B2B is hindered by Product Delusion - Know How ???

B2B is hindered by Product Delusion - Know How ???

Despite a wealth of evidence demonstrating that consumers don't make logical decisions, B2B marketers continue to focus primarily on selling products based on their characteristics.

According to a study conducted by the B2B Institute with System1, 77% of B2B advertisements receive a score of 1 on a scale from 1 to 5 for creative effectiveness. The percentage for B2C is 53%. That's a whole deal better. What causes this dire situation in B2B? Why is B2B advertising so much worse than B2C advertising?

I'd like to share some diagnoses with you today. I think a very specific disease known as the "product delusion" affects B2B marketers, making it practically hard for them to create effective advertising (PD). The notion that a company competes primarily on the basis of the quality of its product is known as the "product delusion." Sales are stronger when the product is superior. Brand hardly counts.How can you tell whether you have a product delusion? There are a few telltale signs, I suppose.Do you think consumers always opt for the better option? I'm happy to tell you that you have chronic PD. Do you believe brands grow by communicating the superiority of their product? Do you insist on communicating value propositions like ‘80% faster processing speeds’? Yup, that’s textbook PD. Do your elbows or knees develop an irritated, scaly rash? You should consult a dermatologist to be sure, but that's probably eczema and not Parkinson's disease.

The product illusion is widespread in B2B industries. Most B2B businesses, particularly those in the technology industry, are product-driven. And I can pretty much guarantee that the head of product will mention the product in their response if you ask them why the company is expanding or contracting. Our great product is the reason for the flourishing economy. We need more engineers if sales are declining because the product isn't up to par.

Product managers should be expected to be duped by the product illusion. Everything appears like a nail to a hammer. Additionally, it makes sense why consumers are duped. But the fact that B2B marketers succumb to the same fallacy baffles us, at least. B2B marketers appear to think that by cramming the ideal product messaging into an advertisement, we will persuade B2B consumers to purchase our goods. In contrast to their B2C counterparts, B2B marketers are nearly twice as likely to rely on "logical" product-centric creative. Despite the fact that a tons of empirical evidence demonstrates that memorable, amusing, and emotive creativity increases the likelihood that consumers would pay attention to an advertisement, purchase a product, and pay a premium for that product. Mimi Turner, a colleague at the B2B Institute, often makes the joke that Coca-Cola would sell itself as "brown, fizzy, and sweet" if B2C marketers thought like B2B marketers. The only thing Coke needs to emphasize to its customers is that it is 98% effective at quenching their thirst. Forget those cute polar bears. Naturally, Coke doesn't do that since its marketers aren't bonkers enough to think that Coke and Pepsi are competitors in terms of features (the product delusion). Coke is aware that winning in competition depends on having more physical and mental availability (the market reality).

But if you tell a B2B marketer that their product isn't that crucial and that their commercials should place less emphasis on feeds and speeds and more on standing out with distinctive, occasionally meaningless, creative, God help you. Astro, the wild raccoon offspring of Salesforce, is silent about the features of its CRM application. Nevertheless, Astro does wonders, assisting Salesforce in continuing to rule its sector. It follows a brand-first strategy. Marketers are becoming more aware of the drawbacks of the product-first strategy. A deeper issue, though, is that marketing doesn't truly manage marketing at the majority of B2B organizations. Marketing and branding are handled by sales, finance, and products, yet they don't fit in their spreadsheets.

How can you cure your organization of the product delusion?

Want to create B2B advertising that is considerably more successful? To treat moderate-to-severe Parkinson's disease, talk to your doctor about the performance-enhancing concept of "satisficing. "The satisficing idea was first proposed in 1956 by Herbert Simon, a brilliant economist who went on to win the Nobel Prize in Economics. The term "satisficing," a combination of the words "suffice" and "satisfy," is a fundamental idea in the fields of behavioral economics and cognitive psychology.

In the past, economists thought that people were automatons that maximized utility and made decisions by weighing costs and benefits. Simon, however, shown that most people are satisfices who favor the first workable option above the ideal one. We compromise because it is effective and helps us save mental and physical energy. Since we are restricted in both time and knowledge, we make do with "good enough." The issue isn't that customers don't understand your items well enough. The issue is that customers are unaware of your brand's existence.

How does this impact B2B marketing, then?

It implies that your advertisements do not need to emphasize how much better your product is because this is not the primary element that influences consumer behavior. Customers seek things that are excellent enough, are readily available in their minds (mental availability), and are simple to obtain rather than the finest possible product (physical availability).Even in transactions with high levels of involvement, relatively little review takes place, according to recent research we conducted with the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. For instance, when B2B buyers require a new financial service, 47% of them immediately turn to their current bank, and 75% of those who claim to have done research still choose their current bank. The majority of customers also don't even compare more than two brands.

The truly logical B2B customer would research dozens of banks, evaluate the features and costs of each, and select the best choice. The genuinely slothful B2B buyer would automatically choose the brand they are familiar with, which is what we all do in reality.

The issue isn't that customers don't understand your items well enough. The issue is that customers are unaware of your brand's existence. And marketing was created to address that issue.


B2B businesses compete on availability, not on product :

Would you rather make sales of a subpar product with good marketing? Or a fantastic product that has poor marketing? Every day of the week, we would wager on the brand with superior marketing.

I'm not suggesting that the product is completely unimportant; of course it is. However, most goods are more alike than dissimilar. In B2C, Coke and Pepsi, or in B2B, AWS and Azure. The availability of items—how "simple to mind and quick to find" a brand is to category buyers—is where products differ from one another. For instance, the majority of startups and companies consider AWS and Azure, respectively.

The engineers who control the majority of B2B companies find this difficult to accept. You'll never hear a CEO declare, "Our product is fairly awful, but our marketing is absolutely great," since it feels dishonest to compete on emotional availability rather than product superiority.

At least in most B2B organizations, marketing doesn't ultimately have any power over the product. What should those of us with subpar products do since there can only be one "greatest" product if that's all that matters? Weep our way to sleep? Of course not, never. The brand is something that marketers have much more control over than the actual product. Wake up from the product hallucination now. The product you are familiar with is the greatest.

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