Kathryn McKay, Founder and Executive Creative Partner at Black&White, says an increasingly challenging and competitive business environment demands a fresh B2B marketing perspective. With the global economy going through uncertain headwinds, making business decisions on all fronts has become more difficult. A decision that could result in a multi-million rand outlay for the company has never been an easy one – and given the constant need to drive efficiency in the current economy, the pressure to generate ROI is relentless.
It’s business decision-makers who feel this pressure, and the consequences of making the wrong one for them are huge. Which is precisely why B2B marketing demands a fresh perspective.
Too many companies start their marketing efforts superficially, focusing on the short term. Direct-selling, lead generation. Often, they use LinkedIn to draw attention to products and offers, have their sales force trawl the platform for procurement contacts or business leads, and then they push products. But this approach fundamentally misunderstands both the profound differences between B2B and B2C marketing and the role that emotion plays in B2B decision-making.
B2B marketing has too long been pigeon-holed into being just ‘selling to businesses’. On the contrary, it is a unique blend of science and art that recognises that business decisions involve many stakeholders and carry significant emotional weight. Think about it. If you are a decision maker signing off on a large RFP, your job, other jobs, in fact, your whole reputation and career, could be on the line. This is far removed from a consumer’s casual purchase. You need to be confident that the solution and partner you appoint will function as promised, is cost-effective, and delivers real value and ROI over the years. And that kind of confidence doesn’t just come from facts and figures and slick marketing phrases – it comes from trust built consistently over years.
In a B2B environment, you are navigating multiple stakeholders: procurement managers, CMOs, CEOs, CFOs, and a host of other influencers, all of whom have different emotional factors influencing them, but all of whom are pivotal in shaping the final decision.
Given these complexities, many brands go one of two ways: either the direct-selling route, which offers a purely functional, product-driven approach with the simple intention of sucking leads into a funnel that sales teams follow up on. Or they lump B2B marketing with B2C tactics – and assume that it’s the same sort of thing, just with a different budget, creating generic ads or tweaking consumer brand lines for business use. And while many traditional advertising agencies excel at consumer campaigns, the same playbook cannot be applied in the B2B space.
This is why both of these approaches fail to address the relational depth and emotional stakes involved.
Take the case of one of our B2B clients – a traditionally a mobile telecommunications brand shifting towards the converged solutions space. And their ICT offering to businesses is valuable, layered, and cutting-edge. But the scale of that offering was largely unknown. They would consult with clients on complex IoT needs, for example, but then those clients would turn elsewhere for implementation, unaware of our client’s world-class, full suite of capabilities. Their sales teams were reporting that their offering ‘was one of South Africa’s best-kept secrets’. They were confident in the impact their products could have in the enterprise space, but they weren’t getting in the door – even when they had existing relationships with companies using their mobile products.
How did we know this? Because effective B2B marketing begins with on-the-ground research. It involves talking to sales teams and product managers at the coal-face, representatives who have actual client contact, to understand exactly what the different stakeholders need, what is missing, and why sales conversions may be delayed. Without this immersion, it’s not possible to create a powerful and holistic B2B strategy. And that’s what’s needed to transform outcomes.
We realised that the brand’s consumer-focused identity, while creating powerful recognition, had not done the enterprise unit any favours. It had led potential business clients to overlook the advanced converged solutions offering, because they couldn’t risk trusting what they saw as a mobility provider, with complex ICT solutions. This was getting to the root of the problem and understanding the emotional barriers.
And the outcome was a separate identity for the business unit. A lock-up that represented the enterprise offering and separated it from the consumer brand, while still clearly showing the link. It was also an emotional promise, encapsulated in a brand line, featured on every execution, that spoke to capabilities that business leaders could believe in, while never undermining its mobility heritage. Research has additionally shown us that our brand’s unique differentiator was its local heritage. It’s 30 years of operation on the African continent, and it’s a hyper-local, on-the-ground service offering. The line: Africa’s leading enabler of connectivity and converged solutions, leaned into this, while at the same time, forefronting the cutting-edge ICT solutions.
The awareness campaign, launched in response to this, went live in precisely targeted out-of-home placements in high-traffic business hubs, such as major airports. It started with large impact billboards, featuring visuals that implied stature and scale to inspire confidence, and solutions-based messaging, targeting specific industry sectors.
This not only addressed the best-kept secret challenge, but it also built a solid foundation for sales teams to have informed dialogues, off a base of trust – fostering loyalty up the effectiveness ladder. This approach married the artistic elements of a campaign with the scientific.
Ordinarily, what one finds in campaigns generally is that businesses tend to veer one way or the other: purely art, sticking B2B and consumer brand ads in the same bucket, or purely science, sticking to direct-response marketing. But by marrying the two, one is able to create strategic assets that foster emotional loyalty, thereby taking a business out of the realm of price wars and towards lasting differentiation.
Unfortunately, the space for these conversations is widely underplayed in the industry, where B2B marketing often gets short shrift compared to the buzz of consumer work. However, B2B is a distinct skill set that moves the needle in crowded, overwhelmed markets. In a difficult economic climate, with longer decision cycles and multiple stakeholders, it is a mistake to overlook the need for dedicated B2B expertise.
A good starting point for CMOs and the rest of the C-suite is to stop and ask this question: Are you truly listening to the people on the ground, your sales teams at the coal face daily, or are you, and your advertising agency, hypothesising about what would work without seeking the actual truth?
Then ask: Does your current advertising address the emotional weight on decision-makers, potentially with jobs on the line and multiple stakeholders to satisfy?
C-suites would do well to consider embracing immersion-led, holistic B2B marketing expertise, not just to build sales, but to empower teams and build loyal partnerships.
M&C Saatchi
https://mcsaatchi.com/africa
