Three Voices™ Strategy is a stakeholder engagement model created by Eye for Image that stretches across all of a company’s audiences. It rests on three original concepts that are vital for B2B marketers and communicators to understand: Voice of Company; Voice of Industry; and Voice of Customer.
Simply put, the ultimate goal of a properly implemented Three Voices™ Strategy is to move from the company telling prospects and customers “We’re great!” to having these audiences telling each other “They’re great!”.
To get there, you need to build Voice of Industry activities, move from propaganda to credibility, and shift from being a salesperson to the role of customer advocate.
The principles underlying Three Voices™ Strategy are relatively simple.
Voice of Company
Voice of Company refers to messages and materials created by a manufacturer or service provider to describe its offerings to prospective customers.
For most B2B companies today, Voice of Company is also the home of corporate propaganda. The key strategic direction should be to reduce or eliminate propaganda-like messages and become a more credible entity that is seen to help customers to determine the solution that best fits their needs.
Voice of Customer
We use Voice of Customer as a term to describe the peer-to-peer conversations going on between B2B buyers, discussing and recommending, or recommending against, specific solutions and products, well before the manufacturer is consulted.
This is where all the action is. It’s where the big changes in B2B buyer behavior have taken place, and where companies need to actively listen and respond if they are to match their marketing efforts to the new realities of B2B buying processes.
Voice of Industry
If Voice of Company is where most B2B companies are focused on today, and Voice of Customer is where they should be focusing their attention, then the middle circle, Voice of Industry, should be seen as the bridge companies need to use to close the gap.
By Voice of Industry, we mean the activities where the company seeks to influence its market and enhance its brand by discussing industry-level matters instead of directly pushing its own offerings.
Typically, Voice of Industry activities encompass:
- paid media - paying to place industry-level content on other companies’ media
- earned media - being seen as a valuable content partner on, for example, an independent industry news site
- owned media - you own a content platform prospects and customers use to help them make decisions
B2B buyer behavior has changed – now it’s your turn
You can read more about Three Voices Strategy and how it can be implemented by B2B companies in the book “The Death of Propaganda”, co-authored by Jonathan Winch, Michael Best and David Hoskin.
Contact us for a no-obligation meeting to explore how a Three Voices™ strategic approach can power up your company’s marketing efforts.
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