B2B marketing is screwed...

There was a huge buzz amongst the world of B2B marketing yesterday as B2B Ignite 2018 kicked off in style with a keynote from the legend himself Mr Rory Sutherland. On the upper decks of the Design centre it was great to see over 150 people fighting their way for a seat in my controversial but light hearted session titled "B2B Marketing is screwed..."

For those of you who missed it. Here's a quick summary.

B2B marketing is desperately in need of a re-boot. Let me explain.

PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO BUY FROM YOU ANYMORE. THEY WANT TO BUY INTO YOU.

This simple statement is at the heart of a silent revolution that is happening in B2B. I was there to bang the drum for change. Not just as a loan wolf or outlier, but to represent all the other agencies and clients who are striving to help shift B2B from a product centric to an audience centric industry.

We've been talking about things like 'emotions' and 'feelings' in B2B for far too long. We know they work. That's not just opinion anymore, it's backed up by science and dozens of reports and empirical evidence. But guess what? Even with all the evidence that says PEOPLE BUY ON EMOTION AND JUSTIFY WITH FACT, 90% of everything B2B marketing creates is dull, fact-based, features-driven, same-old, same-old marketing and content. Yawn.

It's time to turn this silent revolution into a noisy one. And that's a responsibility we all share. To push B2B Marketing to the next level. To stop doing the same old stuff we were doing 30 years ago and move forward.

In my view, whoever owns the emotion, owns the power. If marketing is to be taken seriously in B2B it needs to get in on the emotion game. That’s why sales rules in B2B because they get to play with the emotion ball and us folks in marketing get to do the dull, boring fact stuff. 

The good news is that ‘times are changing’.

For nearly 30 years of my life, I’ve been incredibly proud to call myself a B2B marketer.  But like most of you I never dreamt as a kid that this profession even existed. Needless to say, I learned to love B2B. And like many of you reading this, sometimes we need to reflect what an amazing industry it is. We all owe a debt of gratitude to the engineers and scientists, the technologist, financiers and developers. The one’s who have been solving some of the world’s biggest challenges and helping push the human race forward.

It’s given us some of the world’s iconic companies like Apple, Google, GE and Microsoft. The people behind these companies found their calling in B2B, why, because B2B matters and I think we’ve lost sight of that. 

I love it for its complexity, its innovation, its constant search for the next thing, its intellectual challenge and above all the speed at which everything moves. It's fun and brutal and makes me feel good to be alive. It's a ride like no other.

But while there are many things to love in B2B, there is a huge problem that hangs like an invisible rain cloud over this sector.

I simply call it the Great B2B Paradox.

Since the introduction of the PC in 1981 by IBM, the premise of modern B2B marketing has been that buyers and decision makers buy in a logical, rationale and economic way. This has given rise to an industry born on speeds and feeds, features and benefits. 

After 22 years of never really questioning this assumption, I started to get pissed off with marketing’s inability to really show its true value to the business. I got pissed off with single digit response rates to campaigns and sales always stealing the limelight. That anger made me challenge my own thinking. What if there was a better way, what if B2B buyers are just like normal people? 

Science and behavioural thinking became my new best friend. Instead of reading books about business I started reading books about neuro-science and cognitive decision making. A new me emerged. More importantly, I saw a new vision for B2B marketing. A new normal where emotions and feelings became more important that features and benefits.

The new scientific truth is nicely summed up here: contrary to poplar opinion:

WE DO NOT THINK OUR WAY TO LOGICAL SOLUTIONS.

INSTEAD

WE FEEL OUR WAY TO REASON.

Or to put it another way.

Business people buy on emotion and justify with fact. 

I then went into a mini-rant using Daniel Kahanneman's System 1 / System 2 brain thinking to help inform people what the greatest minds in the world have to say about how and why we as human beings make decisions.

Guess what the answer always comes back as?

EMOTION. EMOTION, EMOTION.

This is the biggest wake up call in B2B since the Internet came along.

We have to shift our thinking from: product to audiences, from selling to engaging, from features to feelings and from messaging to storytelling.

But here's the rub, after nearly 40 years of dumbing down our audiences with facts sheets, white papers, cost of ownership reports and more recently an avalanche of dull and boring content, it’s created a condition in B2B decision makers that we call F.E.A.R. 

90% of business buyers and decision makers live in the F.E.A.R zone.

They are FRUSTRATED, EVASIVE, APATHETIC and RISK AVERSE.

The more product marketing you do, the worse the FEAR condition gets. 

And guess what, we’ve already mentioned that if you want to generate action you have to generate emotion. So doing same old, same old isn’t going to get you anywhere.

It’s why we created the FEAR/ BRAVE methodology. Your job is to make your audiences feel B.R.A.V.E. User BUYER EMOTON, give them RECOGNITION, APPRECIATE the nuances of their role and their company. Demonstrate clear VALUE and above all ENGAGE don't sell to them.

In my humble opinion, emotion in B2B marketing is bigger than ABM, bigger than A.I and machine learning, bigger than video marketing, influencer marketing and even storytelling.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, far from it. Nobody is asking you to throw away all the justify with fact product marketing content you’ve created. But if you really want to take your company and your brand somewhere special, you’re going to need to learn some new skills.

I use the metaphor WINGS on a BIRD and what I mean by that is in order to fly you need both a product wing as well as a more human wing.

And finally, we need to take B2B to the next level, so that the next generation make an active choice about joining this amazing industry.

I’m Paul Cash from Rooster Punk. We're on a mission to humanise B2B marketing. Thanks for reading my post. I sincerely hope you’re with me in trying to bring about the most significant change in modern B2B marketing since IBM launched the Personal computer in 1981. 

www.roosterpunk.com