The most common and effective form of building trust is usually the one-on one meeting between your sales team and the customers and prospects. In fact, for those that remember, this is how the tech business really established itself. The tech buyers would meet with a variety of sales people from various technology companies. They would be handed brochures and reports, sometimes even case studies. Most of the collateral was real techy, but the sales team would establish the trust through conversation and their ability to demonstrate their expertise.

So why am I talking about this. Because this doesn’t happen as often as it used to. Tech buyers are doing their own research ( most of it on-line) to scope out providers that can deliver the solutions they seek. The tech buyers have taken more control over how the relationship can start, leaving your sales team limited opportunity to establish this trust. In fact, now we have business decision makers also in the process that need to trust your technology solutions as well as your company. Again, with limited opportunity to actually meet with them on-on-one doesn’t usually occur until they are half way down the decision-making process.

This is where Tech marketing folks come in to the picture. With limited opportunities to have ono-on-one interactions with tech buyers, the marketing department needs to create the conversations and build trust through their marketing efforts. This is not easy and requires a dedicated strategy to nurture the prospects and reaffirm the customers against buying decisions. Messaging must address the targets business issues and be delivered in a transparent tone. I have said it before and will say it agin, Content is King. Your messaging must be relevant and include proof ponts to build your credibility.

Most importantly, the frequency of your marketing needs to be ramped up. More frequency is critical to ensure your tech company has a commanding market presence and is easily accessable during the tech buyers search.

This point is further supported by A recently released Edelman the 2010 Barometer Report. Not that all of the information is geared towards B2B or even technology, but it does have something quite useful for tech marketers. Based on their annual survey, the report suggests that 60% of those surveyed need to receive a companies message 3-5 times in order for the message to become trusted. Those surveyed also suggested when asked which stakeholder should be most important to a CEO’s business decisions, 52 percent said that “all stakeholders are equally important”

So what does this tell us about building trust on how marketing teams can influence it.

First, beyond the relevance of your content, the types of messages you  build in your content need to come from different voices of your company, sales, marketing, your ceo, your tech experts etc..

Secondly, using multi-channel delivery can be very effective as long as you ensure you have frequency built into your plan.

Trust is something that is earned over time and common logic will tell you that frequent and consistent conversations with your prospects will allow you to build the trust you seek among your customer based.

With pressure to drive revenue it is very easy to look short-term and place your bets on the tactical approach that will drive the revenue the fastest, These are quick fixes and usually do not pan out with the desired results. So you find your self with less dollars to spend and now face the same challenges all over again, although with even tighter budgets remaining.

This is a very common issue among tech marketers and usually is a sign that a plan needs to be revisited.

All of these tactics may have great value to your revenue generating efforts, but taking a quick shot at them with out having a fully thought out plan can only lead to an endless cycle of short terms bets. Tech marketers, if you find your self in this cycle, it time to stop the activities and re-evaluate your plan.

Step back and confirm your target audience, find out what their issues are within their business. Ensure you have developed the proper messaging strategy that is relevant to the target’s issues and demonstrates  your organizations ability to solve these daily issues. Even better is if you can identify how your target consumes the various media you have been using on a short-term basis. Perhaps the majority of them don’t use trade shows within their decision-making process or love to read white papers. This understanding of media use among your target can influence the type of marketing vehicles that should be more effective over the long-term.

This may be very uncomfortable to stop daily activity, in fact it may raise questions from your counterparts in the organization, but by refocusing your strategic approach you will have a better idea of how to spend your limited marketing funds

There is a large quantity of information regarding thought leadership on the web and I recently came across an article in marketing profs authored by  Paul Mckeon the president of The Content Factor. In the article, Paul outlines five best practices for generating thought leadership. He takes a different approach in terms of identifying the mind-set your organization should be focused toward to ensure a succesful thought leadership approach.

1. Clearly define your own brand of thought leadership

Before you embark, be sure you know where you are going. That means having a clear understanding of what thought leadership means in general, in your marketspace, and for your company. Such clarity will ensure that other key stakeholders in your organization follow you, and it will help them understand what it takes.

Experts agree that thought leadership is one of the most misunderstood, overused, and abused terms in business.

“Thought leadership is one of those terms people throw around with no idea what it means,” said Beverly McDonald, former chief communication officer at Infor, a $2 billion software company.

“People think it means repeating what has already been said in the marketplace and if they do it with more frequency they’ll rise above the noise. Or they think it’s an alternative way to get their name in the press when they can’t get attention with any real news. The bottom line for me has always been that you can’t be a great thought leader unless you have great thoughts.”

2. Be guided by generosity

Thought leadership is a commitment to a grander goal than lead generation.

On her blog, elise.com, Elise Bauer says that a spirit of generosity is essential to thought leadership, and it’s a good summary of the shift in mindset that should occur when a company makes the transition from business leader to thought leader.

“Thought leadership requires generosity of one’s time, intelligence and knowledge,” Bauer counsels.

Consider the phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” as a mantra for your thought-leadership efforts, and understand that with a little patience your company will benefit from your work. Companies will look to you for insight and innovation. The media will quote you, and analysts will respect you. And rest assured that your brand will have earned a new credibility and glow that, although difficult to quantify on a spreadsheet, will build your company’s success over the long term.

3. Tell, don’t sell

In our post-credit meltdown marketplace, the consumer—whether B2B or B2C—is more skeptical than ever and can spot an insincere bit of “trust me” marketing a mile away. That is all the more reason for companies to exercise due diligence when starting a thought-leadership program. Be sure it is more “chalk talk” than “pep talk.”

For example, if whitepapers are part of the program, be sure you understand that they should offer objective analysis of an industry issue or problem, not promotion or technical documentation of your products. A whitepaper should accomplish the following:

• Justify why the problem must be solved
• Objectively explore alternative ways to solve the problem
• Logically lead the reader to the conclusion that your organization has the knowledge, expertise, and tools required to solve the problem

4. Take yourself out of the story

Ken Anderberg, publisher and editorial director of Health Management Technology magazine, looks for people who take a bold stand on the issues when he selects contributors to the publication’s regular “Thought Leaders” column.

“The contributors should be presenting an overview that is not self-serving,” he said. “We’re looking for information that is useful for your readers, not a self-serving discussion of a company’s technology.”

5. Take risks; be visionary

Many companies measure a marketing effort’s success solely by how many leads it generates. That shortsighted view doesn’t take into account the longer-term return on investment of a thought-leadership program.

They are also apprehensive about sharing information that goes beyond what is contained in corporate collateral or on their website.

What they don’t stop to consider is that all organizations have a “secret sauce” or “family jewels” that set them apart, and keeping them locked away in the far corners of the organization is not the behavior of a true thought leader, especially not in today’s connected world.

Bottom Line: With the right mind set and expectations, your thought leadership can build your organization’s credibility and truly position itself as a thought leader.

But, it is not easy. Developing consistent and relevant content relies on listening, analyzing and creating valuable information. Most organizations have a hard time setting up the structure to actually stick to the plan. To ensure you can successfully set up a methodology in your marketing department dedicated to content marketing avoid some of the common pitfalls listed below:

1. Your company is set up to sell products or services, not to provide relevant and valuable information to customers and prospects. It takes a real mindset change to start thinking about your customers’ informational needs as part of your marketing strategy.
2. You have well-worn marketing paths that are easy to follow.  Going off the beaten path into uncharted territory is intimidating.
3. You have strong relationships with media partners that may go back decades.  It’s not easy to break those relationships by pursuing a brand-new content marketing strategy.
4. The reduced effectiveness of traditional marketing may have occurred so slowly that no alarm bells have gone off within your organization. You also may think things will come back at some point.
5. Many companies (possibly yours) aren’t measuring their marketing, so you may not even be sure what is and what is not effective. Hard to make any changes when you don’t know.
6. You lack both the right people and the right processes to implement a new kind of marketing.
7. You are reluctant to abandon traditional marketing tactics for what they may believe to be unproven content marketing or new media practices.
8. You lack content marketing role models from whom they can learn best practices.
9. You place very little value in marketing versus other aspects of the organization (operations, product development). Little do you know, that every part of the organization is affected by (or actually is) marketing.
10. Even though I’d hate to think this one is true, I’ve seen it first hand…You have some real incompetent persons running marketing for your company that don’t have a clue about the needs of your customers or what to do about it. Before you can even look at content marketing, you have to ditch them.

Just a reminder: Smart content marketing is a marketing technique for creating and distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined target audience. Instead of pitching your products or services with constant self-referential brand messages, content marketing offers the promise of information, making your buyers more informed. And if we, as businesses, deliver consistent, ongoing valuable information to buyers, they ultimately reward us with their loyalty and business.

Your organization should have a content development plan in place and if you don’t, you should create the process quickly as many other business and technology marketing teams are already realizing the benefits of well planned content development. In fact, a recent article in B2B Magazine details a January 2010 study of business marketers and found that 59% of respondents plan to increase their content marketing budgets this year, up from 56% last year and 42% in 2008.

The share of total marketing budgets going to content marketing will increase to an average of 33% this year, up from 29% two years ago.

Regarding which channels companies are using for content marketing, the top platform is social media, which 72% of marketers are using. Other top channels are: e-newsletters (63%), blogs (63%), white papers (48%), article marketing (48%), case studies (46%), online video (42%), custom in-person events (31%) and microsites (31%).

Well planned content can enhance an integrated marketing effort ensuring your messages are delivered with trusted vehicles (in a few different ways) and over time, this consistent messaging will allow for better audience comprehension.

The CIO Executive Council recently interviewed 277 senior IT executives in October and November 2009 to gain a better understanding of vendor solicitation. Although the full ” Field Report” results are to be published in February, the first look at the results solidify general thinking in the market. Over 50% of unsolicited cold calls by your sales force are found to be the most annoying first contact method listed by the senior IT executives. I don’t think this is a surprise since logic suggests that the target should have some understanding of your solutions and organization before they are contacted.

More importantly, these senior IT executives found that the caller was not prepared and had little knowledge of the targets’ organizational needs in half of the contacts that actually connected.

The list goes on in terms of unsolicited contact strategies deployed by technology marketers. Unsolicited emails, email content that added no value, voice mails that had no clear message were also stated in the survey as being ineffective in a first contact strategy. CMOs, are you experiencing this at your organization? This can be solved with marketing. The sales force cannot do it alone and needs your marketing team to lay the ground work for more successful interactions with the IT buying target.

When these senior IT executives were asked how a vendor should differentiate themselves when contacting CIOs, they listed off the basic content a marketing team is expected to create and distribute using a variety of marketing communications materials and tactics.

• Name references that are relevant to our own company and known/respected by me
• How their product cost or feature set is tailored to companies of our size
• How their product fits with our current IT implementations or standards
• How their product cost or feature set is tailored to companies in our industry
• How their product is competitively different and superior
• What they are already providing to companies like ours
• How their product could help us accomplish our specific business or IT goals

The results outline the simple fact that CIOs and non-incumbent vendors find that establishing a relationship for the first time is hindered by inadequacies and difficulties inherent in the approach for first contact. A smart marketing plan (or even an account specific plan) developed with your sales force can better prepare your content to ensure it’s relevant, your approach to ensure delivery of your message in channels that your target trusts,  and your follow through to successfully  nurture and establish these relationships with key decision makers.

I am encouraged to see a growing trend that I have not seen in many years among the VAR community.  Many VARs are making an effort to brand and promote their own unique value above and beyond any vendor affiliation. Creating this differentiation within a landscape that could easily be described as a commodity can only have a positive affect.  With long term goals in mind, VAR marketing must go beyond the very common messages focused on vendor certifications and the perceived benefit of  associating with these multi-billion-dollar brands. A reliance on provided vendor messaging will only hamper the ability of a VAR to communicate its point of difference in the crowded marketplace.

Tech buyers have consistently  suggested that it’s more important for a VAR to align tightly to its organizational needs by communicating more relevant expertise than to promote the Platinum, Gold or Silver level of certification they may have with any vendor.  VARs can strengthen their customer relationships by highlighting the value they deliver, communicating their deep vertical expertise or by providing above-and-beyond services for more basic infrastructure issues.  Of course, these are only a few general thoughts that demonstrate a path towards more unique messaging and must be underpinned by the VAR’s ability and not necessarily the vendor’s marketplace message.

The economy has forced many VARs to simply become better business people instead of relying on vendors for marketing differentiation and business expertise. VARs have to work hard to identify what their unique position is within the marketplace and develop their own brands to ensure they can stand out among the crowd.

The smart ones will understand that the canned messaging and marketing programs provided by these vendors…. is not a VAR identity.

A common trap inside these corporate marketing departments assumes that when you talk about marketing, you’re automatically talking about tactical marketing – placing ads, generating leads, sending out mailers, attending tradeshows, creating brochures, implementing a follow-up system, and so forth.

There is a failure to realize that the strategic side  – what you say, how you say it, and who you say it to – is always more important than the marketing medium of how you deliver it.

The distinction between the two is critical and these marketing folks need to stay focused on their strategies without undue influence from other departments. Now, I am not suggesting that the sales team input is not important. I do believe in alignment, but the conversations seem to shift to marketing tactic versus the bigger objectives. Tactical marketing is the execution of your marketing plan, such as generating leads, placing media, creating marketing tools, and implementing a follow-up system. In other words, it’s the medium in which your message is delivered.

Strategic marketing has to do with the content of your marketing message and starts with understanding your customers and the issues that are important to them, understanding why they buy or make a decision.

Just putting a marketing message in an appropriate medium for your target audience to hear or read is not good enough. The strategy must derive from an understanding of what’s important to to the target audience. Otherwise, this tactical part of the marketing process will be much less effective, resulting in ads that under-perform.

Many companies simply try to craft their sales pitch more before they find out how to provide a solution to their consumers’ needs.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant, the true intent is to remind all of your busy tech marketers to stay focused.

Developing content can be quite laborious and requires a full marketing team effort. Listening to many CMO’s communicate the concern for cost and time necessary to develop and produce quality content has me wondering about the process and the budget necessary to achieve an organizations content goals. While one of the key issues in enterprise technology is cost optimization, I would suggest that this line of thinking can be applied to content development as well. Is there a tipping point with content development? How much production value should be embedded into the process to best serve your audience ?

As I think about video and audio content-creation for a technology company, I tend to focus on the basics. The content’s purpose will directly impact the tolerance (or lack thereof) that your audience will have for the quality of the finished content. The speed to deliver the content should reflect the audiences need for the information. With a fast paced world out there, I would lean more toward content relevancy and speed versus a high production value.

As an example: If you are reporting live from an event and the purpose of the content is to give your audience a feel for the event as it happens, speed is valuable and you can get by with little to no editing. In fact, the “in the moment” feel of almost-raw video helps support the purpose of the video and communicate the essence of the event.

However, if you’re putting together a reflection on the same event, with the goal being to provide a solid overview of the event as a whole and to draw larger conclusions, I would suggest that you have to balance time and quality. You have a little more time and you’ll need to more thoroughly edit your available footage to tell the bigger picture.

I believe web-content can follow the same measure of content purpose versus production value. Users expect different things from a post created as part of a live blogging activity vs. even a daily post on a thought-leader’s blog. Live-blogging is rawer but is immediately timely. A daily blog is still timely but should have the benefit of a little thought and at least a read-through before posting. If you are developing a white paper, Web site, or learning content, a plan and more substantial editing are called for to truly support the purpose of the content.

Bottom line is you should review your content development with cost optimization in mind. Match your resources against the audience, identify the purpose of the content and measure the added value you may receive from the extra time and budget spent to deliver versus delivering the message faster.

What do you think?

So when I step back and think about Facebook as a B2B marketing vehicles, I start to question how B2B content is going to be relevant in this type of environment. Perhaps if you are a smaller business, this may be a valuable social media choice, but when you think about enterprise based technology, even though your tech buyers and clients are probably on Facebook, are they there for personal reasons? Do they want to participate in business banter or is Facebook more of a respite from their busy work day?

But here’s my observation– most of the really good examples out there are of B2C companies using Facebook to reach their target audience. There are far fewer concrete examples of successful use of B2B companies using Facebook. And I’d caution that it’s not a very good tool for B2B companies to use – as least not right now, anyway.

Why? One simple word: blocking. Those of us who dabble around in social media all day from our laptops, iPhones, or the comfort of our Web 2.0-crazed agency jobs can easily forget that many people work for companies who block Facebook at work. For B2B companies, their target audience is usually (obviously) other companies, but more specifically, it’s the decision-makers within those other companies. This could mean purchasing managers, marketing managers, IT managers or the C-suite. You can have the coolest Facebook fan page in the world for your business, but if none of your target audience can actually access it during the day while they’re at work (and making those decisions about whether to use your company’s product or service), then it’s probably not the best way to engage your potential customers.

It’s not as easy to see how Facebook might be useful in the business-to-business marketing context beyond personal connections and networking. That’s in part why the B2B answer to social networking is often “We are all on LinkedIn (or Twitter)”

What do you think?