Enterprise 2.0 Marketing Tips from Forrester

Oliver Young of Forrester recently wrote a report, Passionate Employees: The Gateway to Enterprise Web 2.0 Sales. He comments of the growing use of web 2.0 tools by employees, even when this use is not sanctioned by their firm. There is an opportunity for “smart tech marketers (to) appeal to employees, IT, and line-of-business sponsors each in turn.” He adds that a well-crafted marketing plan looks at each of these constituencies and their interests.

I agree and wrote a similar message in March on the Fastfoward blog in Swimming with Your Peers. “Many Web 2.0 firms are selling to individual users. And many of these products are coming into the enterprise through happy individual users. So perhaps the enterprise sales strategy, at least in the short term, is to focus on developing a satisfied base of individual users who will take your products into the enterprise. This is currently how a lot of Web 2.0 stuff is getting inside the enterprise. Look to getting key web influencers on your side. Reach out to the individual user market.” This post was in response to an earlier Forrester report reported in Captain Obvious.

Oliver adds, “Forrester user-clients regularly tell us that vocal employees have been hounding then to get blogs, social networking, and wikis into the enterprise.” He adds that employee requests were a driver in Web 2.0 related investments nearly 40% of the time. Oliver says that it makes sense for firms to look to pure play providers as well as the big vendors. The pure play vendors are foten sources of innovation. He goes on to give some good advice to Enterprise 2.0 vendors, including appealing to individual employees through consumer versions of some tools using Newsgator as an example.

However, do not stop here. Getting employees on your side helps get a foot in the door but marketers also need to address IT and line of business leaders to get obtain enterprise adoption as Oliver points out. Viral marketing through blogs is one of several ways to reach all three audiences and should be addressed at the concerns of each to be most effective.