B2B Marketing gone wrong? Learn how to make it right!
According to recent research, we have been doing B2B marketing with the aim of generating demand all wrong. Where have we made a mistake and what can be done to fix it, find out in the article below.
Apparently, companies have been targeting other businesses that might not yet be ready to buy their product or service. Recent research from the Ehrenberg Bass Institute and LinkedIn points exactly to this conclusion: “Most of your B2B buyers—to the tune of a full 95% of them—are not currently in the market for your products or anything like them’’. Furthermore, most B2B products or services are not something that is being purchased on a regular basis, they have higher prices and longer buying cycles.
Inevitably influenced by the digital era that we are living in and the role of digital marketing with all its opportunities to quantify, track, and measure performance, companies have been drifting away from old-fashioned brand marketing. However, the problem with B2B marketing might just be that.
Companies should instead focus on the concept of “brand silence”, referring to the inclination of buyers to remember a brand when it comes to making a specific purchase and associate that product/service with a particular company.
You can imagine this is not an easy task.
Here are some helpful tips you can use along the journey of building your B2B marketing strategy:
- invest in customer research! You are trying to anticipate and predict your customers’ needs years in advance, so having reliable and robust insights about them is a necessity;
- focus on creating distinctive and memorable marketing campaigns;
- think about the world of our customers and what it might look like during the rest of the time when they don’t necessarily need your product or service. Cater for those times and you will for sure be remembered when it is buying time;
- think less about short-term metrics like campaign clicks, reports, and lead numbers. Yes, they are important, but they hijack the focus from building long-term brand awareness and loyalty.
This will help you build and work on that “brand silence” and make your brand louder so that when those customers eventually enter the market, they will surely think of your company!
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