Customers don’t just want to buy from businesses,they want to buy into them too.
Propelled by the past year, digital fatigue has been the height of concern for many CMOs. Now, the B2B customer has evolved.
At such a fragile and decisive economic moment in time, decision-makers must re-think and re-strategise to upswing marketing, sales, and branding. With digital revenue more than doubling in size since the pandemic, there’s not a moment to miss in transferring business focus from messaging to storytelling, from sales to experience, and from Digital to Human™.
"Being great at what you do isn’t sufficient anymore. Being great at what you do is expected. What are you doing beyond that? We are in a new era where people are exhausted of brands just being driven by money."
- Flavilla Fongang, MD at 3 Colours Rule, The CEO.digital Show
Product-centric marketing is now short-sighted. It’s safe to say the transformational long-term growth that can turn your business into the industry leader you want it to be will go amiss if memorable experiences aren’t part of your approach.
of B2B marketers believe its important to humanise their brand
say they’ve achieved this
Source: Talk Human to Me’, Allison + Partners Europe
You aren’t just contending with others in your industry. You’re competing with every B2B, and B2C, experience your customers face every day. Those who can adapt quickly, and leverage experience will win. But whilst the driving forces are clear, the traditional B2B funnel is not without its complexities, even before CX innovation is employed.
Digital toHuman™
Our meticulous research and diverse strategies develop essential engagement experiences that are conducive to building long-lasting business connections.
"As you plan your 2021 and beyond, sharpen your focus on your customer. Place them at the centre of every decision, across marketing, sales and customer success."
- Yamini Rangan, Chief Customer Officer, Hubspot
Step 1
Distinguish & attract
It’s time to speak the language of the C-suite, and decide on your personalised content strategy, to heighten each unique client experience.
"Where Blockbuster once fell to Netflix and the taxi industry was bludgeoned by ride-sharing apps, so too B2B companies will fall if they don’t meet the demand for engaging experiences."
- Josh Buchholtz, Chief Principal, Slalom
The modern demand generation
Buyers are more independent than ever before. For marketers to capture onboarding and reach demand goals, conversions need to be able to happen on the new buyer’s terms. Likewise, marketers must also identify and address more personalised target personas, at every level, with varying (and potentially opposing) motivations, incentives, and emotions.
As B2B marketers, we’re fighting more content than ever before. In this competitive landscape, being able to engage differently, and produce high quality content that stands out, is a must.
Research, research, research
41%
of businesses are making digital transformation investments without customer research to guide them.
Source: The State of Digital Transformation’ – Brian Solis, Former Principal Analyst at Altimeter, a Prophet company & Author
"When we approach our database and think about running content syndication, or invitation campaigns, we map out how receptive the target personas will be to the message, and ensure we deliver the right content at the right time."
- Darcie Fields-Thompson, Head of Digital & Content, Chief Nation
"When we approach our database and think about running content syndication, or invitation campaigns, we map out how receptive the target personas will be to the message, and ensure we deliver the right content at the right time."
- Darcie Fields-Thompson, Head of Digital & Content, Chief Nation
Case study
To establish itself as an industry leader and provide resources for customers, cloud infrastructure company, VMware produces large amounts of content on blogs and user gudies. To ensure content is accurate and timely, they use an AI-powered editor, which also sorts content to more accurately recommend the right articles to each customer.
Speak human
It’s no longer just about the value proposition, but the cultural proposition. The global pandemic has compelled businesses to take their CX to the next level, or risk getting left behind. How can you help your clients navigate in any given crisis and provide the value that they need to build trust?
Providing empathy, crisis offers, and problem solving to the specific landscape you’re in is fundamental.
It makes sense that shifting business focus from pitching and selling to solving customers’ more immediate needs will work to raise brand value and, in turn, drive leads and sales.
This is something that was propelled rapidly in the wake of the Pandemic, where marketers launched entirely new programs, created new content resources, and upped their virtualisation and distrubution capabilities and services to help customers at a time when its needed most.
Case study
Zoom’s surge in profit, and even establishing its brand name as a verb, was not just down to superior product development. Zoom worked to extend its reach to consumers while solidifying its business outreach and doubling down on security. They launched a specialised training content tool for things like teaching, visiting with friends and working remotely. In prioritising education by teaching its millions of new users, leveraging network bridging, and establishing strong network effects, Zoom has become perhaps the biggest player in the game.
Once the research and foundations are in place for providing personalised content, you’ll have the tools and evidence needed to redesign your B2B experience marketing strategy.
"Customers have this expectation that you’re going to know them today, you’re going to understand what they want, what they’re preferences are and then you’re going to deliver content, offers, products services etc. that’s going to meet those need."
- Paige O’Neill, Sitecore CMO, The CEO.digtial Show
Step 2
Network & engage
It’s time to shift the focus of the conversation from outcomes to human-centric experiences.
Experience-driven approaches aren’t complete without engaging clients and prospects face-to-face. So, whether that’s done virtually, or in real life, it’s how you deliver these interactions that makes the difference between human-centric experiences versus a run-of-the-mill sales pitch.
Find your USPs
Onboarding of new tools can transform experience. With the proper implementation of technology, and a new marketing approach alongside this, networking events will be more streamlined, and personal experiences will be limited by imagination only.
Drip feed all audience segments…
People are savvy to mass automation. What can you do that’s different to grab their attention? You need a proven format that works to take care of all senior executive attendee generation.
…But go industry specific
Provide content that can show the C-level how to meet their business objectives and overcome any challenges they might face along the way and, most importantly, deliver this content in a clever and dynamic way.
Drip feed all audience segments…
People are savvy to mass automation. What can you do that’s different to grab their attention? You need a proven format that works to take care of all senior executive attendee generation.
…But go industry specific
Provide content that can show the C-level how to meet their business objectives and overcome any challenges they might face along the way and, most importantly, deliver this content in a clever and dynamic way.
Carefully curated for C-level executives, presented in innovative ways to drive leads and sales, will maximise brand awareness and credibility. Through journalism, a thought leadership content hub of news, original guides, infographics, reports, podcasts, interviews, guest articles, and more, can reach a wider executive community. are shared on the website and via social media.
CEO.digital has reached a community of over 330,000+ C-suite executives worldwide.
Case study
Chief Wine Officer’s live and virtual experiences bring people and technology together for meetups that function beyond the business, where senior executives can meet, learn, and network.
The CWO DIGITAL format achieves this in an online environment using interactive video-conferencing technology. Allowing guests to interact from anywhere and enjoy a hosted evening of specialised industry content and discussion, plus a wine-tasting competition to top it all off. It works similarly to their LIVE events, just with some adjustments to the logistics – the wine is shipped straight to each attendee’s front door just in time for the event.
"The bespoke CWO experiences brought together everything needed for a successful event. The series was the perfect platform to meet key decision-makers and promote relationship building."
- Field Marketing Manager Western Europe, Nutanix
Step 3
Delight & relate
Of course, your marketing strategy should aim to delight throughout every stage, but at this point of an experience-led sales journey, nurturing meaningful customer relationships that create long-lasting loyalty and encourage your clients to become evangelists for your brand is business critical.
When strategising for this stage, you should look to emphasize the benefit of a collaborative relationship – you facilitate your customers’ success by showing them you truly care about their experience, and they facilitate yours.
CX is a shared responsibility
The disconnect between Sales, Marketing and IT is nothing new, but if they don’t work together, the costs of not aligning can severely impact the outcome of a project. It’s time to reconsider.
In generating an experience-driven pipeline, ensure that the CX you’ve worked so hard to build doesn’t crumble when it’s handed over to the sales team. Delight can be compromised when it’s lost in the gaps between organisations, systems, and processes. So, before you seek delight, focus on aligning sales and marketing, and nailing the experience at this point too by creating internal collateral and resources to make sure sales teams have the accurate training to deliver.
Consistency delights the most
In the game of customer experience, consistency will always take the lead. Why?
There are two key pillars to use when generating consistency across your B2B marketing journey:
- Ensuring that both digital (online content) and physical experiences (hosted events) are consistent and reinforcing in overall brand messaging and leadership topic
- Investing in relevant content, and repurposing it at the right time for both physical or digital use
"Delight is episodic – it's once and done. It’s artificial - it’s rendered because someone else is watching. While delight has a purpose in customer experience strategies, it will never move the needle like consistency."
- Jake Sorofman, Garnter
Case study
Software company Adobe is known for a culture that celebrates both employees and customers. They host “experience-a-thons” that give front-line employees the chance to test new products and provide honest feedback. The idea is that employees can point out potential issues and offer fresh perspectives.
Adobe also encourage employees to get additional training through school, conferences or training and helps pay for continual learning. Providing these experience tools for employees gives them real value and subsequently helps drive a stronger customer experience too.
Applying marketing know-how throughout the entire customer journey is a mission-critical intervention. It means the identifying of any potential issues can happen much sooner. It also equates to customers being engaged for longer, increasing changes of reactivating those who may be on the edge of fading away, resulting in more loyal customers and higher overall return on marketing investments.
"Teams that spend most of their energy on awareness and new business may miss valuable opportunities to engage customers in the later stages of the lifecycle. Understanding the needs of customers will strengthen existing relationships, accelerate the move through the buying cycle, and generate repeat business."
- Jill Grozalsky, Product Marketing Director, Sitecore
The B2B space has long been behind the curve when it comes to customer experience, and the pandemic has brought new pressures, challenges and constraints. However, it’s also driven a new confidence in the value of what marketers do – and the growing conviction that the rest of the business is listening to what they have to say.
B2B marketers have had to reconsider the entire buying funnel, with traditional relationship-based, pipeline-building tactics usurped by targeted, intelligent lead scoring and prediction methodologies supported by personalised experience marketing tactics.
By collaboratively defining your vision and strategy, focusing on understanding your customers, and creating an actionable plan to achieve your vision, it’s possible to start slow, build momentum, and enhance your CX journey.
Chief Nation have been instigating C-level conversations and expediting new business relationships between the world’s biggest technology companies and global enterprises.
Learn more about our unique, creative, and dynamic approach to how we help build these long-lasting connections, and how our blending of meticulous data research, content creation, and bespoke networking events, deliver human-centric experiences for our clients from day one.