I believe that connecting with experts in your industry and learning from them is still an underused exercise.
So starting with 2020, together with my colleagues at STOICA, we've been conducting a yearly study about how B2B marketing is evolving.
My personal goal with this study is to understand how experienced marketing leaders think about their marketing strategy, what tactics they focus on and how they choose the right ones.
Here are eight lessons I learned while working on this year's study:
#1 Dig deep into your ideal clients' or customers' journey
While it's tempting to go headfirst into tactics and try the latest trends, the only way to reach your potential clients is by understanding what their journey looks like and what drives them.
And while it might seem like the obvious thing to do, in reality, quite a few marketers do the exercise of constantly speaking to their clients, understanding in depth what keeps them up at night, what challenges they face in their jobs, and what they expect from a given solution.
When you spend more time in client research and understanding their buying journey, that is when you can come up with effective and impactful marketing ideas.
#2 Let people have the experience they want
This leads me to my second lesson, let people have the experience they want. As marketers we obsess over driving people to landing pages, increasing form conversion rates and email open rates. But what buyers want in reality is to find the answer to their questions quickly and easily, without having to speak to a bot or fill in a form and wait.
So instead of hiding valuable content behind forms or "forcing" people to attend a live webinar, let's figure out what questions they have and what is the best experience we can deliver.
# 3 Start from the goal, not the format
Let's do an eBook. eBooks are old school, let's do a webinar, or even better, an online event. The problem here? You're prioritizing format before goals.
Your first preoccupation should be determining what you're trying to achieve and how that will deliver value to your audience. Once you have these down, you can think of formats too. Thinking format first can lead you to create marketing campaigns and assets that look good but "fall on deaf year" as they don't help your buyers in their journey.
#4 Stop being transactional and focus on helping
The pressure on marketing is increasing: every action you take needs to translate into an immediate result. Every article, eBook or podcast you publish should drive results right away: more traffic, contacts in your CRMs, meetings or demos booked.
But in reality, B2B buyers have a complex journey, they need to interact with your brand, get to know and trust you. And this doesn't happen overnight. So instead of obsessing over obtaining quick ROI, focus on creating educational and relevant assets and their compound effect will show in time.
#5 Invest in your personal brand and your key employees' brand
The times when employees and contributors in a company had no visibility are over for sure. With social media being such an important component of our lives, we all want to interact with other people, get to see their personalities, hear their ideas.
So smart companies are investing and encouraging their employees to build their brands on platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter without being afraid to lose them.
#6 Build a loyal audience
When you're selling a high-value service or product, your buyers' path from becoming aware of a problem you solve to deciding to buy is very likely to a be a long and "tangled" one.
In this scenario trying to sell to a cold audience is the least productive approach. It puts people off.
So more and more companies invest in attracting and growing an audience around a relevant topic for them. Sound confusing?
In simple words, companies focus on creating original and inspiring content around a few key topics (relevant to their line of business) and attracting and growing a community. Much like a sports magazine would try to grow an audience of sports fans, for example. And their bet is that when they become the go-to source of information and they have a loyal audience that gets genuine help through their content, the demand will follow.
#7 Create content for humans, not search engines
SEO matters a lot, but when creating content the first and most important priority is to discover how that content fits with your ideal customers and how to add a layer of education and perhaps entertainment.
Paying attention to optimizing content for search engines first moves your focus away from that. And can lead you to create content that ticks all SEO recommendations but doesn't strike a chord with your audience.
#8 Build for the long run
Quick wins and isolated marketing campaigns won't get you far. People need to get to know your brand, get familiar with what you offer and trust you. And for that you need to build slow but steady, focusing on the long term: educational content that is relevant beyond a certain event, educational products (podcasts, courses, etc), a website with an amazing user experience.
If you're curious to read our study and learn how B2B is evolving in 2022, check it out here.