Listen up B2B Marketers: lessons on talking, listening, letting go. (Marketer Q&A with Paul Gillin)

In this segment I'm interviewing veteran tech journalist Paul Gillin. While Paul has been a journalist for more than 20 years, serving as founding editor of Tech Target and editor-in-chief of Computerworld, his columns in BtoB magazine are what hooked me since he covers a range of social media topics specifically targeted to BtoB marketers.

Paul's particular interest is in conversation-based marketing and how businesses, customers and prospects tap social media to engage in an open and constructive dialog as a way to build lasting relationships (so we should be listening to him). Through many great examples, he explains how social-media tools reap new rewards--but require new techniques from marketers. Here's the Q&A:

Learning how to talk with our markets: You've written "Marketing must shift from delivering a message to influencing a conversation." Can you give some good examples of how B2B companies are influencing conversations and initiating dialogs with customers?

Microsoft had an openly hostile relationship for years with a community of people who advocate the use of free software, the so-called open-source community. So, in March, Microsoft created a blog about its open-source position and invited comments.

For the first few days, the critics went nuts. They posted all kinds of nasty stuff. But Microsoft didn't flinch. They engaged in the conversation. Within a couple weeks, the negative comments all but disappeared. The whole conversation became respectful and constructive.

Southwest Airlines just launched a blog that fits really nicely with the company's personality. It's informal, chatty, fun and an advocate for the traveler. Benetton's new blog is much more political than most corporate blogs. It'll rub some people wrong but maybe that's part of the strategy.

Tools that make us better listeners: You've written, "The blogosphere is a massive untapped source of market research for those who want to listen." How can B2B marketers start mining this research channel?

If you aren't already getting Google Alerts about keywords that are important to you, do it today. Through services like Technorati, PubSub, Bloglines, BuzzAgent, BlogPulse, iPodder, IceRocket and others you can find and get e-mail alerts sent to you when someone talks about your product or category.

Find a few prominent bloggers in your market and tell them about some things you're thinking of doing. They'll probably give you some good feedback, but more importantly, the may also tell their readers about what you're doing, and their readers will talk about what they think. You have to be tough, because these comments are all public, but what better market research is there than voluntary advice from customers? And it's free!

If you're ambitious, launch a company blog, promote it to customers and use it to float ideas and get comments. Sun Microsystems does this very well. Their product developers and executives are constantly talking about trends they see in the market and gathering input.

Learning to let go: You've written, "The decision of whether or not to engage with social media may not be marketers' to make." So many of my colleagues fear losing control in the blogosphere but--blog or no blog--haven't they already lost that control? Isn't the decision not to engage actually placing B2B marketers at a disadvantage...and ultimately giving them even less control?

Marketers never had control, they just had a small degree of predictability because they knew if they did certain things, they could get a 2% response rate on their messages. That's pretty depressing, when you think about it.

You can use social media to gain control. For example, it used to be that if you read a negative article in the mainstream media, you had to plead with some editor to make it up to you. Now you can take your message directly to the public through a blog or a podcast. I talk to a lot of marketers and PR people who blog and they say this is incredibly empowering.

General Motors is using this tactic right now in a dispute with the New York Times over an opinion by columnist Thomas Friedman. GM wasn't happy with the conventional channels that were made available to publish its response, so it went directly to the customer on its blog.

If your company makes good products and has happy customers, you have great new channels now to spread the word. Engage with your customers, tell them what you're working on and they'll tell other people. Word spreads incredibly fast online these days. If you have lousy products and unhappy customers, well, don't bother.

End Note: It shouldn't go without saying that Paul gave me this interview in the middle of a copy crunch, a BIG one: this summer he's writing a book about how marketers can work productively with people who are influencing marketing using social media (Spring 2007/Quill Driver Press). Obviously I'm already sold on the concept...but shall read it religiously nonetheless. If you want to access some of Paul's BtoB columns, just go here and run a search under "Gillin".

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Paul Gillin marketer interviews blog marketing Christina Kerley CK Social Media

Comments

[Neil Vineberg]

First, thanks to CK, for another really informative interiew, this one with Paul Gillin. Keep 'em coming. Marketing is changing. It's more important than ever for companies to engage customers through the blogosphere and word of mouth marketing. And there's nobody more knownledgeable than Paul Gillin to help get you there. I look forward to reading his new book!!!

[David Berkowitz]

There's not nearly enough coverage of how B2B marketers are using emerging media. This is a phenomenal Q&A, and I can't wait for more to come in this vein.

[David Reich]

Great interview, ck. I think the Microsoft example nicely shows how important it is to actively engage with customers, even if they don't always agree with your point of view. It looks like blogs can provide a company with a way to enter a dialogue, rather than stonewalling with "no comment," which any p.r. pro worth his salt will tell you to avoid doing.

[Al Ries]

Paul Gillin knows what he's talking about and has some good ideas about how to use the Internet to engage customers. The most important issue, of course, is control. Companies are going to have to give up the "illusion" of control they once had. That's not how things work today.

[Paul Gillin]

Thanks for the nice feedback. I think the control issue is important but perhaps a bit of a red herring. We thought we had control in the past, but all we had was the illusion that if we articulated a certain message to a certain group of people, then a predictable number of them would respond. That's not control, it's myopia. We didn't engage people outside of the small circle whome we knew were potentially friendly to us. The beauty of social media is that your message can spread outside of your comfort zone and it turns out that people you didn't even know cared about you actually want to hear what you're saying.

Check out the Tinbasher blog at http://www.butlersheetmetal.com/tinbasherblog/. I love this site. It's a blog about sheet metal. That's about as low tech a trade as you can imagine. But they're getting over a thousand page views a day because people love their voice and the passion they bring to their trade.

Butler Sheet Metal has a group of people who are passionate about sheet metal and this blog gives them an outlet to express themselves. The employees love it and the readers love it because it has a distinctive voice. I'm sure if you were a marketer in the sheet metal industry five years ago, you'd never have thought that thousands of people around the world would want to hear about what you do. What a wonderful surprise! And they're getting orders from this blog, too. The cost is next to nothing and they're telling their story to the world and people are responding. If you're a marketer, it doesn't get any better than that.

We are all tinbashers. We have stories to tell but we haven't had a way to tell them. Now we do. If we insist on believing that only a defined number of people are interested in what we have to say, then we do ourselves a disservice. We have the tools to tell the world. Why would you NOT want to do that??

[Paul Woodhouse]

Thanks Paul. I'm actually quite touched, and anyone who knows me knows that I don't touch easily.

This thread is a prime example of yet another conversation outside of our 'comfort zone' that I had no idea about but still get the opportunity to engage in.

Everybody does have a story to tell and there are folks out there who want to know too.

I don't do anything special other than present me as me and Butler Sheetmetal as them. Now that isn't some attempt at false modesty as much as an attempt at stating a fact. Honesty is always the best policy.

I've said from the start that if a pokey little jobshop in the backend of NW England can make a do of blogging then anyone can and I haven't received one iota of training whatsoever. I'm just some average Joe Soap with a computer.

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