Humanising B2B marketing

If there's one good thing to come out of the weirdness that Covid-19 has given us, it's that we're human.

Sounds obvious but actually, for a very long time, I thought of myself as two people: work Rebecca and home Rebecca. I'm a true introvert - energised first thing in the morning with my batteries getting slowly drained throughout the day as I interact with others. This also meant that I tended to keep my work-self and home-self separate and so can come across as quiet or distance at work.

But for the past 10 weeks, we've been inviting colleagues, peers, managers and strangers into our homes on a daily basis. And you know what, it's sat weirdly well with me.

Kids running riot and stealing biscuits mid meeting, doing maths homework and running workshops concurrently, turning up to work bare-faced and dressed down.

These things are slowly settling themselves into daily life. Not just in the virtual office but in the way we market our business. My whole career has been in B2B marketing because it's definitely the more exciting of the marketing twins, sorry B2C, you just don't cut it for me.

Being Human is still such a fundamental disconnect in B2B communications though. I always quote Matt Heinz when I speak about how to write for a B2B audience. He said "buildings don't write cheques, people do." What a simple way of getting the message across. And yet we still see formal, impersonal messaging full of jargon.

Don't get me wrong, plenty of companies are doing a great job of talking to their B2B customers like humans rather than robots, but it feels like a distinct minority. Perhaps it's a confidence thing, hiding behind corporate speak for fear of upsetting customers with our informality? Who knows, I'd love to hear you thoughts on that.

My recent LinkedIn Instruct training led by the fantastic Gemma and Lucy backed all this up. If you're luckily enough to be invited to take part, JUMP at the chance. It's given our sales team the confidence to be themselves, their unique selves, and what's more, it's working.

What does being human in B2B marketing actually mean? To me, and feel free to disagree, it's thing like typing like you talk. Using simple words. Having conversations not monolgues (yes I know the irony of this article.) Asking questions. Actively listening. Recognising that your target audience (people) have personal as well as business goals.

I'll stop monologuing now and finish with a question. What does humanising B2B marketing mean to you?