Want ROI From Today's Technologies, Marketers? Don't Just Show Up (participation), Step It Up (innovation).

Many B2B marketers advocate for companies to integrate emerging technologies into the marketing mix. Naturally, I count myself among them. But where I diverge from the pack is in what, precisely, I'm advocating of companies: My message isn't limited to participation in today's media, but one far more focused on innovation from today's B2B marketers.

My argument for integrating these media is rooted in what innovation really means, and why it makes all the difference in levels of ROI. Because, I contend, it’s not that emerging technologies are innovative—it's what marketers CREATE through these emerging technologies that is the true mark of innovation in this era. And in order to increase ROI through social media and mobile media, marketers must be thinking robust programs (innovation) over simple platforms (participation).

Participation in these media keeps your brand relevant. But innovative programs with these media makes your brand unique. Innovative programs differentiate your brand, provide unparalleled value to your audiences, and pull customers to you vs. push more messages at them (that many times serve only to push them further away).

Yet too many marketers view these modern platforms as a veritable 'checklist' of tactical items to incorporate akin to, “Twitter account? Check! Facebook group? Check! Mobile App? Check!” But these tools, technologies and platforms aren't a compilation of items to check off some ever-expanding list. Far from it. They're a set of building blocks with which marketers can architect strategic programs to advance their brands.

Remember, anyone and everyone can use these tools, launch a presence on these channels and sign-up for these platforms. But your brand isn't anyone and everyone. You're not using these technologies to merely make the same moves as others, you're looking to move the ROI needle for your business.

Let's face it, as B2Bs we court audiences that are discerning, demanding and in need of more solutions, not more distractions. Professional audiences don't follow your Twitter streams because you give them updates on your company’s progress, they subscribe to your stream of mobile SMS alerts because the real-time breaking information you provide them progresses their business performance. They don't access your topical communities because they have time to spare—they subscribe to your forums because they've not a moment to waste in making high-risk, big-ticket purchases.

And they’re certainly not downloading your mobile apps because it’s cool to have your icons cluttering their smartphones. On the contrary, they're not seeking more clutter but less complexity... and they’re looking to your apps to solve their problems and improve their productivity.

Marketers, your business audiences need you to innovate around their challenges and needs, and in so doing you might just find you're innovating your B2B business. Let me provide some examples to illustrate how innovative programs lead to myriad points of ROI for today's companies:

Through its Business Exchange, BusinessWeek has created an online venue for content sharing and professional networking that's unique in enabling users to create categories, exchange articles and promote content that they find meaningful—even content from competitive media outlets. As a result? The media outlet is using these technologies to keep a finger on the pulse of topics and story themes that are important to the lifeblood of their business: their readership. In using various technologies to create a program for users to hold “actionable conversations”, National Instruments has built a community of 140,000+ scientists and engineers that are co-innovating with the company to improve existing offerings and identify altogether new revenue-generating products.

By creating a digital footprint of on- and off-domain touchpoints where users can share trusted recommendations and network with fellow peers, SAP is able to decrease purchasing cycles from many months to mere days for their training and educational products. In developing an active community—spanning blogs, forums and video— around supply chain management expertise, Kinaxis has doubled its level of traffic and leads, and yielded double-digit growth in subscriptions of certain paid offerings, even in economically tight times.

Through giving online communities full control over deciding which topics and questions will be polled of 50,000 marketers in a first-of-its-kind crowdsourced trending study, Equation Research realized a five-fold increase in success rates over all other marketing programs in the company's history... and built a pipeline of 400 new prospects in the process. And in developing a revolutionary mobile application that makes road warriors more productive by matching their current locations with business prospecting information, Hoovers has tapped emerging technologies to reinvigorate their brand's core value proposition of business intelligence across a new revenue stream and gained a huge advantage over competitors.

What do all of these very different companies and vastly different efforts have in common? The marketers driving these initiatives are not solely participating in these emerging technologies, they're INNOVATING through them by creating unique programs that are highly valuable to their audiences, and high in ROI to their enterprises.

So, what's the key takeaway, marketers? In this fast-moving era, using technologies to “keep up with” competitors isn’t the critical success factor. Rather, leveraging these emerging media in ways to “stand far apart from” competitors is how you'll create the level of success critical to your company. And for each marketer, and every company, what will set you apart are the *different* programs that you innovate... not using the same platforms in the same ways as all your competitors.

It's precisely this level of ingenuity, and innovation, that makes your brands special (not the same!), secures you a place among highly-coveted audiences and yields real ROI for your business across such benchmarks as improvements in business revenues, market relevancy and customer relationships.

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Comments

[Brandon Croke]

Thanks for the post CK, I really liked the company examples you provided, I think they were relevant and tangible, as opposed to just the vague overarching "principles" of SM that are repeated so often.

My question is, what if you are a brand that is just mediocre? Say you are a value brand that strives to make a commodity product at a discount price. Are some brands going to have an easier time being "social" than others, or is there a place for social media for the knock-off tylenol?

Have you ever worked with a client and thought, maybe you shouldn't go social.

[Social Media Manager]

The challenge for B2B marketers of maintaining a common brand voice. Handling the control of brand identity, messaging and tone of voice is one perceived problem of social media that troubles many in B2B marketing.