On April 20th, John Stucker and Devon Thomas Treadwell
from Pollywog spoke to a crowd of more than 75
business-to-business marketers in Minneapolis.

In case you missed it or if you’d like to add to your notes,
here are some of the highlights of their Five Converging Trends Affecting B2B Naming:

1. Beware the Seduction of Meaningless Names

The dot-com bubble brought about countless names of companies and products that were available as domain names, but didn’t have much to do with function or purpose. John and Devon stated that naming conventions without meaning to the audience (like Lenovo, Akamai, or Doostang) are no longer novel and are bound to be less effective than those that are memorable and evoke part of a product’s positioning. These types of names also require more exposure to build meaning.

2. Growing Awareness that B2B = B2P

Devon and John made the point that people have only one brain – they don’t switch when they get to the office. Keep this in mind through the naming process; no matter how complex, technical, or dry a product might seem, don’t miss the opportunity to connect on a human level.

3. The Rise of Social Networking

The speakers shared a compelling bit of research: “B2B decision-makers spend 1% of the time buying. They spend the other 99% researching and talking to each other.” (Source: http://bit.ly/9CMR9Q) Social media has facilitated new ways for B2B buyers and influencers to interact and has made word-of-mouth more important than ever. Take advantage of this by making brand names easy to share and spread.

4. The Branding Glut

This trend is centered on the idea that most of the obvious names for brands in most categories are likely to be taken. With so many domain names already taken (117 million in April 2010 according to Domain Tools) and trademarks already filed (2 million in the US, 14 million more worldwide according to the USPTO), the key is to make unexpected connections and allusions to your brand’s promise. This is where Pollywog expertise comes in handy!

5. The Era of “Findability”

More key research: “Yahoo” was the #1 search term on Google for the year 2006, and “Facebook” and “Twitter” were in the fop four search terms on Google for 2009. (Source: Google Trends) As web users – including B2B prospects – continue to use search engines for this type of navigation, there are significant implications for naming. Devon and John stressed that your brand name needs to be memorable so customers can find you, and unique enough so you don’t get lost in the static of similarly named competitors. Google “American Fence” and you’ll find an example of a brand name with some cloudy search results.

These five trends will shape the way B2B customers find and buy products and services in the future. How are you going to leverage these trends when it comes time to name your next new offering?

 

Please share your thoughts and reactions in the comments section. Thanks!

 

 

A Forrester report came out this week that doesn't candy coat the effectiveness of targeted and integrated marketing.  He points out that marketers are in denial and are missing the mark in engaging with the customer. I don't disagree that marketers gravitate toward old ways of working in a vacuum and blasting out messages that sure sound like good ideas or at least a good guess. Of course, on today's fast-paced, tactical maketing hamster wheel, it's easier and faster.  Plus, we already know what our audience wants to hear. Don't we? The fact is, the end user is gold and today, we have more tools and intelligence at our fingertips than ever before. There is no excuse to not be talking their language.  Offering options for relevant engagement work. Let's do it and not just say that we are.  In the B2B world, we can get our hands on the same, great information our B2C counterparts know so very well. We just need to go about it differently. Michelle Siebert Senior Marketing Programs Manager Compellent Technologies Forrester analyst: Some marketers are ‘delusional’ about integrated marketing   Christopher Hosford Story posted: October 21, 2009 - 2:44 pm EDT

San Diego—A big disconnect exists between what marketers profess is their commitment to customer interaction and value, and what they actually do in their campaigns. These findings were detailed in a presentation Tuesday by Forrester Research at the Direct Marketing Association’s annual conference and exhibition, DMA09. “Forty-five percent of marketers say they are customer-focused, but only one-third say they have a systematic method of delivering the right message to the right person at the right time,” said Dave Frankland, senior analyst with Forrester.  The claim to customer-centricity appears more an aspiration than a fact, Frankland said. He added that only 11% of marketers say engagement is the primary factor in their customer communications.  “This tells me marketers are delusional about customer value as a key performance indicator,” Frankland said. “It doesn’t make sense to claim you’re customer-centric but have no engagement approach.” The study, “Integrated, Customer-centric Marketing,” sponsored by database marketing agency Merkle Inc., polled 149 senior marketers by phone about current marketing metrics, followed by in-depth interviews with a smaller subset of marketers.                                                                                                                                                                            Best-practice b-to-b marketers face many of the same challenges as their consumer-oriented colleagues but typically employ different methods to encourage customer interaction.  “Leading b-to-b marketers are more likely to include events, webinars and white papers to encourage prospects to respond, but the desire is the same as with top b-to-c marketers—to engage with the customer,” Frankland said. “B-to-b challenges, however, ]include] dealing with corporate hierarchies, long buying cycles and more people influencing the buying decision.”  Merkle’s senior VP-marketing, Mike Savage, agreed.  “I think that understanding the influencers, decision-makers and context strategies are all part of the same conversation,” he said. “The information captured by b-to-b and b-to-c marketers is just acquired differently.”

I found myself chuckling on the drive home from my first BMA-Minnesota Board meeting. It was an energizing session, covering a diverse range of topics by a leading group of marketing professionals, representing many different industry segments. That is until the age-old boogey-man-in-the-closet raised his ugly head: contact lists!

For over twenty years, in every job I’ve ever had, getting the contact list right from the get-go and then management of that “golden” list has been a fundamental challenge. And it is not a very fun one.

The bottom line is there seems to be no easy way to merge/purge/slice/dice/update and validate contact lists. It always takes thoughtful, but mind-numbing grunt work from somebody, somewhere in the organization.

And usually, I found, that person was me.

Why? Because there’s something to be gained, when you dive head first into list management.

You’re giving yourself the insider’s edge. Lists are not just data in a file. These lists are real people at real companies who need real interaction.

People matter. Knowing who they are and what they’re capable of doing, matters.

The interconnectedness of them, and their companies, matters.

List management has never been more interesting (or more challenging) than it is now, with the ever -expanding options of social media contact info available through LinkedIn, Facebook IDs, Twitter tags and the like.

What doesn’t matter is what you call it - whether customer relationship management, database management or contact management.

What doesn’t matter is the sophistication of the tool you use to manage it: it can be an Excel file, a high falutin’ ERP system or a web based 2.0 application.

What matters most is intimacy with your community. Our community.

Having said that – it’s past time for me to go back and review our list management processes.

I would certainly appreciate any of you sharing your personal or organizational approach to contact list best practices. We will all benefit from the refresher.

And, most importantly, I’m hoping to get to know each of you, beyond the list, soon.

Jane Rodmyre Payfer
Chief Marketing Officer
Ergotron, Inc.
twitter.com/pay4this
http://applepiemom.wordpress.com

Paying someone to say or not say something about you is a slippery ethical slope that will inevitably come back to bite you at some time.

In the case of David Letterman, the accused extortionist was asked Letterman to pay him to be quiet. In my opinion that isn’t much different than someone asking for payment for saying something positive about you without disclosing they are being paid.

Case in point bloggers. 

There have been some bloggers who have accepted gifts with the understanding that in exchange they would write favorable posts about a company or individual. In my opinion, this lack of transparency goes against the very foundation of user-generated content. 

However, this week’s announcement by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in their updated “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” the government has attempted to restore a layer of transparency to the situation.

While advisory in nature, the new guidelines will reset standards of behavior that public relations, marketing and advertising professionals should adopt to avoid violating underlying laws against unfair competition and false advertising.

The Guide changes, as set out in the FTC's notice, make three key departures from previous guidance that could impact public relations practice:

The FTC advises that "endorsers" as well as advertisers can be held liable for false or unsubstantiated claims or for failing to disclose material connections between the parties.

The Guides no longer offer the "safe harbor" whereby testimonials can be qualified by a "results may vary" disclaimer.

Regarding endorsements, the Guides specify that celebrities should disclose relationships with advertisers.

While the FTC will approach each potential violation on a case-by-case basis, the new guidelines will impact how professionals should approach some common practice scenarios. Here are some applications of the guidelines:

Bloggers who receive cash or in-kind payment (including free products or services for review) are deemed endorsers and so must disclose material connections they share with the seller of the product or service.

Any firm that engages bloggers by paying them outright to create or influence editorial content or by supplying goods or services to them at no cost may be liable if the blogger does not disclose the relationship.

Advertisements or promotions that feature a consumer who conveys his or her experience with a product or service as "typical" should clearly disclose what results consumers can generally expect or specify how the results were unique to the individual circumstances.

If research is cited in an advertisement or promotion, any sponsorship of the research by the client or the marketer should be clearly disclosed.

Celebrities who make endorsements outside the context of traditional ads, such as on talk shows or in social media, should disclose any relationship with the advertiser or marketer.

 

As with anything, consumers need to access the credibility of the information source and seek other information before making a decision – whether it is a b2c or b2b buying decision.