Today's eMarketer email features an article about the relatively slow adoption of social media by B2B marketers. While some companies have jumped in quickly - and often without a plan - those that are slow to engage may lack executive support or have concerns about privacy, legal issues, or staffing.
And even for those who are ready to engage, while the venue selection is obvious for many consumer focused companies, B2B marketers often need to look beyond the mainstream social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and even LinkedIn to find the best opportunities to make an impact.
Our clients at AMD faced a similar situation. They knew they wanted to be active, but weren't sure how to prioritize. So after jumping into social media they took a step back to examine who their key audiences were and where they were active, which venues they needed to engage in, and what people were willing to accept from their brand.
Want to learn more about social media research? Watch our webinar featuring Georgeanna Liu and Chris James from AMD as they present a case study of how CMB conducted market research to support key social media strategy decisions and how AMD is using it today. Watch here.
Posted by Josh Mendelsohn. Josh is our VP of Marketing and loves live music, tv, great food, market research, New Orleans, marketing, Boston and sports. You can follow him on Twitter @mendelj2.
Posted originally on our Technology Pulse Blog by Chris Neal
We recently conducted research on social media to look at why people become fans and followers of certain brands. We wanted to get a high level view of why people become a fan/follower. Our gut (and some of our own personal experience) told us that many people that become a fan or follower do so because they are already customers of that brand. For the most part our instinct was right. Our research found 49% of people who become Facebook fans do so because they are already a customer.
The really interesting part is we found over half of those people who are engaged stated that they are more likely to buy and recommend that brand since becoming a fan/follower. It's clear that using social media as an engagement strategy helps cut through the online clutter and keeps brands "top of mind".
This makes a lot of sense for consumer companies, but is a social media engagement strategy right for harder to reach B2B audiences? The short answer is yes, but not without digging deeper to learn more about who you are trying to reach and where they "live" online. There are so many social media outlets available today and they are not all created equal and they're not a "one size fits all" answer.
Truly using social media as an engagement strategy may not take a lot of money, but it does take a lot of time. So the best place to start is prioritizing who you want to engage with and then look for the best places to find them and figure out how they want to be engaged in the various social media outlets available.
Recently we worked with AMD, a leading processor company to re-evaluate their social media effectiveness and develop a more optimized and targeted strategy to reach their widely disparate target audiences. It was important to start by looking at each of those targets and then systematically evaluate the true extent and impact of social media usage on each of those audiences.
- Audience: We used separate research modules for each unique target audience, spanning from extreme B2B to consumer segments
- Recruiting: We did not use social media to recruit research participants as to prevent sampling bias
- Techniques: Both qualitative/open-ended and quantitative research
This approach really allowed AMD to refine and optimize their social media content and tactics based on the different behaviors of each target audience. Learn more about this AMD case study at the Social Media and Community 2.0 Strategies event coming to Boston May 3-5.
Understanding B2B Social Media: An AMD Case Study
CMB's Chris Neal and AMD's Georgeanna Liu will presenting a case study of how CMB helped AMD better understand and capitalize on social media to drive their business. In this session, we'll explain the steps that AMD took to review and refine their social media strategy focusing on very specific target audiences.
Read more about social media
by downloading our report:
"Why Social Media Matters for Your Business."
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Guest post from Jared Huizenga, CMB's Field Services Manager
There's a lot to consider when collecting international data. It's a whole different ball game outside the U.S. market. From methodologies to translations to project management, a lot needs to be taken into consideration-even in other English speaking countries. The first step to any successful international research project is choosing the right partner.
There are so many choices and they are not
all created equal. A single data collection partner will never be the right fit for every project. At CMB we have created our own Global Certified Network
to ensure we have the most well rounded pool of partners we can team up with on every project. Having our own certification process has allowed us to hold our data collection providers and partners to the same high level of expectations our clients have come to rely on us for.
To qualify for CMB's Global Certified Network our partners must agree to several strict requirements including industry standards, security requirements, data quality assurance, and project management guidelines. Some examples are...
- Industry Standards: All certified partners are required to comply with the ESOMAR
International Code on Market and Social Research. In addition, all vendors must comply with national, regional, and local laws. They also must sign Chadwick Martin Bailey's Confidentiality Agreement.
- Security Requirements: All partners are required take active measures with regards to respondent privacy. This is especially true when using client-provided sample lists. The partner must be CAN-SPAM
compliant and destroy all sample records at the end of a project-or at any time per Chadwick Martin Bailey's request.
- Data Quality Assurance: Partners must demonstrate that procedures are in place to guard against "bad" data and if any issues with data collection arise, partners are required to inform us immediately and offer proactive solutions. Partners must inform us upfront when they are using additional partners for data collection and they must give us the names of those additional partners if issues come up.
- Project Management Guidelines: Partners are required to provide a minimum of two points of contact and to respond to queries and requests from the CMB project staff as quickly as possible. Partners must also agree to participate in frequent meetings to give us status updates.
These are just a few ways we ensure our partners share the same commitment and high standards we do when approaching each project. This certification has also allowed us to build an outstanding network of partners with some of the best and brightest companies in our industry.
Posted by Jared Huizenga is CMB's Field Services Manager. Jared is on the New England Barbecue Society's Board of Directors and is the pitmaster on a competition barbecue team.
In the words of my friend and colleague Jeff McKenna, "segmentation is one of the most powerful projects market researchers conduct, and when done well it provides direction for a company's success for many years." I would add to that by saying great segmentation is as much about deciding who NOT to target as it is about who TO target.
Both of those ring true in a write up of Jeff and GE Healthcare's Andrew Vranesic's recent B2B segmentation presentation in this month's Research Pharma Report . One key element of the presentation were the 5 "C's" of Great Market Segmentation - which actually have very little to do with market research but are key to making segmentation research useful within your organization.
The 5 C's that drive success:
- Clout: Be the source of organizational swagger, with support from the very top
- Confidence: Work with the belief that you will make the segmentation results useful to the organization
- Collaboration: Be willing to accept differing points of view (and crush them, if needed)
- Cognizance: Gain a thorough understanding of all of your company's major issues across all
business units
- Communication: Do it early, often, consistently, and passionately
Read a Case Study on How Segmentation Helped GE Healthcare
This case study in the Pharma Research Report shows how GE Healthcare and CMB partnered to conduct segmentation that informed and aided business decision making and targeting by GE Healthcare's Picture Archiving & Communication Systems (PACS).
Read the full report here.
Posted by Josh Mendelsohn. Josh is our VP of Marketing and loves live music, pugs, tv, great food, market research, New Orleans, marketing, Boston and sports. You can follow him on Twitter @mendelj2.
The best-laid strategic and tactical plans are doomed to fail if those tasked with executing them don't understand "who" they are building for or speaking to, and "why" they are different from other customers and prospects. To be successful, the whole organization needs to embrace the segments, and to do so, they need an easy way to learn all the important facts about them.
That's one reason why it is critical to engage the users of segmentation research in hands-on settings, ensuring true organizational understanding of and commitment to the segmentation. For example, we often run client workshops that include several group breakout exercises designed to accelerate action.
In many cases, participants in the workshops are asked to take an online "quiz" based on segmentation "magic questions" so that the segments are brought to life among the group. At least one of the main exercises is typically focused on product design and/or positioning, with another focused on marketing messaging and/or targeting. Shooting video footage and creating short vignettes using real segment members can also further brings segments to life for the people who in the end will be using this information to do their jobs.
Finally, these exercises are most successful when incorporating a competitive context and bringing together diverse groups of decision makers, forcing them to think outside of the box. This is needed because great segmentation research almost always provides a completely different lens through which to view your company, how it builds and sells products, and your view of the competition.
What steps do you take to make sure people understand the segments that will be marketing to, developing for, or providing service to?
Want to learn more? join us for our upcoming segmentation webinars:
February 17: Using Segmentation to Understand the Small Business Market: A Premera BCBS Case Study. Join CMB's Laurie Manos and Premera BCBS' David Barnes to learn how Premera used segmentation research to better understand the small business market. Register here.
April 29: Best Practices in SegmentationBrant Cruz will present best practices of market segmentation based on his years of experience as CMB's segmentation guru working with clients like eBay, Electronic Arts, Plantronics, and Microsoft. Register here.
Segmentation Best Practices webinar
Chadwick Martin Bailey's Brant Cruz will present best practices of market segmentation based on his years of experience he has as CMB's segmentation guru working with clients like eBay, Electronic Arts, Plantronics, and Microsoft.
Register here to watch the full Webinar.
Posted by Brant Cruz. Brant is a VP and segmentation guru at CMB. He is also proudly the judge of the Brant Approved awards in our upcoming CMB Cookbook and the self proclaimed funniest man in market research.
Like any custom market research firm, the vast majority of our work is proprietary to help our clients make decisions around branding and communications, product and service development, customer loyalty or segmentation.
We invest a lot of resources in making the results of our projects easy to read, understand, and share throughout client organizations. This not only promotes the value and impact research has on business decisions, but in some cases it can extend the life of the research and create opportunities for others to see something in the results that you didn't and find stories that can help drive the business from another angle.
For example, I look at research findings with a different hat on, with a different mission in mind. I'm always looking for the story, a reason to blog, tweet, and communicate with our customers and key media contacts. And I often find the best opportunities are right under my nose in the data we already own.
In fact, we have several clients that do an amazing job at maximizing the PR opportunities found in their research results including MetLife, Kijij
(eBay's online classifieds), Cisco Systems, and PNC Bank.
In every research project there are opportunities for stories to be uncovered... so where you can, go ahead share the results and see what's uncovered!
Do you share your research results with your PR/communications departments?
Interested in learning more about Marketing Effectiveness? Join us for a webinar on February 24 from CMB and our friends at CMG Partners: The Marketing Performance Advantage: Best Practices for Measuring and Managing Marketing Performance.
Posted by Kristen Garvey. Kristen is CMB's Director of Communications, a mother of two, and loves a good story.
By Jim Garrity, Vice President
As the leader of our financial services practice, I travel a fair amount to client sites to deliver market research findings or discuss upcoming initiatives. Recently I've noticed something interesting (and a bit frustrating). It seems that with the past decade's run up in real estate prices that many of my clients have abandoned the city centers and moved to suburban campuses.
Okay, so what so frustrating about that you ask? Well, nothing really.
Except that I used to be able to get a cab at the airport and ask to be taken "downtown please, the Merrill Lynch building on Vesey." I now find myself asking to be taken to "suburb X, the Financial Plaza, specifically building 5 on Mega Conglomerate Avenue." It's not the 15 minute drive into the ‘burbs I mind, rather it's the knowledge that where in the past I had no idea where my cabbie was going, I was certain he did. Now, I'm fairly certain that he has only the vaguest idea of where we are going. And what's worse, I can now use several iPhone apps to determine precisely how far off track he is...while simultaneously attempting to redirect him as he ignores me.
But why does he ignore me? Well first, he is supposed to be the expert, so he really seems to dislike getting directed by me, the customer. Second, in an attempt to be helpful, I am providing him with suburban landmarks that he is unfamiliar with (so maybe he has good reason to ignore me!). Third, while he doesn't have a GPS device, he does have a Bluetooth earpiece that allows him to obtain directions from his dispatcher. Well at least that's who I assume he's talking to, because he most certainly isn't responding to me anymore.
So what's the lesson here? I think it's something about understanding how technology has made the consumer more knowledgeable, more powerful, AND oftentimes more easily frustrated. And this frustration occurs most frequently when the consumer and company are working off of two different knowledge platforms. In financial services this means bankers and advisors need to know their stuff, obviously...but that simply isn't good enough anymore. They also need to know what their clients know, and know WHERE their clients obtained this information, in order to have a truly productive interaction.
So how has the proliferation of information impacted your business, your client relationships, your training programs? What are you doing to ensure that your customers' knowledge doesn't turn into customer frustration?
Jim Garrity is our VP of Financial Services, never wears blue jeans to work, and knows exactly how to get to his home in the suburbs.
As a high end market research firm we spend a lot of time thinking and talking about the design and analysis of segmentation research projects. We have tried and true techniques and processes for building the most useful scheme for a given company and know exactly how to put them into practice. But from a client perspective, that is only the beginning. Without buy-in from executives up front and evangelization following the research, even the best segmentation solutions wind up unused.
In our recent webinar, Andy Vranesic of GE Healthcare stated that only 10% of effort in getting segmentation used exists in getting to results, with the remaining 90% managing change across the business induced by the results. He continued on to say that segmentation output should cause the C-suite and senior managers to think differently about the business- and that should be reflected in their tactical actions.
Three tips to making segmentation useful:
1) Conduct up front workshops with key stakeholders to set expectations and make sure their goals are included in the design
2) Don't let the numbers unilaterally dictate the scheme you choose, a scheme is only useful if it fits the organizations ability to act
3) Be deliberate about post-project evangelization. Set up an internal strategy for each relevant group so that they understand the key takeaways and take appropriate action.
Watch our recent B2B Segmentation webinar with GE Healthcare
Register for our upcoming webinar on segmentation best practices
Jeff is a Senior Consultant and has of the most diverse professional lives in the business. He applies his experience in new home construction, cosmetics, insurance, corporate governance, and retail with his analytical skills to create dynamite client solutions.
We recently completed our CMB Technology Pulse series (free technology market research) on the future of operating systems in the Enterprise. At the end of the series, we conducted a webinar of the findings "How Windows 7 is Changing Enterprise IT OS Plans and Preferences"
CMB Tech Pulse: Windows 7 and Operating Systems
Despite prior problems with Windows Vista, 51% of US enterprises are likely to standardize on Microsoft's new Windows 7 OS for their desktops and laptops within the next two years.
Download this issue of the Tech Pulse.
This Pulse In the News:
IBM Tries to Woo Business Customers from Windows 7
USA Today- The move comes as Chadwick Martin Bailey, a Boston market research and consulting firm, released results of a survey of 145 IT professionals indicating 51% of large organizations plan to standardize on Windows 7 for laptops and desktops, while 38% plan to do so with netbooks over the next two years. Read the article at USA Today...
Windows 7 Could See High Business Adoption, Surveys Suggest
Microsoft-Watch: A new study by Chadwick Martin Bailey (CMB) should warm the hearts of all those executives currently biting their fingernails in Redmond: their survey of 145 IT professionals indicated that the majority intended to standardize Windows 7 across multiple products in their enterprise.
Chris Neal and the CMB team recently completed a segmentation of the server market for Dell. The following is a brief Q & A with Dell's Chief SMB Researcher, Barry Jennings, discussing his thoughts on segmentation and working with CMB.
CMB: Based on your experience, what are the key determinants of a "successful" segmentation project for Dell?
The key to successful implementation for us has been a very early commitment to change. I have been at Dell way too long and I have done segmentation a number of times. When it comes from the perspective of "this is a great idea, we should go do it and then figure out what happens," it usually fails. When it comes from a perspective of "we don't understand what's going on, but this will help us frame things out and better deal with it," that does not work either.
But when you go into a segmentation exercise saying "there are a lot of unknowns out there and we need to better understand and check out the market, we don't know how we're going to change, but we are very committed to change based off of what we learned in these key areas," that makes a very meaningful difference. It allows you to bring people to the table who may not really care as much about the research, but they absolutely care about what the research drives. That is how you get through to the organization and get people to take action based on what you've learned.
We did that with this segmentation working with Chadwick Martin Bailey and it worked out quite well. There is a strong cross organizational commitment to embracing these segments. It didn't matter what the segments were, or what the agenda was to begin with, we are now committing to this framework.
CMB: Clearly there has to be a real connection to the business- not just conducting segmentation for segmentation sake, have you seen people make the mistake of running segmentation too frequently?
In the past, there have definitely been times when we used segmentation way too much or in too niche a way, and we have also at times done it too frequently or done it for the wrong reasons, so absolutely. Yes.
CMB: What are some of the internal challenges of coordinating segmentation and what advice would you give in managing those challenges? What role can partners such as Chadwick Martin Bailey play in that process?
First up is commitment, just getting the executive to say, "This is going to be our new gospel." We had a senior management team that really held the organization to the fire in doing this. We quickly brought in the CMB team to be a part of the process very early and very broadly. We had kick off meetings with folks from engineering, from environmental design, from product development and from marketing and advertising. Many of whom who won't utilize the results for a very long time and not in their initial form but whose input and commitment was needed.
For example, the raw segmentation was interesting to my advertising people, but segmentation with the personas and with the perspective around messaging is what they really need.
Bringing them into the very first kickoff allowed the CMB team to hear how we were going to deploy and implement the findings, or hoped to, and we factored that into how the segmentation was built. That way we didn't have to crash through any walls to get people to accept it later on. You are still going to have to explain it but you're not going to have to bend the arms of people to accept it. We have had issues with that in the past because they didn't have any sense of contribution or ownership of the process. Having the CMB team come here and spend a whole lot of time In Austin to help figure some of these things out and do the working sessions, while exhausting at times, led to a very good result.
Read the rest of the interview...