This Week in Marketing: All About the Experience

As B2B marketers, we tend to love discussing the many distinctions between B2B and B2C marketing. It’s understandable: Remarking on these differences can be a valuable exercise that helps us better understand our audiences and their objectives.?

In parsing out the difference between B2B and B2C marketing, however, I wonder if we don’t run the risk of losing the forest for the trees. B2B or B2C, it’s all marketing – and all marketing has a few crucial things in common. Chief among them? It’s about creating a customer experience.

No matter who your customers are, you want them to find your content, engage with it, and follow where it leads them until they convert. To do that, you’ll have to make the experience of finding, engaging and following that content engaging at every step. The “hows” might change, but the “whats” and “whys” don’t.

This week, some of the brightest minds in B2B marketing are seeing past the binary B2B-B2C divide to think more deeply about customer experience, and the role marketing plays in it.?

What to Read

Is This Applicable to B2B Marketing? Yes, Please Stop Asking (Marketing Week): Mark Ritson takes on a question every B2B marketer is tired of hearing and teaches you how to answer it once and for all.

Maximizing Your B2B Spend: Is Account-based Marketing Worth It? (MarTech): Andrea Cruz evaluates the pros and cons of account-based marketing to help you figure out if it’s the right approach for your business.

How to Survive 3 New Threats to Your SEO Strategy (CMI): Jodi Harris uncovers three new threats looming over SEO and discusses how to counteract each of them starting right now.

Doing DEI Different: How Radical Collaboration Drives Transformational Change (LinkedIn Collective): Radical collaboration is “a partnership that happens when different people come together to push boundaries and chart new ambitions for a common goal,” according to Emily K. Graham . She explains how this concept can be applied to DEI efforts in powerful ways.

5 Reasons Why Rankings Are Lying and How to Fix Them (Search Engine Land): Brad Smith declares that your “pretty good” keyword rankings aren’t working for you and outlines how to upgrade them to ACTUALLY good.

The Importance of Conversational Intelligence for Customer Experience (CMSWire): Scott Clark makes a data-backed case for the importance of conversational intelligence to offer tailored customer experiences.

What to Watch

How to Fix Your Go-to-Market Strategy

In the latest episode of the Breaking B2B podcast , host Sam Dunning talks to MRP CEO Christopher Rack about:

• Why so many B2B marketing teams struggle with defining and executing a truly effective GTM strategy.
• What makes a good GTM strategy in the first place?
• How B2B teams can build the fundamentals of a better GTM strategy moving forward.

What to Know

75% of business leaders report that digital experience has become a significantly more critical issue for C-level executives over the last three years, according to the latest research by Cisco.?

The top three reasons survey respondents cited for the increased importance of digital experience included:

1. Most customer engagement now comes from digital applications.
2. A significant portion of overall revenue comes through applications.
3. Digital applications are now the most important interface with customers and employees.??

Cisco’s full report, “Experience: the New Boardroom Metric ,” includes more eye-opening insights on the ever-increasing importance of the digital experience.

Follow LinkedIn Collective for the latest insights on B2B marketing.