James Bailey, head of Maxus for Business, offers six ways marketers can achieve true creativity in campaigns
The B2B category has enjoyed healthy investment and refinement in the areas it excels at. In the realms of content, social marketing, building relationship based advertising and so on, we are seeing some truly stellar campaigns of which we should be proud. Much of the best-in-class work, tending to come from the like of IT brands like Cisco and Oracle, stands out for being forward-thinking; some might say daring, in terms of creativity. Across the board, however, creativity in B2B communications still lags behind its B2C peers.
Effective creativity needn’t necessarily require a huge leap in planning processes, nor eye watering budgets.
True creativity can be achieved incrementally if brands are willing to apply some guiding principles:
1. Use insights rather than observations
Every brilliant campaign has a brilliant idea at its core. Insights sit behind great ideas, yet a lack of reliable research in the space means B2B brands often aren’t used to planning in this way. Business objectives are all too often married with proprietary audience data, resulting in the typically rather colourless message of shared success directed at generic business customers.
Work coming from the likes of IBM and Salesforce and being rightfully highlighted for prominence and creativity already does this, but it shouldn’t be exclusive to big, powerful brands.
Take time to go through the rigour of understanding your target audience to gain a deeper understanding of how your brand can connect and interact with them meaningfully. Audience research needn’t be laborious or expensive; it is simple enough to seed digital studies with relevant media owners. Such processes are often enriched through a shared benefit with the media partner.
2. Communicate with humans, not with businesses
It’s far too easy to pigeonhole B2B comms as existing solely to drive businesses to make business-related purchases. Ultimately, however, it is not a business but a human being who arrives at that purchase decision and who you need to respond to your advertising.
Rather than targeting a particular function within a business – whether that be CMOs or CIOs – aim to understand and speak to the individuals employed in that function. Ask what makes them tick, what their passion points are and let that knowledge influence how you build communications.
For instance, a recent study into CFOs discovered that the majority of CFO’s consider themselves to have a sense of humour, yet describe their position within the organisation as lonely.
3. Start with the brave and work back from there
Good rigour, once you’ve come to understand the audience, is to start with ‘what would bravery look like?’ This is often a case of determining the best thing you could possibly do to capture their imagination. Then work back from there in terms of feasibility.. The goal is not to necessarily execute the bravest work, but to apply its essence creatively to what can be done realistically.
4. Be a facilitator rather than a contributor
It can feel like there is great pressure on brands to contribute via content; to consistently deliver meaningful or perhaps even scarier, engaging advertising. Actually, there is an exciting role for the brand willing to facilitate on behalf of its audience.
Bringing together like-minded contributors who represent and align with what the brand stands for can be really well received. There are instances where the audience doesn’t want to be ‘talked at’ by brands. In these cases, the brand can facilitate relevant discussion and that contributes to its wider message.
It can be quite a mind shift for a business to question whether it is best placed to contribute it self, but rich benefits come from being truly collaborative by nature.
5. Elicit emotive responses to communications
Human memory is governed by emotion: a fact is often lost in B2B advertising, simply because it deals with a business’s relationship with another business. To return to point two here, placing a focus on genuine human relationships will enhance advertising recall.
This clearly doesn’t always call for schmaltzy TV spots featuring children or puppies, yet B2B campaigns can veer too far towards the other end of spectrum. They can sometimes feel purposefully unemotive for credibility’s sake. Let’s strive towards empathy, even humour in the B2B space – we might vastly enhance and increase our options
6. Value on measuring brand metrics
Most B2B briefs stem from clear business objectives driven by ROI, while the influence investment has in how a brand is perceived can slide into second position. This is often useful, but try not to lose touch with the importance of being a recognised and familiar brand.
The conversion process B2B marketing aims to influence is complex, involving many stages. Yet this is arguably as important as increasing sales or market share is to build advocates within certain target peer groups. Business decision makers don’t work from darkened rooms – they network, consult and advise each other!
Where B2B budgets come under scrutiny, it is wise to be armed with goals, metrics and successes that point back to ROI and justify spend. All the core groups of metrics (awareness, consideration, advocacy, top of mind in category and so on) are relevant for almost any brand, yet the more specific metrics will be guided by individual brand objectives. Be specific about how customers engage with your business and tailor metrics accordingly.
Differentiating in the B2B space needn’t be difficult or budget-busting. Creativity can propel any brand to enter spaces where peers aren’t yet present, gaining an invaluable competitive edge. Perhaps the time is right for a step change in our space; for brands to stick their necks out and be braver with B2B comms.
