Market to Change Customer Behavior, not Attitudes
Paul Dunay is an award-winning B2B marketing expert with more than 20 years’ success in generating demand and creating awareness for leading technology, consumer products, financial services and professional services organizations.
Paul is the global vice president of marketing for Maxymiser a leading web optimization firm, and author of four “Dummies” books: Facebook Marketing for Dummies (Wiley 2009), Social Media and the Contact Center for Dummies (Wiley Custom Publishing 2010), Facebook Advertising for Dummies (Wiley 2010) and Facebook Marketing for Dummies 2nd Edition (Wiley 2011).
His unique approach to marketing has led to recognition of Paul as a BtoB Magazine Top 25 B2B Marketer of the Year for 2010 and 2009 and winner of the DemandGen Award for Utilizing Marketing Automation to Fuel Corporate Growth in 2008. He is also a finalist for the last six years in a row in the Marketing Excellence Awards competition of the Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA), and is a 2010 and 2005 gold award winner in Driving Demand.
Buzz Marketing for Technology, Paul’s blog, has been recognized as a Top 20 Marketing Blog for 2009 and 2008, a Top Blog to Watch for 2009 and 2008, and an Advertising Age Power 150 blog in the “Daily Ranking of Marketing Blogs.”
Paul has shared his marketing thought leadership as a featured speaker for the American Marketing Association, BtoB Magazine, CMO Club, MarketingProfs, Marketing Sherpa, Marketing Executives Networking Group (MENG), and ITSMA. He has appeared on Fox News, and his articles have been featured in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, BtoB Magazine, MarketingProfs and MarketingSherpa.
Paul holds an Executive Certificate in Strategy and Innovation from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and Computer Science from Ithaca College.
This reminds me of comments John Battelle made in a two-part series (so far) on his blog where he talks about how social media being a catalyst for brand marketing, as opposed to direct response marketing.
He goes so far as to suggest brand marketing is the next evolution of the Web and that passionate online communities are the environment in which it can thrive.
As such, he seems to agree with your surmise that social media does not lend itself as well to DR.
good point Paul
and further to that point – in a recent informal meeting I had with a CMO I asked her what is the #1 thing she would change about her marketing organization and it was to decrease her DR activities
It just wasn’t paying off for her anymore
I’m probably one of the hardest person to market to – unless I’m in the mood to “listen” I just don’t. I’m all for the pull versus push. I’m all for SEM. I think now more than ever, it’s all about the power of the user/customer. I don’t think marketers can affect behavior with social media but I do think users/customers will define their behavior for you. Social media finally gives users that power.
linafuh
Interesting comment – I am intrigued by your statement that marketers cant affect behavior and I see your point
I think the fine line is to allow give the user/customer/prospect the type of content that interests them enough that it ends up affecting them by the experience they have with it
It’s perhaps more one-to-one than you mean, Paul – but social media seems to be lending itself to the more practical sales side.
Last week I saw a demo of Oracle’s latest online CRM offering – headline functionality being that it automatically looks up connections on facebook and LinkedIn between the user and the prospect in the system.
So if I’m chasing a deal with Bob, I can see that I’m 1 step away from him on LinkedIn via Joe (who just happens to already be a very satisfied customer of mine…).
Perhaps a sign that people are trying to capitalise on some value in social networks and affect behaviour through them?
Moving away from one-to-one, I think your point about the right content in the right place for the right prospect/customer is key – if it has the effect of driving them closer to taking a meeting (or being willing to pay more, or more likely to buy) then marketing’s use of social media stands a chance of proving as much value as sales’ use of social networking.
Paul
thanks for the comment – wow I love that kind of feature in a CRM system
I had seen another one that took it a step further and looked up members of the board, senior execs and execs that either went to your school or worked in companies you (the sales person) worked at in the past
taking it a step further
Hi Paul,
Very interesting discussion. As a consumer, my behavior is often affected by online product reviews. Marketers can use social media to address negative reviews and perhaps even to spur consumers to write good reviews. On the B2B side, however, I’m still not totally sold. The picture will become clearer when we see more testing. I’d like to see more rigorous testing along the lines of what Duncan Watt did.
Great post Paul. As I read this, I couldn’t help but think of b2b magazines. They had the opportunity to focus on creating more tools that actually involved a behavior change. Unfortunately, most did not a capitalize on this, and now we see where they are headed.
Any media business that doesn’t focus on a specific behavioral action is pretty much doomed to failure. Attitude changes don’t bring in revenues.