B2B Marketing
A couple of weeks back on LinkedIn, I posted a link to an article that hailed the advent of the Metaverse as new tech that would completely revolutionise businesses everywhere. The article was sponsored by a management consultancy urging CEOs to get on board with this brand new disruptive tech before their own company gets …
Continue reading “Why promotion is dead, and marketing is the Next Big Thing”
“Who remembers Google Glass? What were all that about?” It’s almost a decade since Google announced that the Explorer Edition of Google Glass was going on sale at $1,500 a pop, offered initially to Google I/O developers in the US. For digital natives too young to remember that far back, Google Glass was …
A proposition is a very simple thing. It’s the response to the request: “Give me one good reason why I should buy your product”. Yet too often in B2B marketing when faced with that request we lapse into what is known as the Elevator Speech. The Elevator Speech itself is a simple concept. You’re standing …
Continue reading “Why we B2B marketers need to sharpen our propositions (and how to do it).”
Once upon a time, in the days when the world wide web was just a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee’s eyes and direct mail was an actual *thing*, I started out on my career in marketing. The financial services company I worked for had recently appointed BBH’s newly-formed below-the-line* agency Limbo to work on its direct …
Since the dawn of B2B marketing, there seems to have been a raging debate about whether B2B buyers act more rationally than consumers. Classicists argue that the business procurement process is designed to eliminate irrationality and engender accountability across the entire purchase process. The involvement of multiple B2B stakeholders in that process helps ensure that …
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”
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”
