Editorial
The Gist
- Shift the perspective. B2B marketers must focus on long-term strategies rather than short-term gains for sustained success.
- Emphasize differentiation. Clear, tested differentiation in marketing can double the effectiveness of lead and brand building.
- Leverage thought leadership. Invest in provocative thought leadership and standout content to build memorable brand awareness.
Marketing is an ever-evolving beast, but there are times — like right now — when it feels the sands are shifting so fast that it’s hard to know what to prioritize.
It’s a sentiment echoed by B2B marketing authority Jon Miller, who has been talking recently about how the established playbook — that he helped popularize over the past decade and was previously effective for B2B marketing strategies — is no longer working.
Buyers Tune Out Noisy, AI-Driven Ads
The over-simplified gist of Miller’s argument is that — faced with a deluge of low-quality noise — buyers have become indifferent and apathetic to marketing content. And, of course, this is increasingly so now that customers are being swamped with AI-produced garbage. Today’s customers are doing more independent and anonymous research about what to buy, and it's very difficult to track.
This tallies with our own research showing B2B buyers becoming increasingly independent and self-reliant, with a significant percentage preferring to gather information on their own before (or without ever) engaging with sales.
Shift Focus: Build Brands, Not Metrics
This, Miller says, means marketers need to think longer-term when it comes to their B2B marketing strategies, focusing more on brand and creating engaged audiences and less on “performance.” It will involve giving away valuable thinking to encourage customers to subscribe to your communications.
I try not to talk about playbooks. Regardless of what many martech providers seem to promise, what works for one business won’t work for the next. If there was a failsafe template, everyone would be using it. But there are some golden rules that work for everyone.
So, where does this leave us? As ever, with plenty of opportunity.
Related Article: Mastering B2B Marketing Strategies in a Digital Age
2024 B2B Marketing Strategies Playbook: Build Brands, Not Leads
If there is a 2024 marketing playbook, it looks something like this:
1. Brand Dominance
Marketers should endeavor to build strong awareness and brand associations for mid-term opportunities (demand gen) and longer-term ones (brand building). If you do nothing else, this should be it. Why? Research from Bain & Co/Google found that 80% to 90% of buyers have a set of vendors in mind before they do any research, and 90% of them will ultimately choose a vendor from that list. If you are not on this list you are fighting for scraps.
2. Lead Focus
Marketers shouldn’t waste much time and energy on capturing in-market leads. According to the 95-5 rule, only around 5% of your target market is ready to sign on the dotted line. This varies depending on what you’re selling, but the figure is always tiny. By the time you spot someone in buying mode, chances are they’ve already got their shortlist (see point one above). Ultimately, capturing these leads is a job for sales. Marketing does not equal sales support.
3. Brand Visibility
As for building brand awareness, there are multiple ways. Invest in thought leadership that truly provokes, produce valuable content that stands out in the sea of sameness, use advertising, PR and events across multiple media and platforms. The default for content should be un-gated (remember, attempting to capture leads isn’t the focus, making your brand memorable and visible is).
4. Content Impact
Produce content with purpose. The key is to focus on moving customers from ignorance and apathy to the beginnings of a shift in attitude and behavior. They should easily recall your brand, but they need to do so in the right context. Your content should make their lives easier, help them make progress on important initiatives (often termed their “Jobs to be Done”) and demonstrate the opportunities of making a change outweigh the risks.
5. Strategic Differentiation
Relevant differentiation and meaningful distinctiveness will be fundamental to success. Don't even start before you have this in place. Research we commissioned comparing what the most successful B2B marketers are doing differently from their more average peers, reveals that true differentiation will make your marketing more successful across the board.
For example, tech companies with a clear differentiated position — which, crucially, needs to have been tested with customers and reviewed against competitors — are twice as likely to be in the most effective group across lead generation, demand generation and brand-building. In professional services, where differentiation is typically harder to achieve, the results are even more extreme.
6. Proving Brand Building to C-Suite
Be aware: Attribution for this will suck. However, there is now very solid research you can share with senior leadership to show brand building works. This was pretty much settled a long time ago, yet marketers are still struggling to justify the approach to the C-suite.
Related Article: B2B Marketing Strategies: It's Simple — Get Famous
Final Thoughts
For a case in point I direct you to the mic-drop, deliberately career-ending LinkedIn post by Katherine Pomfret who wrote: “I can't explain social media to one more CEO. I can't explain the power of brand to one more bunch of investors. I can't face one more interview where they ask me ‘how could you get those results more quickly and with two thirds of the budget’.”
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Ultimately, the focus of B2B marketing must always be tied to business growth as this is what CEOs and shareholders care about. Everything else is largely garnish.
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