Social Media - for Business to Business Marketing as well as Consumer Marketing

I've been spending a little time recently thinking about how useful social media are for business-to-business marketing (B2B). A few weeks ago I attended an excellent training event, organised by the Chartered Institute of Marketing, with the rather melodramatic title of 'Digital Marketing Bootcamp'. Mostly this was concerned with B2C, rather than B2B. I think most marketers would recognise the relevance of social media to consumer marketing. But what about B2B? This I had to check out for myself.

Now, the ever helpful Dr. Harker has already assisted me in my embryonic stabs at using Facebook, while some time ago, more or less in complete ignorance, I signed up to something called LinkedIn. At the same time, I have one or two extremely up-to-date colleagues who are never without their iPhones and iPads, and whose every movement I can follow through foursquare, twitter and Facebook. I reckon this means that I am probably a little ahead of the social media curve compared to most people in their sixth decade of life.

It turns out that Facebook is already used to some extent for B2B - meaning, you can find quite a few B2B Facebook fan pages. (Although, in a recent development, you don't become a 'fan' any more, you just 'like' them. But I guess they're still called fan pages.) Two interesting, and contrasting, ones to look at are www.facebook.com/sodexocareers and www.facebook.com/cisco. The Sodexo Facebook page has lots of interesting exchanges between people who work in the catering business, with advice provided by Sodexo on how to register your c.v., how to apply for jobs with Sodexo, what jobs are coming up, and so on. So it's basically a recruitment site. The Cisco page is a different matter, and has a great deal more going on. There are clearly aspects of 'soft' corporate marketing - like nice, friendly posts from senior execs. But there is also genuine mutual cooperation going on to exchange useful information - it looks like a useful user community for techies who like to play with Cisco systems. So, there is some 'co-creation of value' going on here, as we marketing academics like to call it.

LinkedIn is clearly the social network that is designed for business professionals. You can use the search facility at LinkedIn, for example, to look for purchasing professionals in the environmental services industry (I just did). Then, potentially, you have the makings of a B2B marketing list. However, compared to Facebook, LinkedIn is a midget. One question doing the rounds at social media blogs is whether Facebook could just wipe LinkedIn out if it chose to.

Right now, the use of social media in B2B marketing is embryonic and evolving rapidly. No doubt there will be plenty of opportunities for bright marketing graduates over the next few years!

Lovefilm and Blockbuster

In the last post I mentioned that my VCR had been taken out and put down for humane reasons. I also noted that for organisations that were founded and grew on serving markets related to video rental, the advance of technology was a significant issue.

Blockbuster evolved, moving from cassettes to discs, and from films to a range that included games, TV series and an unhealthy amount of sweets and chocolates. That kept them going for a while - but about 8 years ago a severe blow was struck by a new entrant - Lovefilm

Lovefilm operates in a very different way to the traditional video rental companies like Blockbuster. Disc only - for films and games. No retail outlets - customers/subscibers receive films and return them via mail. Films have no time limit, and you can choose a package to allow you a fixed number of titles at home. You pay by the month, not by the film.

Plus points - no need to watch a film the night/weekend you rent it. No having to return the films to the retailer you got them from. Subscription means you know exactly how much you will be paying. Management of your films/account online 24/7. Downside? You queue films, but can't be sure of which ones you'll get. There will probably be a two day delay between a disc being dispatched and it ariving in the mail - the same the other way as you return discs.

This model was replicated by other firms - most notably Amazon. Over time though, through brand building, stock management and superior customer services, Lovefilm bought or defeated most rivals - even taking over the Amazon service. Poor old Blockbuster has tried to catch up, but never quite managed it. I'm afraid I don't hold out much hope for their survival in the long term.

Lovefilm came to dominate their market by taking advantage of possibilities allowed by adopting a different supply chain. They in turn though are coming under pressure from technological developments - namely, digital distribution.

Consumers now have a number of options to receive and watch media they haven't had before. The BBC iPlayer, Freeview/Sky boxes with ability to revord HD programmes and of course internet based distribution - legal or otherwise!

A recent option is the new Apple TV product. Why wait for the film in the mail when you can select and view it within moments?

Lovefilm haven't been caught out by these developments, and now offer films to view on your home PC as well as discs in the mail. What remains to be seen is if this hybrid approach can compete against purely digital distribution - and the ability to conveniently watch on the living room TV, rather than a computer screen.

Not to worry the Lovefilm management, but I've been a subscriber since 2002, and I'm now thinking of cancelling.

Products have lives

My family got our first video recorder in 1982. It was a Betamax! I remember that the shop we bought it from also supplied us with a hookie copy of ET - picture quality not bad, but ten minutes from the middle missing.

My first personal VHS machine was bought on my nineteenth birthday - 1992. First films I bought for myself were Highlander and The name of the Rose. Over the next five years I built up quite a collection of films before shifting onto DVD, then Blu-Ray. I kept a VHS machine so I could still play the movies I had but didn't like enough to upgrade to DVD - until now.

This evening I threw out my VHS recorder - I caved in and came back from the shops with an Apple TV. Most shops stopped selling VHS machines a few years ago, at least in the UK.

As technology advances, new products are introduced, and old ones die. This has significance for firms operating in markets that support the hardware - such as the many movie-rental outlets that have pretty much disappeared from the High St.

Time passes

This blog is about marketing - not physics - but many students experience a time-is-relative phenomenon, especially when they are new to university life. Simultaneously, they feel like they have only just arrived and yet some arithmetic work with a calendar will tell them they are about a 1/4 of the way through the year with respect to teaching. Those of them that reflect on that may consider whether or not they have achieved all they should have done by this point - reading, writing, and researching - and when they realise that they have not it should give them pause for thought.

Guest Post: How I ended up studying marketing

This post is written by a guest contributor. Kevin started his degree at Strathclyde in September of 2010.

'I started my university career at Muenster University doing Business Administration (BSc). As time went by I figured that my main interest is based in marketing and I went to talk to my student adviser asking how to put more focus on the subject which suited me most. When he told me that there was no chance to do so, I decided to look for other alternatives.

Meanwhile a friend of mine started studying at Strathclyde Business School and kept telling me how much more interesting it is to study in Scotland than in Germany. In 2009 she invited me to stay a couple of days in Glasgow and I saw my chance to sneak into a first year marketing lecture, held by Dr. Harker. After reading a few chapters of “marketing an introduction” and some other English marketing books I decided to take the risk, leave the 2^nd best German Business school and start over as a 1^st year fresher at SBS in 2010.

The first weeks went past quite quickly and I met a lot new friends. SBS puts lots of efforts into the integration of foreign students; therefore I never experienced a feeling of not being welcome around here. The marketing lecture worked out as expected. Continuous work and preparation before the lectures and tutorials is essential; no surprises there. All in all I don’t regret that I chose to come to Glasgow and I can’t wait for what’s coming up next'.

Wikipedia and your assignment focussed research

Socially and culturally, Wikipedia is a very interesting thing. Can it be helpful in the preparation of an assignment as part of the research and reading done?

The advice I tend to give is that Wikipedia is something it is OK to start with, but you must be sure not to finish there - more reading and research will be required.

Some Wikipedia entries are very short or haven't been updated recently. Others contain bias or significant omissions or unsupported opinion or conjecture. Generally though, the most useful part is the list of references and sources of information at the end of the entry - indicating where the information came from. Reading through that list is a good way to get the research-ball moving.

Should you include Wikipedia in your list of references? Well now, Wikipedia as one of 5 websites in your reference list looks very poor, but the same entry alongside a couple of dozen references with a mix of other websites, journal articles, market intelligence reports and printed books doesn't have the same negative impact or a reader trying to evaluate the quality and quantity of your research.