Marketing can only generate an effective pipeline if it targets the same buyers as sales, but new research shows the overlap – even between brand and demand marketing – is often shockingly small.
Many are talking of the ways AI will rip up the rulebook on creativity, but for B2B the biggest disruption AI will cause is to diagnosis.
Data shows B2B brands, like B2C, generally serve the same customers, which demonstrates the wisdom of marketing to every buyer in your category.
For B2B firms, investing in brand marketing is the best bet in good times, and it’s an even better bet in bad times when the pool of current buyers shrinks from 5% to 1%.
Marketers can’t control brand rejection but they can elevate awareness, so B2B brands should take charge of the levers they can pull to make their brand stand out.
The history of marketing is synonymous with consumer brands, but now B2B is the key driver of economic growth and it will be marketers who build those businesses.
Brands – both B2B and B2C – should focus less on keywords and more on making themselves memorable at the point of the buying decision.
True personalisation is unachievable due to poor data quality, but it’s ineffective anyway and should be replaced with creative that resonates with everyone.
Brand marketing creates more financial value than short-term performance marketing – the sooner B2B marketers flip their perspective and start allocating budgets accordingly, the better it will be for everyone in B2B.
There’s plentiful research to show buyers don’t make purchases logically, yet B2B marketers still try to make sales largely based on product features.
It’s hard to tell a great story without a great character but most B2B brands seem reticent to entertain the idea. One exception is Salesforce, which introduced Astro who helped revitalise the brand and make it interesting again.
B2B brand marketers need to learn to play the game and win over the CFO if they want to grow their brand and budget, which is where the cash flow funnel comes in.
B2B marketers shouldn’t be spending time and money convincing out-of-market buyers to consider a purchase but instead invest in making every buyer remember their brand next time they need its product.
Account-based marketing is not necessarily a bad idea, but B2B brands focus too much on personalisation, targeting and loyalty when executing it.
Targeting narrow segments, regularly changing creative and constantly optimising campaigns are all antithetical to growth, yet they’re exactly what marketers are incentivised to do.
Marketing to businesses is strategically no different from marketing to consumers, but using the same tactics for both won’t be effective.