Why and how to humanize B2B marketing

Within the marketing world, there’s undoubtedly a split between our perceptions of B2B and B2C. B2B has gained a bit of an unfair reputation as the dull, unadventurous, monotone sibling of the younger, innovative, all singing and dancing B2C marketer. Where has it got this reputation?

When we look at many B2B marketing campaigns which may not seem very ‘exciting’ – commonalities tend to be the lack of connection, emotion, and storytelling. All qualities which captivate our attention.

Are there reasons for B2B content being less ‘exciting’?

Sure. Sometimes it’s sadly a consequence of regulations, red tape, and compliance. Also, B2B campaigns are often targeted at clients with complicated buying cycles, with multiple decision makers and high-value purchases. As a result, B2B content has traditionally focused heavily on delivering information and logic - to support these clients. But focusing solely on:

·??????facts

·??????values

·??????almost academic content

…can often overshadow the importance of connecting, inspiring and truly making a lasting impression.

Boss it

Doing things a little differently – a recent, award-winning B2B campaign 'Boss it’ by Sage and Wunderman Thompson, ticked all the boxes of an exciting marketing campaign, which made a great connection with its audience.

Their challenge: reconnecting with an audience of six million small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs.

Their approach: focusing on the true core of B2B - P2P (People to people).

The campaign launched by Sage, a provider of cloud business management solutions was multi-channel, across - TV, OOH, print, radio, and social media. Unfamiliar in B2B territory, they were the first B2B brand to partner with TikTok to broaden its audience.

As part of the campaign, they launched a #BossIt2021 branded hashtag challenge, asking TikTok users to share how they were bossing 2021. The most creative video would win a ￡5,000 home workspace.

Before the launch, they were advised to expect around 250,000 views on TikTok.

Inspiring an overwhelming response of user generated content and resonating with small business owners, the results were much more impressive…

·??????8.2bn impressions

·??????1.3million video challenges created

·??????15 PR articles

·??????193% increase in sales Year-on-Year

Not too shabby for ‘boring’ B2B…

Watch and learn B2C! B2B is shifting!

Sage’s campaign success was largely owed to the way it embraced the core of businesses – it’s people. Instead of just focusing on facts and information-driven marketing, the campaign resonated with its audiences’ challenges and encouraged engagement through the competition.

The impacts of Covid forced B2B marketing across all industries in 2020 out of its comfort zone. It was the time to start showing emotion, no matter how strange and uncomfortable it felt.

At the height of the pandemic in 2020, one of the challenges I witnessed was how B2B marketers were put under pressure to communicate differently. It was no longer the time to be simply communicating behind the shopfront of a brand name. It wasn’t sensitive to carry on with marketing ‘as usual’. Businesses were needing to connect with their audiences by being personable and connecting emotionally. They needed to align with their clients, delivering content to help them navigate the new ‘pandemic world’.

Sales teams were also having to change their tactics. Not just in terms of how they communicated - but thinking of ways to add extra value and support. How could they stand out from the crowd? Because being restricted during lockdown, meant we were now all competing to be the best version of ourselves online, especially through social networks.

Moreover: todays B2B buyers look out for knowledge leaders, who inspire and challenge. Many B2B buyers are natives to social networking – after all millennials are now in the age of 26-41.

The B2B benefits of Employee Advocacy: authenticity trumps all!

As businesses were trying to communicate in more personal ways, I truly believe the covid pandemic accelerated the importance of humanizing B2B marketing campaigns, not only through the messaging and content, but by embracing real voices within workforces.

Whether or not it was intentional or recognised – a lot of businesses accelerated their social media strategies with employee advocacy. So much so, Gartner have predicted by 2023, 90% of B2B social media marketing strategies will incorporate scaled employee advocacy programs (Gartner Marketing Predictions 2022).

The need for authenticity plays a huge role in this acceleration. Nearly 6 in 10 say their default tendency is to distrust something until they see evidence it is trustworthy (Edelman Trust Barometer 2022). On top of that, during the pandemic many of us lost confidence in what we were being told by businesses, governments, and politicians. So, the shift to people doing business with those “they know, like, and trust.” (Bob Burg, author, Endless Referrals) is important now, more than ever.

People are 3x more likely to trust company information shared by an employee than that shared by a CEO (Edelman Trust Barometer). Statistics from LinkedIn also show that when employees share content, they typically produce a 2x higher click-through rate than when their company shares the same content.

For B2B marketing – the benefits of employee advocacy are enormous.

A couple of astounding stats:

·??????Leading social sellers create 45% more opportunities and are 51% more likely to achieve quota (Source: LinkedIn)

·??????Leads developed through employee social advocacy convert 7x more frequently than other leads (Source: IBM)

So, if you’re looking into humanizing campaigns – employee advocacy is a brilliant way to really create credible narratives, and elevating experts within your business into thought leaders and influencers.

Translating this into actions

How can you start weaving employee advocacy into your own marketing strategy?

If your company already runs an employee advocacy program, here are three initial stages to consider:

1.??????Establish and connect with employees who are experts in your topic area. Explore their social media / online maturity in the advocacy program, challenges they are facing and the types of content they enjoy creating and sharing.

2.??????Planning content. Once you have documented the first step, start thinking about your campaign content – does it include elements of valuable, share-worthy content? There is a huge sharing element of social advocacy, with 62% of LinkedIn members engaging with content on the platform because it’s educational or informative. Top examples of share-worthy content include videos, blogs, guides, whitepapers, and eBooks.

3.??????Deliver 4-1-1 content for your employees to leverage. This is to ensure the sharing of quality informational content and not just your brand’s content. As a rule of thumb, this translates into 4 pieces of curated external content, 1 piece of your own content and 1 piece of your company’s content.

Although it might be tempting, it’s important you don’t make the mistake of approaching employee advocacy as just another marketing channel. If you do, you will lose the authenticity and value of your employee’s personal brands. For employees to elevate into thought leaders, they should be truly passionate about the topic of your marketing campaign and sharing / creating content around it.

If your company doesn’t have an employee advocacy program, here are four suggested steps to consider:

1.??????Define program objectives. Consider how an employee advocacy program could support your overarching business goals. For example, looking at your marketing goals - if an objective is to increase the number of marketing qualified leads by 40%, or for recruitment - Increase the number of referrals by 20% - how could the advocacy program support that?

2.??????Finalise content strategy. The core of any advocacy program is authentic content - and the right mixture (as mentioned above with the 4-1-1 approach). So, make sure you create a content calendar to keep your program on track.

3.??????Identify your first employees to join the program. Choose employees who are experts in their topic areas and seem excited by the prospect of joining the program. Don’t invest in people who are not interested in or excited by social. Making the program a success will require time and commitment from all parties, so you’re looking for eagerness from the beginning.

4.??????Involve your leadership and managers to make sure your ambassadors will be supported and motivated. As with everything, it’s about setting examples. If the leadership doesn’t actively engage in social, how can they expect their employees to?

Are you inspired to see if your B2B marketing approach can be humanized with employee advocacy?

Let me know your views and experiences on this topic in the comments below!