Brand Central Station

An article posted to BtoB Magazine’s web site a while back pointed out an interesting result from a recent Hearst survey: nearly 50% of all b-to-b marketing budgets are spent on online programs.  That spend covers everything from web site development/enhancements to online advertising to SEO to webcasts to Social Media … you get the idea.  The survey goes on to explain that trade shows account for 17% of marketing budgets, direct marketing (12%) and print (11%) account for most of the rest.

But like most media property-driven market research, it ignores a significant pool of resources that often go untapped by most b-to-b marketers and the media.  I understand why.  For a magazine or other media outlet to try and identify how much money and human resource is dedicated to internal communications, training and organizational behavior, they would have to step waaaaaay out of their comfort zone.

It’s kind of like asking an amateur astronomer to find Dark Matter in the universe using his existing, backyard telescope.  They may have an idea where to point the telescope, but they can’t really see what they’re looking at.

Instead, I’d point you to this most excellent post by John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing.  In it, he explains how everyone in a company has a marketing responsibility.  “Here’s a little flash – anyone associated with your business that comes into contact with a prospect or customer is performing a marketing function.”

John advocates the idea of businesses provide marketing training for everyone in the business – including administrative and finance people.  A quarterly “all hands” brand meeting would cover a variety of topics including:

Why you named your company what we did – attach this to your personal story

What colors, images, fonts are official and why – create a simple style manual of standards

Your core marketing message – and why – help everyone connect their position to the message

The way you want the brand to be thought of in the market – your goal, your one word of association

Benefits of your products and services – demo them and present them just like you would to a customer

Description of your ideal customer – use photos and success stories of real customers

Your current lead generation activities – show off ads, run radio spots – sell them on the campaign

Your lead conversion process – everyone should know the next step when a prospect calls

Key marketing metrics – sales generated, leads generated, referrals generated, PR generated

Your marketing calendar – show everyone you have a plan for the future

(Read the entire post here.)

So, why mention this along side the Hearst study?  Because one of the things that I think is missing from John’s suggestion is the idea of bringing in outside information on the market, trends and competitors.  Magazines currently reeling from advertising cutbacks have a tremendous wealth of untapped and under-reported information that could be leveraged to supplement internal communications sessions like these.

Realistically, this could be a significant revenue opportunity for trade journals that could be nearly “uncontested” with regard to competing publications, trade shows or online programs.

From a business owner/manager’s point of view, there are few marketing spends that produce a faster and greater return on investment than internal team building and training.  There is real power behind the idea of getting everyone on the “same song sheet”  when it comes to dealing with customers, suppliers and one another.

Any agency (advertising or PR) reading this post should see this as a significant opportunity to tap budgets outside of their client’s marketing department.  You can be very creative and very, very effective.  Broker the relationship between media properties and client and produce the “event” – you could make everyone happy and successful as a result.