B2B Marketing: Insights I have gained in the last 10 years

In recent months I have been working with a number of B2B startups. I get exposed (and sometimes outline) their marketing strategies in light of changes that occur as a result of the reality in which we live: a reality that requires social distancing, among other things.

In this post, I will review some interesting aspects of B2B Marketing.

1. Honey, the child has grown
   According to surveys, a significant proportion of those who will buy a product or will subscribe to a service made the decision even before talking to the salesperson (Sales Development Representative and in short: SDR). More precisely, 68% prefer to conduct preliminary market research on their own before talking to this salesperson, compared to 53% in 2015.

But, hey, this is just a survey, right? The answer is NO.

Look around: B2B executives belong to the millennial generation (to which I also belong). This is a digitally native generation.

Let’s leave the B2B world for a moment, and jump into another world, which turns us — me and you — into consumers. The B2C world. A survey found that 90% of people who asked to buy a product online did so after reading a positive review (which caused me some panic, as 74% of buyers read at least one fictitious review in the last year, but that’s a topic for another post) when 97% of the buyers indicated that the same positive review affected the purchase process.

Back to B2B. Bill Gates said back in 1996 (!) that Content is King. Or in his words:

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting […] But the broad opportunities for most companies involve supplying information or entertainment. No company is too small to participate.”

You can read the full article here. What Gates wrote 24 years ago is still relevant today. Having said that, when many companies nowadays do not adopt that content strategy because of XXX (you can complete this reason), I like to refer them back to his statement: “No company is too small to participate.”

Moreover, I can tell you that in my latest company — Algopix — we have
invested quite a bit in content. Quality, exceptional content, one that gives value. We started with our content strategy early (but still a bit late) and the results were not long in coming.

Back to our topic. The millennial generation is a fast generation. We are characterized by the “instant culture”, right?

If I like to sing and I want to get famous, why go on a tour in remote pubs in south London, when I can apply for one of the reality shows (or TikTok).

If I love to cook and want to open a restaurant, why work for years with an esteemed chef, study at Cordon Bleu in France and open a restaurant after a decade? It can be submitted to one of the reality shows (or TikTok).

This millennial generation, in many cases, is what we base our Buyer Personas on (I’ll share my 2cents about the mistakes we do when we outline our buyer personas in another post).

The Buyer Persona is actually a fictional character/character that the organization creates. Why would an organization do that? The buyer persona helps the organization better understand to whom it will sell the product. These most often relate to the background (personal and business), the challenges that the persona faces, how the company’s solution can help them solve those challenges, understand what the goals of that character are and how the company can help them reach these goals, etc.

So we have understood two things so far:

1. The Buyer Persona is an important aspect of marketing.
2. By 2020 (and beyond!), In many cases, our Buyer Persona will be the suspicious millennial generation.

Why is this important? According to a study by Gartner (one of the leading research companies in the world), the millennial generation is suspicious, understanding, and less confident in salespeople. Does that mean you don’t need more salespeople? of course not!

In my opinion, this means that it needs to be prepared. Or as Gartner points out:

“B2B sales leaders must prepare their teams to address millennial concerns
and leverage this group to drive consensus.”

Why am I talking about sales in a post that deals with marketing? Because we are dealing with something similar, if not identical: we are trying to do profiling for someone that we do not know, and here — it is important to understand — changes are taking place.

We sell to people born into the world of technology. They sip on their espresso while asking Siri what happened while they slept. The same target audience is suspicious of quality and unbiased content sources.

What is considered “quality”? What is considered “not biased”? Great questions. In the era of bots, fake news, and online reputation management agencies, The answer is not always clear.

This brings me to the next point.

2. Numbers. But heart as well.
   Did you know? During 2009 the rate of high achieving students from rich backgrounds is double and even higher than students from low backgrounds.
   We are being measured. All the time.

We should be able to measure B2B marketing as well: funnels, conversions, optimizations. Anyone who is in the field of analytics knows that it seems simple but it couldn’t be farther from it.

The first thing a good marketer does is market himself. The second thing is to learn: learn the product, the market, the competitors, the target audience, the entry barriers, and the opportunities, of course.

A good marketer will keep digging and will ask to interview clients and partners. A good marketer will collect data and conduct experiments. Because she/he knows — that she/he knows nothing.

Therefore — I urge you to try. Take risks. Do not be afraid to fail. I chose a quote the one and only — maybe because I’m still influenced by the Jordan series I saw on Netflix while wearing my Chicago Bulls pajamas (not really):

“I CAN ACCEPT FAILURE, EVERYONE FAILS AT SOMETHING. BUT I CAN’T ACCEPT NOT TRYING.”

(I even wrote the quote in Capital Letters, because Jordan is great!)

You must try, especially in the beginning, but even after that.

In the beginning, we know nothing. Nothing. Even if we conducted market research, conducted personal interviews, worked with Design Partners, etc. — we’ll have an idea. That’s a great start. But still — we do not really know anything.

Therefore, it is important to try — and fail quickly.

Justa starting? I would suggest “Spray and Pray”. What’s the problem? Are you afraid to lose your market? Which market? You just started! If in your little experiments you lose the market, I’m sorry to tell you — your market does not exist.

So we talked about numbers. Now — let’s talk about the heart.

Heart. Intuition. Passion. That’s your Baseline. Our roots. God forbid I underestimate numbers and measurements, but I honestly think the Holy Grail is the combination of the “out of the box” thinking, and the measurement/analytical ability to draw conclusions.

Having said that, I find it surprising that by 2020 only 17% of marketers are making real use of A/B Testing to improve their conversion rate.

3. Love Me Tender
   In his timeless classic, Love Me Tender, Elvis writes — “Love me tender, love me long. Take me to your heart. For it’s there that I belong. And will never part”.

In recent years, the Customer-Centric approach has been growing. In his book called Customer Centricity, Dr. Fader explains the principles behind the approach and notes that marketing efforts must be invested in the true customer segment, which he defines as “having the highest value”, in order to be profitable.

Sounds obvious, right? I thought so too. It turns out that 66% of marketing leaders do not know how much their customers are worth. What about the remaining 34%, you ask? It turns out that they enjoy a potential 17% increase in their sales — when they identify and maximize high-value customers.

You can’t talk about Customer-Centric without mentioning Jeff Bezos. Which brought the approach to the level of art, no less. Not many know, already in 2013, Bezos told Charlie Rose (an American journalist) that the customer comes before the business innovation, or in his own words:

“I would define Amazon by our big ideas, which are customer centricity, putting the customer at the center of everything we do.”

I have all kinds of weird habits (I can only imagine the reactions of the people who know me). One of them, which not many know about, is reading old shareholders' letters.

I find it extremely interesting. Aside from the fact that we can learn a lot from our existing point of view (in a kind of retrospective wisdom), it just drives me crazy. really.

I started with this habit in 2011, when I read all the letters Warren Buffett wrote to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders (which led me to read his biography by Alice Schroeder — 928 pages I read. Twice).

Back to the point. In one of his letters to shareholders, Bezos writes the following:

“This year marks the 20th anniversary of our first shareholder letter, and our core values ​​and approach remain unchanged. We continue to aspire to be Earth’s most customer-centric company, and we recognize this to be no small or easy challenge. We know there is much we can do better, and we find tremendous energy in the many challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.”

In the same letter (as always), Bezos attaches the legendary letter of 1997. The word Customer appears in it no less than 25 times (out of 1,617 words, but who’s counting?).

Being customer-focused means a lot of things, including requiring designing processes and policies from the customer’s perspective. I believe one of the most correct applications of this method is personalization.

4. Hi [first name]
   I will not forget the first time I received an email sent to me as part of some sort of automated Workflow (as part of a Marketing Automation process) from a kind representative named Katie.

That was a long time ago. I was naive and believed with all my heart that flesh and blood people are behind the text I receive. I started the registration process for some SaaS products and abandoned the cart in the middle.

Katie sent me an email with a “personal” dedication, explaining to me how much the product I decided not to purchase would help [Company_Name] and there are situations where there were a few more placeholders.

I did not buy the product, but I answered Katie. Apparently, it was a great trigger to put SDR into the picture, but that’s no longer relevant. “Katie” managed to fool me.

Therefore, it is not surprising that personalization is the super-strategy of 47% of B2B marketers in 2020. Moreover, according to a study conducted by Accenture in 2017, about 73% of B2B customers indicated that they want to be approached personally, just as happens in the B2C world.

Through personalization, marketers are able to lower up to 50% of their CAC (Cost of Acquisition) costs and increase up to 50% of the LTV of their customers (Life-Time Value).

Everything, of course, is based on Data. Today, most CRM companies offer a basic + an additional data-enrichment layers. However, today’s segmentation is mainly based on geographical location, company categorization, prospects’ keywords in the prospect’s prospect, his behavior in the company’s digital assets, etc.

Good marketers make a company look smart.

Excellent marketers make the customer feel smart.

But I’m sure I did not renew anything for you. After all, if you have come this far, you regularly consume quality content.

5. Hmm… You had me at hello
   There’s nothing like starting a paragraph with Jerry Maguire’s immortal quote from 1996.

While most of us classify companies under B2B or B2C (without now entering the worlds of D2C, B2G, etc) — let’s not forget the most important combination: H2H (meaning: Human to Human).

Every experienced salesperson will tell you that a sale starts from a relationship. Especially in this Work-FromHome (WFT) era. No matter how we turn it around: people tend to buy from other people.

While most B2C transactions are characterized by non-repetitive or non-subscription, the expectation from B2B companies is to renew the subscription, which adds another dimension to the relationship between the salesperson and the buyer.

There is another significant difference between B2C and B2B.
Usually, in B2C transactions there are many vendors who will supply the product, and the customer must choose the supplier with whom he is interested in working. That is a relatively simple decision of “yes” or “no”.

B2B transactions, in the technical aspect, for example, are required to be approved by a number of engineers who test the product, while adopting parts of it, with the business / operational side of the company waiting with the negotiations (until the technical side is completed). If the B2C sale is usually 1X1, then in a B2B sale, the customer can involve 15–20 people, just to produce the deal. I too was surprised to see these numbers, but I had a hard time arguing with an official McKinsey report.

Additional surveys show that about 66% of B2B companies use at least the Marketing Automation platform. While a company that wants to grow at an exponential rate cannot be expected to manage all of its relationships personally, I certainly believe that a hybrid model should be adopted. I was very attached to the following chart, which also appears in McKinsey’s previous report, which I mentioned earlier:

6. ABM strategy
   Often, when I work with a company, the following question is asked:
   “When is it best to send an email to the C-Levels I am trying to sell to?”
   According to studies, 11.42% of those executives open their mail at 10 a.m.:

While it’s hard to argue with statistics, I try to understand/believe what I just read [OR] refute it.

Therefore, when I send an email to someone, I try to imagine what his state of mind would be like. I know — it’s a long shot and I should have some kind of ‘educated guess’ (since we do not know each other). My starting point is that when this persona (who is usually employed in a senior management position) starts her/his, — two main things will keep her/him busy:

1. Responding to complex / urgent emails
2. To Clean the table and especially sweep simple emails.

How do I know what can maximize my chances?
Here is the place to introduce a marketing strategy called ABM, or in its full name — Account-Based Marketing.

This strategy focuses on a targeted list of companies (“Accounts”). Instead of investing a lot of money to produce a point of contact with multiple functions within the company (and it is already known that on average, one needs to generate at least 9 meeting points to become a lead), the ABM strategy devotes resources and budget to a specific list of companies and functions within the company.

Back to the previous example — To maximize your chances, I recommend the following:

A. Personal and focused messaging. Apart from the fact that such an approach illustrates the value that that person will receive from you since it also gives the feeling that you have approached them personally, and at the very least — you deserve a personal answer. Even if negative.

B. Timing. Gather some intelligence. Check when the same person uploads posts — whether personal or professional. If you find a pattern (even if any) — bingo. At this time he/she has leisure. And this is a great time to approach.

C. Interest. Did we say intelligence? Where does our persona write? And what about? What do they find interesting? If it is technical — we will look for it in Stack Overflow; Are they visiting Quora? Maybe just active in different LinkedIn groups? Understand what interests your persona and click on the rigger.

D. Style. Following on from the previous point. If the person you are addressing is a short and concise writer, you will be in the mail. Because she/he has no patience. You’ll lose them. If they allow themself to end a post with a smile and a wink, or you feel they are informal — be such yourself.

E. Get out of the box and not be afraid. For example, I found that in the COVID-19 period, which brought us to work from home — the “private” and the “personal” do, in fact, mix. For me, this is a great opportunity to send an email to the private email box, since the competition in this box is significantly smaller.

I can name dozens of other sections, but I think the above 5 sections are a good start, as anyone can develop them as they see fit.

Good luck!