Most B2B marketing is horrific. Here's why

I'm torn. I appreciate the simplicity of the post and at the same time, it leaves me wanting for a long-form article of examples of best/worst practices.

Maybe even a little landing page site with some templates, community votes, metrics for downloads and maybe the opportunity to come back and post stats/analytics on results.

Surely there's an opportunity to work together as a community to build more effective B2B emails, this would benefit everyone.

I'd be happy to assist, if you want to have a crack at it?

Focus on the outcome, not the product. Both audiences will get it.

@Darko I think there’s truth in your comments and also in most of the replies. And I also see a lot of generalizations that are too broad. I’ve been in sales and marketing for enterprise software for a very long time, and I think the situation is much more nuanced. The kind of marketing and sales you need will depend almost entirely how your prospects make their buying decision. And their buying process varies widely depending on many factors—the cost of your product, the results your product can deliver, the areas of operations your product will affect, the novelty or complexity of your offering in the eyes of your prospects, the amount of risk the buyer(s) perceive in making the wrong decision, the amount of change your product will require in the buyer’s organization or operations, and many more. You must understand and consider all these factors in your go-to-market strategy and tactics.

This feels a bit too basic of an explanation by Harry.

Sometimes the buyer and the user are the same person. For instance, I use Pipedrive and I'm also the buyer. Nobody else was involved or uses it within our business.

Whereas Miro is mostly used by my team. One of them brought it to my attention as a great tool for creative collaboration... so we trialled it and subscribed.

We're a nimble company so we're pretty quick when it comes to making these kinds of purchases. Equally, we're quick to get rid of stuff we don't use as well.

I remember doing a whole subject on buyer behaviour and the different stages of decision-making, etc at Uni (I did a marketing degree). It can be super complex depending on your product, the cost, the size of a company and of course how many people are involved in the process. Or it can be simple.

If you're a startup that's trying to get some traction in a market... then think about what you're wanting as an outcome. Then focus your communications on that. Typically it's about getting trials. So the focus has to be on the user. If they're not the decision-maker... they'll hopefully take it up the line to the person who is.

Agree with Rich Benny too. There's got to be a better resource to help people/make it simple for the community to share and use ideas.

Valid point. I had come across a B2B website that was targeted at the users. And they had a prompt to download a PDF deck so that the users can convince the buyers.

Well when the buyer isn't the user, marketing can get so tricky. 😅 Essentially, there needs to be two different types of messaging. One targeting the user - i.e. how the product will improve users' lives, and this message can be pushed internally to evangelize users.

The other type of messaging is basically an entirely different marketing effort (hopefully being helped along by those users who are now convinced of the product's value). That second marketing stream (geared toward the buyer) should tackle ROI, profit margins, etc.

Interesting discussion. It seems that if we don't realize this distinction, we'll fundamentally be pushing a wrong message to the wrong people.

I am not 100% sure how valid a point this is.

I think it is definitely wrong if "marketing" in OP's tweet is used to refer to the whole marketing of the organisation.

But, weirdly, it is definitely true if "marketing" is referring to a single asset, creative, collateral, etc.

So, overall, your marketing as a whole, could and should be addressing multiple audiences moving them across their journey. Whereas, a single asset should focus on a single change, meaning it needs to have a single objective to move a certain audience member from one point in their journey to the next (and maybe a couple more steps).

How does IRL pitching sound? I have created an unlimited graphic design service and I am struggling with marketing it. One idea I have is to put on a suit and go out to businesses pitching my business to the managers/owners on site. Is this a good/bad idea?

You need to understand holistically how your product is purchased. It is not like having multiple stakeholders stops stuff being purchased by companies. I think that is why you need salespeople. You need intelligence … and intel … applied to each circumstance.

If it is a sub $1k product though you probably are selling to one person anyway not a crowd.

Focus on the outcome

true

Questions is: if you have to decide, do you go for the buyer or the user? (i.e. the one with the problem or the one with the money?)

What pointers could help decide that?

In most cases, the buyer and user are not the same.

The way I see it, the BUYER and the IMPLEMENTER are usually 2 different people. Here's an example: you see your software to a mid-size company of a few hundred people. The CIO ended up signed the contract and buying it, but he's expecting someone in HR/Marketing to implement the SaaS. Now, this isn't a problem if theres clear expectations between the buyer and the implementer, but sometimes they aren't on the same page, and this causes terrible issue in the post-sales cycles.

This is like having a marketplace and trying to attract different users with the same message.