Everything you wanted to know about - INGREDIENT MARKETING

Ingredient - branding is creating a brand for an ingredient or component of a product, to project the high quality or performance of the ingredient. Ingredient-branding takes a special position in marketing, as it cannot be clearly allocated to either industrial or consumer goods

marketing as per Wikipedia. There are several companies whose only specialty is to assist their clients or play a key role in creating a better product with which they partner. Brands like ABS by BOSCH, Teflon, Intel and many others play a key role in the final overall product offered to the buyer. In short, an “ingredient” brand is used by a “host/mother” brand to partner or help established brand equity of the host brand.  To keep it simple “Ingredient brand is a brand within a brand”.

Buyers trust products which are transparent (showcase what ingredients have been used to make or manufacture them). Means it is no longer enough for ingredient brand to market itself just to product/brand manufacturers. But now needs to reach out to more and more consumers and establish themselves as key INGREDIENTS. It is much more important when consumers start ensuring the host product to sell along with the preferred ingredient. This lays importance to talk directly to the consumer through the power of ingredient branding

Brands who have used ingredient marketing - Dupont’s Teflon, Intel’s Intel Inside, Lycra for clothes by Rayon, ABS by Bosch Mobility, Dolby Stereo systems, etc.

"Intel Inside" was the first, and arguably the best, "ingredient" branding, let’s understand how this strategy helped a microprocessor brand. This campaign was targeted by B2B Company to B2C community, directly to buyers/consumers.

Before we understand the strategy, let’s first and foremost understand more about the company products. Intel makes an ingredient, MICROPROCESSORS or silicon chips for the computer industry. It doesn’t make the main dish, means computers. Consumers aren’t interested in ingredients like vanilla flavoring brand in ice cream or pastry, they are concerned about the final product. Intel doesn’t make or sell these products or chips directly to consumers. They make semiconductors, microprocessors chips found inside popular consumer electronic devices.

Microprocessor chips were an unknown component of PC for the end consumers. Intel was a market leader in microprocessor brand in the 1980s with the launch of microprocessor 286, 386 and 486. Soon competitors were catching up with Intel and it was getting tough to sustain. Intel realized that to remain a leader in business, it needs to enter the mind of Consumer and establish connect which can only be accomplished with emotional branding campaigns.

Based on initial research by INTEL, they identified what people think about the chips in the computers and how they relate to it. The consumers or buyers of PCs were never certain about the quality or reliability of the microprocessor chip which was a critical component. They were just interested in computers. Except for gamers, programmers, hardware specialists, scientists, and technology enthusiasts, hardly anyone was aware of the microprocessor, the computer was a mystery for rest.  Intel felt that microprocessor being a critical component of PC had an opportunity here to enter the consumer’s mind.

This led to the launching of the campaign “Intel Inside” they initiated tie – up with existing OEMs to partner. OEM partners were happy as whoever partnered received a 10% premium for “Intel Inside” products from end-consumers plus advertising support.

With this campaign ‘Intel’ logo started appearing at the end of the ad with a piece of specific music. That music became synonymous with Intel. The first thing everyone would remember from an event is the “Ending” part. The Intel music provides that pleasant sensation. Everyone could remember the Intel Logo and the sound.

With the launch of this campaign, other key market leaders from B2B product and service industry initiated similar fashion campaigns to establish INGREDIENT products. We saw TEFLON campaign for non – stick cookware, ABS by Bosch for automobiles, Dolby stereo for cinema halls and music industry.

What we learned?

1. The person who buys your product may not be the person who uses or benefits from your product. Think about marketing to the end user.
2. Don’t be ashamed of being an ingredient or a small part of a larger product. In fact, use it to your advantage!
3. Technology can be complicated. Keep the message simple. Intel makes your device faster! Focus your marketing on the benefits of your product not the features of your product.

How eLearning Systems can change B2B Product Demo and Customer Support

Traditionally B2B organizations have been offering product demos at customer location. This accounts to huge amount of investment in travel and stay, but cannot be neglected. Often customers also request for repeat of demos, which builds the cost. This happens due to complexity of product or low academic qualification of customer, they take more time to learn. B2B companies especially in the area of customize products regularly face this problems of repeat demos, thus reducing profit on sales.   

B2B should develop new age ELearning systems for product demo. ELearning systems now have high technology integration like Augment Reality, virtual Reality, Web – Meetings, etc. These systems can be incorporated with questionnaire for evaluation of product demo based on answers. Further, this questionnaire will also help in product and service co-creation based on feedback.
Each eLearning capsule or graphic video shouldn’t be longer than 2 to 3 minutes duration to engage with customer and ensure understanding.  These demos can be translated into different languages and sent on smart phones.

Further B2B organizations can offer customer support using these eLearning systems, probing the user to identify issues and raise support tickets for customized solutions.

Some benefits of eLearning Systems to B2B organizations:

• Cost Effective: eLearning is cost effective as there are no logistics like travel and stay of engineer is involved. This will reduce dependability on printed collaterals, as everything is available on cloud servers.
• Learning 24 x 7 x 365:  User can learn watching repetitively, thus increasing engagement. Also as the eLearning systems are on cloud, users can watch it at his / her convenience. 
• Tracking of course: ELearning systems can be incorporated with tracking systems which can help B2B organization to understand analytics. These eLearning demos can be incorporated with questionnaire for evaluation of demo. Feedback systems like these helps in product development, since users can share in real time and partner in co – creation of product / service. 
• Standardization and Scalability of demo: ELearning systems help to standardize demo, also help to integrate changes based on feedback in real time, so demo course keeps on evolving for better engagement and understanding of user. 

Why B2B should STOP using YouTube in Social Media / Content Marketing

B2B organizations have been dependent on YouTube for sharing product demo videos, insights on new developments, product servicing videos, etc. to customers. These videos are used for marketing and customer support as well.

But YouTube has been blocked by most of the corporates, so employees cannot view videos during work hours and as it distracts.  YouTube doesn’t offer landing page for videos or lead generation facility for B2B. These have adversely affected B2B organization’s as they have to courier CDs of product demo and servicing videos to customers, and use other content marketing tools for lead generation. Time has come for B2B organization’s to identify better tools for video sharing, along with landing pages for lead generation and analytics.

Content marketing is most essential for B2B organizations and videos play major role in content marketing. Most B2B organizations have corporate clients for whom they offer products or services, as YouTube is blocked this becomes very difficult to engage with them.  Here are few examples how Video helps B2B in engagement.

1. Email marketing with Videos: Using videos for email marketing can increase Click – Through – Ratio (CTR) for the campaign. Using video streaming server helps to view the video in the email box itself thus increases engagement with customers. These videos should be not more than 60 seconds and have landing pages incorporated in the emailer for lead generation, which helps to attract customers to website by showing trailer videos. 
2. Video landing Pages: Using video landing pages during social media and search engine optimization campaign helps for more time spent on each page, thus increasing engagement with customer. Usually website visitors tend to view video rather than spend time reading the entire content. 
3. Analytics of videos: Video streaming websites offer better analytics about viewing patterns of the video; this helps to filter target audience based on engagement levels. Better the analytics and better will be the marketing strategy. 
4. Customer Support: This is the most important element of marketing, whether offering demo of the product / service or helping in solving errors in the product. As YouTube is blocked by most corporates, sending a video of product demo or servicing becomes tedious process, with video streaming, B2B doesn’t have to worry about blocked content; the video directly opens in email box. Since it is stream from different server’s chances of the server getting blocked is very less. 
5. Testimonials: One of the best marketing tools for B2B organizations are testimonials from clients, these are the most effective tools and can be marketed along with case studies. As most customers don’t have time to read through the content, viewing videos  with case study and testimonial capsules helps to engage, since it increases me-too factor and spread word – of – mouth.

 There are many companies offering services of video streaming like

• Bomb Bomb
• Get Response
• HTML5 video plugin is supported by high number of mail boxes, which can help in video marketing

Outline to help you in designing social media marketing strategy for B2B

B2B organizations have started venturing in social media and content marketing campaigns. Prior planning a social media campaign, B2B organizations have to venture in social listening strategy to understand more about what stakeholders are discussing? What interests them? How can B2B organization engage with them? What are the influencing factors? Etc. Have worked on parameters for which the B2B organizations need to answer before venturing in social media and content marketing strategy.

1. Define your target audience / stakeholders / customers – Unless you know with whom you need to engage, you cannot venture in Social Media campaign. 
2. Information which your target audience likes or feels important – Identify through social listening, what they like, type of information which can engage them, topics of interest, when they share posts, etc. 
3. Social Media networks used by target audience – Identify the social media channels where you can find your target audience, also identify specific groups where they discuss. It is necessary to identify organic and paid channels of social media for specific targeting. 
4. Marketing vision of B2B brand – Whether B2B or B2C, brands should define their vision, as this forms the motive for marketing. Without vision it will be difficult for brands to engage in any marketing communications activity. 
5. Visual Identity of Brand – All B2B brands connect with highly specific customers, but should have a visual identify which stakeholders can recollect or connect when they read about the brand. This in an integral part of marketing, as B2B brands have to influence customers deep learning systems. 
6. Responsibility of content generation – B2B organization have to define employees / people responsible for content generation and authentication before it is published on social media, to ensure any negative impact due to errors. 
7. Identify most important topics / categories – Identify most important topics / categories which help to engage and communicate with stakeholders / target audience. 
8. Keywords– Being a B2B organization it is important to target the content based on keywords search trends by target audience. Having right keywords build into the content helps search engine crawlers to rank the content. 
9. Identify customer journey from Search to Purchase – This is the most important element to measure ROI for campaigns on social media and content marketing. B2B organizations have to identify the complete process along with specific parameters like time required, number of decision makers, customization required, and cost of project.