader in this unique market segment.
4) Branding – Company image messages would be directed toward the whole industry (chemical) and beyond. CEO quotes/interviews about industry trends and forecasts in horizontal publications like ChemicalWeek, Chemical & Engineering News, and Chemical Market Reporter can help achieve company branding.
Closing
This new communication model can help our profession significantly improve B2B communication and help B2B companies meet their long- and short-term business goals and establish stronger relationships with all of their target audiences. My hope is that this article will serve as a catalyst to stimulate further ideas for enhancing B2B communication’s efficiency and effectiveness.
Now, one of these days, I’ll get around to writing that book…
© 2000 Jeanne Russo. All rights reserved Schubert Communications
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