What will B2B marketing “pivot” to?

Me writing this post is completely thanks to the nudge & encouragement from my dear colleague & friend Shankar. In our chat last week, the last bit of reference was his ‘ism’ of ‘Say Do ratio’ – that’s all it took for the procrastinator in me to be overthrown by the narcissist in me – and here I am! I spent a few conscious and some subconscious moments to think of what angle should I bring in for a #BankingonKarMa post and I thought (inspired by some re-reads of #bankingonKarMa) what better than what sparks joy for me. While my role is defined as a Field marketer, I like to think of myself as the one face of marketing – both to our business/sales team, clients as well as HQ marketing. So here I am exploring the “pivot” in B2B marketing in the Covid world, combined with the forces of platform economy at play, where the future is all about “Platforms”.

Before I begin, I have to comment on this - We in marketing always cringe when referred to as ‘sales support’ and elegantly correct that to ‘partners’ with business – a quick recheck in the dictionary clarifies that support is ‘something that bears all or part of the weight of’

I must start by saying that one of the reasons Shankar and I developed this strong camaraderie was our obsession over ‘think business outcomes first’. And that very simply is incremental pipeline and marketing contribution to it. While there are other KPIs of CTR, MQL, etc., revenue metric is our north star.

The digital interaction(s) have taught us to peel the onion layers even more and go the extra mile to get to understand the buyer personas deeper (#bankingonKarMa calls it ‘Read the Room’) - what do they care about and worry about, what are they passionate about and then ensuring that the narrative is crafted to foster both empathy and a connection. Personally, we all related very well to HDFC’s #MoohBandRakho or their older #Allispossible campaign

https://www.expresscomputer.in/news/hdfc-bank-launchesmoohbandrakho-campaign-for-creating-awareness-on-cyber-frauds/69013/

https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/10/26/brand-bounce-back-hdfc-bank-s-cmo-wants-help-consumers-be-positive

While it may be stating the obvious but it’s worth mentioning that one of the key elements behind all this customer focus is ‘listening’ to the customers – whether it’s from their media or social presence, or from events they are attending and even from the conversations they are having with their account managers – what do they care about today is the fulcrum on which the narrative needs to be built. We do not want our customers to be at the other end of?Harry Dunne in Dumb and Dumber?

“She gave me a bunch of crap about me not listening to her, or something. I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention.”

Given digital is the primary mode of engagement, the brand isn’t just restricted to the company’s official handle or homepage. It lies with every profile of the executives, sales & marketing team – don’t we all do a quick LinkedIn search before speaking with someone for the first time? So, a social media strategy and enablement of the teams to act as advocates and custodians of the brand is critical. And this must remain personal – no one wants to see replicas of a standard messaging or jargon across profiles, everyone is looking for “your perspective”, your take and your way of narrating that story – and that is what will help a customer choose us versus another. Recall Jerry McGuire again

“The key to this business is personal relationships.”

Often when I read about , Account based marketing – I associate it with an exclusive first-class ticket (yes, I am always reminiscing about travelling again) with special services only for a select few – my understanding is that today’s need and perhaps more so going forward every client/prospect will need to be treated with a similar methodology (ABM Lite if we were to coin a term around it) – just like how Kingfisher Airlines made us feel in the days of yore even on an economy ticket.

What that means is zero degree of separation between us and the client, creating content & experiences unique to address their specific problems with heart. B2B or B2C – people buy from people, so we must communicate the real heroes behind the story – make it more personable, as in

“Stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.” ~ Craig Davis

But what about “Digital Fatigue” – and haven’t we used this word of the season often this past year??- creating the virtual experiences that are unique for your audience, providing a platform to recreate the ‘networking’ space where the 1:1 connect can happen and relationships built, narrating crisper stories to cater to the decreasing attention span and of course content that is engaging and useful for your audience. I personally see a “Platform business model” emerge for marketing as a function, which brings the ecosystem of customer(s) & partner(s) together whilst each one obsessing about revenue as a key metric. As Billy Beane from Moneyball would say

“We’re going to change the game."

?“There was an Idea…to bring together a group of remarkable people. To make them work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that…we never could. Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes.” – Nick Fury

PS: Views are mine and only mine, whilst I drew a lot of inspiration from my conversations and dialog with #bankingonKarMa duo which is self-evident in the repeated usage of the word “Pivot”.

Cheers,

Rashi

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