Plan your inbound marketing efforts

After describing an inbound marketing strategy I was asked how I would implement and manage all of the different properties and postings.  It is a good question, especially if inbound marketing activities are only part of your initiatives as managing the different platforms can be very time consuming and difficult to track.  If you do not  have a plan the postings cans lose some of its effectiveness as the messaging can seem muddled and ad hoc. In my last post I discussed the different ways to use each platform, now you need to implement a plan to make sure you are getting the most from your efforts.

You need to draw out a weekly, monthly and quarterly plan of inbound initiatives and make sure you know when these will all fall and who will be responsible for managing them. The plan should take into account any upcoming case studies, white papers, webinars, banner or other forms of advertisement and event attendance or other items so you can schedule announcements appropriately. You also need to assign people to manage these events on the different platforms. For example, if you have  technical white paper coming out in two weeks, it would make sense for someone on the development team to write a blog post about the paper and possibly promote it on LinkedIn. You will need to make sure that person is aware of their deliverables and know when and where they need post. You need to plan like a marketing agency would plan for more traditional activities to make sure your messaging is cohesive and accomplishes your objectives.

Anyone else have thoughts on how to plan or some best practices?

Can a B2B product be a luxury brand and marketed as such?

Image via Wikipedia

The firm I work for, Harvard Business Publishing, is a division of the Hrvard Business School. Obviously our brand is very well known across the globe and the brand stirs certain emotions. High end B2C luxury brands like Bentley, Gucci, Aramni and Patek Philippe are also well known across the globe and also stir different emotions than a Dockers, Gap or Walmart.

Luxury brands command a price premium and usually justify the higher price by messaging the emotional benefits of owning such a product and implying that access is limited to only an elite few.
The P's are well defined in the marketing of luxury B2C brands but can a B2B brand also take some cues from these products in our own marketing?

Looking at a few of the luxury brand traits, you can see that B2B brands have the potential to market themselves as higher level than other products.

• Pricing power: High
• Emotional pull: High
  
• Status: High

If your product does fall into the luxury B2B category, it would  seem that your approach to marketing should encompass the same attributes as B2C luxury brands. Off hand, I can't think of any true luxury B2B brands in the same category as a Rolex or Gucci. Can you?

Workflow marketing

Marketing should be a means to generate a conversation with your customers. Engage with them, identify their needs, pains and introduce your solution and value proposition. I am of the belief that this conversation, to be successful, needs to be done within that customers particular workflow. I call this approach Workflow marketing.

Workflow marketing is introducing your product when it is needed in a prospects daily routine. Interacting at the right moment is where social networking, blogs, ratings, wikis, audio, groups, etc. are so powerful because they are becoming ingrained in our every day routine and firms can leverage these tools to interact with prospects to start a conversation.

Workflow marketing is the opposite of flooding people with information in the hopes that they will remember you when the time is right. The key is to be there when your customer is seeking what they need as they will be more open to a dialog. Obviously, this is similar to behavioral marketing and targeting but I think it goes beyond those tools because it is less intrusive, less obvious and more welcoming to the prospect.