The average B2B brand is stuck in a hamster wheel of mediocrity. Every year the PPC budget is signed off without hesitation (nothing wrong with that!), yet if someone demonstrates a little creative ambition, an awkward silence descends.
The good news is this – if you’re willing to be the exception, you’ll find even a small amount of imagination goes a long way. From podcasts to cartoons and TikTok to handwritten letters, we’ve delivered of hundreds of B2B campaigns that broke every rule while delivering massive ROI.
More likely than not, your audience will begin their journey in the search engines. And they have a lot of questions.
In fact, the average B2B buyer is now 85% of the way through their journey before they're prepared to speak to a human. So if your website isn't answering all their big questions (particularly around pricing and contracts!), you can be sure they'll find one that will.
While the search engines still dominate B2B demand capture, it is often untargeted and saturated.
If you want to build relationships with your ICP (Ideal Customer Persona) before they're even in market, social media is the single most scalable way to do so.
We have tonnes of experience building B2B social engagement, in even the most corporate of markets. Check out Dan's LinkedIn cartoons for one example at the more absurd end of the content spectrum.
Every B2B market is packed with brands fighting over every available lead. And 99% of them are making the same mistakes...
- Lack of clarity on what constitutes a lead.
- Substituting product-market fit for sales intent - too many brands would rather sell to anyone today than their ideal buyer tomorrow.
- No clear Cost Per Acquisition model - in other words, they have no idea how much they can spend on a lead whilst maintaining profitability.
If you want to be the 1%, book a call with us today.
Your business is just a product of its people. And the best people go to the best brands.
You need a strategy that demonstrates why tomorrow’s rockstars should make your brand their home. What is it about your vision and values they can connect with? And, more importantly, what are the daily mechanisms that bring those values to life?
Just as the best B2B sales people combine emotional intelligence with robust data, the best B2B marketing combines powerful storytelling with deep insights.
Without the storytelling, the decision maker will never want to buy from you. And without the insights they won’t be able to rationalise it.
Every great B2B brand needs both.
Most B2B brands are stuck in 2011. Scrapping over the same “in-market” leads as everyone else.
Here’s why that’s a problem:
So while every brand should have a targeted demand capture strategy, our advice would be to focus on your ideal buyers, irrespective of where they are in their journey. It may reduce low quality leads today, but you’ll be building a far higher value pipeline for the future.
The average B2B buyer is 85% of the way through their journey before they decide to speak to a human.
Think about that for a moment. 85%.
But why should this surprise us? For the last quarter of a century we’ve been trained to do all our research online for consumer purchases. And we expect to do the same in a business context.
That means the buyer wants to understand:
Ideally, they want this information in both text and video format.
Sounds like a lot of work, right?
It is. But get this right and:
Oh, and you are building a compound asset – more on that later.
Be honest, if your brand was a film it would be 50 shades of grey, only without all the fun stuff.
Despite what the evidence may suggest, it is possible for B2B design to be every bit as creative and engaging as any consumer market. After all, your decision makers are just people. Ordinary people with dreams and fears and bad hair days and holes in their socks.
And just like other ordinary people, they like beautiful things and fun stuff. At home and at work.
So make your designs beautiful and fun. Your bottom line will thank you.
There has been a recent shift towards short form content. And for those B2B brands guilty of pumping out their 300th whitepaper since 2010, it’s a welcome move that’s encouraging much needed creativity in an otherwise malnourished space.
However, the real lesson should not be that you all need to be banging out short form content, but that your content just needs to be better.
By all means develop a TikTok strategy – that’s brilliant – but understand that these things are contextual:
Why is this?
Well for a start, most B2B purchases involve multiple stakeholders. So if each of these stakeholders are going to be able to rationalise their decision to work with you, that means detail. Lots of detail.
But it’s more than that. Sometimes, people have to feel like they’ve invested a certain amount of their time and energy in you, if they are to feel meaning and connection in the relationship. So just as IKEA want their customers to experience an amount of friction in their journey, so do most B2B brands – particularly those at a higher price point.
While the best campaigns are drowning in creativity, at the foundation of every B2B marketing strategy are a few basic numbers. Unfortunately, most organisations haven’t got a clue what they are or why they’re so important:
– Your lifetime customer profit value – ideally this takes into account your long term retention and referral rate, but even if you base it on short term transaction profitability, that will immediately give you some steer on what you can afford to spend to generate a lead.
– Your cost per acquisition – how much does it cost you to generate a lead. If this number, when multiplied by your lead to sale conversion ratio, is smaller than your customer profit value, you have a viable route to market. And assuming your operational model offers significant scalability, you should throw money at it like there’s no tomorrow. Because if you don’t and your competitors do, there might not be.
This is simple stuff that every B2B brand should get a handle on before spending a single penny on lead gen.
It’s funny how the most creative people are invariably the ones with the most information?
Your competitors know things you don’t, and it’s evident in how they spend their money and execute their marketing.
There are tools out there that allow you to see where your competitors are driving traffic and how much it’s costing them.
There’s also a lot that can be learnt by just picking up the phone and speaking to people.
Before we play a single hand, we want to make sure the cards are dealt in our favour. And that’s why we always do our homework.
A strong brand identity helps your business to improve both brand visibility and brand awareness amongst your target audience, meaning decision makers are more likely to consider your company during the buying process.
Along with your website, your email database is the only other digital asset you own. You should use your mailing list to send out personalised and relevant content, such as newsletters, product updates, webinars, and exclusive offers. This will help you to build stronger relationships, drive conversions, and foster brand loyalty among your target audience.
Social media provides a platform for B2B companies to showcase their expertise, engage with industry professionals, build relationships with potential clients and grow your email list. Through thought leadership content, industry insights, case studies, and networking opportunities, you can enhance brand visibility, establish trust, and generate qualified leads from a targeted audience.
You can find relevant influencers by engaging with industry events, using social media platforms to identify thought leaders, partnering with content creators and bloggers, and transforming satisfied customers into brand advocates. LinkedIn is a particularly helpful platform for finding B2B influencers.
To boost SEO and position your brand as a trusted authority in your industry, you should focus on producing valuable content such as educational videos, podcasts, blog posts, webinars, e-Books and email newsletters.
Our blog provides valuable insights into the world of marketing across multiple sectors. Your go-to resource for success in the digital landscape.
Contact us today for a free consultation to drive change and grow your market share.
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