No stop signs, no speed limit… we’re on the highway to hell. Or are we?

We’re in a scary situation - and I’m not simply talking about Halloween. The news is full of doom, gloom and grim economic predictions.

Don’t leave anything to chance! The companies that fare best during recessions keep marketing - smartly. And when it comes to promoting your business smartly, the B2B marketer’s secret weapon is ease.

I hear you. B2B is complicated. The sales process is drawn out and when there are umpteen moving parts, there’s not always much you can do to speed things along.

The answer? K.I.S.S. Nope, I’m not suggesting you smooch your way out of a sticky situation. I’m suggesting you keep it simple, stupid. Look, these are difficult times. Unprecedented times. Insert-your-adjective-of-choice times.

I’m not here to gloss over that.

Hopefully, this week’s post brings a little of the Halloween frivolity to the supernatural landscape we find ourselves traversing. Hopefully, it’s a reminder that sometimes, even in B2B land, the path of least resistance is the one worth pursuing.

What’s that coming over the hill? Is it a monster?

The news makes for a sobering read: Coronavirus, job losses, Brexit, economic downturn, a looming recession - it’s all there.

We are all in for a bumpy ride, so the media oracle indicates. And yet the predicament many businesses find themselves in is real; it’s not the hangover of a spooky Halloween tarot reading. It’s not in the future, it’s not an anticipated, hypothetical situation – it’s now. And while virtually every news bulletin features a publican or a professor the truth is, we all suffer.

Events are as much a feature of the B2B calendar as the festivals and concerts we enjoy at weekends. And while professional service providers haven’t been impacted in the way that cafe owners have, they face their own conundrums. When making sales depends on people being in a room, building a relationship and hashing out a workable solution, what then? How can B2B marketers build the know, like and trust factor when the way things have always been done aren’t there any more?

You better stop the things you do…

That was precisely the message the Prime Minister delivered to us on the 23rd March 2020. All businesses had to pivot, and fast.

In a crisis, it’s tempting to drop anchor, slam on the brakes, press the ejector button. And yet those who take rash action could fare worse. In the last economic crisis, the Harvard Business Review published an article arguing that those businesses which did best during and after a recession, were those that kept marketing. The trend was apparent across economic downturns from the 1970s onwards:

"Companies that put customer needs under the microscope, take a scalpel rather than a cleaver to the marketing budget, and nimbly adjust strategies, tactics, and product offerings in response to shifting demand are more likely than others to flourish both during and after a recession."

Left alone, my mind was blank, I needed time to think

March hit the brakes hard. We were all left reeling from the impact and suddenly found ourselves with a totally different picture facing us. For many business owners and marketers, they were faced with either too much time to think as work fell off a cliff, or too little time to think as demand soared.

And yet, doing nothing at all was simply not an option. While it meant that organisations had to change tack quickly, it also meant that they needed, now more than ever, to keep some semblance of normality up, even as the old ways fell by the wayside.

So far, the HBR thesis seems to have been borne out. I’ll share a few thoughts on how to keep marketing later - first let’s look at the HBR argument bit by bit and what it means for B2B service businesses.

Put customer needs under the microscope

Tune into customer attitudes and their needs. If you have the budget to commission research, so you’re working with data rather than gut feelings, great. If not, keep your ear to the ground. B2B service sales are based largely on relationships: a trusted bond built up over one party with a problem and another with a workable solution. It’s likely that you’ll be able to discern from customers where they are at from the conversations they have with you, any buying signals they’re giving (or not), and any new or altered behaviour. On the subject of data, if you have evidence that gives you insight or supports your conclusions which you can take to your boss for budget negotiations, dig that out.

Take a scalpel, not a cleaver to the marketing budget

The reality is, your budget may be impacted, if it hasn’t been already. But hey, who knows, maybe lockdown proved beneficial for what you offer (Zoom, I’m looking your way).

Either way, planning for 2021 is likely to look very different to the planning you did a year ago for 2020. The key is to be strategic. Here comes that data again. Take a good hard look at what’s having the most impact and trim away the stuff that looks good but drains resources. Cut the bloodsuckers and divert the flow of cash you do have to what you can see regenerates your bottom line.

Nimbly adjust strategies, tactics, and product offerings in response to shifting demand

While being more strategic with where your budget goes, be more strategic about how you make the most of your investments. Choose tactics which require a low-fair input and yield a high return. This will vary by business - you know what works best for you and what your customers respond to. Good examples include things such as PR; simply talking to a journalist, giving your professional opinion on something, can carry your message far and wide. Video is a great asset too, though a little more involved. Once created, however, it’s yours to do with what you will.

As a service provider, is there any part of what you do which can be productised? Can you create a guide, a how-to, do it yourself kit, so that you reach a different part of the market which doesn’t perhaps have such deep pockets? Can you license any of your intellectual property? While this a bold undertaking and requires specialist advice, it could be an option for creating another revenue stream, while building influence in your field.

Finally, don’t forget the last part of the sentence - ‘shifting demand.’ Don’t shoot from the hip. When there’s a crisis, when the future looks bleak, it can be tempting to make snap decisions. Take a breath; circle back to the first point. Consider where your customers are at, observe any available data and keep a weather eye on gaps in the market.

Really, it’s not so different to normal times, eh? You’re still going through the same motions, just with the fast forward button pressed. And when watching a horror film, that’s usually the best thing to do anyway.

Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name

Ah, what's puzzling you

Is the nature of my game

Don’t leave your prospect guessing. Assume nothing. Spell it out for them, or else they’ll be puzzled and they’ll switch off. Recognise the lyrics above? Mick Jagger and the Devil he sings about need no introduction. You are neither Mick Jagger nor the Devil. In which case, you will need to introduce yourself and you will need to be explicit about your game.

Putting that into practice

The HBR article stresses the need for a strong brand message. And while the article deals with product-based consumer brands, the insight and analysis of psychological drivers can be applied to B2B and service businesses too.

UPS is the world’s largest courier company, as of January this year. Its slogan is ‘We ?? Logistics’. I can’t imagine a company whose slogan was ‘Logistics… meh’ reaching the number one spot on such a list.

Number 2 is Deutsche Post with the slogan ‘Connecting People.’ Bit more appealing than ‘Driving your stuff around’, eh?

In 1994, FedEx was ‘the first transportation website to offer online package status tracking, enabling customers to conduct business via the Internet.’ The same year, they launched the slogan 'The World on Time'. This year, FedEx occupy position number 3 on the same list. Hmmm. Would the pioneer that is the first-trackable-internet-parcel-service still be around and in such a strong position today, if their slogan was ‘The World… when we get there…’?

I’m being ridiculous to make a point. Messaging is just as mission-critical for B2B as it is for B2C brands.

Let’s not forget the savagery that engulfed Twitter in the spring with people mocking every Tom, Dick and Harry that sent the ‘We care about our customers’ email.

The fact remains that in B2B land, people tend not to buy because they want to feel warm and fuzzy. They tend to buy because they have a commercial problem, something that’s causing them an issue that needs fixing. They’re not interested as to whether their accountant cares deeply about their physical health. They care whether they’ll still have a business in a month’s time. They don’t care that their IT supplier is taking every precaution to protect the world and his wife. They care that their systems don’t go down and that a dispersed workforce, now distracted by Peppa Pig, home learning and the cat walking across the laptop, doesn’t inadvertently invite a cyber attack into the organisation.

A strong message lets people know how you can help them. At a time of crisis, a clear, compelling message is even more important. People, businesses and organisations are under huge stresses. Don’t ask them to work hard to understand how you can help reduce some of the difficulties they face. They won’t.

Superstition ain’t the way

Make it as easy as possible for clients to do business with you. A rain dance might do the trick, but you’re better off taking things into your own hands.

Your clients and prospects can’t believe in something that they don’t understand. Have a good honest look at your marketing collateral, your sales process, your literature and documentation and ask yourself, ‘where is the bottleneck?’ Remove barriers, make it as easy as possible for people to buy into what you do. They want their problems to be solved - if you can solve them, make it obvious.

Remove roadblocks

Rather than send a document that goes on and on and on for page after page, can you condense the need-to-knows to a one- or two-pager? I know. I know! You offer a complex, valuable, professional service, you can’t possibly say it all in such a small space. And if you’re positive that a prospect is going to study every inch of your 50-page document, then as you were.

If you think that putting the information that’s really going to help someone make a decision front and centre could move someone closer to where you want them to be, give it a go. Don’t forget here that as well as to-the-point copy, images and design are extremely helpful in conveying key information. Copy, imagery, and design are the holy trinity of a clear marketing message, pandemic or not.

Supporting evidence

The truth is, we are in the middle of a pandemic. Things are uncertain, and prospects may be feeling the heebie-jeebies when it comes to parting with their cash. It’s totally understandable after the year we’ve had. You may well need to work a little harder to demonstrate that you offer a suitable option.

Instead of overloading them with a huge proposal, drip-feed supporting evidence. Case studies are powerfully persuasive and demonstrate your credibility; they’re content that you can use long after the pandemic departs us too. If you have the budget for a video case study, or even some video testimonials, these are assets you can deploy over and over again to help persuade prospects that you’re a safe bet in a turbulent world. On that note…

The power of testimonials

If your marketing budget has been slashed, don’t fret. You don’t need anything as fancy as video testimonials to provide evidence. Do make sure that you ask every customer you work with to provide you with some kind of review. Perhaps they leave you a LinkedIn recommendation, a Google Business review, a rating on Trustpilot, or whatever platform you use. These things are free, simple and available to all. Actually, asking for a review consistently (pandemic or not) underlines perhaps the most important message of this whole piece: take care of the basics, and the basics will take care of business.

Testimonials fulfil two key functions, according to Professor Robert Cialdini and his book Influence. Firstly, when someone goes on record and states that they believe X, Y or Z, they tend to keep believing it, so they’re more likely to remain a customer. Secondly, testimonials provide powerful social proof. We humans are tribal animals, and when we see that someone else has had a good experience, we’re more open to it ourselves.

The responsibility rests with you: it’s your problem whether the customer chooses to work with you, not the other way around. By taking a few simple steps and by making the decision-making process easy, you give yourself the best chance of the client choosing to work with you.

Say something once, why say it again?

Because it needs to be said that if you take nothing else from this post, take this: the biggest favour you can do for your clients and prospects is to make their life easier.

That’s a pretty good approach at the best of times. When times are hard, it’s absolutely essential. The sheer volume of information coming at us on a daily basis is staggering. Throw in variable lockdowns, regional restrictions, and official advice that changes frequently and all of our heads are spinning. Make it easy and you’ll simplify your client’s thought process - and that’s possibly the best gift anyone can give at the moment!

If you do need help with clarifying your message, I’m happy to help. Contact me for a chat. I hope you found this useful and I wish you a spookily spectacular final quarter - oh, and a great Halloween.

Your words matter,

Laura

P.S. Bonus points! The headlines are all lyrics from creepy tunes, can you guess which songs they belong to? No prize on offer, merely my undying respect. No Googling allowed!