Iryna Manukovska is the chief marketing & strategy officer at XME.digital and JEVERA software solutions.
getty
"At the end of the day, it's all about value delivered to the customer." That's how my marketing club meeting ended last month. Today, marketing goes far beyond "the performance of business activities that direct the flow of goods and services from producers to consumers." That's how it was described by the American Marketing Association in 1935.
Now, the AMA defines it as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."
Through the years, marketing has been divided into B2B and B2C. And there's a reason for it. We act differently when choosing a software vendor (partner, in fact) for the next five years to support digital transformation projects than we do when choosing sneakers to support our exercise.
Anyhow, there is much more we, as B2B marketers, can learn from B2C to create special bonds with our customers and help them make their business more sustainable and efficient.
Straightforward Offers Like Coffee And Gelato
Typically B2B services are hard to communicate. There are so many services we provide and industries we serve. This leads to generalization or hard-to-understand concepts and deeply professional words. It creates barriers for customers. The harder it is to understand what we are talking about, the fewer chances we have to make a deal. So, let's make our language simple. A good litmus test could be an elevator speech to a friend of yours who is not a part of the industry you work in.
A Frictionless Experience
A frictionless and transparent checkout process is the key to success for any consumer business today. Customers want to have full control of the process and be sure of any additional charges that may occur.
Research done by Jared M. Spool and his team at User Interface Engineering discovered that eliminating a login screen from the checkout experience of a major e-commerce site increased sales by $300 million. He changed the checkout button from "Register" to "Continue" so there was no need to log in to purchase. We can't evaluate how much friction like this could cost a B2B company, but I bet it has some real significance behind it.
Make settling up as easy as possible. Work on the user experience your clients have with you, and improve it constantly.
Emotional Bonds
People work with people. If you still treat your customer's team as an enemy to fight with for project success or act as master of the chamber, it's time to change. Partnership is king. And it's impossible without emotional bonds.
We need to start treating our customers as human beings. This may mean supporting them outside of business or giving them a good word when they struggle with something personal. The driving force behind this is empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
Storytelling
"The more you tell, the more you sell," as David Ogilvy used to say. He was known as the father of advertising and founder of the Ogilvy & Mather agency where I used to work. Eventually, the goal of marketing is to make a deal. It's about the story, not the marketing materials themselves or the marketing funnels.
LinkedIn recently introduced a "Life" tab for Career Pages, allowing users to get a behind-the-scenes-look into a company's culture from the employee's perspective. Creating and distributing content like this among employees and clients allows native storytelling to occur. Content is not only about white papers and corporate updates, it's about events, conferences, meetups, and social and sustainable projects.
The more informative your advertising, the more persuasive it will be. Follow this rule for B2B communication, and you'll develop a natural interest in your stories. It can work as well for your business as it has throughout the years for consumer brands.
Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
