How to Create Commercial Grade Digital Marketing

How to Create
Commercial Grade
Digital Marketing
Written By: Yariv Drori
Vice President of Programmatic Ad Operations
We’re all used to B2C customer experiences, many of which are easy, helpful,
and successful in getting us to buy – and the fact is that many B2B marketers
have some catching up to do when it comes to making marketing that’s just
as pleasant and profitable. Yariv Drori explains how to shift your marketing
toward becoming commercial grade – meaning it creates an experience for
your customers that meets their high expectations set by B2C businesses. By
following the steps he outlines here, you’ll attract more customers, boost
your reputation, and grow your business to new levels of success.

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B2B Connected. Commercial Grade Digital Marketing
Some of us buy goods on behalf of a business and some of us sell them; some of us take
products to market, some influence decisions and some may be doing all of the above.
But in our lives we are all consumers and as such we have become accustomed to a
buying experience that is based on lightning fast access to abundant information at the
tips of our fingers. As consumers we expect brands and retailers to be ready with every
bit of information that will help us make the educated decision that’s necessary to
complete a purchase. We expect to be able to find the companies we need, learn
about them, get help in making a decision and engage in a transaction. As business
professionals we bring those expectations with us when we seek products and services
on behalf of our businesses. However, many B2B brands have yet to adapt to this new
standard in customer expectations, and as a result they are taking a major risk and
losing business.
Take Carl for example, who drives a
sport sedan and works as a warehouse
manager at a brewery. Let’s compare
his experience when buying a new set
of tires for his car versus a new set of tires
for a forklift at his warehouse.

© 2016 MultiView. All Rights Reserved. 3
The B2C Customer Experience Versus the B2B Customer Experience
When buying car tires Carl gets an instant opportunity to browse and compare almost
every option on the market. By conducting a quick search online, he comes across
multiple retailers, manufacturers and consumer rating sites that provide an abundance
of information in the form of specs, graphics, videos, comparisons, customers’ reviews
and expert advice. At any point of the process Carl has the opportunity to find what he
is looking for and engage with a retailer to complete the transaction. Tirerack.com is a
great example of a consumer brand leveraging digital media to sell tires because it
caters to all the steps in the conversion funnel in one excellent website.
Now let’s compare Carl’s experience shopping for car tires to his experience shopping for
forklift tires. These are commercial grade tires; they are heavy duty, durable, made out of
quality materials, often cost 10 times more than car tires do, and are difficult to install. The
path Carl takes would probably be one of the following:
Rummage through his drawers to find the phone number of the
distributor that sold him the forklift 10 years ago, call the dealer
(hoping they remember him), let them know the make and model
of his machine, wait for them to look through a 2,000 page catalog
and give him a price for a couple of options from the same
manufacturer of the old tires that they happen to have a
relationship with.
Pick up the phone and call the guy in a van that visits his warehouse
once every two weeks who’s selling anything from paper towels, to
light bulbs, grease, gloves and earplugs. While it’s convenient, he’s
most likely going to just call the same distributor we referred to in the
first scenario and mark up their price a tad.

Carl may even follow his consumer instincts and go straight to a
search engine on the web looking for forklift tires. A bunch of sites will
come up in the search results for distributors, manufacturers and
retailers. A few more clicks and Carl soon finds out that to get his tires
he would either need to download a 2,000 page catalog or contact
one of these companies by phone, email or fax. He may be lucky to
actually find tires that fit his forklift, but there will be no videos, no
peer reviews, nor comparisons, and the product pages will be plain
and utilitarian – just a picture and some technical specs.
The big risk in ignoring the fact that buyers have moved online is in the disruption of the
current product distribution model. The same effect that Expedia had on travel agents,
Netflix on broadcast and Uber on yellow cabs could happen here too. What would
happen to forklift tire distributors if tirerack.com – a company that’s adapted to their
buyers’ new habits – started selling forklift tires directly to Carl?
Today’s B2B buyers are accustomed to a richer, more nimble and more transparent
experience because that is what they get from their journey as consumers. B2B marketers
must adapt quickly because Carl may have ended up calling the distributor for his forklift
tires today, but I am pretty certain he will not be calling them for the next set in the future
when he’ll be even more likely to shop online.
How to Adapt to Your Customers’ Expectations
Of course, everything we’ve covered up until this point sounds easier said than done.
But if you take the time to develop these four areas of your marketing strategy, you’ll
align your customers’ experience with their buying expectations and ultimately grow
your business.
Why the stark difference in user experience between B2C and B2B when in
both scenarios we are selling tires to the same guy?
The answer is that, for the most part, B2B marketers have not kept up with the
rapid changes in consumer behavior; many of them are either sticking to their old
ways of doing business or have made only marginal improvements.

B2B Connected Industry Newsletter
B2B Connected The Ultimate Buyers GuideB2B Connected. Commercial Grade Digital Marketing
Build Your Brand
Think of your brand as the perception
that your addressable market has
your business. It includes everything
they hear about it (from you or
anyone else), their past experience
with your company and the
connotations they associate with it.
Where would you put your brand on this chart ?
Everyone wants to be in that green quadrant where your potential customers know and
love you. While getting into that quadrant requires tremendous effort and
Make Your Company Discoverable
You must give your prospective buyers a chance to find you. It may seem like a
ridiculously obvious statement, but I am still repeatedly astounded by how deep some
B2B businesses are buried in the web. Some are difficult to find even when looking for
them specifically. People expect the internet to be indicative of everything that there is,
and if they cannot find you online through a standard search then you practically do not
exist. You absolutely must assume that people are looking for your products and services
online; it is how the buyers’ journey begins today.
Discoverability can be managed through:
Search Engine Optimization – Make sure your business comes up in
search results related to what you offer. You can improve this yourself
by seeing which keywords are driving people to your site in Google
Analytics and including them throughout your site (without overusing
them.) Consistent content marketing will also improve SEO.
Search Engine Marketing – Your buyers are searching for different
terms related to your business throughout the buying journey, and a
comprehensive SEM strategy can help your company be a part of
every step.
Public Relations – Regular PR plays give your company more
opportunities to come up for reputation or brand-based keywords
while showing off your progress and expertise.
Low Awareness
and Positive
Low Awareness
and Negative
High Awareness
and Positive
High Awareness
and Negative

Create Content
Are you familiar with the feeling where you talk to a sales rep who cannot tell you
anything you don’t already know about the product you want to buy? That may have
happened to you in a car dealership or an electronics store while shopping for a
consumer product. The internet is a fantastic research tool and people use it
extensively during their buying journey for B2B products, too.
In fact, recent studies found that 94 percent of B2B buyers research their purchase
decisions online* and 70 to 90 percent of the buying journey is done before they reach
out to sales.* When people look for what you sell, they will consume an immense amount
of content to help them reach a decision, and the more they consume the more likely
they are to buy. Just think of the websites you visited and the content you consumed
before you purchased your current car. There’s a reason why companies invest so much
money and effort in content that helps you reach decisions: content converts prospects
into customers.
1. *Acquity Group 2. *Forrester
investment, you can probably name a few brands that can claim it. But remember that
high awareness is not always a rose garden and can become very difficult to manage
when customer experience goes bad, which is why you can probably also think of some
big brand names that fall into the red quadrant.
Many B2B businesses, especially SMB’s, fall into the blue quadrant. They are very focused
on providing top quality products and services, which is great, but they struggle to justify
investment in their brand awareness – an aspect of their businesses that’s absolutely
essential – especially within the context of discoverability mentioned in the previous
section. While getting found will put you on the roster when your buyers are looking for
your solutions, investing your brand will get you in the starting lineup.
65% of buyers cited reputation as a top primary factor in choosing a vendor.*
Reputation in today’s world equals positive brand recognition. So while B2B
companies MUST manage their brand perception in the ways they have
before, now they must do so through online channels as well.
1
2
*Forrester

Engage With Your Customers
So, you invested in discoverability and people found you, you invested in your brand and
people trusted you, and you invested in content on your website pages so people are
now choosing to engage with you. So much effort was put into capturing this intent, and
now that you are in full control of the process, how do you facilitate this engagement?
Checkout the website of Case IH (www.caseih.com),
an agriculture equipment manufacturer with a
fantastic website that doesn’t leave a clod unturned
(literally!) in its effort to convert visitors into customers.
It makes you wish you were a farmer; it is that good.
B2B Connected Industry NewsletterB2B Connected The Ultimate Buyers GuideB2B Connected. Commercial Grade Digital Marketing
Communicate Through All Channels
The more methods people have to engage with you the more likely they
are to do so. Think beyond the form on your website or a phone number
and consider creating downloadable content, webinars, and newsletters
while facilitating conversations on social channels, chat, email, and text.
The challenge will be to maintain a consistent, quality experience
regardless of the engagement method.
While you are carrying out these initiatives, don’t forget to ask potential
customers about their journey and the factors that drove them to engage.
The stories you will hear may surprise you and are invaluable data for
refining your marketing programs.
Maintain the Relationship After the Sale
This part is often excluded from marketing conversations about the buyers’
journey. But in the context of this ebook it is important to bear in mind that
your customers are still going to expect you to be there through all those
engagement channels after the sale is over for support and customer
care. When they engage with you after buying they’d expect to find you
again, to get answers to their questions, to find more information about the
product they purchased, and for you to pay attention to feedback.

B2B buyers are essentially regular consumers who are in a mode of trying to accomplish
an objective on behalf of a business. Indeed, they may be bound by different rules they
need to abide by in order to reach a decision and execute the purchase, but the way
they do research, the way they are influenced, the way they engage and the way they
expect to be treated are all similar. Yet, it seems to take B2B businesses a little longer to
jump on the digital bandwagon, and many businesses who are accustomed to
engaging with customers through traditional channels are literally sinking into the abyss
of nonexistence because they fail to acknowledge this change in buyers’ behavior. But
by focusing on how you can make your marketing commercial grade, you can create
a strategy that will make the grade – and ultimately make more happy customers.
Is Your Marketing Making the Grade?
Visit us at multiview.com
Learn more about customer strategy today
972.402.7070 solutions@multiview.com
About Yariv Drori
As MultiView’s Vice President of Programmatic Ad
Operations, I help more than 2,000 B2B clients connect
with their audiences. It’s been a fun journey from fish
farming on a kibbutz in Israel to here. In between, I went to
art school for photography and animation, worked as an
animator, then joined an ecommerce firm that created
immersive shopping experiences (it was hot in 1998!) for
world-famous luxury brands like Neiman Marcus, Brooks
Brothers, Kate Spade and Barneys NY. From there I joined
another start-up that evolved into Sizmek, then moved to
adap.tv, which sold to AOL. I even ran an ad agency in
NYC before coming to Dallas. I still love photography and
English football (that’s soccer in American).
Follow me on

How to Create Commercial Grade Digital Marketing

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How to Create Commercial Grade Digital Marketing