Laurie Young, marketing consultant and former global marketing partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, talks to Marketing Society editor Elen Lewis about B2B and what it can teach B2C.
What are the core ingredients of B2B marketing?
I don’t know if they are the core ingredients but the very best, who earn very high margins, certainly adopt some unique approaches. For instance, a number of the world’s leading providers have woken up to the fact that some of their buyers have revenues that exceed the GDP of some nation states. They have applied the approaches that they would use to enter a new national market to large businesses and it has completely transformed their method of marketing and selling to major accounts. Some call it “account based marketing” and it is very different to the account management process of ten years ago.
Another important part of their armoury is “thought leadership”. Inside firms like IBM, HP, Fujitsu, Deloitte, PWC and KPMG this is a very familiar method of marketing. It promulgates ideas using sophisticated relationship marketing and viral marketing techniques as back up. And it earns many millions in revenues. When combined with elite media (like the Harvard Business Review or the annual meeting of the world economic forum in Davos) its impact can be devastating. For many of these leading firms it is their main method of marketing; and yet it has not made an appearance in any marketing text book or undergraduate course.
There are a number of other unique approaches which are very successful. I find it frustrating that they are so poorly known and that many agencies concentrate on low level tactical techniques. They miss out on huge potential revenues as a result.
What can B2C marketers learn from B2B marketing?
What an interesting question. I had not considered this before. Well, one of my friends provides research and new product innovation work to some of the world’s leading consumer marketers. He thinks that many FMCG providers have become so process orientated that they have lost their creative power. B2B by contrast are investigating “co-creation” as a major means of innovation and joint process integration as a mechanism of mutual profit.
And then there’s thought leadership. Lord Lever used it when first launching soap in the 1890’s and Coca-Cola used it when trying to educate the “modern” American house maker of the 1920’s. Consumer marketers appear to have forgotten its power. I wonder whether the millions made, at little cost, through this approach in B2B might help the margins of B2C if effectively transferred.
Hear more from Laurie at the B2B Marketing Excellence Workshop on 13 April. He’ll be joined by Ruth Rowan, director of UK marketing, BT Global Services, and Caroline Taylor, vice president of marketing, communications & citizenship, IBM UK & Ireland.