Unlike B2C market; B2B is a tough market to crack and the competition is quite high. This makes B2B Marketing a skill! Doing it differently is the best way to getting better results today!
Not just the market or the industry; but the customers have become tech-savvy too and are aware of what they want. They also have multiple choices available with them today; while they also indulge in extensive research to compare vendors, use Social media actively, before arriving at any purchase decision.
Traditional marketing techniques no longer appeal to this kind of diverse and educated customer base anymore; and it is therefore even more important for b2b marketers to devise and come up with new and creative strategies for marketing and advertising their products and services in a novel and unusual way for today’s customers.
Let us discuss some exemplary B2B marketing use cases that can encourage marketers to experiment; innovate and include a mix of strategies to enhance business results.
Shopify: A case of hyper-visibility marketing
The entire campaign of Shopify was based on creating high brand awareness and brand recall value. The campaign was everywhere, making inroads into people’s everyday lives.
Shopify did not rely on only one tactic; but what worked best was the use of a combination of tactics that ultimately created a strong brand recall value.
With their “Let’s make you a business” campaign; they chose multiple channels to make an impact.
Making use of TV ads, posters, billboards, quotes and much more they were literally everywhere.
Right after waking up to just before going to bed; people could see Shopify on their TV channels, on their phones, on hoardings outside their windows etc. making Shopify a part of their day to day life and also a part of their memory. Trying to stay at the top of their customers’ minds was the main objective of the campaign that naturally resulted in great business outcomes.
Encouraging all the small business owners to use Shopify to grow their own business; this brand created its own space in the market! With consistent marketing and having an Omni-channel presence, they made sure each business owner will think Shopify before making a buying decision.
IBM: A case of brand awareness marketing
Data breaches are one of the most sensitive issues, especially so if they are related to financial transactions. IBM’s campaign of “Every second counts” made a huge impact while it communicated the message of what data breaches could possibly do and how IBM got it all covered for the customers by protecting them with their technology.
IBM used a mixed media approach to get the message across. Even a well-known brand such as IBM used multi-channel approach to reach target audiences in different segments. Using videos, landing pages, social media outreach and much more, they made a huge impact with their ‘every second counts’ campaign.
The short films that they created to spread the message was the focal point of their campaign and it created awareness about issues such as cyber disruption by telling stories inspired from real life incidents.
This campaign was promoted incredibly well by creating promotional video trailers, GIFs, teasers and much more to raise the curiosity. Thought leadership articles, interviews and awareness content was created to complete the loop and engage users from start to end.
Video marketing helped the IBM campaign immensely as this medium can quickly and effectively convey the message to the decision makers and engage them too.
Taking up a highly sensitive and critical issue such as cyber-attacks and resilience by keeping an influential target audience in mind such as business owners, CEOs, CFOs etc.; the campaign won hands-down!
HP Wolf Campaign: A case of emotive marketing
There might be hardly anyone from b2b sales and marketing industry or b2b technology companies who haven’t heard about the Wolf campaign by HP.
This campaign is the ideal example of the use of emotions and how establishing an emotional connection with customers works wonders for the b2b industry.
Starting with a less appealing product such as printers; this campaign changed the way a printer is perceived by people. This campaign changed the perception that b2b is boring and it established the fact that b2b marketing can spice-up their advertising too!
Take a look at this video and you will know that it is an incredible marketing genius in itself:
Starring Christain Slater; this video by HP shows the dark side of how a simple print command can destroy the confidentiality of data for an entire business.
The campaign was hugely successful that helped raise awareness about security breaches caused through printers. The film or web series was able to raise emotions of anxiety, insecurity, helplessness and ultimately of urgency!
These campaigns prove that variety, experiential marketing, use of videos, visuals; strong story telling capabilities, use of the right script etc. can create incredible campaigns in the b2b domain.
These examples in the article are testimony to the fact that if you want to do things differently; people will notice. It not only helps in getting more business; it also helps in establishing a brand and also helps in cementing brand recall value in the minds of the customers.
Conclusion:
Customers need something novel and creative; and to be able to attract them in this fiercely competitive market, one should not shy away from experimenting with new ideas and using multi-channel approach for a greater impact.
Understanding buyer personas, identifying niche target audience; mapping the digital footprints of customers and hyper-personalizing the outreach to these audiences are some of the techniques that b2b marketers are already busy adopting today.
Clearly, this paradigm shift in the market, marketers and customers is weighing on everyone today. Therefore; only unique and innovative strategies are now creating incredible impression in the market resulting in outstanding business ROI!
Hence b2b companies who want to showcase their skills in a unique way and attract more business have to adopt unique ways of marketing their products and services.