B2B tech marketing requires a long-term perspective. Instead of chasing leads, prioritize building a strong brand that fosters trust and credibility. You’ll have a better chance at capturing and maintaining the attention of future buyers and getting on their shortlist.
We’re all guilty of cutting corners and searching for the elusive “secret.” The reality is that achieving B2B market success rarely happens overnight.
And while B2B and B2C marketing have more in common now than they did a decade ago, expecting B2C results in B2B is unrealistic. B2B marketing is still a marathon, not a sprint. There are no shortcuts or magic pills, no matter what the sales-led or product-led hype wants us to believe.
Jack Welch’s message? Stop the wishful thinking.
Important: Before continuing, if you only care about pumping up your tech product so you can dump the company on the highest bidder in the shortest time, stop reading. This is not for you. Good luck with whatever you do.
But if you’re genuinely interested in building a lasting tech solution like Slack, Hubspot, or Salesforce, put your expectations, opinions, and assumptions aside for a few minutes.
Many B2B tech companies, especially startups, think their products are so good they’ll sell themselves and attract loads of new leads. The reality is that the majority of B2B tech buyers simply aren’t ready to buy no matter how many times they look at our website. The solution they currently use is good enough (for now).
“A lot of companies haven’t fully realized yet that most people are not in the market for any product at any given time. You need to target them with a long-term lens.”
- Jann Martin Schwarz, LinkedIn B2B Institute
Studies like the 95-5 rule show that only 5% of B2B buyers are actively in-market looking for a new solution. Yet our wishful thinking still makes us believe otherwise.
“Our surveys show that 95% of B2B marketers expect to see significant sales within the first two weeks of a campaign.”
Professor John Dawes, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute
Most B2B tech buyers, Professor Dawes points out, are on a much longer decision-making journey than we want to admit.
Here’s a real-world dose of reality (there’s that word again) from a recent interview with a procurement leader, courtesy of Mark Stouse over at Proof:
“Risk has always been the biggest part of any B2B deal. Since 2022, that has increased exponentially. It’s why we have so many ‘no decision’ decisions. The vendors fail the test more than half the time.”
Decision-makers are risk-averse for good reason. Buying tech is harder than selling it. Choose the wrong solution and we end up with egg on our face, an expensive mistake, or worse, shown the door.
The safest decision? No decision.
Brands aren’t born great. Market success in any business is a long-term investment. Ask any established tech brand, from Apple to Salesforce, to kill their brand and replace it with a sales-led or product-led approach, and they will tell you where to go. Brand equity trumps all.
“B2B marketers shouldn’t be spending time and money convincing out-of-market buyers to consider a purchase but instead invest in making every buyer remember their brand next time they need its product.”
Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo
That sums up the problem with B2B marketing as we know it today. It’s flawed because it focuses only on short-term linear “funnel” outputs and metrics, sales-led and product-led thinking, leads and quotas, blah, blah, blah. You get the point.
Think of brand building as farming. The seeds we sow today are not harvested in the same season or even in the same year. It takes time to generate demand, earn trust, establish authority, and create loyal fans.
B2B tech buying is not a neat, linear path—it’s not a funnel! Yet we still expect linear and immediate results.
The majority of B2B tech companies think in terms of lead generation and pass off brand marketing (demand generation activities) as wasted effort that takes too long and is too hard to measure.
It’s why B2B marketing is measured in linear stages (leads, sales, etc.). It’s also why B2B marketing teams scramble to justify their turf with linear metrics.
We end up with the wrong results because we set the wrong expectations, create the wrong outcomes, and look at the wrong data.
Short-term thinking can also lead to schizophrenic stop-start marketing tactics that confuse the market, dilute our value, and kill any potential momentum that brand marketing produces.
It’s better to provide helpful and current content at every stage at any given time because the reality is that we don’t know when someone is ready to buy, upgrade, or switch.
Supporting your sales activation (lead generation) activities with brand marketing (demand generation) gives you the best chance to stay top-of-mind and capture the attention of your future best-fit customers when they embark on their search.
Monday.com launched in 2014 to compete with the likes of Asana, Trello, and Wrike. Three years later (not three months), the project management SaaS solution began an explosive 6-year run.
In 2023, Monday.com’s annual revenue was estimated at $702 million to $717 million but made over $729 million, an increase of 41% year-over-year. Forecasts for 2024 are expected to be between $926 million and $932 million.
That’s impressive growth for a B2B tech brand that’s only 10 years old!
Monday.com has invested heavily in brand building with a tongue-in-cheek style that’s not typical for B2B. Their most recent Work Without Limits campaign (below) aired during the 2022 Super Bowl. Their previous Manage Your Team campaign ran for over three years with regionally targeted ads.
Take a page out of Monday.com’s playbook. Invest in a B2B marketing strategy that balances sales activation with brand marketing. That will lay the foundation for long-term growth, building trust with your audience. The rewards are well worth the effort.
“So follow the 95-5 Rule to grow: invest in lead-generation efforts targeting the 5% of people who are “in-market” today, but don’t forget to invest far more heavily in reaching the entire category with brand advertising that resonates with future buyers, and thus generates future cash flows.”
Ty Heath, LinkedIn B2B Institute
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