Like their consumer counterparts, business-to-business brands are only as good as their customers’ experience with them. The difference today is that the Internet affords customers lots of ways of communicating those experiences to their peers. Chat rooms. Blogs. Rating and review sites. Think of it as “word of mouse” –– a phenomenon that’s influencing marketing strategy as never before. Of course, business-to-business marketers have always recognized the power of word-of-mouth marketing, but the Internet dramatically enlarges the scale on which that model operates. So it’s possible to spend thousands telling your target audience how great your company is, while their fellow customers are quietly contradicting you. Another reason word of mouse is compelling is that it’s not just words, but images (often moving ones, thanks to YouTube and sites like it). When a video of a Dell computer self-combusting appeared online, it spread like wildfire (pun intended) –– something a pre-Internet, word-of-mouth story never could have achieved. Not to pick on Dell, but the company also recently suffered in the blogosphere when serious customer-service issues surfaced and then multiplied. This phenomenon, a kind of Industrial Strength Web 2.0, represents nothing less than a fundamental shift in the nature of business-to-business relationships. Brand owners are no longer the sole masters of their messaging. Business-content consumers are online, sharing thoughts and information, and taking away control from brand and media owners. If business-to-business marketers want to continue connecting with customers, they need to embrace word of mouse and build brand-loyal user communities.
— Brian Davies, Managing Partner
