B2B marketing – evolution or revolution?
Kimberly Brind kicked off the day by looking at how digital and social trends have blown apart marketing’s traditional bedrock. Dell’s Simon Hall echoed this by pointing out that marketing has changed more in the last 5 years than in the last 50.
Despite this, corporate culture still holds back B2B marketers. For example, some C-suites remain nervous of social and 70% of enterprise marketers still aren’t using it.
The answer? Be brave and be bold! It’s time for B2B teams to get out of their shell and into the action. This means radically rethinking brand, content and communications.
Our ABM Innovation Lab is getting traction in this space by helping #ABM get social. This includes using social for a modern approach to engaging customers, identifying influencers, analysing sentiment or spotting the latest trends that impact individual enterprise accounts.
Account-based marketing in the spotlight
Account-based marketing took centre stage in the main presentation room, where two thirds of delegates chose to attend – evidence of the increasing attention ABM is getting.
A few interesting facts from an ITSMA survey:
- 41% are planning to adopt ABM
- 59% are adopting ABM
- 25% of adopters are scaling ABM
This tallies with our experience as we help customers scale ABM activities and embed them in their organisation.
A big part of this will be to promote ABM as more than ‘just’ a marketing initiative. For true scale and big results, it needs to propel the continued shift away from product-led to customer-led sales and marketing alignment.
Getting emotional
You’re 50% more likely to win a contract if you lead with an emotional proposition.
This was reinforced by Adobe’s John Watton, who presented on B2B’s perfect blend of science, art and emotion – particularly relevant as our personal and work lives merge.
At Momentum, we spend a lot of time thinking about how to appeal to both rational and emotional needs.
Rationally, ABM helps businesses develop a stand-out strategic proposition that aligns precisely with a customer’s needs.
Emotionally, ABM links interactions with a decision maker’s personal motivations while instilling passion and determination into sales teams.
Content still rules
But not any old content, quality content.
Nearly 60% are set to increase content marketing spend – no surprise when 70% of customers prefer to get to know a company through original content.
In ABM terms, we go further than ‘original’ – to ‘unique’. This is because we tailor content assets – for social, mobile, web or print – to an individual customer: in their words, in their visual language.
B2B – no longer the poor cousin of B2C
As shown by IBM’s 3D printing campaign, B2B is executing with creativity and flair. Another equally impressive example was VMware’s flip from 80% push marketing to 80% social and content.
It was not so long ago that the tech industry was swamped with dull datasheets and generic whitepapers. It’s fantastic to see that times have changed. Take a look at our work for more examples.
All about ROI
Catherine Howard from ATOS gave a great presentation on a subject close to Momentum’s heart – ROI.
She pointed out the current obsession with ‘doing more for less’ and argued that it’s only when we demonstrate our value that we can grow the budget. But this isn’t just about ‘selling and telling’ all the time; it’s about building profitable relationships.
We couldn’t agree more – and that’s why ABM delivers higher ROI than any other marketing activity.
Thank you to B2BMarketing for a fantastic day!
