March.
We launched this NextGenB2B newsletter with a mission to highlight interesting stuff happening in B2B marketing that may not already have hit your inbox, and newsfeed posts you might not have seen. So to deliver on that we’ve been expanding the sources we curate from. This month we’ve gone straight to source with summaries, comment and links to insights from Forrester, McKinsey, and Oracle. How are we doing? Let us know! [email protected].
Scroll on for the cost of being ‘dull’, a reality gap for B2Bs, a great example of community in practice and an awkward moment with a sizzle reel.
Content.
Thought leadership drives sales (so why are so few B2Bs doing it well?) The 2024 edition of the annual Thought Leadership Impact report from Linkedin and Edelman has just been published, delivering data insights consistent with previous years, but with new emphasis that thought leadership is - or can be - about much more than ‘brand.’ For instance ? of C-suite respondents said thought leadership content has prompted them to research a product or service they hadn't considered, with 23% of them going on to buy. 90% said they were more receptive to sales outreach having read useful thought leadership content. And 70% had considered changing supplier as a result of reading thought leadership from a competitor of their incumbent. So, huge potential, but for many there’s a gap in reality. Only 48% of respondents said that overall the quality of TL they see is good - and only 15% say it’s generally very good or excellent.?
Our take: There are clear rewards for those that do it well and yet half of businesses say they under-resource thought leadership, fewer than half have effective measurement in place and 25% of firms say they are not leveraging their best talent in their thought leadership, with a further 25% saying they lack the skills internally. In practice, these are all relatively straightforward to fix, by training and supporting internal thought leaders on content planning and creation, and / or adding outsourced expertise on distribution and management. And the data to track performance is often already there, or relatively easy to set up.
‘The smarter we get in a category, the duller we get…” So said Adam Morgan, author and founder of EatBigFish, at the most recent Brands Lecture where he presented new data on the financial cost to brands of being 'dull' in their positioning, messaging and storytelling. Truly fascinating stuff, and you can read our short summary here ahead of the deck being published later this month.
Our take: We are totally on board with this! Indeed the opening slide of Adam’s presentation is one we use too to highlight the zero-sum practice of focusing on what your direct competitors are doing, saying etc. In our brand workshops and market analyses we often find that it’s by looking at what we call ‘laterals’ - out of category or adjacent businesses - that we find the insights that inspire clients to do more interesting - and commercially rewarding things.?
AI.
New AI creative community from Adobe: An innovator and?long-term investor in user community as a service model, Adobe has launched a new community tab for users of its Firefly suite of AI-enabled community tools.
Our take: Sitting bang in the centre of our Venn diagram of obsessions, this is a great example of community in practice, and a valuable resource for anyone exploring the creative potential of AI and the considerations around IP rights and ethics - whether a Firefly user or not.
领英推荐
Community.
B2B marketing has become dominated by the culture and language of demand generation. A sector dominated by rational messaging and functional positioning bought-in heavily to the promise of performance-led tech and tools.. And yet, almost everyone we speak to is complaining about the quantity, poor quality and increasing frequency of lead gen content they get every single day, enabled by tech… and this is a big driver of interest and investment in Community Based Marketing. So what is the data telling us?
New research from Forrester found that 75% of B2B marketers say buyers are taking more time to commit to purchases, up from 67% the prior year, with anonymous digital buying becoming the norm. They say that while technologies like generative AI, CDP's and ABM platforms can help, three major internal, tactical, challenges are hindering progress - siloed teams, using disparate data sources, and inability to map campaigns to customer needs - and that a lack of coordinated strategic oversight is often part of the problem.
New insights from McKinsey highlight the behaviours of B2B businesses excelling in what they call “Next-gen B2B sales’ (snappy title..). These include:
And finally a recent blog from Oracle highlights the benefits of investing in a customer data platform and integrating it with a marketing automation platform…like, say, Unity and Eloqua, from Oracle…
Our take: The data show that by using marketing tech to deliver a timely, personalised CX at scale, returns are more positive and predictable. But imagine if the power of that tech was implemented alongside and plugged into a community of customers and connections across your sector. Creating valuable connections, giving current and potential clients access and agency to directly influence your NPD, service, marketing and sales. Investing in community alongside more traditional and sales-focused demand gen activities can create self directed, peer-supported ‘customer journeys’ or even micro-communities - connecting the members of the buying committee and influencers within prospect companies - ultimately enabling B2B sales teams to become even more effective and avoiding death by inbox.
Team VOLUME.
AI dominates: While we’re still recovering from jet lag and brisket on our return this week, the internet has been busy summarising the key takeaways from this year’s SXSW Conference in Texas.
Aside from the usual arts, entertainment, music and film premieres, one thing dominates many of these round ups: AI. “Remarkably, SXSW 2024 saw the crowds boo and jeer the push for AI adoption”, according to many sources including these Standout Tech Moments, with one awkward incident with a sizzle reel reported here “underscoring the fact that the tech conference and creative mediums of film and music have always been strange bedfellows.”
Roundup.