To be or not to B2B Marketing

In the world of B2B business, where sales cycles are long and where customers buy for value and outcomes, the role of marketing is often misunderstood.

Is marketing even needed? Isn’t sales all that is needed? It needs to be boring, right? These are recurring questions.

As we work with high growth B2B firms looking to scale towards new geographies, product expansions and value creation opportunities, here are some of our learnings.

First - Marketing Matters for the B2B world. For both brand building and for sales enablement. And it can be bold and creative while being functional and in depth.

Here are a few choices to keep in mind:

Choosing the right marketing mix: Not all marketing channels are needed by all companies. It is important to balance the right mix for efforts and investments across digital marketing, account-based marketing, sales enablement, analyst relations, press relations and events.

For example, for a company which has a highly innovative product in a competitive market, focus on account based marketing and high impact sales collateral needs to be balanced with high quality digital marketing to build the brand.

Data-driven storytelling and thought leadership: Given the in-depth nature of a B2B buy, prospective customers need to see the original thought leadership of the company. For example, for a company that is innovating on unstructured data to drive actionable insights, a podcast that brings out that point of view, along with clear industry use cases demonstrated in thought papers and before-after case studies that unveil the power of unstructured data for real impact are needed to build the edge.

You’ve still got email - email marketing: Strange but true, ?simple and clear emails still work when it comes to marketing in B2B. Choice is critical here as well. Will there be emails explaining the product/solution and asking for a meeting or does there need to be completely customized emails based on context for specific accounts that are in focus, using a drip marketing approach?

Analysts as influencers: If B2C companies today focus on influencers as a key element of marketing in the world of B2B, the analysts across firms such as Gartner, Forrester, HFS, Everest, Zinnov etc. drive significant influence. They study the trends, identify the emerging opportunities and track and feature companies that are making a demonstrated difference. Briefings to the relevant analyst and ensuring that the story is understood by them can be a gamechanger.

So, let’s drop the “to be or not to be” dissonance for B2B marketing and start with the real choices that can drive outsized impact.

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