Solutions Marketing: Musings on a Definition

A lot has been written over the last several years about the drive to solutions and the need for “solutions marketing,” but a good definition for it is still waiting to be written.

I think about this a lot and would like to start a conversation around what Solutions Marketing really means and, by extension, what it means to be a solutions marketer.

Marketing guru Philip Kotler defines marketing’s role as “understanding, creating, communicating and delivering value.” This is a good place to start.

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B2B marketing as media: Six ways to think like an editor

B2B marketers in great numbers have jumped on the content marketing bandwagon and embraced the idea that marketing needs to be more like media. We have to focus on providing "readers" and "viewers" (i.e., customers, prospects, and other stakeholders) with interesting and useful material on a regular basis as the starting point for creating and sustaining interest in our products and solutions.

The big problem, of course, is actually doing it: consistently producing material that our hoped-for audiences actually care about enough to read, listen, view, and, ideally, comment upon and share more widely.

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Four levels of B2B content sharing: Publishing isn't everything

Consistently creating engaging content is one of those programmatic challenges that strikes fear in the hearts of many B2B marketers looking to take more advantage of social media.

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Strengthening thought leadership marketing: Five steps to excellence

I've just had the privilege of helping judge ITSMA's Marketing Excellence Awards, and was impressed in particular with the submissions in the Thought Leadership Marketing category. 

As recently as five years ago, thought leadership marketing was mainly the province of the top consulting firms. Few other B2B firms took it seriously. Boy, has that changed! The submissions in this year's awards program reflect a substantial increase not only in spending but, more important, in the programmatic discipline that is necessary to make a serious impact with customers and market influencers.

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The four engines of B2B marketing success

A friend recently had the good fortune not only to take over marketing for a successful B2B firm, but to do so with a mandate to build a new strategy that ensures a much greater impact on the business.

He's a bit like a kid in a candy store. He's got budget to spend, executive support for more ambitious marketing, and a relatively clean slate upon which to draw the new strategy. 

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Two cheers for Eloqua's new Content Grid

Actually, I think Eloqua's new Content Grid is fabulous: it crams a complex story and a lot of information into an easy to understand infographic on a critical topic for B2B and solutions marketing. Nice job, folks!

My small beef is with the definition of "content marketing" that underlies the grid. Don't get me wrong: I'm a huge proponent of companies and marketing organizations getting much more serious about creating and executing integrated content strategies to support marketing and sales. Indeed, I make a decent part of my living these days helping companies make this happen.

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Editorial strategy: Why do B2B customers need your information?

A new report from the always excellent Project for Excellence in Journalism got me thinking a bit differently about thought leadership and content marketing and marketing as media.

We all know that social media is increasingly central to how we get our news and information. The main finding in this new report is that Americans use different media for different types of information.

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The lure of cheap content in B2B marketing

An article in MediaWeek on content mills like Demand Media and Seed.com got me thinking about the dangerous lure of cheap content in B2B marketing. The goal of the content mills is to crank out a huge volume of search-oriented content for the web as cheaply as possible and sell advertising against it. Large consumer brands including AT&T, Proctor and Gamble, and General Motors have taken the bait and the model seems to be working. Critics bemoan the implications on multiple levels, including the crowding out of quality editorial and the low wages paid to the freelancers who fill the mills

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Can corporate journalism work?

Read an interesting post by Ike Pigott today (thanks Amber) suggesting that as mainstream journalism continues to shrink, struggling journalists should consider jumping to the dark side and plying their trade as corporate journalists. 

Ike distinguishes his notion of the corporate "embedded journalist" from the age-old tradition of reporters simply leaving the newsroom to go work in corporate communications. What's new, he says, is that the decline of mainstream journalism means that companies increasingly are going to forgo pitching stories in hopes of coverage and just start publishing themselves.

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Social media and thought leadership: The virtuous circle for B2B marketing

As B2B marketers invest more money and time in both thought leadership and social media, they risk missing a great deal of potential benefit they can achieve by bringing the two together in a holistic way.

All too often, at least in my experience in the tech sector, marketers investing in thought leadership view social media primarily as a channel for disseminating content. 

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