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Posts tagged ‘vision’

5
Nov

“You have to” versus “You Should” Marketing

marketing patchwork

Are you into “marketing patchwork” ?

You have to do social. You have to do mobile. You have to do content. You have to do inbound. You have to do digital. You have to do blogging. You have to do thought leadership. You have to do SEO. You have to do Apps. You have to do customer experience. You have to do context. You have to do community. You have to do gamification.

You have to be home on time.

You have to do Buyer Personas. You have to do brand journalism. You have to do opt-in. You have to do authenticity. You have to do collaboration. You have to do 1-1. You have to do collaboration. You have to do analytics. You have to do big-data. You have to do automation. You have to do Social CRM. Read more »

1
Apr

Bi-directional Vision alignment of Company and Buyers

vision alignment

How do you align with your buyers vision ?
Image source : Flicker @ Thomas Hawk

So many solutions are available to B2B companies today.

Increasingly products are being industrialized to be cheaper to produce, and cheaper to sell. In B2B, and in high value goods, pricing is less important. Value is more important. But value is increasingly brought by more and more competitors. Competitors with cheaper prices. And in the end price pressure comes back.

That’s got to end one day. One day your value doesn’t cut it anymore.

Where do you differentiate when market values and prices are converging? When your market is becoming a “red ocean” again?

B2B companies don’t buy your products. They buy your vision. 

Recently I had to choose a new website builder. After a short RFI procedure, three companies where selected. Pricing was ranging from low to mid to high.

Which company did I buy from?

  • Not the company with the best product.
  • Not the company with the best account manager.
  • Not the company with the best price.

I bought from the company that had a vision that aligned with my vision.

Or, their vision aligned with my vision.

How do you align your vision with the needs of your customers?

This might sound like a sales technique.

It’s not a sales technique.

  • Deloitte wants to excel in everything they do.
  • IBM wants to lead in IT technology that brings value to their customers
  • Cisco’s vision is to change the way people work, live, play and learn
  • Philips made simplicity part of their vision.
  • Apple made design and usability their vision.
  • Amazon made ease to buy and choice their vision.

These are the visions of these B2B and B2C companies.

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27
Mar

Basic marketing questions to answer when building a website

http://www.flickr.com/photos/drachmann/

This post is about which basic marketing questions you need to answer before you can start building your website. And why growing companies need to build a team of specialist when designing or re-designing their website.

Your first company website

Let me share a story that might sound familiar to some people. When smaller companies start their business, they are very much focused on creating good products or services. They often build a website themselves, because money, time and knowledge reasons drive them into that scenario. Or if they lack knowledge to do so, they outsource but with minimum costs.

Then the company grows, and becomes more aware of their brand strengths, more products are being put in the portfolio, and they start taking marketing more seriously. They start creating a marketing plan, build marketing collaterals, some advertising, some PR, and often in B2B tradeshows and conferences are part of the mandatory marketing “menu”.

Your company has grown, but not your website

Although this is a perfectly natural way for smaller companies to grow their marketing, let me list a few things that clarify my point:

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