The Art of Effective B2B Marketing

Avoid the sea of sameness

'Content' is the king, but 'Quality' is its high-maintenance queen. By providing valuable and informative content to potential customers through content, B2B companies can further differentiate themselves from their competitors and ultimately drive more sales.

But we all live in a world of information or content overload. The problem with information overload is that you end up living in the sea of sameness, and in the sea of sameness is the death of every market.

The best marketers in the world escape the sea of sameness because it is the death of a market. No customer wants to hear the same story repeatedly. Marketers can provoke their audience or customers by using various mediums (like humor). But the marketing community often confuses efficiency and effectiveness.

By focusing on producing unique content, B2B companies can establish thought leadership, differentiate themselves from competitors, and build trust with potential clients. By offering a different perspective or providing valuable information, a B2B company can build trust with potential clients while addressing the needs and concerns of its target audience—establishing itself as a credible and reliable resource.

Don’t start with the product.Start with your customer!

It implies putting the ‘Customer’ first and the ‘Product’ after that. The goal is to build a culture that rewards behaviors that lead to customer success. Simply put, organizations acknowledge that a happy customer will buy your product—which is crucial to their business growth.

When customers face various problems, they look for someone to help them solve those challenges efficiently. But they’re not starting with a product and a feature; they are beginning with a higher-level value proposition. If you start from that point of the buyer’s journey by considering how people consume information, do their research, learn how other customers have done that, whether analysts believe in the product’s capabilities, and others, you can have a different starting point. You can further move toward the product, its features, and the articulation of your capabilities.

Being thorough with all stages of the funnel

While the funnel is a fun process for sales, it is, from a marketer’s perspective, a buyer’s journey. From an effectiveness paradigm, a marketer should be thorough with every level of the funnel, whether it is the top right, middle, or bottom of the funnel. Especially, CMOs should be aware of where marketing and sales enter the funnel and work together because it paves the foundational knowledge necessary for effectiveness.

Let’s understand the point with an example. Sometimes organizations receive enormous inquiries, but nothing converts, and they miss their target audience despite creating all the required assets. At other times, they do not receive enough conversions despite strategizing everything. This is where we need to be cognizant that our sellers are human beings, and they don’t know everything. They are given an insight, or a narrative—something they can take to a customer or potential buyer who might not be better educated than sellers. People assume it’s the sales responsibility, however, regarding the art of the deal, our responsibilities lie in the middle

Organizations should analyze how their products benefit buyers. They can start by asking: “What are we giving them? Are we giving them something insightful? Are we helping them tell the story? Are we helping them engage in a meaningful way?"

Marketers can do this in different ways—for instance, by looking at the efficiency tools and understanding that none of these tools will get past you; hence, they must do something to help a seller articulate. As a result, they can help move the IQ-articulated pipeline to an EQ-articulated engagement model between a seller and a buyer.