Many of the IT businesses owners and marketing leaders we meet in the B2B space have something like this to say about their marketing activity:
“We’ve put so much effort in to getting our business in front of as many eyes as possible, but we’re just not getting the type of engagement we’d expect, or that we’d be happy with.”
It is sometimes difficult to determine how interesting our businesses may appear to potential prospects. As such, it is no surprise that we may gravitate to solutions that appear to offer quick and easy wins – “I’ll do some ‘digital marketing’, ‘Facebook stuff’, ‘banner ads’, ‘pay-per click’ and if it doesn’t work, no one can say we didn’t try!”. We demand those skills in the people we hire…
When we hear comments like this and do a little further investigating, we find that a common theme emerges – all too often businesses focus on maximising their ‘digital reach’ without taking the time to consider and craft a relevant message to their target market.
If this sounds vaguely similar, then read on!
Are you getting too hung up on distribution?
In a recent presentation at the CorrectED Breakfast Series, one of our Directors, Thomas Unwin, presented some high-level thoughts on ‘marketing in a digital world’.
One of the key points made was that an over-interest in terms like ‘digital marketing’ may inadvertently be leading you astray. The fact is that the digital world has opened up a whole new plethora of promotional tools and channels – and this can be distracting.
Consider now if your organisation is putting too much effort into thinking how to ‘hit-up’ as many of these digital channels as possible, at the expense of focusing on defining your underlying messages and overall marketing strategy? We guarantee that for the vast majority of readers, the answer is ‘yes’!
What’s your underlying approach to marketing your business?
Ask your marketers now, ‘what’s your approach to marketing our business?’, if they answer by giving you a list of all the digital tools and channels they’re using, then they’ve either misunderstood the question or they might be focusing on the wrong things.
We’re not saying that it isn’t extremely important to think about driving awareness of your business and getting your message ‘out there’, but ask yourself: ‘if we are lucky enough to put something in front of the right person, at the right time, is that ‘something’ actually relevant and interesting to them in any way?!’
If your answer is “well if they want to buy the product we’re selling, and we show it to them at the right time, then they’ll buy”, then you are over simplifying. This may be at the core of why your marketing feels, and falls, flat.
Given that everyone else has access to the same digital (and non-digital) tools as you, what makes you think that your product deserves a special place in a prospect’s heart? What else do they know about your business – apart from which products you sell? How have you established a relationship with them before this time?
The fact is: only a small percentage of your target market is ready to buy. The rest are looking for information on how to do their job better and need to be nurtured – through relevant conversations – along their buying experience.
The solution? Go back to basics – concentrate on being relevant
In our opinion, good marketing simply tries to replicate what any good sales person does naturally and instinctively – read the situation and provide relevant information to the other party, at the relevant time.
You wouldn’t go into a sales meeting with a new prospect and just whack a product brochure on the table – so why do the equivalent in your marketing? Similarly, if a prospect asked you to send through a contract for signing, you wouldn’t try to engage them in a friendly chat about their business challenges – you’d give them the damn contract!! Relevant information at the relevant time.
Concentrating on relevancy won’t just make you more interesting to customers and prospects. As Google moves away from keyword search ranking and towards semantic search (as illustrated nicely in this article from the Content Marketing Institute), producing properly thought-through, strategic content is becoming the way to ensure that you get up the list on Google.
Don’t just give a title to a copywriter and hope that will be enough – you need to work with a strategic marketer with a sound understanding of the modern marketing landscape. If you can find a person to do that in-house – great! If you can’t, give us a shout.
But first – do you even have a problem?
In a future article we’ll present some useful tips on how to create a relevant message – and to help you apply the theory in practice.
But for now, why not just work out if you even have a problem to solve with your approach to marketing. Ask yourself and your colleagues the questions we’ve asked here and try to assess honestly: how well does your business define its uniqueness to new prospects?
If you find that you are struggling on this point, give us a call. Even a quick phone chat may help you identify the key challenge you are facing, and give you some clarity on the way forward.
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