One of the main reasons why marketing doesn't work is that B2B companies fail to land their message with their target audience. The best idea in the world is worth nothing if you can't convince people to really believe in it. A poor idea is a poor idea, but poor communication can kill a great idea.
How and what you communicate is more important than ever. Research shows that our average attention spans have dropped from 12 minutes to 5 minutes over the last 10 years. This is because we now have to filter out far more information to get to what’s important to us.
We normally give communications, whether it’s a TV ad, an email or whatever, just a few seconds to decide if it’s worth our precious time. We ignore the vast majority, because our brains simply don’t have the capacity to process everything. And the other reason most B2B communications get ignored is because they aren’t in sync with the way that our brains process information.
Always start with what matters to your buyers
For us to pay any attention, a communication has to be instantly relevant to something that is important to us. A pain, a need, the priority projects we’re focused on. So marketing messages and content have to start there. So many companies still start by talking about themselves. Like, we are the experts in application management, our methodology has been used by over 1,000 clients, we’ve been established for 20 years. I’m sorry to break it to you…Nobody cares.
The good news is that more and more marketers are starting communications with buyer issues. But where they still fall short is that after they have established relevance, they then fail to get their audience to take any ACTION.
Make them believe
For human beings to take action, we first have to BELIEVE it’s the right action to take. Most communications fail to activate beliefs. Even the better ones skip this step and meander their way from issues to the company information they want their buyers to know.
Many companies still can’t break the habit of mentioning their offering in every piece of content. But buyers just see this as a veiled sales pitch and switch off.
It doesn’t matter how much information a seller puts in front of a potential buyer, if they don’t believe they need it, they will ignore it. If the buyer doesn’t BELIEVE they have a serious problem or that their problem can be fixed, none of it will matter. You have to make people believe the issue you’re talking about is a priority, which means you’ll either support or disrupt their current priorities.
Accept that your story must be told step-by-step
You have to lead your buyers through a journey one step at a time. To do this means you first have to be clear about what you want your audience to do as a result of each communication. In a considered B2B purchase, noone is going to read something and buy, so be realistic. There is going to be a series of steps before they trust you and become convinced. So your first communication or piece of content might lead them to your website, or a blog post might lead them to a webinar and so on.
The critical step is to figure out what they would need to believe to take this action. Typical examples are, ‘the problem I have is as a result of this’, ‘the impact of doing nothing is bigger than I thought,’ ‘this is a new, proven way to solve my problem.’ Changing peoples’ beliefs isn’t easy, but it is possible with a compelling story.
You need to give people new thinking, evidence & references about a particular issue and also get them to visualise themselves overcoming their pains and succeeding with their main priorities. The bottom line is the art of persuasion has changed from clever messaging, to using your expertise to help people think through a new business idea or a particular issue, which you are best placed to solve.
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