B2B Marketing
Most of us, at most points in our careers, have a boss to turn to for advice. Whether we’re faced with a tricky client, or a challenging colleague, or a seemingly unsurmountable task, we can generally ask the boss for help. And whilst they might not necessarily take all our troubles away, a …
Continue reading “Who does the boss turn to for advice when they run out of bosses?”
Imagine you need to buy some double glazing. Apologies if the thought brings you out in hives, but I’m guessing that the anxiety you’re feeling right now has far less to do with cost, and far more to do with fending off endless calls from pushy reps keen to sell to you their wares …
Continue reading “Why gated B2B white papers can lead to fewer sales, not more”
There’s an awful lot of brand BS spoken by “practitioners” who deliberately muddy the waters with endless funnels, spidergrams, flowcharts and the like. It’s almost as if they thrive on confusion rather than clarity. Those “practitioners” (I use the word advisedly) would be dismayed to learn that perhaps the most powerful piece of …
Continue reading “When the secret of successful brand research really is simplicity”
Our car insurance renewal arrived last week from Aviva. Like many people’s, it was slightly higher than last year’s quote – despite the fact that we’d made no changes to the cover required, nor made a claim in the last year. Indeed, as my wife and I both work from home – and given …
Continue reading “Why most brand promises are purest waffle”
I missed a message from a client a few days back. Thankfully it wasn’t urgent, but it led me to question whether we are benefiting or being besieged by the multiplicity of ways we can be reached nowadays. The client had sent me a note via WhatsApp, but the fact that I hadn’t seen it …
It’s been said that if consumer marketing is a game of draughts, then by comparison B2B marketing is 3D chess. That’s because B2B marketers have to overcome a myriad of complex challenges that consumer marketers rarely face: The decision-making process is infinitely more complex for a business compared to a consumer B2B marketers have a number …
Continue reading “B2B marketing is a fiendishly complex puzzle: here’s how to solve it”
Insurance is dull, no matter how marketers try to dress it up. Renewing your annual insurance policy is a grind akin to queuing at the bank, or filling the car up with fuel. The less time you spend doing it the better. Indeed any time you spend doing it is resented. Yet once a year we are …
Continue reading “How creating an emotional reason to purchase can trump a rational one”
Imagine a client that wants to launch a new product that helps cats sit on mats. The Marcomms Manager at the client briefs their agency. After two weeks of locking themselves away, the agency turns up at the Marcomms Manager’s doorstep and unveil their meisterwork concept. Visual: Cat sat on client’s mat. Headline: “The Cat Sat …
Continue reading “How to get better, faster, cheaper work from your creative agency”
Many years ago I used to run graduate recruitment for an ad agency. As a warm up exercise on recruitment day, I asked each of the participants to write on the flipchart the name of the last newspaper or magazine they bought, and why they bought it. One by one, up they got. “Cosmo – …
Continue reading “Why you should always make the logo smaller”
Your proposition is the single-sentence answer to the question: “Give me one good reason why I should buy your product”. Remember, you’re only allowed ONE reason. It’s the elevator speech for someone only going up one floor. That single sentence ideally should have only ONE verb and ONE adjective. Finding that one good reason is deceptively difficult. …
