B2B Excellence - The golden goose of B2B marketing

B2B Excellence is a weekly newsletter that curates the best B2B marketing content from the brightest minds in our industry.? I like to share provocative, intelligent, and original POVs that challenge conventional wisdom and create a conversation.

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The golden goose of our trusted lead gen motions has stopped laying for some time now.

With budgets continuing to get squeezed, we’re expected to do more with less, and self-perseveration kicks in, are we defaulting to a process we know doesn't work as well as it once did or at least, as well as we think it could.

Our challenge. We know lead gen, and everything that comes with it is commonly accepted internally.

Chris Walker talks about the 1:1 ratio on ROI with performance marketing.

Would this honest assessment reflect a lot of our work?

There is a plethora of insightful debates, conversations and research across LinkedIn on routes to market that reflect real-life buying behaviours.

So why do we default to lead gen 1:1 ratio marketing when it doesn’t reflect the reality of B2B buying.

FOMU - Fear of Messing Up

Another wonderful term coined by LinkedIn and their recent study (no link to it just yet), is that we’re so risk averse, that we gravitate towards the safest and most well-known options when making buying decisions.

Does this behaviour carry over to decision-making with our marketing strategies?

It’s easier to stick to the known MQL first thinking, because it’s what people know, but deep down, we know, as good marketers this is not what should be driving all of our marketing decisions.

But we default to our famous adage. “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM”.

Rewritten for today, “You’re less likely to get fired for not rocking the boat and sticking with your lead gen motion” It’s not as catchy, but I am no copywriter.

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LinkedIn are betting big on B2B Influencer Marketing.

Here are the 4 things I found interesting at LinkedIn’s hashtag#B2Believe event yesterday.

Buyers are consuming influencers content whether they’re in or out of market. But their attention is heightened when they’re in the “consideration/research” stage of the sales cycle. 67% of buyers consume more influencer content at this stage vs 59% when they’re out of market.

Subject Matter Expertise, Trustworthiness and Network of Connections are the most important elements of influencers we follow.

Influencer marketing is not a media buy, you’re dealing with humans. Brilliant quote from Imogen Coles

The importance of the hidden buyers we tend not to care about. Procurement, commercial and legal teams. They have an equal say in purchase decisions for those who are our “typical ICP / buyers”.

The stage is set for B2B Influencer Marketing in 2025.

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Conversations and articles I like

• Personalisation at scale was always a marketing buzzword and easy to say, but difficult to action.
• Tech is still dominant in B2B marketing campaigns, but professional services is catching up fast
• New Office Announcement - Fun Video
• Do we do marketing for our boss or our customer?
• Your measurement framework is not a destiny it's an evolving process.
• Audience research ≠ buyer research.?
• It takes at least 266 touchpoints to close a deal in 2024.
• The role of B2B marketing changes as you grow as a business.