Marketing Creates And Captures Markets

We recently won a Global Innovation Award for our Asia Pacific efforts to grow and capture the market.  It was a recognition of marketing in our true profession of strategy, management, multi-channel and integrated marketing across content, social, digital.

Code named CAMP (Create A Market For Power), marketing lead the initiative with understanding the market dynamics, being creative to develop a programmatic approach, daring to do things differently and making an impact to the business.

It helped us achieve several consecutive quarters of year on year growth. Here is the story of how marketing led the way to this transformation.

IBM Power Systems in Asia Pacific is the market leader in the Systems of Records for IT infrastructure requirements.  With the shift in infrastructure consumption to solutions for big data, , we needed to take a hard look at our business to assess what we needed to do differently to win. We started by understanding more about the market place.

Understand The Market. Use Analytics.
The market had developed besides Systems of Records to Systems of Engagement, Insights, etc.  This new area was a fair fight with many market players who were trying to make the shift.  We assessed our position of power, who we needed to work with to extend into the new solution areas and what was needed for the shift.  This was done by using analytics, social and other listening.

Appoint Champions. Lead The Business Plan
Within the business, we needed champions who could prioritize and focus on the growth areas. The champions were needed to pitch the propositions, drive capabilities and align resources. We then mapped out the business and marketing priorities and what the game plan was. Resources included budgets, facilities and people across sales, technical, marketing from both internal and external. 

Develop The New Approach. Make It Simple.
We clearly defined the business problem as “How do we generate revenue for Brand with Who for What Solutions in Where".  The plan included considerations for conditioning the market, recruiting key players, training to develop skills, developing joint go to market, creating the market demand and generated business opportunities.  The approach had to be systematic and scalable, easy to understand and execute, convincing for investors and worthwhile for the time and effort spent.

Choose The Battle Field. Define Success
We chose to test the approach in a region where the opportunity was the largest but adoption was the lowest and in another region where adoption could match up to the pace of the opportunity growth. The approach yielded great results against the targets. In the first market, we grew our revenue by over 400% year on year.  In the second market, we achieved grew almost 200% of our target.

Determine Success Factors. Learn As You Go.
Through this initiative, we learnt that there are critical success factors that made a significant difference.

1. Quality over quantity: creating an impact helps to then ramp up the volume
2. Standardize and simplify: making things easy to speed up go to market.
3. Leveraging others' ability: Each party is better positioned as advocates and have greater influence to their segments, and it would greatly accelerate the results where we can overcome resource or capability limitations and creates self-sufficiency
4. Ownership & team work: Strong collaboration across each activity phase across the various stakeholders is crucial.  Often, one of the team members will just step up to lead beyond their role to ensure success.
5. Integrated marketing: A 360-degree engagement is required - internal and external communications, digital and off-line, business and technical, social and content, etc.

Marketing truly creates and captures the market.  While this winning initiative is being replicated across the business. The principles of how marketing can lead in business transformation can be applied to what we can create to make a difference.

This is the awesomeness of marketing!

Time to Amplify The Power of Marketing

As some of you may know, I was awarded #2 Social Seller by LinkedIn in November 2014.  It is now November 2015 and I wonder about how well I now stand with my social media ranking.

The good news is that in 2015, our IBM Power blogs are being pumped out almost on a weekly basis with "We Believe - Power Wins" and "We Amplify - Power Marketing" blogs, and responses to the many global and regional Systems and Marketing blogs that we actively contribute and respond to.  I have lots of re-tweets, re-posts, shares and comments on IBM on all my social media platforms - Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Linked In.  I would like to think that besides the great work from our brand, technical and sales team, marketing and our social efforts has helped us turn around our business to several consecutive quarters of year to year growth since I have joined the Asia Pacific team.

Looking across 2014 and 2015, there was a significant change in my personal social engagement. In 2014, I was in ASEAN Systems Marketing and had to manage the System x team which had the challenge of enduring a year of uncertainty before they eventually transitioned to Lenovo.  Blogging had become a way for me to share my thoughts about the industry both tech and marketing.  I had hoped that my raw and honest view helped to provide an objective perspective amidst rumours and nay sayings.  It was my way to inspire my team, encourage my fellow colleagues, business partners, customers and the industry.

Many who were inspired or touched by my blogs reached out to me to share with them and their teams.  So in 2015,  I began sharing, training and mentoring many who were willing to learn about digital and social.  I was invited to share my expertise on how to build social eminence with general managers, directors, managers, staff and students.  These included universities, trade associations, government boards, human resource organizations, manufacturers, marketing forums and public events.

As I spend time mentoring and coaching, coupled with ramping up our IBM capabilities, I had somehow neglected myself and when I forget to share "me" to the world, those who followed me have lost the opportunity for inspiration.  Several followers recently commented that they have been following me and been missing my blogs.  So, it is time to really amplify the power of marketing by re-awaken my social identity and re-vitalize my blog. 

I will share as I learn.  As Tim Cahill says, "A journey is best measured by friends than miles."  Come and follow me on this journey.

Social Media Is Indispensable & Personal

Earlier this year, I was invited by Jason Chu, the Chairman of the Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium to speak at the Customer Relationship Excellence round table hosted by DHL on my views on Social Media as part of the O2O customer experience.

The first step is to recognize that Social is Personal and that is is indispensable as part of a customer experience.  The more involved you are, the more you can capture those moments to make it an awesome customer experience.

Being someone active in social media, my behaviour is typical of what customers are like, and companies should embrace and care about being engaged in social media.

Here are 5 why the Chief Customer Relations Officer should care:
1. I have 4000 followers on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, Linked In
2. I wake up and reach for my phone to check my social accounts and that's the last thing I do before I go to sleep
3. I am great at multi-tasking: I am active on my social accounts at work or at play
4. I shoot, post, tweet, share and answered the responses before I finish my meal or leave any social event
5. I share everything - the good, bad and ugly. I am vocal. Hear me express myself!

In 2010, only 25% will share their negative experience on social media.  That has risen to 75% in 2015.  Capturing the negative is not all.  It has also become a sales generation tool.  Gartner's research suggests that by 2015, businesses around the world will get 50% of their sales from social media.

Looking at Gartner's Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing, we have already experimented on many elements from all the various stages.  We are definitely already on a journey in a new way of marketing supported by technology from real-time marketing, to data-driven marketing, to commerce everywhere, to web analytics, and so on.

But why are we not seeing the results of our technology and digital marketing getting exponential results?

Gartner thinks that only 80% of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.

From the response around the audience, while many have acknowledged that social media is here to stay and the customer engagement needs to evolve, many are still hesitant due to fear of backlash of negative comments going viral.  While the desire is there, the management focus, processes, policies and skills may not be ready.

Let's look at how well our top leader, the CEO is doing in embracing social media. IBM's CEO Study estimates that only 16% of CEO use social media as a tool to connect with customers.  This is expected to grow by 3.6x to to 57% by 2018.

The social transformation must start with setting the strategic goals and culture, strong executive sponsorship, integrated orchestration across the organization with new processes and roles, governance and policies, and then technology and standards.  Will the CEO drive this change?

B2B Content Strategies: Content is the heart.

It was a great gathering with a couple of panel speakers in "B2B Content Strategies: Lessons From The Trenches" with the world of content creators, aggregators, clients, agencies and communications professionals. 

Catch the interview: http://youtu.be/S0RJN6AIUUM via @YouTube

 
Here are some of my thoughts:

1. Understand B2B Content World. In the B2B world, targeting different job titles, industries, roles in decision making process, technical jargon and technology life cycle make content seem more complex than B2C.  However, if you think about it, the same targeting, segmentation and consumption patterns is studied and applied. Your target audience is human too.

2. Segment with precision. I am known as a guru of segmentation using analytics to better understand my customers and potential customers.  The reason why the marketing programs that are run by my teams are so much more effective is the precision of message and approach based on segmentation. 

3. Content can drive ROI. We have done such a great job in delivering pipeline for the business that sales believe in the power of marketing in lead generation. Demonstrating return on investment still remains an important part in getting budget and resources to focus on content.

4. Content is the heart of persuasion.  Today, there is a lot more content in multiple forms but are they the right ones? Content is the heart which transmit the right messages at the right time to the right person. Content is about how we can engage someone to develop a deeper relationship with the customer.

In the B2B world, we need professionals who are willing to invest time to understand the portfolio and pitch the appropriate content mapped to the customers' journey.

Here are some of my quotes:


“To break through the content clutter is to really understand customer and then bring the right content" 


"What do love and dating have to do with B2B content marketing?"
 
“Ultimately, when it comes to convincing internal stakeholders of the investment, IBM Asia-Pacific’s Director of Marketing for IBM Power Systems, Anne Phey, suggests “showing that conversion rates and revenue” are increasing over time. 

It may even be a case of sitting down with the business leaders and CFO to explain what marketing does, how conversations on social media help us gain insights on customers and content trends, how online activities such as web traffic, downloads, etc are monitored against targets, as well as showing the opportunity pipeline for conversion to wins. 

Adds Phey: “Our  business leader understands that content doesn’t have to generate revenue straight away. It’s like having a relationship. You’ve got to start dating and wooing the prospect before he becomes a customer. As of 2015, we’ve appointed content marketing managers. That’s a breakthrough for us.” 

Read more from Gracia Chiang's at

http://www.kingcontent.com.au/creating-emotion-in-b2b-content-marketing/

Asian Women Shy Away From Limelight

  

The advancement of women is a strategic talent priority not only for many companies, government and nations across the world.

Our IBM Chairman and CEO, Ginni Rometty, shared at The Clinton Global Initiative's forum on Re- imagining Impact: "I would define diversity differently now…It is really about Engagement…Engagement means giving people the freedom to contribute in any way they are comfortable, and when we do that, we unlock entire segments of the population".

At IBM, we have a Diversity Leader in our human resource department.  For the International Women’s Day or Week, the team led a first ever social discussion on Diversity, an online community chat to encourage employees to contribute their thoughts, best practice stories, innovative ideas and recommendations on two topics: “You are What You Share” and “Create an Irresistible Work Experience”. Our Singapore Managing Director Janet Ang also hosted a panel of distinguished women to share with us their journey in going digital for work and for personal life.

 

“You are what you share” is about leveraging the power of social to build digital eminence and through this, a personal brand.  Research suggests that women in general, have been less inclined to do personal branding, which impacts visibility and networking internally and externally.

Technology - Old Boy’s Club. Unicorns - New Boy’s Club.

As interviewed by USA Today, studies show that while women make up 42% workforce, tech industry has only 24% women representation. Tech is another old boys' club. Elizabeth Caudle, East Coast regional director for Girls Who Code leads an educational group seeking to expose 1 million young women to computer science education by 2020. 

IBM’s Sandy Carter says that women are natural techies in that social networking can be a strength in the workplace. A study by Catalyst showed that companies that are more diverse – with more women and minorities – deliver about 1 35% higher return on equity and a 34% return to shareholders.

A Fortune analysis showed that the Fortune 500 is led mostly by men. Only 25 Fortune 500 companies have a woman as CEO.

A new analysis by Fortune also uncovered that 60% of the US unicorn companies have all-male boards compared to 5% of Fortune 500 companies.  These include the most celebrated brands like Uber, Snapchat, Tinder and Airbnb. 

Asian Women Are More Reserved Than Men...

Most women posted that they are more reserved and unable to get the same visibility as their male counterparts. This was especially more pronounced among Asian women.  One woman manager said, “I am an Asian woman, and the culture here generally is that we are always not the ones to put up our hands first when questions/comments are sought. We tend to only answer if we are called upon, even though we may have rich views to share. So with the (social) platform, we can encourage each other, we can build more self-confidence hearing from our fellow woman friends how they over-come such challenges.”

Another women professional said “ Asian woman are often associated to being reserve, less vocal about their opinion and even shy away from recognition; take for instance when a recognition is given to woman publicly in a team setting you would often hear, ah... it's the team's effort where if it's a recognition given to our male colleague you could see him standing tall and taking the credits. We should encourage our fellow women colleagues to take the stage and accept the compliment. Just say thank you very much for the recognition and shine in your achievements and also comment about what the team has done.”

I shared on-line as well as at the Singapore event that “I too am an Asian woman and a Manager in a mainly male-dominated division in IBM Systems Hardware team.  We tend to be "humble" and "not speak until spoken to".  Last year, when I was involved in community work in different countries, I found that a lot of social enterprises from CEOs to politicians in ministries to the youths were really listening and learning enthusiastically to what I had to share from my personal experience from studies, professional career development to my values in life.  In many countries, woman who have not spoken up, do make an impact when they speak up!  

Building A Social Profile In Two Months!

I also shared that I was inspired to start building my social profile last year on Blogspot (http://annephey.blogspot.sg/),  to share about my community work and with the youths.  After half a year in September, I decided to get active professional social profile on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annephey).  In just 2 months in November, LinkedIn awarded me as the #2 Social Seller out of their Top 100!  So, ladies share your valuable experience as you may never know when it can encourage someone or advice for their development.  When we speak, people listen. When we put our mind to it, we are unstoppable! 

 

 

Get Inspired By Women in Leadership!

IBM Women in Technology has  a great sharing of insights during this Celebration of International Women's Day on youtube: IBM Women In Technology

I note that we are missing the Asian women in this video.  However, judging from the impressive panel and audience that we had at the IBM International Women's Day event, we had many women leaders from finance, human resource, consulting, banking and manufacturing in Singapore who inspire us.

Women should build a network with mentors and peers to grow and take control of our career.  We can do better than our counterparts in the west.

Abridged version on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/asian-women-shy-from-limelight-anne-phey-innovator