10 B2B myths expelled 2

Content is king
Content marketing is talked about to death these days and you’ve possibly even read more than one article with the above three words in the title. Brands often clamour to produce the best blog or social media content, yet it is still only one part of a much bigger marketing mix.
“Thinking of content in isolation is dangerous,” warns James Trezona, managing director at Mason Zimbler. He continues: “Emphasising the ‘what’ we say without equal weight to the ‘why’ can easily distract from the true challenge of making connections with audiences. 
“There seems to be a misguided belief at the heart of many content marketing strategies that quantity should be the driver. How many times have we been told we should blog at least once a week, tweet every day, spend three hours a week on LinkedIn? It is all a myth. The reality is people only bother reading your content if it is relevant, interesting and useful.
“So who, or what, is king? Surely it is the customer. Their needs and wants should form the centre-point of marketing activity. By working strategically to give them what they want, when they want it, we can earn their favour,” he says.
Trezona sums up: “We could look at content as simply being the official state car. It can convey the true king to where they want to go. But without data to give direction, and creativity for fuel, you’re never going to get there.”

I must make a video now
Like social media, or even just pure ‘content’ as described previously, some B2B brands jump on the bandwagon when it comes to video production and believe they simply must do it, just because it’s cool. Coupled with the fact smartphones now allow us to take decent quality footage and upload it to the likes of YouTube or Vimeo in an instant, it’s easy to see why the internet is awash with poor-quality video marketing.
Miles suggests: “Only make a video if you have something for which video is the correct format and you have the facilities – both IT and human – to produce well-constructed, visually dynamic output.”
Simon Baker, business development director at ITN Productions warns: “If some initial strategic thinking is not carried out then you can quite quickly start to create poor quality or inconsistently branded content. Work with experts who have experience in establishing content strategy and in building the on-screen branding guidelines and video assets,” 

he advises.

I won’t ever see eye-to-eye with sales
It’s an age-old argument; the one that says sales and marketing departments just don’t understand one another. In a nutshell, marketing teams argue sales departments fail to effectively follow up leads, while sales people argue the marketing teams are spending their hard earned revenue.
But Ali Moinuddin, CMO of social business platform Workshare points out that this argument simply isn’t valid.
He says: “It’s a total myth sales and marketing can’t get along. After all, they should both be working to the same end game; profitable business growth and happy customers. In our business we have a saying ‘everyone is in sales and marketing’ and we work like a highly tuned engine. Each of our activities is syncronised to deliver maximum impact and not to waste energy. This way we never have a discussion around marketing not delivering leads or sales.
“The trick is to build a collaborative relationship between sales and marketing and not to wander off and do your own thing. Sales has a unique position in the company in that they speak to clients on a daily basis and can provide valuable feedback to marketing on how messaging and campaigns are resonating in the market. Without sales input, marketing is really operating blind and that’s not good for anyone.”
Emma Chalwin, director, brand marketing, EMEA at Adobe believes the increased measurement capabilities around marketing is the key to working with sales. She says: “It’s true to say most sales teams haven’t always understood the value marketing is adding, and how it is contributing towards qualified sales leads. However, marketing is facing an exciting time. Never before has it, as a discipline, been so measurable. All the data produced by the business and its customers on every channel can now be brought together to provide actionable insight.”

B2B is boring
The perception that B2B is boring is something of a hangover from the time before digital became a discipline – B2B advertising, until a decade ago, nestled almost entirely inside staid corporate brochures, came at you at the end of a telephone line or churned, monochrome, out of fax machines. But thanks to digital technology, B2B caught up with its B2C cousin years ago in the creativity stakes.
“The days of literature racks and PowerPoint presentations in a soulless blank box are long gone,” says Justin Isles, client services director at Event Marketing Solutions. “At events, mobile shells provide highly engaging bespoke environments, using the latest technologies and techniques to stand out. Cutting edge design combined with creative use of fixtures, fittings and materials provides countless options from demonstration and educational hubs, interactive showrooms and VIP entertainment suites to repeating in-store brand architecture.
“You can travel the globe, entertaining and selling to customers in multiple countries each week. You can share your journey, extending campaign reach through social media with conversations around the build-up, on the day and post event going viral. Customers wait in anticipation for your arrival and there’s nothing like the impact of a giant, gleaming, branded truck arriving on site.      
“For all of these reasons, B2B isn’t boring, it’s breaking boundaries, becoming bolder and more inventive every day.”

Mobile isn’t a priority
A business customer doesn’t stop being a business customer when they leave their desk. Smartphones now equip us with pretty much all of the facilities a laptop or PC has in the palms of our hands. On your commute home tonight, look around at how many fellow passengers have their heads bowed concentrating on their small screens.
“Questioning whether mobile web has a business advantage is the same as questioning whether having a phone on your desk is an advantage to talking to people on a daily basis,” says Adams of Ph.Creative.
“The smartphone is now a remote control for life, and that goes for business, socialising and almost any form of communication that isn’t face-to-face. Any companies not embracing mobile should be making it a huge priority, and those who already have a strategy in place should now be looking to capitalise on opportunities such as geo-targeting, an emerging business tool that enables the direct targeting of messages to ‘active’ customers in a certain location, who are searching for a specific product or service.”
Advancements in mobile technology mean B2B brands have a great opportunity to show off their innovative side too by designing engaging on-the-go versions of their websites and creative apps.

To read the top five Marketing Myths click here

 

 

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