Posts Tagged ‘procurement’
Businesspeople are people too: the case for emotion in B2B branding
By Rob Meyerson, RiechesBaird
The goal of branding is sometimes explained as an attempt to create an emotional connection between brand and customer. It’s easy to demonstrate the effectiveness of this emotional side of branding with examples like Disney, Starbucks, and Harley-Davidson (brands that you may associate with happiness, indulgence, and rebellion, respectively). Brand managers working with business-to-business (B2B) brands, however, often chafe at the idea that their company or product—maybe an accounting firm or an esoteric scientific research tool—should be connecting with its customers at an emotional level.
Six tips for marketing to a new breed of procurement professional
By Tom Golland, AGA Consult
Over the past few years there have been two revolutions!
Go back to the 1990s and you will have met a breed of people inhabiting your customers’ businesses known as ‘the Buyers’.
The Buyer was usually in charge of managing such things as stock levels and legal detail within a contract. Very occasionally the buyer would sit quietly in the corner of the meeting room as you pitched your company’s wares to ‘the real decision makers’.
Then the first revolution!
It seemed to start with a change in title from ‘Buyer’ to ‘Procurement Manager’. The species had evolved to become a new breed of super-humans ruling over the lives of their suppliers, and single-handedly destroying profit margins. ‘Procurement’ and ‘discount’ became inter-changeable terms. Decisions appeared to be made solely on price, and the power of end users and those to whom the marketing messages were directed seemed powerless to influence either the choice of supplier or the terms under which they were contracted.
And now for news of the second revolution! (more…)