G’day you B2B folks!
Kev has let me take the reins on this one again, after doing “quite a good” job on the last one. Thanks to all who took the time to reach out to tell me they enjoyed it too!
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3 B2B Strategy Tips
1) Be ‘helpful’ should be your marketing mindset: Marketers are obsessed with ‘hacks’, ‘tricks’, and tools. We think it’s the only way to get that growth our bosses are asking from us. Trust me – I’ve learned the hard way that this doesn’t work in the B2B world. Business in this world are built on relationships of trust, and trust is built by helping people – not manipulating them. So start putting the customer back at the heart of your marketing strategy by asking yourself at every turn: “is [insert x] helpful to my Dream Customer? Will it make their lives easier or harder?”. If the answer is ‘No’, then don’t do that thing.
‘Be Helpful’ is stage 2/5 in our 5 BEs Framework. Kev and I discuss in depth why this mindset drives more demand for your business, and then show you how to do it step-by-step.
2) Stop waiting for big data sets to make decisions: I don’t know when it happened, but it’s like if our dashboards don’t look like the opening credits to The Matrix, then we’re not doing a good job as marketers. And yet, the reality is for most B2B organisations – you won’t collect statistically significant data fast enough to make decisions that matter. If you wait for the data to show up in Google Analytics or a Hubspot report, you’ll never move faster than the competition. I’m not saying you should abandon data, you should just also start collecting qualitative data as well as the quantitative. Quantitative tells you the ‘what’, qualitative tells you the ‘why’.
Great sources of qualitative data are customer interviews, surveys, self-reported attribution, and customer and audience feedback. It’s much harder to reduce to numbers, but much easier and faster to act on.
Learn more about how to constantly improve using qualitative data.
3) Most B2B companies get this wrong with their marketing budget: They allocate 90% of their budget just capturing demand. Capturing demand is
investing money in places that your Dream Customers are ready to buy from right now. Think: Google, Capterra, G2, direct response ads on social, etc. The problem with that is in your market, only 3-5% of people are ready to buy RIGHT NOW. And if you and your competitors are all competing for that same 3-5% – it’s like jumping into a swimming pool full of sharks. It’s a blood bath out there.
A sustainable marketing plan should start to allocate more budget to creating demand. This means building trust with the other 95% of the market who aren’t ready to buy right now.
Learn how your company can start shifting from only capturing demand, to also creating demand in episode 56 with Myles Madden.
Doodle of the Week
3 Articles and Resources
1) How to go beyond thought leadership and dominate your category: ‘Thought leadership’ is table stakes. Even your competitors are starting to do it. Here’s how to go beyond it.
2) Two exercises you should do to define your Dream Customer: Focussing on your Dream Customer is crucial. Here’s two ways to start to deeply understand them.
3) How to conduct customer interviews: Doing customer interviews can be scary. Expert Ryan Gibson shows us exactly how to do them in Episode 37 of The B2B Playbook podcast.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. Don’t forget to subscribe to The B2B Playbook podcast.
Strategy, Templates & Tools To Drive More Revenue With Marketing
Our 5 BEs Framework teaches b2b marketers exactly how to drive more revenue with your marketing.
We share our Framework step-by-step every week on The B2B Playbook.
There’s 3 ways you can learn and implement it in your own business:
- Listen to The B2B Playbook Podcast
- Subscribe to our Newsletter
- Apply for The B2B Incubator
(P.S. The B2B Incubator gives you strategy, templates and tools you need to implement this in your business over 12 weeks. Click here to find out more or apply now).
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