Growth marketing report special feature: B2B

Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is often more complex and trickier than its B2C (business-to-consumer) counterpart. Not only are there longer sales cycles and smaller markets with fierce competition, but most B2B brands don’t have the same name recognition that B2C brands have, and often have to work harder to differentiate their products and services.

As the economic landscape continues to shift and become more competitive, B2B buyers’ expectations have also evolved radically. Now more than ever, B2B businesses must produce the same types of compelling content and engaging experiences that their buyers enjoy as B2C consumers in their personal lives.

Now that B2B marketers are reframing how they think about consumers, the big question is how to deepen their relationship and better meet their needs. One huge untapped market is helping companies advertise to small to medium-sized businesses (SMB). Many B2B brands need help selling to and serving small businesses due to their diverse customer base which requires unique positioning and messaging.

With these diverse customer bases, the approach to advertising also looks completely different when speaking to an individual or a smaller company versus a buyer group. With an enterprise company, there’s a larger group of decision-makers and typically three types of personas:

• Practitioners who are going to use the tool.
• Managers who want to ensure that the tool is going to make their job easier and more efficient.
• The executive who wants to ensure the tool is a good investment.

Marketing and selling to an enterprise company (where all three personas are part of a buyer group) can sometimes take up to a year of education and convincing them that it’s the right purchasing decision. With SMBs, you typically only have one or two decision-makers, making it possible to educate, inform, and make the sale within a week or even within a single exposure to the brand.

Despite certain challenges, this is an opportunity for brands looking for differentiation in an unoccupied space to build a niche and help companies advertise to SMBs, address the challenges of marketing to different segments of audiences, and devise a strong strategy to drive growth. While budgets may look different between enterprises and SMBs, the end goal is the same: to create engaging marketing and achieve scalable, sustainable growth.

We’ve identified four key challenges that B2B marketers face that tie into this overarching conundrum:

• Bridging the B2B creative gap.
• Silos between sales and marketing teams.
• Uncoordinated and disconnected marketing agency support.
• Poor data collection, management, and activation.

The good news is that B2B brands can overcome these difficulties by embracing growth marketing, implementing strong strategies, and utilizing innovative solutions to outshine the competition. So how do you get started with growth marketing in a B2B company? Well, the first step is understanding what growth marketing is, how to strengthen your growth marketing efforts, and how to identify the current opportunities and hurdles.

Based on the responses to our survey, the B2B sector is made up primarily of Performers (62%) and Transformers (32%). Companies in the “Performer” category have already prioritized and proactively implemented a combination of middle- and lower-funnel performance marketing activities. While they have established this, they will experience diminishing returns on their marketing investment if they don’t make improvements. “Transformers” are a bit further along in their journey to growth marketing excellence, as they have implemented various measures like a framework for a full-funnel investment approach with goals and objectives clearly aligned with the overall business strategy.

Interestingly, our assessment also showed that 6% of our respondents in the B2B sector scored at the highest level as a “Disruptor” and have more disruptors in this space than any of the four industries.

We found that while B2B marketers’ growth driver investments are well balanced in creative, brands are failing to create compelling and engaging advertising assets that have the potential to distinguish themselves from their competitors.

While many of our respondents said they invest in creative, we’re seeing that creative still needs to be done more effectively by B2B brands. It’s a problem when brands spend the money they do on creative, but they don’t see the value in it. It’s easy to throw money at anything, but it’s a waste when it isn’t well executed, and it doesn’t drive outcomes.

A common complaint from B2B companies is that they want their ads to look and feel more like B2C. From lackluster stock imagery to overly-professional and robotic-sounding brand voices devoid of personality, B2B marketers have realized that they must be creative to get noticed.

Let’s face it: a B2B buyer is still a consumer who craves an emotionally appealing, entertaining, and engaging experience that connects and resonates with them.

There is no room for snooze-worthy content on platforms like Tiktok and Snapchat, where a boring B2B ad is quickly scrolled past and forgotten. One way to combat this and create attention-grabbing content is by building creative that is native to those platforms and teaching B2B creative teams how to take a more strategic approach to storytelling and humanizing the brand. Tapping into your consumers’ emotions can build awareness and trust and create brand loyalty.

It’s also important to note that B2B products and services are commonly marketed to a specific type of company and to a distinct segment of customers to fill a specific need, so it’s critical to target those users rather than a broader, more general audience. When you narrow your target audience, it also allows you to provide the right message to the right audience for a more coordinated approach.

We expect creative to be a big theme in 2023 and recommend that B2B marketers prioritize investing more intelligently in it to foster more authentic relationships with buyers and stand out against the competition.

The majority of B2B marketers (72%) scored their agency support as average or below average.

To rank higher within this pillar, they may need to streamline their agency relationships or keep only one agency on retainer. Similar to the previously discussed silos between sales and marketing, this can drive better customer outcomes by ensuring data and strategic approach is better connected across all stakeholders involved.

Managing several different agencies across numerous different projects can lead to an uncoordinated strategy and execution. It also becomes more difficult to track metrics when they are scattered across different teams and multiple agencies. Not tracking and measuring your performance also makes it difficult to improve, since you don’t have a clear idea of what you should even be focusing on.

The solution? Consolidate agency support to improve data collection, tracking, and measurement success and ensure a coordinated, omnichannel media strategy. If multiple agencies are required, ensure all are working from one unified plan.

Brands need strategic and strong agency partnerships to stay competitive, remain relevant, and keep up with the rapidly evolving digital space. Like any relationship, it should be positive, collaborative, and sustainable.