This Week in Marketing: A Fresh Perspective

Adopting a new perspective is undoubtedly valuable, but it’s also much harder than it sounds.?

The way we see things is ingrained – it’s shaped by our experiences, our training, and familiar conventions. Shaking those shackles loose takes real effort, and it can be uncomfortable.?

At Forbes last week, RCCA founder Christine Russo pondered whether it’s time for a breakout in B2B marketing . “Creative B2B marketers want B2B to lose its bad rap of relying on a dated playbook with unimaginative, restricted creativity,” she wrote.

Russo quoted LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky ’s keynote from Cannes :?

“The advertising industry understands so well how households buy detergent or cereal. But to grow they’ll need to learn to understand how IT managers buy CRM software or cyber security systems. They’ll need to learn how businesses think and make decisions. It’s not easy but it is worth it. For the advertising industry, B2B is where the money is going to be.”

Reaching this understanding requires B2B marketers to challenge their own deeply ingrained assumptions about what motivates business buyers from a human perspective. This week’s round-up of trending content can help you do just that. Read on for insights from the LinkedIn Collective and all over the web.

What to Read

Why Commit to Great B2B Creativity? Here’s What the Numbers Say. (LinkedIn Collective): The most persuasive argument for embracing creativity in B2B is that the data and science back it up. In this post for the Collective, LinkedIn’s Senior Global Director of Customer Science Melissa Furze lays out the evidence.

When Complexity Meets Craft: The Future of B2B Marketing (LinkedIn Collective): In sizing up the path forward for B2B marketing, Accenture’s Chief Marketing and Communications Officer Jill Kramer suggests it might be time to rebrand the term itself. “Maybe it should be B4B. Or delete the second ‘B’ entirely because it’s always ‘business’ at some point, anyway. B2H—humans—would reflect a critical focus with (hopefully) greater creativity.”

Here’s How B2B Influencers Are Transforming Considered Buys (AdAge): Influencer marketing is another strategy being reshaped in the new era of B2B. “The B2B influencer marketing vertical has the potential to generate $11.7 billion in revenue by the end of 2022,” writes Emma Ferrara , “with more than 38% of B2B companies currently exploring influencer marketing as a new lead-generation avenue.”?

Cookie Countdown: Preparing for a B2B Marketing Future Without Third-Party Cookies (Destination CRM): One barrier standing in the way of a future driven by tailored creative B2B content is the coming deprecation of third-party cookies. Melanie Parker of Jabmo explores how marketers can navigate the personalization challenges ahead through the lens of omnichannel ABM.

Is B2B Becoming Less Boring? (The Drum): Editor Sam Anderson rounded up answers from six marketing industry leaders to ask them the question on all of our minds: is B2B marketing really becoming more exciting? The answers are all insightful, and I really loved this clincher from LoveThat creative director Charli Edwards :?

“B2B has grown into a fascinating pursuit, because information is everywhere. This means the hunt for new business is supported by everything from social listening to intent data. We’re able to refine audiences; to craft human-to-human messaging in real business terms. Maybe nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM, but in the age of the disruptor, who cares? Show me the upside potential.”

What to Watch

Content Optimization: When, Why and How (MarketMuse)

In this quick 13-minute webinar, Chosen Data co-founder John Reinesch joins MarketMuse co-founder Jeff Coyle to discuss the tenets of content optimization: when it’s warranted, how to do it well, and what to do if something goes wrong.

For further reading on this subject, we took a lighter look at repurposing past content on the LinkedIn Ads blog last week, drawing lessons from Hollywood franchise reboots like Star Wars and Spider-Man.

What to Know

Recently Eleanor Hawkins of Axios wrote of a C-suite shift taking place , with marketing teams increasingly reporting to communications rather than vice versa. It’s a reshuffling that should put marketing leaders on alert, especially since Hawkins closes with this stat via a new CMO Performance Study from Boathouse : Fewer than half of CEOs trust their CMOs and only 25% believe their CMOs have strong decision-making skills.

This speaks to a momentous opportunity for CMOs to win back confidence and trust, in part through a bold, data-backed creative vision.

Make sure to follow the LinkedIn Collective for more insights.