“Social bullshit.” Those were the two words that ended my oldest son’s interest in becoming a fourth-generation member of our family’s manufacturing company in Chicago. It was a clash of cultures between my millennial son and his boomer aunt (he being a newbie grunt, she being the COO). The words were uttered as she looked over his shoulder and asked why he was wasting time creating a LinkedIn presence for the business, which has facilities in three U.S. states and Mexico.

Usually, family business stays within the family, but I sense a need to drag this one out for public discussion. This moment represents an honest clash that is occurring in the front and back offices across many business sectors. The consequences are daunting. The risks include the ability (or inability) to attract and retain great young talent, secure revenue with existing customers and grow business by finding and winning new business. For companies like our manufacturing business, the stakes have never been higher.

Millions of big and small businesses grew handsomely for decades with the owners proudly declaring, “We don’t do marketing.” The tools they used were shoe leather, the offer to define a business problem and options for solutions. Most business was built on the development of personal relationships. While relationships remain the highest level of building and securing business, the tools to establish them are changing dramatically and in a very short time period.

Source: The Corporate Executive Board

The Corporate Executive Board, an advisory firm that counts 80 percent of the Fortune 500 as its clients, says, “Today’s customers are better informed than ever before. By the time they approach suppliers, they generally have a clear idea of the problem they need to solve, the solutions that are available and the price they are willing to pay. The old tools and the old rules no longer apply.”

A recent CEB study of B2B decision makers revealed that by the time suppliers get an invitation to write a proposal or develop a quote, 57 percent of the decision process has been completed.

Brian Solis, Altimeter Group: “The pace of technology is threatening the biggest, most established companies.”

Brian Solis, author of The End of Business As Usual, says business has evolved to a new era he has labeled “Digital Darwinism.” Essentially, technology and society are evolving faster than businesses ability to adapt. At a digital conference in Chicago, Solis said, “The pace of technology is threatening the biggest, most established companies because they don’t pay attention to change and once they recognize the need to change, they are organized in silos that prevent the nimble approach they need to pull it off and they languish.”

If your customers are figuring out the problems, solutions and pricing on their own, what can your business do? The answer is marketing using digital business tools.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the adoption of digital marketing is helping industrial businesses thrive. The Journal reports: “Industrial companies are starting to catch up with consumer brands in their use of social media marketing using LinkedIn, Facebook and even YouTube to reach buyers for decidedly unsexy products such as electrical components, industrial lubricants and contract manufacturing.”

The good news in B2B/manufacturing circles is that skeptics of digital marketing are becoming a minority. Chief Marketer Magazine reports that 62 percent of B2B companies report they are adopting social/digital tools as part of the core sales and marketing process.

Ontario-based Etratech is a stellar example of social and digital tools impacting business results. The privately-owned manufacturer set aggressive goals in 2012 and used a combination of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube to tell its story. After a year of investing in digital tools, Etratech shortened its sales cycle to six weeks from six months. Since then, growth targets have increased and customer comments indicate the social business channels are an important part of the decision-making process.

Still don’t see the value?

Try this. Take your company’s top 10 customers and perform a quick audit of their social and digital presence. Our family company did it. We found:

• All of the top 10 customers used LinkedIn to recruit talent;
• Seven top customers had strong Facebook channels; and
• Half had active Twitter accounts.

After that round of research, our family company leadership understood the worthiness of investing in digital tools.

This summer, my youngest son is working for the company that bears his great grandfather’s name. He’s managing an effort to launch a new website, produce two YouTube videos and establishing LinkedIn and other digital/social channels the company will need to compete well into the next generation.

What’s keeping your organization from adopting digital marketing tools? If you are already in this space, how did you convince reluctant leaders to get on board? We look forward to hearing and sharing your comments.

The post Famous Last Words: “We don’t do marketing.” appeared first on Tunheim.

Marketing and communications inside large organizations have traditionally been organized by individual channels, but customers don’t differentiate messaging like companies do. Customers expect the information they are seeking on the channel of their choice, when they are seeking it.

This is especially true in digital — digital can no longer be treated as separate channels, but must be integrated with the rest of your marketing and communications initiatives. With that in mind, we’ve compiled 5 digital strategy mistakes we still see large companies make that are caused by internal silos.

1. Companies ignore social media and only focus on owned digital channels

This primarily pertains to business-to-business companies, especially those in healthcare, manufacturing and companies that rely solely on a traditional sales funnel.

We hear often that either companies don’t think their customers use social or they don’t want to know what is being said because then they will have to deal with it (or as is common in regulated industries like healthcare, they may have to disclose it).

This is a dangerous strategy regardless of your business for a couple reasons:

• If customers are talking about you, you are letting the conversation happen without your knowledge; in some cases this can quickly escalate into a crisis.

• Your company may be missing a large sales opportunity by not taking advantage of the relationship-driven nature of social media. Social media can help at all levels of the marketing funnel.

2. Companies rely too heavily on one or two social channels

Depending on where digital sits within your company, there may be an individual, a small team or perhaps multiple teams engaging on social media on behalf of the company.

Before a company has a mature digital strategy, often the channels represented rely on the interests or knowledge of those managing the social media channels.

But if your company is spending all of its time on one channel, there may be missed opportunities elsewhere.

This may also leave you scrambling when the platform makes changes that will adversely affect your hard work.

Think your company doesn’t have anything to share on Instagram, Vine or Pinterest? General Electric has found unique ways to use Instagram, Vine and Pinterest and have amassed a large following on each channel.

3. Companies create content ad hoc rather than planning ahead and aligning with key messages

Without a strategy and road map to guide, your digital communications will be ad hoc. While this can work for awhile, it won’t allow your digital communications to impact your business.

All your digital and social channels should share a calendar with your marketing and communications calendar with a major emphasis on how you can engage your customers.

A secondary issue we see often is that measurement is looked at based on these ad hoc messages rather than overall impact.  But looking at analytics in a silo will only ever tell you part of the story.

4. Companies don’t develop a cross-functional team of stakeholders

Digital initiatives cannot remain siloed. But too often, they remain in the control of one group based on budget or perceived scope.

But social media rarely only touches one area of your business and you may need a cross-functional team to be able to respond to certain posts from your customers.

The stakeholders necessary are different for every business, but likely include brand marketing, public relations, internal communications, customer relations, community relations, government relations, legal, risk management, product/service representatives, and likely other groups from within communications and marketing.

By bringing together a team to solve customer problems and align initiatives rather than protect turf, the silos will have to come down. Have the group get together and talk through the best and worst case scenarios — as with any crisis planning, by talking through these things in planning, it helps ease the fear of the risk and get the team to focus on positive outcomes.

There does need to be a lead, so if digital is currently living in one of these groups, aim to support that existing team. If it will be new, public relations or marketing communications is a smart place to start — look to the storytellers in your business who also have a close connection to your executive team to lead the way as executive support will come in handy to help knock down any barriers you face.

5. Companies don’t align digital strategy with business goals

Digital and social media should support your business goals, as well as your marketing and communications strategies. They should not be operating on their own with little thought to how they support those important business touch points. The channels you use should align with who you are trying to reach (your audiences).

By focusing on what you are trying to solve rather than budgets or ownership, your messaging will have greater impact.

Main takeaway: Use digital communications to reach customers and solve their problems first.

Interested in more information or wondering where to start? Let us audit your digital channels or run a sample social listening report to see what opportunities exist for your business.

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