The Future of B2B Marketing – From Ed Abrams at IBM

I had the pleasure of sitting through a presentation by Ed Abrams, VP of Marketing for IBM, at American Business Media’s Spring Meeting a few weeks back.  Here are some of the high points.

The Customers Are In Control
Abrams was adamant about the notion that corporations have lost message control as part of the marketing process. Consumers choose what conversations they want to be involved in. The role of marketing is to work to get involved in those conversations that matter.

Research Shows that Non-Traditional Communications Have Impact (and are growing)
Abrams pointed to a number of research findings that state consumers get more and more of their information through such tools as blogs, wikis and more.  In the pictured chart to the right, 31% of IT professionals engage in IT blogs and wikis when searching for new product information. Critical Point: Abrams suggested that IBM looks for this number to double in the next year, theoretically making blogs/wikis the most powerful informational source for IT professionals behind only search engines.

IBM Making Impact in Social Networking
According to Abrams, IBM has the single largest community in LinkedIn at 175,000 members. They also have approximately 5,000 different communities on Facebook. IBM believes that, to be successful, they need to be a part of these conversations on an ongoing basis.

Online Influences Most!
According to Enquiro Research as presented by Abrams, the three leading influencers for IT decision-makers are Vendor websites, search engines, and industry informational websites (in that order), followed closely by Word-of-mouth peer and Word-of-mouth friend.

Content-based websites are key for IBM. Abrams believes that IBM must provide ongoing, consistent information about what is happening in the industry to be successful.

Abrams’ Top IBM Takeaways for Online
Abrams shared a number of key points that are essential to IBM’s long-term strategy for growing their business. Here are the ones that made the most impact.

1. User-Generated Content. This is critical to IBM’s success. IT professionals trust in this information, and IBM has to know how to become part of those conversations.
2. Trust in the Audience. IBM has to trust in their social audiences to be self-policing. IBM knows they cannot control the audience.
3. Peer-to-Peer Communications. IBM must facilitate this type of behavior in any way they can.
4. Transparency. In all online situations, IBM must be transparent and open. Consumers can “smell BS” a mile away. If something is broken, IBM must admit that it’s broken and address it immediately.
5. Low Barriers to Enter Conversation. Must make it easy for decision-makers to get involved in the conversation.
6. Facilitate Collaboration. Must be willing to work with others and promote others’ ideas and concepts.
7. Connect People to Information. Get decision-makers to the information they need quickly and easily.
8. People first, money later. IBM believes that attracting the right people is the key…making money off of those people will happen later if all these points are followed.

In Summary

• Power is with customers, who can now connect with each other
• Two-way dialogue is more valued than marketing messages
• A lot can be gained by ceding control – viral marketing, market intelligence, etc.
• Marketing has an opportunity to operate faster, be more flexible and more responsive

From my perspective, IBM has transformed themselves from a “command and control” company to one that may have one of the best understandings of the “new marketing environment”. Over this time, they have also adjusted their product mix to be more service-centric than product-centric.

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