BtoB marketers – journalists love social media just as much as you do. Ninety-two percent are on LinkedIn, 85 percent have Facebook accounts, and 84 percent use Twitter. Check out the infographic below to see how today’s most popular social media sites stack up. For more information about BtoB journalists and how they use the web, download your free copy of the 2011 Arketi Web Watch Media Survey here.

Listen up, marketing and branding pros: Don’t assume the customer programs you’ve developed are the ones that will hit home and keep your customers brand loyal!

ROI. It’s the only reason most marketing departments justify budget growth. So here we are well into Q2, and you’re either preparing a new budget (if your calendar year starts in July), or you’re starting to tweak your 2012 budget to more clearly align with desired results. So it’s time to take a look at what’s working and what’s not, and begin some re-considerations.

Do you have a Brand Loyalty program in place? Yes? Well, how’s that working for you?

According to a new study by SAS, a leader in business analytics and integrated marketing management, and Loyalty 360, The Loyalty Marketer’s Association, these programs aren’t working well.

What’s going on? Well, let’s start with the survey snapshot. More than 150 BtoB and BtoC marketing execs were surveyed. Results? Survey says:

• Two-thirds have a department or functional area dedicated to customer loyalty and retention

-       13 percent plan to add one

• Less than one in four consider their loyalty and retention efforts “very effective”

-       Approximately 44 percent think their programs are “somewhat effective”

OK, so we’re investing all this time and money, and the efforts are not returning much in the way of loyalty. If you take findings from a CMO Council survey into consideration, you’ll find that what’s really happening as a result is defection! Bulldog Reporter points out that research from the CMO Council suggests loyalty programs are actually alienating our customers, especially when we repeatedly send information that is not tailored to individual needs or interests.

Stop Spamming Your Customers!
As a group, marketers have gone deaf on our customers. Instead of listening to what they need, we tell them what we want. We tell them and tell them and tell them. What are we saying? “We want you to buy more!”

And what our seemingly desperate actions say is that “We don’t care what you buy, just buy something! And we will keep emailing you with irrelevant offers until you DO buy something!”

Or, more likely, until they bow out – gracefully, or not so gracefully.

Let’s consider a few personal examples. Think of that wine club you joined online recently, or that makeup you purchased using a store credit card (whose bill you pay online), or the new store downtown that offered you 10 percent off in exchange for your email address. Every one of them wants to make you a loyal customer, and every one of them has your email address.

Now, how many emails have you received from them lately? One a month? A week? Or is it closer to one a day? Are those emails tailored to you, to what you want or need? How do you feel as a result – do they instill a desire to tell all your friends about how great this is, or would you talk about how obnoxious they are?

Stop Pushing. Listen More.
We’ve been blessed to be marketers in a time when we have a plethora of tools at our disposal. It’s time to use those tools, and use them to refocus on the customer. It’s time to look at the long term value of that customer – and retrain your efforts in converting them into not just ‘loyal customers’ but the Full Monte: A Brand Evangelist!

So be serious. If you think the primary goal of your loyalty program is to get customers to spend more now (as it was with 47 percent of those unsatisfied marketers in the survey), I encourage you to think again.

Likely, your ultimate goal is a hyper-committed customer – someone who recruits new customers for you, who is proud to use your product or service. The best way to drive the long term financial success of your product and your company, thus meeting your objectives, is to create what Loyalty 360 CEO Mark Johnson calls “sustainable behavioral change.”

At Arketi we call this Stop Selling. Start Listening. It’s a way of thinking that re-orientates BtoB marketing to place buyers and their needs at the center of all marketing priorities. Understanding what buyers care about, how they make decisions, and how they want to receive information, makes marketing about them, not us.

That’s not done by beating your customers over the head. Instead, develop a formal customer lifecycle program. Start early in the program – maybe even before the first purchase – and integrate loyalty data into the research and purchase process. Recognize that your customer’s voice is easier to hear now, thanks to social media. Start listening for it. That’s where you’ll get value from your loyalty program.

The SAS/Loyalty360 online survey, entitled Facing the Challenges of Building Loyalty and Retention: The New Strategic Imperative, was conducted from November to December 2011 from a cross section of industries.

This blog post was featured on CommPRO.biz on May 8, 2012 and can be found here.  

Here are our top 10 picks for this week:

How to deliver a clear, strong call to action
from PR Daily
Good calls to action are framed in the context of the audience’s needs, fears, hopes, and desires—not yours. That call to action works better because it is specific, audience-focused, and user-friendly.

How to write a blog post people will read
from PRWeek US
For better or worse, catching people’s attention is probably the most crucial component to a successful blog post.

Google Analytics Adds Social Reports
from Social Media Examiner by Cindy King
These new social reports “help you measure the impact of your social marketing initiatives and evaluate the effect social media has on your goals and ecommerce activities.”

Editorial vs. Advertising: Blurring the Lines
from Tech Affect by Melissa Baratta
Over the last 10 years, the line between journalists and readers has grown significantly shorter. The line between editorial and advertising has also always been a sticky area, and as a PR professional I’m trained to view pay-for-play media opportunities with a bit of a wary eye.

Is Technology Exceeding Humanity?
from My Three Cents by Ken Makovsky
I would contend that as we increasingly become an extension of technology, the human connection becomes more — not less — important. We must not succumb to the lure of the PDA and mistakenly substitute that for the human-to-human relationship.

Addicted to Your Smartphone?
from March Communications by Erica Frank
According to eMarketer, the “smartphone class” is a new class of consumers, with 100 million members (growing daily) who are redefining cultural norms in our country.

Study: Facebook Timeline cover image replace wall posts in popularity
from Ragan.com
Cover images matter most. At least, that’s where the most eyeballs are drawn to on the new Facebook Timeline format, according to a webcam eye-tracking study conducted by EyeTrackShop for Mashable.

16 ways to use Pinterest for PR
from Ragan.com
Pinterest is not a strategy. These are fun ideas for using Pinterest at work, but they should be used as part of a larger marketing or communication strategy.

Brand journalism: everyone has a story
from PRWeek US
At first blush, the words “brand journalism” might seem like a contradiction of terms.

7 reasons corporate websites are so boring (and how to fix them)
from Ragan.com
There are many factors that can make Web content dry and stale—many of which have nothing to do with the subject matter. To help you evaluate your own site, here are seven reasons website content loses readers.

It may be a natural disaster, new legislation or other announcement affecting your industry. Whatever the breaking news may be, make sure your executives and company website is prepared to serve as a secondary source for journalists.

Are there any additional online resources journalists turn to? Let us know and we’d like to include your feedback in our next survey. For more results from the 2011 Arketi Web Watch Survey, check out our surveys here.

We know journalists are online, but where are they spending it? Findings from the 2011 Arketi Web Watch Survey: Inside BtoB Media Usage of Social Media reveals 64 percent of journalists say they spend more than 20 hours a week online, with 21 percent reporting more than 40 hours on online activity each week. Not surprising, top activities include: reading news, searching for news sources/story ideas and social networking.

The 2011 Arketi Web Watch Survey seeks to understand the use of technology by BtoB journalists covering multiple industries. A free copy of the report’s findings can be downloaded at www.arketi.com/surveys.

Here are our top 10 picks for this week:

Is social media simply a bad choice for B2B?
from Ragan.com
When your brand’s name is synonymous with your product, just how useful is social media? That’s what Xerox is figuring out. At the Digitas NewFront conference in New York last week, the company’s chief marketing officer, Christa Carone, said of sponsored tweets, “I’m not sure it works for our campaigns and our messaging.”

Infographic: Presentations with 1-20 slides get read most
from Ragan.com
A new infographic from Sales Crunch zeroes in on just how many of your slides people read after the presentation. The takeaway? People read presentations with fewer slides more than long ones, and for longer periods of time.

Social media analytics: The basics for brands
from PR Daily
Measurement is a ceaseless debate in social media. One of the biggest problems organizations face is defining the key performance indicators (KPIs) they should look at when assessing their efforts. This infographic from Social Media Today lays out some of the analytic basics that almost every business can relate to and understand.

How to Generate More Opportunity From Existing Customers
from Social Media Examiner by Michael Stelzner
In this video I interview Becky Carroll, who is the author of the great new book, The Hidden Power of Your Customers. Becky shares the story and meaning behind her “ROCK” strategy and why it is so important to focus on your existing customers.

Create your own infographics at Visual.ly
from The Publicity Hound’s Blog
Create your own infographic at Visual.ly, a start-up that allows anyone to quickly and easily create professional quality designs with their own data. When you’re ready to show your work to the world, publish it on your Visual.ly profile, your own personal showcase.

A marketer’s guide to the social media landscape: UPDATED
from PR Daily
Companies that jump into social media ventures often wonder which social tools are right for them. Good thing CMO.com updated its highly informative social media primer to help match your goals to the right social media outlets.

If You are Going to Help a Reporter, Remember to be helpful
from PR Breakfast Club
Help a Reporter is great resource for PR pros to have and it presents opportunities not found elsewhere. Stay focused and don’t get sloppy just because you’re emailing a reporter you don’t know. Remember, it is easy to spot a quality PR pro in the batch of query responses by the time that was taken to craft the answer.

Some Small Businesses Are Making One BIG Mistake, And Other Hot Topics
from Constant Contact blogs: Fresh Insights
A new study from BIA/Kelsey found that 80.5% of small businesses are breaking a major best practice by not linking their website to their Facebook, Twitter, or other social media networks. The study also found that almost 75% are missing an email link on their homepage and more than 90% of business sites are not mobile-compatible.

Tech companies lag in corporate blog activity
from BtoB Magazine
Despite the rise of social media and content marketing as key marketing elements, only 20.5% of technology companies have corporate blogs, according to a study by content management company Percussion Software Research.

Dissecting Today’s Top Social Media Tools [Infographic]
from March Communications
With so many different social media tools, it’s often difficult to determine which are best to use for specific campaigns or outreach strategies. Luckily, Zintro compiled a useful infographic detailing the demographics and benefits of four of today’s major social networks.

Old school marketers remember well the Four P’s of Marketing: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Of course, they still apply today, but all of the P’s have become so much more involved and complicated than they once were.

As BtoB marketers, we spend a lot of time defining our product, price, promotional strategy and the channels we will sell through… but I have realized, that we spend too few cycles on how we are going to package our whole solution to the client.

For many, we think of packaging as the physical box something comes in, and yes, this is packaging. And, we know that certain companies such as Apple take great care in building a great package for their products. In fact, it is part of the product. Many might argue that most of Apple’s great products are the result of a brilliant packaging exercise of various technologies.

Regardless, I don’t believe most companies take the packaging exercise as seriously as it needs to be taken. They build product, they determine pricing, they create a promotional plan, and then they start selling. But, packaging itself is often the glue that holds these “P’s” together. How one goes to market is intricately tied to the “package” it will be delivered in, or for non-physical products, how it is delivered.

Software products are an excellent example where packaging is critical. For example, which features belong in which solution at which price point? Defining this is a packaging exercise. Oftentimes, we have found that not thinking about how the customer wants to buy your solution will greatly limit your flexibility in how you can price it and the channels you sell it through.

Rather than waiting until you are building a go-to-market strategy before considering packaging issues, I would argue packaging needs to be thought through early in the product development cycle and be fed by 1-on-1 customer research. By digging into the customer mindset, we can start to understand what features are considered the basics and which are advanced – we also may start to understand how we can better package and price our solutions to where clients see the value. This will not only increase the sales kill-ratio, but will extract greater revenue from customers. It will also help us architect our products better to serve more customers.

When our product is packaged appropriately, we can segment our market better and tailor specific packages to different needs of different target groups or segments. That can only lead to greater customer acceptance, which should be music to any marketer’s ears.

So don’t forget to think through the packaging of your BtoB solutions early in your product and marketing planning. I am off to lunch now… time for me to go eat some dead, cold fish. Ok, I mean Sushi in a nice restaurant, but it goes to show that packaging does make a difference… I would never buy a package of dead, cold fish!

1. Determine how extensive of a mobile web presence you want to have. A dedicated mobile site? Landing pages, etc.
2. Evaluate the channels and decide what kind of content you need to create for your mobile users. SMS. MMS. Applications. Content. Email, etc. Of note: Forrester Research sees mobile devices and content marketing as two of the top three marketing trends to watch in 2012.
3. Build an integrated strategy that includes apps, display ads and email. Nothing successful stands alone, and your mobile strategy shouldn’t either.
4. Create multiple calls-to-action. Don’t assume your mobile audience wants to connect to you via a single connection point. Include multiple ways to connect in your promotions — from QR codes to text messages.
5. Finally, don’t forget to measure! If you can successfully track prospect interaction with a mobile device, you can justify your mobile program. But if you can’t quantify the value your mobile program is delivering, it’s likely to go the way of the landline phone.

Keep in mind that these tips just scratch the surface in everything you can do to market to mobile users. If you need more assistance, we are always happy to help.

Arketi recently launched Arketi Insights – a regular thought-leadership series of publications that examines top and emerging BtoB marketing topics, and what they mean for high-tech BtoB marketers. The first Arketi Insights focuses on mobile marketing in the BtoB space. The time has come for marketers to past their procrastination and give mobile marketing a serious look – because buyers are. Learn more about how to make mobile a part of your BtoB marketing mix. For a free download of Arketi Insights: Time for Mobile Marketing to Go BtoB, visit ww.arketi.com/2012mobileinsights.

Here are our top 10 picks for this week:

Why Great Design Is the Future of Content Marketing
from Mashable Tech
Although it’s still early in 2012, the importance of visual storytelling is clearly one of the year’s breakout trends. Facebook Timeline, Pinterest, and Instagram are forcing brands to think and act more visually. Couple that with the impact of mobile browsing, and these emerging trends give new meaning to the phrase “show, don’t tell.”

10 ways to use Pinterest for your business
from PR Daily
Your boards should support your strategy. Pinterest users will pin and organize your content as they see fit, but you should use your boards to help define your brand and company culture.

How to Make the Best Business Impression in 8 seconds or Less
from Forbes
The average adult attention span is 8 seconds. In reality, most people will stop listening after 5 seconds. Unless they have become hooked, they are lost or on to their next thought.  Telling someone what your business does in this amount of time is a talent and needs to be practiced word for word.

For marketing and PR, the future isn’t interactive—it’s unified
from PR Daily
“Unified marketing is about tailoring the right message to the right person at the right time,” explained Rachel Conforti, director of marketing at Definition 6. “It’s also about building genuine relationships—trying to evoke an emotional response between brands and people.”

Forrester says b-to-b marketers will increase budgets 6.8% this year
from BtoB Magazine
B-to-b marketers will increase their marketing budgets by an average of 6.8% this year, according to a report from Forrester Research.

How Fortune 500 companies use social media
from PR Daily
Want to benchmark your brand’s use of social media against that of the Fortune 500? Here’s your chance, thanks to a Go-Gulf.com infographic, which offers a host of statistics and facts about the Fortune 500’s use of social media.

Becoming a “Corporate Executive Tweeter”
from Social Media Today
In this digital age CEO’s are expected to tweet. An article by e-marketer on research done by social branding firm BRANDFog tells us that 78% of people surveyed on topics related to businesses using social media felt that CEO participation leads to better communication

5 ways to create irresistible content with limited resources
from PR Daily
A recent business study showed that 75 percent of buyers are likely to use social media in the purchase process, and 55 percent of business-to-business survey respondents search for information using social sites.

Annenberg’s PR study: Good news for the industry
from Ragan.com
The seventh biennial Generally Accepted Practices report finds public relations budgets on the rise (if only slightly), social media use on the upswing, and perhaps most surprising of all, a majority of executives on board with what their PR and communications staffs are doing.

Engagement ain’t nothing but a number – why 1% isn’t good enough
from Brian Solis
A recent study published by Ehrenberg-Bass Institute found that less than 1-percent of Facebook “Fans” actually engage with brands.

Here are our top 10 picks for this week:

Is technology PR broken?
from PR Daily
Here’s an unsexy truth: the majority of PR pros I meet are hard workers with a scary amount of knowledge about enterprise technology.

Upping the ante for b-to-b
from PRWeek US
After having spent hours upon hours over the last few years working with pure b-to-b brands on their marketing efforts, it’s become abundantly clear that the applications for social media aren’t always as immediately obvious as they are in the b-to-c sphere.

6 tips for effective Web copywriting
from PR Daily
Web writing can be difficult, but once you have mastered these six steps, you will be way ahead of the competition.

IBM study identifies four types of ‘digital personalities’
from BtoB Magazine
A new survey from IBM Corp. identified four “digital personalities” emerging among users of the desktop and mobile Web.

Tech PR: The Post-Product World of Ad Revenue
from Crawford
I tend to have a certain amount of faith in the high tech economy, but my opinion took a slight knock this morning when the WSJ quoted ad network Millennial Media’s IPO paperwork. Apparently, the folks at Millennial don’t know “when or if we will ever achieve profitability.”

How to hook readers with killer headlines and grabby leads
from Ragan.com
Headlines and leads ought to be examples of what Ragan called “refrigerator journalism,” writing that says something so valuable so concisely that someone would be compelled to cut it out and stick it on his or her refrigerator.

Pitching Notes, the Yelp of the PR Industry
from PR Daily
Pitching Notes is a new website devoted to aggregating important information about journalists in an effort to create in-depth pitching profiles accessible by anyone, free of charge.

The new definition of PR: ‘personal recommendation’
from PRWeek US
We need to start explaining to our clients that customer service is as important as PR, and that an army of half a million people screaming about how good your service is can be just as beneficial as a front-page article placement.

Study: For corporate news, journalists prefer press releases
from PR Daily
A recent survey of 72 journalists in the U.K. found that the press release is the most preferred method for receiving news about a company.

Result: The Only PR Metric That Counts
from Crawford
The only measure that counts is whether you achieve what you set out to do, a point so obvious that it’s odd how often some PR pros obscure their results behind a numeric facade rather say point blank whether they succeeded or failed.