A call to arms for B2B marketers

In our hyper-connected, attention-scarce world, it's been all too easy to get distracted by the enticing allure of the snake oil. The impulses of social media are towards the instant, the immediate, the ephemeral rather than the lasting, the slow and the deep. Somewhere along the way the industry got too excited by the shiny and new. By the overlap between marketing and technology. By the capabilities of online media targeting and the promise of ‘game changing’ CRM platforms.

This led to a focus on short-term metrics, attribution modelling and efficiency based KPIs. Some people came into marketing roles from the tech side of the fence while others lost sight of a big part of the success equation - the long-standing drivers of brand and profit growth. Unfortunately, the evidence is clear and getting harder to ignore. Brands are built on profit, not click-through rates.

B2C marketing teams are already wise to this. The great work of Les Binet & Peter Field has helped to optimise the balance across the long brand building and short-term performance marketing. In 2021, Dr. Augustine Fou (writing for Forbes) reported that big brands like eBay and Adidas had turned off elements of their performance marketing without impacting sales volumes. AirBnB followed suit and reduced overall marketing spend by increasing investment in the brand and reducing reliance on search-engine marketing. Making the brand more famous generated long-term demand, which enabled a 50% cut in the performance marketing budget.

Even tech titans like Google and META have shifted their narrative to stress the importance of long-term brand building. META Cross-media research (2022) demonstrated that the biggest driver of sales effectiveness is TV and Online Video was the biggest driver of sales efficiency. This research, and these case studies reinforce the need for a balanced and connected approach to channel planning, but also for engaging your audience and stimulating their senses to hold their attention.

Thanks to the likes of Jenni Romaniuk and John Dawes at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute and Jon Lombardo and Peter Weinberg at LinkedIn’s B2B Institute, the evidence base for B2B is finally catching up. In summary, you need much more than a watertight lower funnel to support the growth ambitions that 88% CEOs currently report (source: Deloitte) against a gloomy economic backdrop. While B2B has its nuances, as Professor Mark Ritson points out, it shares 98.8% of its DNA with B2C. This means a focus on grabbing attention with well-branded and distinctive assets and tell stories that communicate why you’re different, often, long before people are ready to buy. This impacts on metrics through the funnel.

B2B buyers are busy, working people. They’re easily distracted away from your response-led marketing messages, especially when they’re multi-tasking. The best tools available to you for overcoming their distractions are creativity and consistency in use of distinctive brand assets. This requires you to understand the context you’re appearing in and the dynamics of the channel you’re using. Similarly, you shouldn’t ignore the fundamental importance of emotion in landing a message in your audience’s memory simply because you have products to promote. What value are you offering to your reader / viewer / listener and their business context?

AdWeek reported in May 2023 that we’re entered “the golden age of B2B”. The old order is crumbling and the rule book is being rewritten, one powerful story at a time. The time has come for B2B Marketing teams to shift their focus from the short-term tactics of the “digital age” and rediscover the power of long-term brand building to drive sustainable business growth. The industry needs to reclaim the power of narrative, emotion and human connections. It’s time to relegate the short-sightedness to the past and make your brand famous amongst current and future buyers by embracing the enduring magic of storytelling.