I was recently talking to the CEO of a middle-market B2B company who reached out because he was frustrated with the level of marketing return. And he isn’t alone.
Leadership across B2B companies has been feeling the haunting sense of shifting winds without being able to put their finger on it.
So, what gives?
I’ve talked before about how B2B doesn’t have a marketing problem but a culture problem where marketing has long been seen as an on-demand collateral center for sales despite the fact that the modern buyer’s journey has dramatically shifted.
Here are five beliefs that are really slowly killing tech-driven B2B companies across the board.
1. All prospects are in the market.
Prospects and “prospects in the market” ae two different categories, yet B2B often puts them in one bucket.
Prospects in the market are those who are actively looking for solutions like yours. They are officially seeking a solution to a present problem. On the other hand, prospects can be anyone who may need your product or service in the future. The difference is that they aren’t looking to buy at this moment.
Let that reality sink in.
There is even a rule established around this called the 95-5 rule. It states that only 5% of your target market is ready to buy now. 95% will, at some point, in the future cross that line into the 5%.
Where do B2B marketing and sales teams spend all their time?
Chasing the 5%. Just like every other firm.
Where should marketing spend their time? Focused on the 95% and building mindshare, so the moment they cross that invisible line into the 5% – they think of your brand.
Ignoring your broader prospect base for those in the market at this very moment is a catastrophic approach to growth and will always keep sales spinning their wheels.
2. We have to be serious because we need to be taken seriously.
Nothing could be further from the truth. In a time when you need to stand out from the noise more than ever, you must embrace a more playful approach. The launch of Rabbit at CES was a great example of this in action. A colorful little device with an AI-based interface sold out in minutes.
Some scoffed at it and said, “Who needs another device?” but they were missing the point. The novelty of the internet, by and large, has worn off.
Remember the days when we used to wait for the next Tamagotchi ? When a new iPhone release meant more than just a battery life upgrade? We looked forward to a release. Technology was fun.
The more mundane your product or service, the more you need the fun factor.
Without it, your prospects may choose to buy from someone else – even if you product or service is “better than theirs.”
3. Executive presence doesn’t matter.
There’s a direct correlation between CEO visibility and corporate visibility, and both types can greatly influence business outcomes.
Their findings are not “just research” – they are a reflection of buyers are wanting and expecting.
It is more vital than ever before to engage with the media (both social and earned) for the benefit of stakeholders across the board – from vendors to employees to certainly clients.
For example, more people engage and trust SparkToro (b2b SAAS company) because of founder and CEO Rand Fishkin and his honest insights into the industry.
Being visible as a leader doesn’t have to be hard, it just means you have to prioritize your digital presence.
4. Only performance advertising works.
This is the ultimate Achilles’ heel of B2B marketing and by far the biggest loss center. B2B’s insistence that all marketing be linear and attributable to an ideally single channel or source has forced marketers to choose the merely measurable over the actually meaningful.
The data backs up the assertion that brand marketing delivers in spades for b2b. BCG shared an example of a B2B company that ran an experiment to determine the gains it could generate from brand marketing investments. The company found that the long-term return on marketing investment of those initiatives—including cross-selling opportunities for current customers, the acquisition of new customers, and the retention of those customers after their initial purchase—was approximately 640% over four years.
Add to this, Google recently made this announcement:
“In Google’s Media Lab, we’ve made a commitment: We won’t present a stakeholder with any media plan that doesn’t have integrated paid, owned, and earned components. We talk about the whole thing together, the way users experience it.” – Joshua Spanier, VP of Google Media Lab
The key here is – “the way users experience it.”
So much of marketing today is structured for business efficiency but not buyer effectiveness.
Do you think customers separate marketing into brand and performance?
Customers buy in the messy middle, and it takes all the channels – owned, earned, paid, and rented – working together over time to guide them through the process from awareness to champion.
I am sure our clients and my team are tired of me saying it, but it is true –
Repetition Drives Revenue.
5. Intent is the beginning of the journey.
Bain did a study where they found that buyers make a list of vendors for consideration before starting the search process.
- Fully 80%–90% of respondents, depending on what they are buying, have a set of vendors in mind before they do any research.
- 94% of prospective buyers are fully or somewhat informed before contacting a vendor representative.
- 84% want relevant content at each stage without relying on calls with sales.
- Meeting with reps makes up only 17% of today’s buying process.
- And that number DROPS to only 5% to 6% if they are looking at competitors.
90% of them will choose a vendor from the day one list.
Tragically, most B2B companies THINK marketing begins after intent is shown.
Because of this outdated belief, 90% of marketing dollars are spent on someone who has shown intent. By the time that flag is waved, it is already too late.
Most b2b companies have it completely upside down. Is it any wonder that sales cycles are taking longer to close?
Despite some of the doom and gloom headlines, there has never been a better time to be in tech, especially b2b tech, because the landscape is ripe with opportunities.
If you are able to be honest with yourself about how buyers REALLY buy today and can pivot to serve that, you will do enormously well.
Making this pivot is easier said than done, but CAN be done. In fact, it MUST be done if don’t want to lose your “seat at the table” to a competitor who’s already making this shift.
Shama Hyder is the Founder & CEO of Zen Media, an international keynote speaker, and a bestselling author.
Fast Company calls her a “millennial master of the universe” and a “zen master of marketing.”
She’s a Forbes and Inc. 30 under 30 alum, and LinkedIn has named her a Top Voice in Marketing four years in a row.