I’m finding a disturbing pattern in much of the B2B marketing I evaluate. A pattern where marketing focuses on everything BUT the problem they solve and the solution to it. ** What this looks like is gated content that is broad and generic. ** It’s vague messaging that could apply to anyone and everyone. The thought process with content seems to be the following: - Identify a broad audience - salespeople, accountants, HR, etc. - Come up with generic content ideas we could easily write about. - Spend weeks making an e-book - “Top 10 things XX care about.” - Gate said e-book to collect emails. - Collect emails and give them to sales. - Get mad at sales because they don’t follow up. - Repeat. The thought process with messaging seems to be the following: - Identify a broad audience - salespeople, accountants, HR, etc. - Come up with three generic benefits for said audience. - Add complicated language in an attempt to sound smart. - Share no real details - keep everything high level and vague. - Direct the audience to your e-book and go through the above. Let’s stop it. Instead, it’s pretty simple: - Embrace why your company exists and what you do for customers. - Focus on the Old Way vs. New Way. - Old Way => life before your product/category. (the status quo) - New Way => life after your product/category. (the solution) - Spend more time (60/40) articulating the status quo problem. - Make sure you are positioned uniquely against the competition. - Drill into anchoring the story on what makes you unique. - Iterate and improve as your gain more customer insight. - Get customer insight constantly, both formally and informally. - Build a messaging and content strategy focused only on this story. There are plenty of books on this subject - both old and new. This may sound super simple. However, what I see is that very few marketers do it. The reality is that this is the one thing your marketing team MUST do well if you want yourself, your team, and your company to succeed. The benefit is that you will stand out as most marketers won’t put in the effort because the OLD WAY (or status quo) I outlined above is easy and, unfortunately, the expectation. #b2bmarketing #marketing
Cassidy Shield - you have put into words what bothers me when I see ‘content writers’ say that ‘content is king’ folk. Content isn’t king - content isn’t anything. Relevant, impactful solutions are king. Too many generic content spewers out there, they know how to write but have nothing to to say. It’s our job as communicators to communicate value, not empty blog posts and email.
Totally agree with you that top of funnel informational marketing needs to be focus on a well defined audience and shouldn't be a lead gen activity - I mean, you're educating your market and you're locking 90% of the buyers out because they won't fill out the form in return for getting a bunch of "leads" who don't want to talk to yet? Hard no. And I like your guidelines for doing good solutions focused marketing - it's a really well articulated. But - if you are selling a high-ticket solution, if it's disruptive, if you don't have the brand awareness of the incumbents, that broader content that is about needs and problems vs. yourself is really important. I actually see more over-rotation to solution focus at the expense of top of funnel activities. (I do think the world is getting tired of "10 biggest challenges for advanced widget designers!" ebooks though. There's probably more mileage to be gotten out editorial, analyst, and customer community activities.) Having a really clear view of your TAM and your own situation is really key to getting the balance right. (But please, don't gate an ebook and then hand the form fill to sales, you're wasting everybody's time.)
Excellent writeup and a great checklist. I can use this right away.
It's an interesting and distinctive post. Thank you. However I am confused about your pov on the Old Way vs. New Way. At the beginning it felt like you'd support focusing on the solution (the new way) But then on the last part, it sounds like focusing on the Old Way (status quo) is better. I am sorry maybe it's my lack of understanding, but I read it a few times and I was not sure about your exact opinion on the old vs new.
I think your observations are right on Cassidy Shield, I share your thoughts!
Madeleine Stump Cassidy is another great one to follow
I really like how you framed this. Thanks for sharing.
Well said. I like the way you lay out what companies SHOULD be doing. It’s honestly the basics of marketing that we seemed to have abandoned in pursuit of metics and tech.
Digital Marketing Manager | B2B SaaS Growth | WordPress Expert | User Experience Strategy | Demand Generation
1yI was JUST thinking about this exact same thing yesterday. I can't even tell you the number of websites I visit where I spend 5 minutes going through the homepage and I STILL don't really know what they do. I'll add to that, YES, you do need to explain the benefits of using your product or service, but I find so many marketers/ companies focus so much on the benefits that they forget to tell us what the heck the product actually is! Yes this is all great but what do you DO?