So B2B businesses are building personal connections with their clients?
Short answer: yes. Over the years businesses are looking to take control of how they sell and distribute their offers out there, while at the same time having direct access to their customer pools 🔍
This is especially true for B2B businesses. They’re starting to pick up how significant marketing can be, and how content’s going to help bring people together than just physical roadshows. It seems like B2B is shifting its focus to match what B2C’s been doing so far: Have direct relationships with customers.
What do B2B businesses do exactly?
They leverage on content marketing to humanise the way they run marketing strategies.
1/ Generating social content that encourages discussions and input from customers
This actually helps them connect with their target market and customers - It creates a clear feedback loop where today, if the customers think the product/service is unsatisfactory, they’d go on social media and say, “Hey, I don’t like xxx. Do better!” It’s an immediate feedback that businesses can pick up and make changes to optimise what they offer to the market. In the past, this could’ve taken a way longer time to have the input getting back to the business ⏰
One more thing about social content is that it’s shareable and scalable. Like how you’d share a LinkedIn or Instagram post you find interesting to your community. When content is spread to more communities, the creator (the business) is likely to get noticed by newer and wider audience pools.
2/ Having persons as the face of their brands.
Hooray for whacked, we’re seeing more and more B2B businesses understand the impact of having personal brands 🕺🏻
Business leaders like Tony Fernandes, Anthony Tan and many more across the globe are putting themselves out there, sharing their industry expertise and stories in the form of content. They’ve built a large community through their content and grown their influence in their respective industries.
On one hand, there may be audience digesting the content and go, “So why should I listen to you?” That’s why “credibility” is important here. It’s about showing them (instead of telling) how trustworthy and reliable this person is. For example, both Tony Fernandes and Anthony Tan has showed their audience the scale of their businesses, company growth and so on.
What drove the change though?
Older methods in marketing used to position buyer journey as a linear pathway: A prospect sees a product. He considers it. He reaches to the sales team and they offer a convincing pitch. He then decides to get the product and that’s a sales deal closed.
The thing is now, buyers are getting more educated with the vast information out there. Forrester’s research shows that a majority (up to 60%) of B2B customers aren’t keen to communicate with sales teams for info. They can already gather the info they need elsewhere, so there’s no need to reach out to a sales team for it. But does this mean sales teams are obsolete? Nope (we’ll get to it in a bit).
As buyers more self-driven in their research, the buyer’s journey actually gets more complex.
You might have prospects who are just “Take my money!”
Some need more different info
Some are considering if the purchase is worth it
Everyone is likely to be at different decision-making stages.
Here’s where you’d need Sales team (+ Marketing team) 👥 Sales will be figuring out where the prospects are at in their decision-making stages and offer pitches or messages that nicely cater to what they need. On one hand, Marketing will collect all prospect insights to run campaigns or create content that’s able to hit right at the spot - Moving the prospects up the sales funnel and helping them want the product/service.
Also with content marketing, you’re building up your content wealth out there. More and more people are going to see them. They’ll start noticing you more often. If they like your content, they’ll spread to their own communities. Over time, they start trusting in what you say and your expertise. So when you have content that hits right at the spot for what they’re looking for - They’re likely to reach out to you for what you offer and go, “Hey, I need help on this.”
Humans are quitee complicated, you see 🤣
People-driven marketing strategy is the new black
Marketers are compelled to see what their competitors are doing and see how they can replicate exactly that. They tend to follow most best case practices out there too - Finding success in doing what successful cases have done. It makes sense. But at the end of the day, how the marketing strategies are shaped should depend on which target market the marketers are looking at.
Chris Walker, CEO of Refine Labs, shared in a podcast that better marketers actually leverage on qualitative data that they collect from actual customers. He himself shared when he was working as Head of Marketer in a company, he took an extra mile to personally meet customers and directly get insights/feedback from them. He fed the info back to his marketing strategies and achieved better alignment between what the business can offer and what customers exactly want.
‘Cause what you think customers want may not be what they actually want 💡 It all goes back to understanding your customers needs and interest with depth, while making sure you’re able to address them.
Businesses are looking beyond the value exchange in business transactions. They’re finding ways to position themselves as the trusted brand in the market for customers. Through providing a more holistic experience for customers, building a lasting relationships, which both become trust and loyalty to the brand. Because they’re listening to what the clients want and offering just that. In the long run, they’d have a community that’s ever-ready to listen to them.
Big credits to the resources that’ve made this newsletter possible:
RV79 - 0 to 20MM Through Content Strategy | Game Changes Podcast. https://open.spotify.com/episode/45eoUsJtSGdE1gEjilVx0G?si=9c10a615f43f4cbc
Are B2B and B2C Marketing Strategies Really Converging? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/b2b-b2c-marketing-strategies-really-converging-mars-techsol/
Why Successful B2B Organizations Are Going Direct-to-Consumer (DTC). https://www.businesstoday.com.my/2021/08/24/why-successful-b2b-organisations-are-going-dtc/
How Direct-to-Consumer Brands Can Continue to Grow. https://hbr.org/2021/11/how-direct-to-consumer-brands-can-continue-to-grow
How to Build a Brand for Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Products. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2022/05/16/how-to-build-a-brand-for-direct-to-consumer-dtc-products/?sh=3dd6a9a4b82c
About us
We're a team of content marketing strategists and social sales specialists supporting business leaders in growing their personal brands on LinkedIn.
Our core focus is on creating targeted and value-packed content with real stories/ideas to help achieve your goals on social media.
Learn more about scaling your personal brand on LinkedIn here.