Emphasize Safe Innovation When Marketing to Millennial B2B Buyers

Numerous research studies have shown that millennials are now playing pivotal roles in B2B purchase decisions. Many marketing industry pundits contend that millennial buyers have distinctive characteristics that require a different approach to marketing and sales.

But many claims about the attributes of millennials are gross oversimplifications of reality. In a 2017 report, the global research firm Ipsos MORI wrote, "Myths and misunderstandings [about millennials] abound, with bad research jumping to general conclusions based on shallow caricatures . . ."

A research report published last November by The B2B Institute and GWI provides a detailed and nuanced view of millennial attitudes and behaviors. Work in BETA:  The Rising B2B Decision Makers ("Work in BETA") was based on surveys of business professionals between the ages of 21 and 64 in ten countries. The report focuses primarily on the attitudes and behaviors of survey respondents between the ages of 21 and 40.

The Work in BETA research produced several insights that have significant implications for B2B marketers. One important group of findings relates to the attitudes of millennial business professionals toward innovation and risk.

The Desire to be Innovative - The Need to Feel Safe

Millennials value innovation highly, and they are also keen to enhance their professional status. These two aspects of the millennial mindset are both evident in the findings of the Work in BETA surveys, and they create a tension that is manifested in how millennials make business decisions.

For example, the surveys asked participants what types of improvement initiatives were important for their company to implement in the coming year. Improving efficiency and productivity, and finding cost savings were the most frequently identified initiatives by respondents of all ages. However, millennial business professionals were far more likely that older survey respondents to identify improving innovation as an important initiative.

Millennials also want to be trendsetters, and they want to be sure they are keeping up with peers and competitors. In the Work in BETA surveys, millennial respondents were more likely than older respondents to agree that "I always like to try new products" and "Having the latest technological products is very important to me."

When survey participants were asked about the reasons that might lead them to consider bringing a new product or service into their company, millennial respondents were more likely than older respondents to say:

• To keep up with the latest trends
• Because a competitor is using it

Somewhat surprisingly, the Work in BETA research found that millennial business professionals are more risk averse that is commonly thought. The report states that millennial buyers ". . . spend the most time on research, explore the widest range of vendors, and yet are the most likely to ultimately pick one that they already know."

The inclination of millennial buyers to be risk averse is evident in the sources of information they see as most influential when researching products or services. The Work in BETA surveys asked participants to rate the influence of 16 sources of information used when researching potential purchases. The three sources most frequently described by millennial respondents as very influential were:

1. Recommendations from experts in my network (53%)
2. User reviews (51%)
3. Recommendations from industry analysts (50%)

These survey responses show that millennials are very aware that their decisions or recommendations regarding potential purchases will have an impact on their professional status, and therefore they seek out the opinions of trusted experts and other users to support their decisions.

Implications for Marketers

The implications of this group of findings for B2B marketers are fairly obvious. The actions suggested below will be effective to some extent with potential buyers of any age, but they are particularly important when marketing to millennial buyers.

Emphasize Innovation - To make an impact with millennial buyers, it's vital to position products or services as innovative to the greatest extent possible, and marketers should make innovation a major theme of the brand story. Products or services can be innovative because of their design, architecture, or functionality, or because they will enable users to implement innovative business processes.

Expert Endorsement - As noted earlier, recommendations by trusted experts are very influential for millennial B2B buyers. Therefore, marketers should have a plan for keeping recognized experts in their industry informed about product/service capabilities and new developments. Marketers should also look for opportunities to establish and cultivate relationships with relevant experts.

Social Proof - In the Work in BETA surveys, just over half of the millennial respondents (51%) rated user reviews as a very influential source of information when researching potential purchases. So marketers should encourage customers to share their experiences with the company's products or services and provide an easy-to-use way for customers to give reviews. Case studies can also be an effective way to provide the social proof that millennial buyers want.

Brand Salience - About 30% of the millennial respondents in the Work in BETA surveys said they will only buy from a company they've heard of before. As the report states, millennial buyers are ". . . drawn to names that have a ring of familiarity and an established reputation." Therefore, programs that are designed to raise brand awareness and increase brand salience are important for marketing effectively to millennial buyers.

Image courtesy of Epic Top 10 via Flickr (CC).

Marketing to Millennial B2B Buyers - Leverage the Yearning to Learn

Millennials are now major players in B2B buying, according to research recently published by The B2B Institute and GWI. Work in BETA:  The Rising B2B Decision Makers ("Work in BETA") was based on surveys of over 17,000 business professionals between the ages of 21 and 64. The report focuses on the attitudes and behaviors of business professionals between the ages of 21 and 40. The surveys were conducted in 2020 and included respondents from ten countries.

In the Work in BETA surveys, significant proportions of the millennial respondents said they have influence at every stage of the buying process, including identifying the business need (57%), researching potential vendors (41%), evaluating vendors (40%), and approving the final purchase (47%).

The Work in BETA research provides a plethora of insights about the attitudes, behaviors, and lifestyles of today's millennial business professionals, many of which have important implications for B2B marketers.

In my last post, I discussed why the pervasive use and reliance on smartphones by millennial B2B decision makers is elevating the importance of "micro-moments" of marketing. This post will discuss how B2B marketers can take advantage of the strong desire to learn that millennial B2B buyers exhibit.

The Yearning to Learn

Millennial business professionals have strong feelings about the importance and value of professional development. The Work in BETA research found that they have a penchant for online learning. About 80% of the surveyed millennials said they participate in online learning events to improve their work skills, increase industry knowledge, or obtain professional qualifications.

Millennial B2B decision makers also use online events to learn about products and services, with almost 50% of the Work in BETA millennial respondents reporting that they regularly attend webinars. However, only about a third of those respondents said the webinars they attend are useful when researching products or services.

Implications for Marketers

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of most in-person marketing events in 2020, and in-person events aren't likely to return until the second half of this year. As a result, many companies have turned to webinars and other online events to fill the gap.

The findings of the Work in BETA research make two things clear:

• Webinars and other online events can be attractive vehicles for engaging with millennial B2B buyers.
• Many webinars aren't "hitting the mark" with those millennial buyers.

To maximize impact, B2B marketers must recognize that webinars* are hybrid events that perform both a marketing function and an educational function. It's also important to understand that if a webinar doesn't effectively perform its educational function, it won't be an effective marketing event.

There are an abundance of resources that describe how to plan and conduct successful webinars. Most of these resources approach webinar planning from a marketing perspective. Most don't deal with how to develop webinars that will be effective learning events.

To produce webinars that are both great marketing events and great learning events, marketers need to be as meticulous in planning the educational aspects of a webinar as they are in planning the marketing aspects. In short, a successful webinar requires both a sound marketing plan and a thorough lesson plan.

Professional teachers have used lesson plans for decades to organize their classes. A lesson plan is simply a detailed description of a specific class. The content and structure of lesson plans can vary significantly, but all complete lesson plans will include three essential elements.

Learning Objectives - Learning objectives specify what the students will have learned or be able to do after completing the lesson. Obviously, learning objectives for a webinar should be relevant for the potential attendees and be aligned with their existing knowledge about a subject. The process of identifying learning objectives for a webinar will help ensure that the webinar content delivers real value to the attendees.

The Hook (a/k/a the "Anticipatory Set") - A hook is something the teacher does at the very beginning of a lesson to grab the students' attention and get them engaged with the subject matter of the lesson. Hooks are brief and can take many forms. For a webinar, the hook could be a creative poll, a compelling story, or even an attention-getting chart or graph. An effective hook will be linked directly to one or more of the learning objectives and will provide a clear answer to the question:  "Why should I pay attention to this lesson?"

Lesson Materials and Procedures (a/k/a "Input Modeling") - This component of a lesson plan is a detailed description of how the teacher will conduct the lesson, including:

• How the lesson topic will be introduced.
• What materials (slides, videos, polls, etc.) will be used.
• How much time will be spent on each portion of the lesson.

Creating a complete lesson plan for a webinar does take time. But when this level of educational planning is done in parallel with good marketing planning, B2B marketers will substantially improve their odds of producing highly effective and successful webinars.

*I'm using the term "webinar" broadly. Today, a webinar can be a presentation by a subject matter expert, a panel discussion, an interview with a subject matter expert, or an informal "chat" with an industry leader or recognized expert. The subject matter of the webinar will usually determine which format will work best.

Image courtesy of Marco Verch (CC).

Marketing to Millennial B2B Buyers - The Rise of Micro-Moments

 

In my last post, I reviewed the findings of a recent research report that examined the attitudes and behaviors of millennial B2B buyers.

Work in BETA:  The Rising B2B Decision Makers ("Work in BETA") was published by The B2B Institute, a think tank funded by LinkedIn, and GWI, a market research company. The report was based on surveys of over 17,000 business professionals, and it focused on the attitudes and behaviors of those between the ages of 21 and 40. The surveys were conducted in 2020 and included respondents from ten countries.

Numerous earlier studies have shown that millennials are playing increasingly important roles in B2B purchase decisions, and the Work in BETA surveys confirmed that millennials have become major players in B2B buying. Forty percent or more of the millennial survey respondents said they have influence at each stage of the buying process, including identifying the business need (57%), researching potential vendors (41%), evaluating vendors (40%), and approving the final purchase (47%).

Many of the attitudes and behaviors identified by the Work in BETA research aren't new, nor do they exist exclusively among millennials. But they matter more now because millennials have become key decision makers for many B2B purchases.

The findings of the Work in BETA surveys are interesting in themselves, but they also have important implications for B2B marketers. I'll be discussing three of these implications in this post and the following two.

The Ubiquitous Smartphone

Millennials have been linked to smartphones for years, but the Work in BETA research showed that smartphones have become millennials' go-to device for both personal and professional purposes. Among millennials, smartphones have surpassed laptops and desktops to become the most widely-used device for work-related activities. Over 70% of the millennial survey respondents said their smartphone is the most important device in their day-to-day life.

It's also clear that millennials use smartphones for a wide variety of activities. GWI's research tracks 35 online activities, and the firm found that millennials are more likely than older business professionals to do all of them via a smartphone. And on average, millennials perform 14 of the 35 activities exclusively with a smartphone.

Implications for Marketers

In light of the Work in BETA findings, B2B marketers should assume that many (perhaps most) interactions with millennial business buyers will occur via smartphones. Obviously therefore, marketers need to ensure that their content can be easily viewed on these devices. 

The more significant implication for marketers, however, is that always-available, always-on smartphones have enabled people - including B2B decision makers - to access and consume information differently than in the pre-smartphone world.

Nearly six years ago, Google introduced the concept of micro-moments to the marketing world. Google argued that the customer buying journey has become fragmented and composed largely of many brief interactions that usually involve a smartphone. Google contended that people increasingly use smartphones in spare moments of time to engage in brief, spur-of-the-moment interactions for specific purposes - i.e. micro-moments.

Sridhar Ramaswamy, who was then Google's Senior Vice president of Ads & Commerce, described micro-moments as follows:  "Micro-moments occur when people reflexively turn to a device - increasingly a smartphone - to act on a need to learn something, do something, discover something, watch something, or buy something." Therefore, Google says, companies must win at those micro-moments in order to maximize marketing success.

Micro-moments impose stringent demands on marketers. The Google research found that when people interact in a micro-moment, they have high expectations for immediacy and relevance. So marketers need to have content resources that will work effectively in these brief encounters. In addition to having resources that can be easily viewed on smartphones, marketers need to develop and deploy "bite-sized" content resources that can be easily and quickly consumed.

Google's initial discussion of micro-moments focused on the behaviors of consumers. The Work in BETA research shows that the pervasive use and reliance on smartphones by millennial business decision makers have made micro-moments a prominent feature of the B2B marketing landscape.

Illustration courtesy of Aaron Yoo via Flickr CC.

A 2020 Snapshot of the Attitudes and Behaviors of Millennial B2B Buyers

The B2B Institute and GWI recently published a research report that provides a wealth of important insights regarding the attitudes, behaviors, and working lifestyles of millennial B2B decision makers.

Work in BETA:  The Rising B2B Decision Makers ("Work in BETA") is based on surveys of over 17,000 business professionals between the ages of 21 and 64. The report focuses primarily on the attitudes and behaviors of business professionals between the ages of 21 and 40, and it refers to this subset of survey respondents as "BETAs." The surveys were fielded last year and included respondents from ten countries.

Numerous earlier studies have documented that millennials are playing increasingly important roles in B2B purchase decisions. In the Work in BETA surveys, 40% or more of the BETAs said they have influence at each stage of the buying process, including identifying the business need (57%), researching potential vendors (41%), evaluating vendors (40%), and approving the final purchase (47%).

Work in BETA provides a fresh look at the attitudes and behaviors of millennial B2B buyers, and I recommend that you read the full report. In this post, I'll review some of the high-level findings from the research, and I'll discuss what the research findings mean for B2B marketers in future posts.

The Work in BETA report organizes the research findings around four major themes.

Blurred Boundaries

The boundaries between work life and home life have become blurred for BETAs. They use many of the same tools and services for both professional and personal purposes. Their smartphone is their go-to device for both professional and personal communications and information consumption.

• Two thirds of BETAs said they are working from home.
• More than 80% of BETAs said they regularly work late, work overtime, and check emails outside of normal work hours.
• Over half of BETAs use their personal smartphone for work-related purposes, and over 70% said their smartphone is the most important device in their daily life.
• Over half of BETAs said they use many online services for both professional and personal purposes.

Evolving

BETAs are career oriented, committed to professional development, and active users of online learning opportunities. BETAs also want to be innovative, and they like to be trendsetters. But BETAs are more risk averse than is commonly thought. They conduct extensive research and seek expert advice before taking action.

• About 4 in 5 BETAs participate in online learning to acquire or improve job skills, increase industry knowledge, or obtain professional qualifications.
• About 75% of BETAs said they like to try new products, and about two thirds said that having the latest technological products is important.
• But . . . about 30% of BETAs said they will only buy from a provider they've heard of before.
• Most BETAs also seek expert opinions when researching products or services. Half or more said that recommendations from experts in my network and recommendations from industry analysts are very influential when researching potential purchases.

Tech Natives

Most BETAs are "digital natives." All but some older BETAs began their professional careers after social networks and many other online communication technologies had become mainstream. Many BETAs were already using smartphones by the time they started their first job. These circumstances have had a significant impact on how BETAs use technology and communicate.

• BETAs primarily use websites (40%), social media (36%), and email/newsletters (32%) to keep up with industry news.
• But . . . industry conferences and trade shows are (or were) important for BETAs - 4 in 10 said they were regularly attending them.
• 71% of BETAs said they use a smartphone for work.
• About 70% of BETAs said they use collaboration tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc.) at least once a day for work. And over 60% said they use social media and video calls at least once a day for work.

Activist

BETAs are more likely than older business professionals to expect brands to take actions regarding important social issues. Most BETAs care strongly about diversity (76%), community contribution (74%), and sustainability (67%). The open question is whether or to what extent BETAs will be able to translate their beliefs and values into actual business decisions and actions.

The Need for a Follow-Up

The surveys that the Work in BETA report is based on were conducted last year, and some of the survey responses were almost certainly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope The B2B Institute and GWI will publish an updated version of the report after the pandemic has subsided. That would help us distinguish pandemic-induced attitudes and behaviors from longer-term trends.

Image courtesy of ITU Pictures via Flickr CC.