Peering through the fog: How to be more precise in B2B marketing

Marketing has become more scientific and data-driven in recent years. But the language of marketing is another matter: a lot of the vocabulary is vague and means different things to different people.

Here are seven of the most unclear terms I come across in my work on B2B content, and why you might want to avoid them.

1. White space

If only you could find an idea that no one has ever thought of, then its uniqueness and newness will be enough for your audience to respect your expertise and, ultimately, to buy from you. Right?

Wrong. Finding this so-called white space might make your business look clever, but that is not enough to create the associations you need to drive future buying behaviour. Your fresh ideas might not be relevant to the conversations your audience wants to have with you, so pursuing white space as a goal in thought leadership is misguided.

Most of the time, audiences want your take on a theme that is already out there: AI, net zero and hybrid working, for example. Companies tend to cluster around a small number of hot business themes, and you need to be there too — because those are the issues that your audience cares about. It’s not white space that interests your audience; it’s the topics that are most crowded and contested. So don’t be different just for the sake of it.

There’s a wider debate in marketing circles about differentiation and distinctiveness that’s relevant here. Conventional wisdom dictates that brands should differentiate and find a USP, but customers don’t buy from you because you are completely different from your competitors. They buy from you because you stand out, get their attention and solve their problems — that’s how you will come to mind when they are purchasing.

2. The C-suite

Many marketing briefs still say that the audience for the campaign is “the C-suite”. But the C-suite is a collection of diverse individuals with different perspectives, priorities and needs. There is no point trying to lump them all together.

Instead of trying to create content that addresses this eclectic group of people as if it’s a single entity, we should be focusing on individual needs: the specific personas and roles who can relate to your point of view and are most influential in the purchasing decisions that matter to your business.

Of course, B2B buying groups are large and you will need to influence multiple individuals who may have C-suite roles. But a blanket, catch-all approach to targeting is likely to stop your content from truly resonating with anyone.

3. Awareness-raising

Many marketing briefs will say that “raising awareness” is one of the key goals of the campaign. This sounds sensible, but it is too vague.

There are many strands of awareness-raising, so it’s essential to ask some questions during the strategy stage of a thought leadership campaign. Awareness of what, and among whom? And where does that awareness lead to in a purchasing journey? I may be aware of a brand, but that doesn’t mean I understand what it does or whether it can give me what I want now or in the future.

Instead, consider the kinds of associations you want to create, and be clear about who you are trying to reach and influence. This way, you will know exactly what you want to achieve.

4. The 95:5 Rule

The 95:5 rule, set out by Professor John Dawes of the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, is that most buyers of B2B services will only buy every five years. This means that, in any given quarter, only 5 per cent of your audience will be looking to buy or renew, while the rest of them will not be considering a purchase and so are “out of market”.

According to the rule, marketers should concentrate their resources on priming the 95 per cent rather than spending a disproportionate amount of budget trying to influence the much smaller 5 per cent. Many businesses pay too much attention to the small proportion of the audience who are ready to buy, rather than the much larger proportion who are out of market.

But the split will rarely be 95:5, because B2B purchasing may take place every three years, or even annually (in which case the split should be more like 75:25). Dawes himself says that the 95:5 rule should not be followed slavishly, and circumstances will vary depending on the service or sector. Companies considering allocation of budget across brand building and performance marketing need a clear view of the duration of buying cycles and how these vary across segments.

5. Thought leadership

I need to be careful here, because I’ve made a career out of thought leadership, and I don’t want to kill the golden goose.

But this term has been so maligned and misused that it scarcely means anything anymore. Most of the content positioned as thought leadership is anything but, which devalues the concept and invites justified criticism. The other problem is that there is no clear definition of what thought leadership is. If you speak to 10 people in a company and ask them what they think it means, you’re likely to get 10 different answers.

How to avoid this problem? First, you need to define your terms and make sure that everyone in your organisation has a common, shared view of the goals of producing content and what success looks like.

Maybe you want to build associations between your brand and a particular area of knowledge to drive new sales. Or maybe you want to present your leadership team as experts in an emerging discipline. Both aims are legitimate, but they require different approaches. Being systematic about objectives, audience, success factors and distinctive messaging across your portfolio is critical. Will that be thought leadership? There is no guarantee of that, but at least you will have a common vision of what you are trying to achieve as a business.

6. Gen Z and other demographic catch-alls

This is like the C-suite problem but on a much bigger scale. These generational cohorts exist to describe people born in a certain period, but the idea that those people share the same values or think the same way about a product or service is questionable. We don’t make these assumptions in our daily lives, so why do so many companies make them with their marketing?

I often see research-based content that seeks to highlight differences between generations – for example in their views on sustainability or ESG. These studies tend to draw conclusions that some generations are more interested in these concepts than others. Most of these survey segmentations are nonsense, because research has repeatedly shown that generations do not think nearly as consistently as many companies assume. It’s as scientific as horoscopes, and the assumption that all people born between two days in a year will share common characteristics.

7. Brand purpose

There are few topics that polarise marketers as much as brand purpose. But wherever you stand on the debate, a common problem is that purpose is seen as a marketing add-on instead of something that is embedded in the business itself. It is not authentic.

Many companies make the mistake in their communications of seeing purpose as a vehicle for joining in on conversations around the environment or society. But this focus on following the zeitgeist is problematic because it is not deep enough: purpose should be a foundation of the business, and something permanent — not something fleeting or a reaction to news events or popular causes.

Those are my seven bugbears. Let us know if there are any other terms that you think are similarly vague, imprecise or misleading.

This article was originally posted on LinkedIn. Join the conversation now.