One ERP Vendor Product Page Scores High

By its nature, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) installations are complicated and broad in scope.   Below, I rate the product home pages of three top ERP vendors, using my Core Score method (see point criteria at right).

NetSuite (an ERP package combining CRM, ERP and web activity) is the winner, awarded all the points except for “News headline and link,” totaling  11.  But they also get 4 bonus points, with 3 of them for effectively differentiating their product/service from competitors.  So the grand total is 15.

I love the use of many customer logos that are links to Customer Success Stories – although it would be better if the stories were on web pages rather than downloadable PDFs.

By comparison, Microsoft Dynamics ERP and SAP Business All-in-One product home pages both score 9.  Sage MAS 500 did poorest among those examined, with 4 points out of 12.

All companies got one bonus point for not using “leader” or “leading” in the text, although NetSuite succumbed on their “About” page. All are clearly leaders in the ERP game and can prove it – nothing would be gained by proclaiming it.

Give your B2B Home Page the Core Score

There’s a lot of attention given these days to the SEO and navigation aspects of B2B websites…and most marketers are aware that sites should have gobs of helpful content, news and links.  But what about the initial messaging and information presented on the home page?  It either quickly makes a connection with people who don’t know your company or what you do, or it doesn’t.

So here it is… my rating system for B2B marketing-oriented website home pages. Completely subjective and yet somehow slightly scientific.   I call it Core Score.  It’s not about the look or the navigation…it’s about value propositions and specifics.  There are 12 potential points in the basic tally.  I’m also, however, going to add bonus points and some subtractions (more on this later).

Links to home pages that demonstrate each of the six home page attributes are included below.

Three points each for:

==Home page succinctly states what the company actually does (3 points)

Examples: see Truecar,  First Solar

==Quantifies benefits in terms of cost reduction, time, ease, efficiency, and/or productivity   (3 points)

See Freight Center,  Riverbed, or  Johnson Controls

==States two or more customer challenges that can be solved by product/service  (3 points)

See Telogis, Cybersource,  Sourcefire

One point each for:

==Text links to specific problem-solving ideas  (1 point)

See Ixda,  ABB

==Links to testimonials/examples  (in addition to access from main nav bar)  (1 point)

Many examples: one is Johnson Controls

==News headline and link (1 point)

Many examples; see Autodesk

In upcoming posts, I’ll calculate total Core Scores for individual home pages for companies in the tech sector and other industries.  Your input on selections and scoring-weight are welcome.

Application Stories Fueled B2B Manufacturing-Tech Leadership

Early in my career in the years “B.I” (Before Internet), I began experiencing first-hand the marketing power of pumping out useful, insightful content to the marketplace.  My colleagues and I proved that we could magnify the perception of a very small company as a leader, by demonstrating what they know.

Our Detroit-area agency did the marcomm and PR for a Bridgeport, Connecticut manufacturing-tech specialist and system builder,  Bodine Assembly & Test Systems.  Bodine had one basic carousel system format that they applied to the assembly of products in dozens of industries, from consumer padlocks and batteries to fuel injectors, to little telecommunication connectors.  Fascinating to watch.

My on-going program focused on demonstrating the depth of their custom engineering genius, applied successfully for so many different product manufacturers.  We created a direct mail mini-magazine, videos, advertising, PR, trade shows – a comprehensive mix. Lots of testing technology news. And we helped top executives to speak out, on subjects such as quality assurance to lean manufacturing.

The biggest element was the application stories. The trick was beating the proprietary-technology roadblocks that so many of Bodine’s customers would put up, many times for good reasons since the assembly process contributed significantly to their competitive edge.  But we worked with them, or around them.

Door Hardware Application in Bodine's Direct Mail Mini-Publication

Showing the “nuts and bolts” of applications helped prospects visualize themselves as users of the technology.  We also had our version of the Human Interest angle … let’s call it “Engineer Interest.”  For instance, we told the story of how an older Bodine synchronous assembly machine that had been making garter belt clips, of all things, was sold and converted into a machine to make electrical products. Women’s fashions had changed, markets shifted, and the technology got re-applied.

Over five years time,  we proved that our awareness-building programs worked, with metrics from publication-sponsored research, and from Bodine’s successful entry into new markets, fueled on the front-end by marketing communications.

Also see my May post on persuading top management.

Exposing Business Cliche Over-Exposure

I had the pleasure of contributing some informal research to David Meerman Scott’s book The New Rules of PR and Marketing back in 2007. Since then, it has become a business-book bestseller, and now a revised and updated 2nd edition is being sold on-line and by major book retailers such as Borders. Some colleges are using it as a textbook – it is a comprehensive overview of the tactics available to reach buyers directly with useful information as opposed to hype.

David Meerman Scott's business bestseller

My research, summarized in Chapter 12 (see pages 156-157), has to do with over-used words and phrases that have lost any meaning; clichés that are spewed daily in news releases and other content in the BtoB world. I surveyed publication editors to gage their complaints.

I have talked plenty about the ubiquitous word “solutions”  (see “Guess What, We Make Products”).   There’s plenty of new lists and sources, including Seth Godin’s amusing Encylopedia of Business Cliches on Squidoo, where you can vote for your favorites. “Synergy” and “paradigm shift” are both in the top 10.

The indictment of business cliches has moved from deeming the practice of using them as mere laziness of the writer, to slamming it as intentional subterfuge.  I think it’s a mixture.  Another factor is ignorance of the news-release writer due to lack of experience within the industry discussed.

My suggestion for freshening up your business vocabulary:  read Business Week, Wired, Discover, Scientific American or other technology-trends publications.  Borrow an appropriate term, give it a new context, and make it your own.

B2B Marketer’s Challenge: Cutting Through the Clutter to Persuade Top Management

I am now in the 4^th stage of my career.  This post begins a series on these stages, with some insights I have gained along the way.  Stage  I (below) was my “heavy-duty” period.

The struggle of manufacturers during this deep recession to get support from banks for investments in new technology and capital improvements reminds me of the challenges of the first stage in my career.

One of the toughest industrial marketing communication assignments is the job of trying to get top management to consider investing in new manufacturing capital equipment.  In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was my mission, my daily toil. I did it for a dozen and half different companies who engineered and built robotic cells, lasers, controls and all kinds of bizarre-looking automation.  These companies had to succinctly demonstrate the ROI of their systems to their market, which was the manufacturing industry, or else shrivel up  as just another “clever idea.”

The trick on the front end of the sales cycle was to promote these technologies with messages that would actually get noticed and absorbed. The recipe was a mixture of persuasiveness, tersely-stated bottom-line benefits, and creative clarification of how the improved process / technology worked. The audience was extremely skeptical.  We were asking these potential customers to consider risking millions of dollars, or tens of millions, based on our claims.

The Tools

Case studies were big, and this put me in the thick of things – crawling around violently-noisy machine tools, climbing high into towers of automation, getting intimate with lightening-fast assembly systems – all to get accompanying images, and also to get a real feel for the technology in use.  I talked regularly with production supervisors, engineering management and mahogany-row execs.  Being in the trenches was fascinating and at times, extremely strenuous.  I’ve been yelled at by shop union stewards, and spent evenings scouring dense process charts.

What was being made by the industries served? Airplanes, appliances, sporting goods, cars and trucks, computer products and telecommunications widgets, padlocks, Barbie Dolls, even breakfast cakes.  I worked for some software and integration companies also.

We would rifle-shot our ammunition on more than one battlefield. The channels were simpler then – primarily business and trade publications, supplemented by targeted direct mail. Content was the key.

What I Learned

Most promotional information that is spewed from companies with a complex technical offering is in one of two categories: it either consists of large quantities of engineering detail that can’t be deciphered by top management, or it goes in the opposite direction – it’s AdSpeak fluff that bores and/or patronizes the reader.

We designed outreach programs that avoided both mistakes. I learned how to write and produce brief, meaningful content that clarifies a compelling value proposition, and included enough concisely-stated substantiation to be credible to a CEO.

Messaging was on three levels:

1)      Brief, poignant and ROI-oriented messages for the highest-echelon execs

2)      Case studies and perspective papers to convince manufacturing management

3)      Video programs for production supervisors and process engineers…seeing it at work increased their comfort level with the technology.

It’s some of the hardest work I’ve done.  For the target audience, there’s scarce capital and valuable floor space at stake.  Persistence was essential – most of these programs were multi-year, and several were between 5 and 10 years in duration.  Staying on message was a priority, yet we had to constantly find fresh ways to say it and to disseminate it.

I have applied many of these skills to describing and promoting IT systems in recent years. Most importantly, I learned a lot about a number of industries and what makes them tick.

Let Engineers Tell their Stories

During the late 1980s and 90s, I spent a great deal of time writing case studies on behalf of manufacturing technology specialists, the companies that innovated new controls, automation and processes used to make durable goods.   The work took me to plants throughout North America and parts of Europe.

There were numerous obstacles.  General Motors had a policy against endorsing “suppliers” in articles, and would not allow their engineers to be quoted or GM’s name to be used. This is back before they needed supplier’s good will and cooperation as much as they need it today.

Sometimes, we found ways to bend the rules.  Once or twice, we just plain broke them.

I always remember being in a Maytag manufacturing plant in the early 90s.  The appliance industry is notoriously stingy in terms of investing in new automation technology, due to cost and risk in light of razor-thin margins.  The “let Mikey try it” attitude pervaded,  “Mikey” being the automotive industry, historically with deeper pockets.  And, since manufacturing-efficiency advantages were critical to an advantageous price,  Maytag and Whirlpool and others typically forbid case studies sponsored by their equipment suppliers.

So, here I am, looking at innovative die change automation on Maytag’s production floor, figuring that I will only walk away with some caption-less photos and a little information attributed to an unnamed appliance maker. But the manufacturing engineer, a company veteran about to retire within a few months, said “to hell with it.”  In essence, he said: “I don’t care about the company policy.  I worked hard to champion these changes for many years, and stuck my neck out for them.  I want to tell the story.  And yes, use my name. Turn on your tape recorder, and quote me.”

I guess the “easier to ask forgiveness than for permission” axiom prevailed.  He happily retired, on schedule…i.e. not early.  The profession of manufacturing engineering is virtually invisible to the general public, and under-valued by corporate management, so recognition and appreciation is scarce. Those engineers dedicated to it want to tell their stories, and not just to a few coworkers at the bar.  They want it to be their legacy.  The balance between helping the manufacturing community with case study information and protecting a company’s competitive edge can be achieved.  I made sure that happened.

The Value of Business Storytelling

The value of storytelling goes back a long ways.  Thousands of years.  An unfolding story holds more interest than a mere stating of facts derived from it.  In B-to-B marketing we are fond of saying that it allows a prospect to visualize himself or herself as a user of a given technology, imaging how the benefits would apply to their operations.

The irony of the current state is that, while users are more willing than ever to allow their stories to be told in order to foster cooperative ties with their technology suppliers, there are fewer trade publication/website pages available for reporting the stories. The Problem/Solution format has traditionally been in great demand by editors, but they have less band-width to publish them.

How-to books have a finite shelf life.  But great business stories are useful, and popular, for much longer. Consider Lee Iacocca’s Autobiography. It out-sold every other non-fiction hardcover for two years straight in the 1980s. Why are we fascinated with all the blow-by-blow details of a business success when we already know what the person or company ultimately accomplished and the impact of its success?  Perhaps because some useful “do’s and don’ts” and “forks in the road” will be revealed, but it’s also because we like a good story.

So what’s with the humongous, bodacious burger?  Is is lunchtime? (Well, yes, but…) To kick off my little series on business storytelling, I asked a big bunch of colleagues last week to vote for one of three famous business stories.  Lee Iacocca is one of them, and the polling is almost complete; it looks like a burger business story wins over the car story; I’ll deliver up the results in the next blog post, tomorrow.

Can Advertising Add Value to the Brand?

Advertising, ye ‘old engine of capitalism, sure has been taking a pounding lately. Is it a victim of the “wild west” internet and the lovely chaos we’re all involved with? In the world of Web 2.0 marketing, value-add content (i.e. useful information) is king, and when everybody starts chatting, re-tweeting, and blogging about this valuable information, it builds the brand. “No need for your filthy, self-centered ADVERTISING,” so the reasoning goes.

A lively conversation about Brand Bank Accounts went on last week within David Meerman Scott’s WebInkNow blog. I found myself defending advertising.  I used to write a lot of B-to-B product and service ads before I gravitated to other forms of marketing communications.

It’s true that AdSpeak, brag and boast, and me-me-me ad copy are definitely ineffective and passé.  Good riddance.  But advertising can focus on delivering the kind of valuable content that Web 2.0-focused marketing folk are talking about.

For instance, Case Study copy allows potential customers to visualize themselves benefiting from a new technology, and “how-to” themes provide helpful tips and application ideas.

Ads accelerate awareness, and should provide a way for the marketplace to comment.  On-line ads certainly could be formatted to let people chime in – rather than just expecting the reader to click-through to a static website for more information (or unfortunately in many cases, a hard-sell pitch).

IBM's "Decade of Smart" ad campaign provides valuable content

Take a look at IBM’s new “Decade of Smart” campaign.  Two-page spreads running this month in Business Week, Forbes and other magazines provide a fact-rich narrative on the ways that various industries are using smarter information systems.  This is thought-provoking stuff.  No hype for IBM products.  It ends with an invitation to “join us” in building a smarter planet at ibm.com/smarterplanet.

This is advertising that doesn’t “subtract” from brand equity, as suggested (categorically) by Huib Van Bockel (a marketing director for Red Bull) as reported in David’s blog: “Brands withdraw from their accounts through the attention that they demand from consumers in the form of television commercials, print ads and the like.” Mr. Van Bockel’s important theme, however, is that brands add to their “accounts” by creating things of value, and that a brand needs to give more than it receives.  So true.

Unfortunately, too high a percentage of advertising doesn’t offer valuable information, and much of it is blatantly self-serving; in the B-to-B world we have an opportunity to do better than this.  Let us know what you think.

Guess What, We Make Products.

The overuse of the word “solutions” in BtoB marketing and publicity, and the reliance upon it in headlines and text, has had its fair share of attention. I did some surveying on this several years ago and blogged about it. But here’s a new way to look at it. You never see a company begin their opening descriptor (on their home page, or in an ad) with:  “We make products.”

Rather, the company simply tells you what they make.  In a similar way, why begin with a focus on the word “solutions?”  Just say what you do, and your prospects will know it’s a solution if they have a problem that you have shown you can solve.

"Hey Everybody - We Make Solutions!!"

As I’ve often said,  hanging your hat on the word “solutions” (in a tag line, ad headline, etc) is about as ingenious as a food product manufacturer deciding that they will win over hearts and heads by proclaiming their product “tastes good.”  It’s expected…it’s a given.

And if it’s reaction and on-line conversation you’re looking for, proclaiming only what the marketplace expects won’t get it rolling.

Letting Customers Explain Your Technology to the Marketplace: Red Hat Does it Well

Letting your customers do the talking, endorsing you by describing their application of your product or service, is the best way to help prospects in your market to “visualize” themselves as a user of your technology, then start asking questions or participating in discussions on-line.  The more complex the technology, and the more varied the applications, the more important this becomes.

Enterprise Linux innovator Red Hat (Raleigh, NC) is a prime example. When your business is built around Open Source, the openness mode tends to pervade everything you do.  Thus, according to Leigh Day, Red Hat’s senior director, Global Corporate Communications, cultivating Customer References (a.k.a. mini case studies) is a major thrust of Red Hat’s marketing effort.  The company solicits this participation via their newsletters, home page promos and by other means.

I talked with her about the benefits of this program to all involved…the user (customer), Red Hat, and the industry at large including proponents of Open Source platforms.

The Customer Reference is a highly well-oiled machine, with dozens of case studies on-line.  A PDF brochure available on their site outlines the benefits of doing a case study. First of all, it’s all part of a mission that is broader than just a showcase for Red Hat and the user; the philosophy and practice of Open Source is continually reinforced via successful implementations.

Red Hat marketing focuses heavily on Customer References

Red Hat lines up the writers (using both internal and external sources) to craft the story based on information from the customer, and Red Hat’s PR department will help set up media interviews and other channels to promote it.  Some stories get a video treatment.  Collaboration is the fundamental element.

I’ve noticed that the quick-read “fill in the blanks” format, including the headings “Challenge,”  “Solution,” and “Benefits” is becoming the preferred template for most BtoB case studies, and it works well for Red Hat. Their case study summaries are available under“Customer Success” (within the “Company” main nav tab), each with a link to the full story with more details.

The latest tools are brought into play.  “We also tweet news headlines and notices about our user events, such as JBoss World and the Red Hat Summit” Leigh added.   “And our news blog is a source for new trends and Open Source developments.”  Cloud computing is a hot topic.

Red Hat has been riding high.  The have been named the #1 software vendor for value and reliability in the CIO Insight Vendor Value Study for the fifth time.