B2B Marketing is hard
This is therapy for marketing people who live in a B2B tech world, including me...
Marketing is hard. B2B marketing is even harder. B2B tech marketing is even harder. We work with engineers who know how hard their jobs are and assume all other jobs are easy.
If done correctly it is also deeply unpopular. It is questioning grand visions before customers do, it is re-framing dreams from technology cleverness and features to customer benefits, and outcomes.
It is creating external heroes, not internal ones.
There is no other purpose to this post than acknowledging the complexity of the job and giving 4 pillars for success, based on my experience. Note that identifying these is easier than successfully executing them.
It is a job where having multiple personalities is beneficial.
Before going into the promised four pillars, let's define the heart of marketing.
Marketing is the "CEO of the Company Soul"
Most companies are highly inconsistent. They promise incredible products, delightful experiences, and caring interactions. The reality is the exact opposite.
Most classical marketing failures are obvious in the eyes of customers. Companies that say they are all about the customer but treat their customers as revenue-generating units are classic examples. Even when externally obvious, the echo chamber of a company only listening to itself can drown out any doubt internally.
Why does this happen? Because marketing is viewed as window dressing to the core of the company rather than being the core of any company and a job for the actual CEO.
The CEO of every truly successful company owns its soul. They define it, lead it, they drive it. The CMO owns the process of realizing, inspiring, and governing the company's soul.
Soul whispering is not a CEO core competence
Most CEOs were not CMOs before.
The best CEOs understand the value of marketing better than most CMOs.
The number one job of any CMO is to help their CEO understand, structure, and execute outcome-based positioning, company value, and operational consistency. This is not a CMO's responsibility, they do not have the authority to define how all people in the company should align, prioritize, or behave. This has to be the CEO.
Most CEOs need help.
Very few CEOs arrive at a company with a blank piece of paper.
They inherit
This leads to internal vested interests, strongly held historical beliefs, and complicated internal relationships.
Company positioning done well acts as social engineering to bring all parts of a company together, to discover what the company does not understand it can do itself. All participants have an equal voice and all voices are heard. Given the vested interests internally, having an outside company facilitate such discovery and new proposition is a recommended best practice.
I recommend visiting Firebrick, Inc. to learn best practices for doing this.
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What to do when you don't have this
If you can lead with a CEO-supported positioning and execution life is fun for all marketing people involved. There is an immediate natural alignment with the top of the company. If that is not possible what do you need to do?
This is where you have to be strong and hold multiple personalities.
As a marketer, you are blessed to be paid to spend as much time as you can outside the company not within. Everybody is focused on the company's point of view. Marketing needs to provide the voice of the customer directly into the heart of what the company does.
1. Maximizing buyer-centric positioning
On a product level, solution level, and business level, maximize the value of that product by standing in the shoes of the customer and asking what is most likely to make them a hero, get them paid, and make them successful.
Be the biggest external cheerleader for the company.
Provide education and new mental models to market segments who know they need to change, but cannot see a different framing of the world that enables them to change in reality.
2. Being the voice of the market and customer internally
This is hard.
This is where marketing has to represent the reality of the market and what is being said in response to what we are projecting.
If customers are not adopting the new products and services that are so incredible then why?
If customers are very keen to adopt initially but the adoption does not translate to commercial deployment then why?
This is hard because people don't want to hear what is not working, people don't want to hear other perspectives, even when the evidence of existing perspectives
In many circumstances, the reasons for the lack of forward momentum have nothing to do with the company, but the company cannot afford to ignore them, so the company must listen to them.
The most powerful companies embrace the seen reality and change direction. The debate is always about whether to change too soon or too late.
In all circumstances, the role of marketing is to point out internally what is not working. That can be a very lonely job when no one else is paid to do the same.
This is when marketing has to be both Dr. Jeckyl cheerleader and Mr Hyde company hater.
3. Maximize core positioning
What buyer-centric positioning is consistent across all businesses, products, and solutions?
Rather than having the luxury of top-down positioning, the next best alternative is bottom-up organic positioning. Marketing takes the role of building consistency through iteration, repetition, and pattern matching across all participants.
4. Maximize internal belief
From the organic positioning comes common beliefs and value systems. This becomes what it means to belong to the company, what it identifies, and what it stands for.
This company essence can be used to drive common behaviors, understanding, and consistency across the whole company. Internally this can bring all employees together in having a common identity and feeling of belonging. Both this and the core product positioning define the employer branding to be used when recruiting new hires and answering the question "What does it mean to work for this company?"
To close it out
There was no big plan for writing this. If you work in marketing at one time or another you question what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why it is hard. This questioning is healthy, whatever job you do.
But if you are in marketing, give yourself some slack and do everything you can to think ahead of the curve and give your company all the help you possibly can.
VP Sales Tr3Dent
4 个月Geoff… This is an intriguing post. Fundamentally, great marketing reflects the messaging and positioning offered by customers. Their unique experience, their incredible outcomes and their new powerful superpowers acquired through your solution define great marketing. It is always an outside in process but you have to be deeply engaged with customers. Walking miles in their shoes to understand their truth. Thanks again
Geoff Hollingworth interesting writeup! From my experience, I see the main problem with tech marketing, especially B2B, is that most tech companies think that they are selling, well, technology or innovation or 'latest and greatest'. What most tech companies don't understand is that marketing is a reverse process - start with the customer, then back up. When it comes to postioning, there are only three considerations that the tech marketer needs to address with the customer. Show how your product or service: 1) solves an issue or problem for them, 2) saves them money, or 3) makes them money. That's it! What this means, though, is that tech marketers must take the time to really understand the customer's goals and priorities, and then sell into those. Not easy but doable and necessary. (With a little research on each prospective customer, you can find most of what you need to know about what the customer says about its business.) We used to run a program called Customer Value Recognition - understand what's most important to the customer and sell into that, and in the process, gain an unfair competitive advantage because everybdy else is still trying to sell 'speeds and feeds'!
I feel seen ??
you nail it down. One other aspect is that the CEO inherit the people which add another layer of complexities for change. What OKRs would you recommend measuring for each pillar?
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