Ever wonder why most B2B marketing is so gawd-awful? The reason: most B2B marketeers wrongly believe that B2B products in the 21st century should be marketed the way that consumer products were marketed in the 20th century. Unfortunately, what made Coke and Nike successful doesn’t work today, especially not with B2B. Not to worry, though. Once you understand the real problem, there is a way to fix it and make your B2B marketing actually helpful to the sales team. Only one question: does your top management have the guts (and brains) to do what’s necessary?…
The reason most B2B marketing is so lousy is that most B2B marketeers were trained to think of marketing in terms of “broadcast messaging.” This textbook marketing strategy consists of three basic steps:
- STEP #1: Create a product that has a broad appeal so intense that demand “pulls” the product through the sales channel.
- STEP #2: Reach as large an audience as possible with a message that appeals to as many potential buyers as possible.
- STEP #3: Replace desire for the product with desire for the brand, so that the brand can be extended into additional product categories.
Whenever I’ve written about marketing, I’ve gotten dozens of comments endorsing this view of marketing. And that’s not surprising, since it’s the one that’s universally taught in business schools under the guise of “best practices.” (See the post “Peter Drucker was Totally Clueless“.)
HOWEVER, when it comes to B2B, there are two problems with this traditional “broadcast messaging” approach :
PROBLEM #1: Broadcast messaging is losing its effectiveness.
The explosion of media outlets and the proliferation of advertising venues has created a state of “brand overload.” There are so many brand messages flying around everywhere that consumers tune out 99.44 percent of them. And broadcast messaging was never all that effective, even back in the 20th century. Probably less than 1 out of 100 branding efforts was actually successful, if measured in terms of increasing revenue or profit, and today that ratio is probably more like 1 out of 1000. In any case, there are only a handful of really successful consumer brands. Most marketing groups, even with a big budget, have about as much chance of creating a “Coke-like” brand as they have of winning the lottery.
PROBLEM #2: B2B products must be narrowly targeted.
B2B products are fundamentally different than consumer products.
Successful B2B firms do not sell products. They sell change. More specifically, they are selling the change that will occur in the customer’s business as the result of buying the product or service.
While it’s true that consumer products also sell “change,” it’s usually just an emotional change, as is “you’ll feel great with these sneakers on.”
With B2B, the change that being sold completely different.
For one thing, it’s quantitative change, not qualitative change. Businesses are all about money, not “lookin’ good” or “feelin’ great.” B2B offerings must therefore be able to have some kind of integral effect on a company’s financials (business model, supply chain, cost structure, etc.).
Because the financials of every company and industry is different, the change that’s sold through B2B is necessarily different for every customer. Therefore, B2B marketing requires “narrowcast messaging” that appeals to a small, highly targeted audience. Such messages, to be effective, must:
- Address a limited set of customer problems, rather than have a broad swath of appeal.
- Emphasize a limited number of relevant capabilities, rather than a broad set features.
- Target a specific industry, industry sector, or even a specific customer.
- Aim at firms of a certain size, because startups, SMBs and enterprises are completely different.
In other words, the messaging requirements for marketing B2B are the EXACT OPPOSITE of the requirements for a consumer product.
ENTER THE LOUSINESS
When B2B marketing groups emulate the behavior of consumer marketing groups, it creates a company that’s “bi-lingual.” The marketing group talks one language (broadcast messaging about a product) while the sales group talks another language (narrowcast messaging about a solution).
This is expensive because two marketing campaigns (the official marketing-driven one and the unofficial sales-driven one) cost more than one. It’s also a recipe for internal conflict because the marketeers (who are convinced they are right) will continually try to force the broadcast messaging down the throat of the sales team, even though the sales team knows, from experience, that those messages don’t work.
It’s also confusing for the customer, who may be exposed to both messages simultaneously. I’ve seen examples where what the broadcast message was almost the exact opposite of the narrowcast message coming from the sales group.
For example, I’ve seen at least a dozen high tech vendors with marketing groups broadcasting a “one-stop-shop” message, but with sales engagements that require industry-specific partnerships. The broadcast message forces the partners to see the vendor as competition, thereby making it MORE difficult for the sales team to recruit partners to develop individual sales opportunities.
It’s important to emphasize that we’re not talking about two equally valid messages. The broadcast message is stupid and doesn’t work, while the narrowcast message is smart and does work. In other words, the marketing group is wrong and the sales group is right. However, before we fix the problem, we need to know why the situation continues to exist.
THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM
The obvious solution to the problem is that we must wean B2B marketeers away from their addiction to broadcast messaging and instead focus them on narrowcast messaging that supports the solution-selling process. However, that’s very difficult, for three reasons:
- Many Marketeers have MBAs. Many marketing professionals are the products of MBA programs that provide case studies and training in broadcast-oriented marketing methods. Broadcast messaging techniques are easy to teach to a broad range of students who are working or intend to work in a broad range of industries. Solution selling is too unique and situational to be taught in a classroom, particularly by an academic whose sole sales experience was running a lemonade stand.
- Many Marketeers are Lazy. Broadcast messaging is less work than narrowcast messaging. It takes a lot less time, effort, and research to create one set of marketing tools for everyone rather than a customizable set of messages for each targeted industry sector. Broadcast messaging also lends itself well to lazybones generalities like “improves productivity” and “state-of-the-art” — the kind of verbiage that sounds “business-like” to most marketeers.
- Many Marketeers are Clueless. The vast majority of marketeers never sold anything. As such, they lack the basic capability to build a narrowcast message that could actually make it easier to sell. There are exceptions to this rule, but as I’ve pointed out before, selling is like sex. Unless you’ve done it at least one or twice, you’ve got no business telling other people how to do it. A marketeer telling sales pros how to sell is like a eunuch writing a sex advice column.
HOW TO FIX IT
I wish there were an easy fix to the problem, but there isn’t. If you’re a B2B firm that’s got a marketing group that’s doing broadcast messaging, the root of the problem is that you’ve hired people with wrong skill set. So the only way to fix the problem is through a general housecleaning:
- Put sales and marketing under the same management.
- Eliminate funding for all broadcast-oriented marketing.
- Fire all marketers who haven’t spent least a year in sales.
- Fire your Chief Marketing Officer, who is obviously an idiot.
- Compensate marketing based upon its ability to reduce cost of sales.
Do the above, and I guarantee you’ll start seeing “narrowcast” marketing that supports solution selling by addressing 4-5 business problems in a particular industry sector.
I write this knowing full well that most top managers are too stupid (or too hypnotized by their own MBA experience) to take the rather obvious steps above. So those marketeers who have managed to read this far will be happy to learn that they’re probably not going to find a pink slip on their desk tomorrow morning.
Even so, if I were in B2B marketing, and didn’t have any sales experience, I’d be looking to get a temporary transfer to the sales team ASAP. In B2B, the ONLY way to learn how to market is to do some selling. Period.
BTW, while the “fix it” plan above is my own, the observation about broadcast versus narrowcast comes from a presentation by Bob Schmonsees, a noted authority on marketing and sales alignment. I wish I were smart enough to have made that observation originally, but I’m not, alas.
