G. David Dodd
CustomerThink
Nashville, TN, United States
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Past articles by G. David:
What B2B Buyers Rely On to Make Purchase Decisions
Earlier this month, TrustRadius published the findings of its fifth annual B2B buying disconnect research. The 2021 B2B Buying Disconnect report is based on two surveys that were conducted in September of this year. One was a survey of 907 individuals who are involved in making business technology purchases for their organization, and the second was a survey of 227 individuals who work for… → Read More
Understanding the “Non-Rational” Dimensions of B2B Buying
It’s now clear that human decision making is usually a mix of rational and non-rational components. The recognition of this fact began to emerge in the 1950’s when leading behavioral scientists started challenging the concept of human rationality that had dominated mainstream economics for decades. The work of these scientists laid the foundation for a new discipline that would later be called… → Read More
What Has – and Hasn’t – Changed in B2B Marketing
“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again, there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:9 (New International Version) “Don’t throw the past away You might need it some rainy day Dreams can come true again When everything old is new again.” “Everything Old Is New Again,” Peter Allen and Carole Sager, 1974 The last two decades have been a period of almost nonstop… → Read More
Why Human Psychology Still Matters in B2B Marketing
Image Source: The B2B Institute Three topics have dominated much of the conversation in B2B marketing circles over the past few years – technology, data, and content. The explosive proliferation of marketing technologies has been well documented. For example, Scott Brinker’s latest graphic of the marketing technology landscape includes 8,000 martech solutions. “Data analytics” has become one of… → Read More
COVID Is Driving a Step-Change in E-Commerce – And That Also Means B2B
For the past several weeks, a chorus of business analysts and marketing pundits have been proclaiming that the COVID-19 pandemic is driving a substantial step-change in online shopping and buying. E-commerce sales have been growing rapidly for several years, but it’s difficult to argue with the proposition that 2020 will turn out to be a major inflection point for online commerce. If we want… → Read More
How CMOs Can Build Strong Relationships With CFOs . . . And Why They Should
Image Source: The B2B Institute/IPA For several years, marketing leaders have faced growing pressures from CEOs and other senior business leaders to prove the value of their activities and programs. To satisfy these growing demands, marketing leaders must address two distinct but related issues. First they need to develop measurement systems that will accurately capture the value marketing… → Read More
Charting the Course to Your COVID-19 Recovery
Two weeks ago, McKinsey & Company published an article discussing the steps that B2B company leaders should take to create an effective COVID-19 recovery plan. A post-COVID-19 commercial-recovery strategy for B2B companies identifies five components of a pandemic recovery strategy: * Identifying pockets of potential revenue growth * Adopting new go-to-market approaches to meet changed… → Read More
Research Highlights How COVID-19 Has Changed B2B Buyer Behaviors
Wunderman Thompson Commerce (part of Wunderman Thompson, a WPP agency) recently published a research report dealing with the attitudes and behaviors of B2B buyers who make at least some of their business purchases via online channels. The B2B Future Shopper Report 2020 was based on a survey of 200 B2B professionals in the United States. Survey respondents represented a range of job functions and… → Read More
How to Build Compelling Value Propositions for the COVID-19 Recovery
It’s no secret that the U.S. economy experienced a traumatic shock as the result of mandatory business closings and stay at home orders that were implemented to stem the spread of COVID-19. In April, retail sales fell 14.7% compared to March, and the unemployment rate also reached 14.7%, the highest rate since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Recent economic data suggests that the bottom of… → Read More
Research Documents the Impact of COVID-19 on Sales and Profits
The COVID-19 pandemic has been wreaking havoc on U.S. businesses since March when the governors of most states began closing “non-essential” businesses and issuing “stay at home” orders. As the reality of the pandemic sank in, it quickly became apparent that COVID-19 would have a major impact on the financial performance of most companies. What was not clear back in March and April was exactly… → Read More
How COVID-19 Has Changed Customer Behaviors
The findings of a special COVID-19 edition of The CMO Survey were published a few days ago. The Founder and Director of The CMO Survey is Dr. Christine Moorman, the T. Austin Finch, Sr. Professor of Business Administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. The survey is sponsored by the Fuqua School of Business, Deloitte, and the American Marketing Association. The CMO Survey is… → Read More
The Right Pivots Can Drive Revenue Growth in 2020
The business world now has a new buzzword thanks to the coronavirus – pivot. Until recently, the term pivot was primarily used to describe a major, long-term change in a company’s business model or business/marketing strategy. But over the past three months, I’ve seen a growing number of media articles and blog posts using pivot to describe a wide variety of changes that companies have made in… → Read More
How B2B Buyers Actually Consume Content
Over the past fifteen years, content marketing has become one of the most widely-used techniques in B2B marketing. Today, virtually all B2B companies are using content marketing in some form. But ironically, the popularity of content marketing has made successful content marketing more difficult to achieve. As companies produce more and more content, the total volume of content available to… → Read More
It’s Time to Reset Marketing for the Balance of 2020
After languishing in coronavirus purgatory for the past three months, the U.S. economy is coming back to life. All fifty U.S. states have now begun the process of reopening their economies, and there are early signs that economic activity is beginning to pick up. Data from Apple indicates that people are beginning to move around again, and the volume of debit and credit card transactions has… → Read More
The Critical Importance of “Unrealistic” Thinking
In 1960, Theodore Levitt wrote a landmark article for the Harvard Business Review titled, “Marketing Myopia.” When it was republished in 2004, HBR editors said the article, “introduced the most influential marketing idea of the past half century.” In a quintessential passage in the article, Levitt explained the decline of railroads in terms that have become part of the fabric of business: “The… → Read More
How to Approach Marketing Planning for the Balance of 2020
Developing sound marketing plans is never easy, but it becomes a herculean task when a global pandemic turns the business world upside down. Scenario planning enables marketing leaders to manage marketing effectively in the face of unprecedented uncertainty. The momentum for reopening the U.S. economy is steadily building, and it now appears the process is likely to begin within the next few… → Read More
It’s Time for Senior Leaders to Begin Planning for the “Next Battle”
In his 1989 best seller, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey wrote that effective people practice the habit of “putting first things first.” By this, Covey meant that highly effective people focus most of their attention on things that are truly important. Covey used a 2 x 2 matrix to illustrate that we spend our time and energy in one of four ways. Below is my version of… → Read More
A Temporary Change of Direction
For only the second time in over five years, I did not publish a post here last week. Over the past few weeks, I have found it increasingly difficult to create posts that I truly believe are timely, relevant, and useful for my readers. The reason for my difficulty is COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. One way that I keep myself on a regular writing and publishing schedule is… → Read More
Should Sustainability Be Part of Your Brand Story?
The political debate surrounding climate change has been raging for the past two decades and is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. However, several recent developments indicate that the leaders of many large business enterprises have accepted the reality of climate change and recognized they need to step up their focus on environmental sustainability. August 2019 – The Business… → Read More
How to Make Personalization Work in a Privacy-Conscious World
In my last post, I wrote that it’s time for marketers to rethink their approach to personalization. The value of personalized marketing has been widely recognized for nearly two decades, and most marketing pundits are recommending that marketers expand their use of personalization. They contend that marketers should make personalization more specific and use it more frequently, in more channels,… → Read More