This international dimension has important implications for how market research is conducted and interpreted.  In my time I’ve run research projects in dozens of countries so thought I’d share a few pointers for those about to embark on an international B2B research study.

• Choose the research approach carefully.  Select the wrong methodology and participation rates may be low or real opinions hard to uncover.  For example, some cultures have a strong preference for providing feedback one-to-one which means that focus groups aren’t a viable option.
• Ensure clarity.  In any country it’s essential to ensure that all research questions are clear and unambiguous.  This is even more important when questions will then be translated into another language.  For example, avoid jargon or slang.
• Translate well.  It’s essential that the nuance of meaning in a question is the same in all languages being used.  This means that back-translation and proof-reading by native speakers is a must for survey questionnaires.
• Remember the rules.  Surveys need to adhere to local Data Protection laws and, if they’re offering participation incentives, bribery laws.  These can be strict in some countries so take care not to fall foul of the authorities.
• Interpret in context.  Different cultures have different norms when it comes to answering survey questions.  For example, some countries are ‘hard markers’ and tend to give lower scores to brands in relation to measures like satisfaction or advocacy.  This means that focus should be on the relative position within each country and direct comparisons between countries need to be made with care.

Happy travels!

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

Horse meat in our Findus Crispy Pancakes.  Sub-prime mortgages hidden within bundles of triple-A rated loans.  Dodgy surveys parading as fact.

This deception – whether intentional or accidental – has far-reaching repercussions.  In the case of faulty research it can lead to sub-optimal decisions and missed opportunities.  And it’s an easy mistake to make.  Statistics carry a sense of authority and it seems counter-intuitive to challenge the statement that ‘customers told us’.  But challenge we should.

Next time survey numbers are presented as conclusive fact, here are three questions you might want to ask.

Who was surveyed? 

The power of surveys is that by speaking with just a proportion of the target market, the likely opinion of all can be deduced.  However, this is only true if two criteria are met.

First, the survey must comprise sufficient responses to justify the label ‘reliable’.

Second, it is essential that those responses reflect the market structure.  Here a lot of surveys fall down.  In their quest for capturing as many opinions as possible, they fail to ensure that more weight is given to proportionately larger (or more important) groups.

No really, who was surveyed?

Dig a bit deeper and sometimes you’ll find the horse meat – survey respondents who look legitimate, but aren’t.

So ask who was invited to participate in the survey.  Was it a controlled, vetted list or could anyone respond?

Ask what steps were taken to screen out inappropriate respondents.  Was everyone posed non-leading questions to determine their role and level of authority?

Ask if any checks on identity have been conducted post-survey.  Are we confident that people are who they claim to be?

Who wasn’t surveyed?

Just as important is to understand who might have been excluded from the survey and whether their absence may distort the picture.  The principle consideration here is methodology (online, telephone, etc.) as not all survey techniques provide an equal opportunity for the target market to respond.

Tuck in!

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

The most fruitful of these plans are built on customer insights.  But insights into what exactly?

Here are three things that would top my list.

What really matters?

We all know that successful marketing propositions perfectly align with customer needs and wants.   But here assumption and guess-work abound.  The remedy is a two-step process.

First, directly ask customers how they make decisions, especially what makes them choose one supplier over another then remain loyal.  But beware; people don’t always really know why they do, what they do.  So, don’t take their word for it.  Instead apply a liberal sprinkling of statistics to your surveys.  Through smart questioning and clever pattern-spotting maths, these techniques deduce what truly motivates behaviour.  It’s not always what you’d assume or what customers tell you.

Of course, not all customers are the same.  The traditional approach in B2B is to segment the customer base ‘firmographically’ – based on size, activity, spend and so on.   The reality though is that customers sharing a similar profile can have very different needs, wants or attitudes.  Identifying segments on this basis leads to a much better ROI – marcomms resonate, propositions have greater appeal and new products see higher demand (read more on B2B market segmentation research here).

How are we performing?

Armed with knowledge about what matters to customers, performance in each area needs to be monitored alongside the general health of the relationship.  That’s why a regular customer satisfaction survey should be a staple in any marketing plan.  It provides the critical metrics needed to optimise approach and set targets.  One of these metrics should measure good will and the legendary Net Promoter Score (NPS) is a great tool in this respect.

What marketing channels work? 

There’s a huge amount of speculation concerning the effectiveness of different marketing channels.  Take social media.  But if we know for sure where customers hang out (sources used to keep up to date) and how they feel about different methods of direct contact, marketing ROI is much more certain.

Just three more…

So there we are; three topics for consideration.  If resources and budgets allow, here are three more I’d add:

• What’s it like being a customer?  Understanding a ‘day-in-the-life’ of a customer is invaluable in fuelling innovation and enabling better engagement.  A much deeper approach to marketing can be taken if you know what the customer’s working environment is like, what tasks consume their day, what makes them successful (as an organisation and an individual) and where your products/services fit in
• What’s on the customer’s mind?  Insights into trends in a customer’s industry, their critical success factors and their own customers, allows you to remain relevant.  And if content marketing is your thing, then this understanding ensures that your content is of interest (read more on B2B thought leadership research here)
• What does our brand ‘mean’?  To develop and manage a resonant, differentiated brand it’s essential to understand what your brand ‘means’ to the market.  Add an understanding of what the brand could mean (areas of credibility and stretch) and should mean (desired brand attributes and behaviours) and the optimum positioning can be set as an aspiration

Which customer insights are top of your list?  Share your thoughts below.

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

It can actively hurt business performance by drawing misleading conclusions.  Conclusions which fail to consider the full picture, which focus on the obvious rather than delving deep or which are simply based on faulty information.  The result is bad decisions.

Research can also passively hurt business performance by not driving action.  The conclusions are sound, but sit on a shelf gathering dust.  Usually this comes down to poor communication – the research isn’t cascaded throughout the organisation or the communication is so impenetrably dry that nobody listens.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Research can also be very, very powerful.  Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to say that good research can transform a business.

So how can you ensure research actually does drive better performance?

One of the most important tricks is to avoid shoehorning a B2C research approach into a B2B environment.  This just leads to superficial outcomes and potentially damages your brand in the process.

B2B research is different from consumer research in eight important ways:

1. The 80:20 rule applies.  Give extra weight to the opinions of strategically important accounts
2. ‘Kingmakers’ are critical.  Provided those that lead supplier decisions are represented, a relatively small number of interviews obtains a reliable view
3. Behind the ‘Kingmaker’ are various influencers.  The research needs to represent these voices for a rounded perspective
4. Account for the ‘domino’ effect.  Take a holistic perspective so that events in another part of the customer’s eco-system don’t catch you off guard
5. Relationships matter.  Don’t try and bypass those who ‘own’ the customer relationship – they and their customers may react negatively.  Instead, gain their support for the research
6. B2B buyers are experts.  Engage them intelligently and ensure any interviewers have sufficient knowledge to do so
7. B2B decisions are more considered.  Reflect this in questioning, but don’t forget to cover ‘emotional’ dimensions too
8. B2B research can be a valuable relationship building tool.  Promise confidentiality to those sharing their opinion, but ask if they would like a direct follow up.  That’s often what they want

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

A marketer’s our raison d’etre is to understand people and influence their behaviour.  And for the majority of agencies supporting marketers, people are essentially what they’re selling – their time, their expertise and the experience they create for clients.

So if you’re building a marketing team or running an agency, motivating and retaining the best people is critical.

But what’s the secret?

A recent survey undertaken by Circle Research and Vodafone provides some valuable pointers.

We asked 505 senior managers in UK PLC to rank the most important determinants of employee satisfaction.  First by a significant margin is salary.  One third name this as the single most important driver of employee satisfaction.  There’s also a recognition that financial reward, whilst centre stage, isn’t the entire picture.  Ensuring people feel valued (34% of managers place in top three) and their work life balance (30%) are also felt to play an important role.

Ask employees the same question (we did – 861 of them) and it’s a similar picture.  One fifth will name remuneration (18%) or their work life balance (17%) as the single most important sources of employment happiness.

But in reality the truth is more complex.  You see, people don’t always know what really motivates them.  So to uncover the true drivers of happiness we isolated unusually happy employees and using some statistical wizardry explored how else they differed from the average employee.

The results are revealing.  Base salary and work life balance actually have only a moderate correlation with job satisfaction.  They matter along with a handful of other factors related to working conditions, but are the basics.

Outstanding employers add three secret ingredients.  They inspire through their leadership.  They invigorate by providing people with enjoyable, stimulating roles.  And they make people feel valued individually whilst at the same time creating a sense that they’re part of something bigger – part of a tribe which shares a common identity and has bought into the same vision.

Read the full report on talent management  here – Vodafone Perspective Series

How do you motivate your team?  Share your tips in the comments area below.

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

As the vast majority of specialist B2B agencies participate in the League and their financial data is verified, this is a strong measure of the sector’s health.  If B2B agencies are doing well, it suggests their clients are too.

Look at the headline numbers and you’d be forgiven for thinking everything is rosy.

Average gross income is up 15%.  Employee numbers are up 16%.  1 in 10 (9%) agency leaders says the market is ‘strong’ with most of the remainder describing it as ‘good’ (49%).

But look a bit deeper and we can see that whilst far from dire, the market is certainly subdued.

Although average gross income growth of 15% in 2012 is positive, it is a slower pace of growth than in 2011 (18%) and is still nowhere near the pre-recession peak of 30% experienced in 2007.

In 2011, double the number of agency leaders (22%) described the market as ‘strong’.

And what do you think agencies said when we asked them to name their single biggest challenge?  More than one half (56%) said ‘pressure on client budgets’.  The next closest challenge, ‘measuring campaign effectiveness’, was named by just 7%.

So, looks like green shoots are emerging but someone’s applied a sprinkling of weed-killer.

Some benchmarks

Economic landscape aside, what does ‘good’ look like for an agency.  Well, here are some benchmarks you might wish to build into your strategic planning.

Financially speaking:

• The average gross income of an agency is £3,900,615
• The average income per employee is £84,608
• The average net profit is 11.8%

And in relation to clients:

• On average, 25% of gross income comes from just one client
• The average client satisfaction score is 8.3 out of 10
• The average Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 48.9%

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

We’ve the intellectual stimulation that comes from getting to grips with complex markets and decision making processes.

The average satisfaction score given by clients to their agency is 8.3 out of 10

We’ve the juicy challenge of bringing to life what can often, at face value, be rather dry products and engaging with buyers on an emotional as well as functional basis.

And we also have a thriving community of agencies.  At the B2B Marketing Awards we see a showcase of talent that never fails to impress.  But that’s just tip of the iceberg.  There’s an army of unsung heroes out there too.

Every year B2B Marketing, in partnership with Circle Research, ranks the UK’s top 50 B2B marketing communications agencies based on their verified revenue.   The headline numbers suggest that most agencies are in reasonable commercial health, but the environment is still subdued.  Average gross income in 2012 is up 15%.  Positive, but this represents a slower pace of growth than in 2011 (18%) and is still nowhere near the pre-recession peak of 30% experienced in 2007.

However, agencies are thriving in a different, some would say more important, respect.

Big doesn’t always mean beautiful.  So this year we went a step further in our assessment of agency health.  We surveyed 448 of these agencies’ clients to see how satisfied they are with their chosen partner.

Here the numbers are excellent.

The average satisfaction score given by clients to their agency is 8.3 out of 10.

The Net Promoter Score (NPS) received by agencies is 48.9%.

As a man who’s conducted dozens of client satisfaction studies in B2B environments, I can say with confidence that these are good scores.  And the NPS metric, calculated by subtracting the percentage of clients unlikely to recommend an agency from the percentage who would proactively recommend them, is especially important.  Several studies have shown a positive link between a high NPS score and above average commercial performance.  This is borne out in the Agency League.  Here the fastest growing agencies receive an average NPS score of 66.2% – far above the norm.

So, no doubt we’re on a rocky road economically, but the fundamentals remain strong.

Share your experience below.  What makes a great agency?

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

Maybe not, but you’ve probably glanced across your own office and felt similar feelings towards sales.  At least you will have done if you’re anything like the 100 B2B marketing leaders Circle recently surveyed as part of the B2B Marketing Leaders Forum.

Two thirds (62%) of these senior marketers feel the sales function dominates in their organisation and holds a status akin to that of marketers in FMCG environments.

Of all the findings revealed in the survey, that struck me most.  Not because it’s an issue in itself, but because these two critical functions are often mis-aligned as a result.  Not a rare occurrence.  The B2B Barometer finds that 79% of B2B organisations experience such a disconnect; 28% describe the mis-alignment as “significant”.

The impact of this is serious.  Marketing leaders tell us that morale suffers as internal tensions run high (34%).  The brand suffers as inconsistent messages are sent (43%).  Most importantly, the bottom line suffers as leads aren’t fully nurtured (61%).

Madness when we consider that sales and marketing share exactly the same goal – generating profitable revenue. 

That’s not to say marketing leaders are accepting this disagreeable status quo.

Here the much lauded panacea, the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), doesn’t even get a look in.  Indeed, a mere 1% of marketing leaders feel this is a viable solution.

Rather the issue is being approached more as a cultural change project – common ground is being sought and used as the basis for closer collaboration.  Marketing leaders are setting shared goals with their opposite number in sales (67%).  They’re aligning resources around these goals (47%).  And they’re tracking performance to create visibility and, importantly, accountability (48%).

Refreshingly positive steps in relation to an age old problem.

What’s your experience?  Any tips for aligning sales and marketing?  Share them in the comments box below…

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

You start with determination to put the customer at the centre of decisions.  You carefully design a robust survey.  You intelligently analyse the findings to get to the heart of the issue.   Then…

Well, nothing.

The research becomes an academic exercise rather than a catalyst spurring action.

So, how can we ensure that insight always leads to action?

Here are five tips.

Be inclusive

Involve those who need to make, approve or execute decisions at the start rather than end of the process.  This means that the research will provide the information they most need and test any ‘pet theories’.  Importantly, by consulting them they’re more likely to put their weight behind the end result.

Be thorough

Ensure the approach can withstand scrutiny.  If the findings lack credibility, nothing you do will cause them be accepted.  Quite rightly too.

Be persuasive

Research findings are often dry and inaccessible, but shouldn’t be.  At the core is a
fascinating story.  So think of yourself as a playwright and tell that story well.

Have a beginning, middle and end – share the most important research findings but only to support the clear business recommendations made in the ‘final scene’.

Have a cast of memorable characters – include video vox pops from customers and case studies which emphasise this is not abstract or theoretical but reality.

Apply lashings of creativity to make the findings accessible and memorable, e.g. use physical props to communicate key messages (see right – a dairy farmer making a point about how little of the retail price from a carton of milk is shared with him).

Be complete

Provide a holistic view.  Couple research findings with other internal or external information needed to make a fully informed decision, e.g. sales trend data, macro-economic data, industry analyst opinion.  This will expedite the recipient’s thought process.

Be there for the long-haul

Act as or appoint a champion – someone who represents the ‘voice of the customer’ and reminds colleagues of the insight until it’s acted upon.

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+

But we business-to-business marketers have always been an optimistic bunch.  

The latest B2B Barometer survey explored the opinions of 128 B2B marketing professionals collectively controlling budgets of £29.1 million. 

It reveals that despite the economic turmoil, the majority of client-side B2B marketers see happier times ahead.

Confidence is high

A balance of 70% are confident in their organisation’s commercial prospects for the coming 12 months.  This starkly contrasts with the low point of 48% reached two years ago in June 2010. 

This confidence is reflected in marketing budgets.  One half (49%) report that their budget for the next 12 months is set to increase and only one quarter (28%) expect budgets to decline.

B2B marketing agencies are even more optimistic.

Two thirds (61%) of agencies report that their billings have increased over the past 12 months.  Looking ahead, a net 80% of agencies are confident in their trading outlook for next 12 months. 

So, it seems most of us are set for a busy year.  The B2B Barometer also reveals where the ‘hot spots’ of activity are likely to be.

Marketing priorities and budget allocation

When asked to name their highest priorities for the coming twelve months, B2B marketers report that four objectives are likely to consume their attention. 

Three of these concern demand generation – generating more leads (41% name as a priority), generating better quality leads (27%) and raising brand awareness (32%). 

The fourth involves better harnessing the revenue potential in existing customers through up- and cross-selling (38%).

They also reveal that five marketing channels will take centre stage in their efforts to do so:

• Trade shows (expected to consume 15% of total marketing budget)
• Direct mail (12%)
• Email (11%)
• Website development (9%)
• Print advertising (9%)

Fancy some more?

There are plenty more juicy stats in the full report which reveals the complete ‘state of the nation’ and this wave has a special focus on content marketing.  Take a look:

• Get stuck into the full report – B2B Barometer Q1 2012: Full report
• View the infographic – B2B Barometer Q1 2012 Infographic
• Download slide deck – B2B Barometer Q1 2012: Slide Deck

Hope you enjoy!

Enjoyed this post?  Subscribe and receive new posts by email or RSS

Connect with Andrew on Twitter or Google+