The rules of B2B marketing are constantly changing. What worked yesterday won't necessarily work today. . .or tomorrow. This blog presents information, opinion, and speculation about where B2B marketing is headed.
Showing posts with label Marketing Tactics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marketing Tactics. Show all posts
Edelman and LinkedIn recently published their 2025 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report, which was based on a survey of 1,934 management-level business professionals from a wide range of industries and company sizes. The survey was conducted March 17 - April 3, 2025.
The primary focus of this year's study was "hidden buyers" - people in the buying organization who influence a purchase decision even though they are not a primary user of the product or service being considered.
The 2025 report includes several survey findings for "hidden buyers" and "target buyers," defined as follows:
Hidden Buyers - "People who . . . are a final decision-maker in group purchasing decisions and are primarily involved as a representative of a function that does not require in-depth knowledge of the specific product or service. These functions might include finance, operations, legal, compliance, procurement, and others."
Target Buyers - "People who . . . are both a final decision-maker and are primarily involved as an expert in the service or product being offered."
Here are some of the major findings from the Edelman/LinkedIn report.
Consumption and Use of Thought Leadership
Hidden buyers consume as much thought leadership content as target buyers. Sixty-three percent (63%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents said they spend an hour per week (on average) consuming thought leadership, compared to 64% of target buyer respondents.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents reported using thought leadership content to evaluate potential vendors, compared to 56% of target buyer respondents.
Impact on Marketing/Sales Interactions
Seventy-one percent (71%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents reported having little or no interaction with vendor sales reps. However, 95% said that strong thought leadership content made them more receptive to marketing and sales outreach from companies producing such content.
Attributes of Strong Thought Leadership
Ninety-one percent (91%) of the hidden buyer survey respondents said that a key attribute of high-quality thought leadership content is that it helps them uncover challenges, needs, or opportunities that they hadn't previously recognized.
Two Controversial Findings
The Edelman/LinkedIn report contains two somewhat controversial findings. In this study, the researchers asked participants to rate the importance of several considerations when selecting a vendor.
The following table shows the percentages of hidden buyer respondents who rated each consideration as very important or moderately important.
As this table shows, hidden buyer survey respondents rated "Vendor is the 'safest choice'" as less important than five other considerations.
The second controversial finding relates to the importance of brand. The researchers asked study participants how much they agreed or disagreed with this statement: "In vetting vendors, if an organization produces high-quality thought leadership, it matters much less to me how well known they are." Fifty-three percent (53%) of both hidden buyer and target buyer survey respondents somewhat or strongly agreed with this statement.
The Alternative View
These two findings differ significantly from the results of other recent research. One example of this research is a recent study by The B2B Institute, Bain & Company, and NewtonX (the "B2B Institute Study").
(Note: This study is described in a 2024 LinkedIn article written by Mimi Turner and Jann Schwarz, both with The B2B Institute. I understand The B2B Institute is planning to publish a report or paper discussing this research later this year.)
The B2B Institute Study examined the attitudes and behaviors of hidden buyers and target buyers using definitions of those terms similar to those used in the Edelman/LinkedIn study. The study found that making a "safe" purchase decision is a primary driver for hidden buyers.
Hidden buyers care more than target buyers about factors such as brand reliability and "peace of mind." (See the graphic accompanying "Finding #2" in the LinkedIn article.)
About two-thirds of hidden buyers and target buyers said they would prefer products or services that "provide peace of mind without career advancement" over products or services that offer "business growth that involves potential career uncertainty."
The B2B Institute Study also found that a strong, well-known brand is important to both hidden buyers and target buyers, but is more influential with hidden buyers.
Eighty-one percent (81%) of the study participants said the brand they ultimately bought was known to everyone or almost everyone in the buying group at the start of the purchase process.
Hidden buyers are 31% more likely to reject brands they don't know and 70% more likely to reject brands that aren't well-known to other members of the buying group.
My Take
These two studies present starkly different perspectives regarding the tendency of B2B hidden buyers to make "safe" purchase decisions and the influence that brand has with hidden buyers.
I suggest that most of these differences can be attributed to differences in the focus and design of the underlying surveys. The B2B Institute Study focused on high-consideration, high-value technology purchases by large enterprises. Sixty-four percent (64%) of the survey respondents in this study were with companies having more than 10,000 employees.
The survey used in the Edelman/LinkedIn thought leadership study had very different survey demographics. In fact, 48% of those survey respondents were with companies having 200 or fewer employees.
Several other recent studies have highlighted the preference of most B2B buyers for safe purchase decisions and the important role that brand plays in B2B buying decisions.
Under these circumstances, I think the findings of the B2B Institute Study provide a more accurate picture of real-world B2B buying.
Top image courtesy of Hans Splinter via Flickr (CC).
(This is the third of three posts discussing the use of environmental claims in marketing. The first two posts in the series can be found here and here. This post describes how marketers can make environmental claims more compelling for potential buyers and thus more effective at driving revenue growth.)
Many marketers at companies offering sustainable products or services have been featuring environmental messages prominently in their marketing campaigns, and this shouldn't be surprising. After all, numerous surveys have found that most people are concerned about the environment and support actions aimed at improving environmental sustainability.
But many surveys have also revealed a substantial and persistent disconnect between the views people express about sustainability in surveys and their actual buying behaviors. This say-do gap can be attributed to several factors, including:
The failure of some surveys to capture how important sustainability is to survey respondents compared to other factors that influence their purchase decisions
The higher cost of many sustainable products
How convenient it is to purchase sustainable products (compared to "non-sustainable" alternatives)
While all these factors have contributed to the say-do gap in specific instances, marketers also bear some of the responsibility for the gap because we haven't consistently communicated the benefits of sustainability in ways that produce changes in buying behaviors.
Recent Research Provides Important Insights
Making sustainability an effective marketing tool has been a tough challenge because there hasn't been much research on what kinds of sustainability claims are most appealing to potential customers. However, two recent studies have provided several important data points on this issue.
The Public Inc. Survey
The first study is a 2024 survey conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Public Inc. (the "Public Inc. Survey"). This survey was conducted July 11-24, 2024 with a nationally representative sample of 1,510 US adults and 1,508 Canadian adults.
For this research, NYU and Edelman partnered with nine consumer brands from various industries. The researchers conducted a survey with a sample of the US general population and asked respondents for each brand to rate the appeal of 30-35 marketing claims, which included a mix of conventional product claims and environmental claims.
The researchers used two robust survey techniques to obtain an appeal score for each claim and to identify the combination of claims that produced the maximum overall appeal.
The Formula for Effective Sustainability Marketing
Collectively, the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study provide robust evidence about the attributes that make sustainability claims appealing to potential customers. They also identify two steps that you must take if you want to be successful at using sustainability claims in your marketing efforts.
Focus on the Right Goal
First, you must always remember that your primary objective is to drive increased sales of a sustainable product or products, not to evangelize the cause of sustainability.
This distinction is critical because it largely determines which sustainability claims you will use and how you will frame those claims.
The focus on increasing sales is not solely a matter of economic self-interest. The surest way to advance sustainability is to increase sales of sustainable products. As the authors of the NYU-Edelman Study report wrote: ". . . consumer demand will be a key driver for companies to scale investments at the pace necessary to combat climate change and other urgent issues."
Recognize the Diversity of Your Target Audience
The target market for your sustainable products - and therefore the target audience for your marketing campaigns - will consist of potential buyers with substantially different levels of interest in, and commitment to, sustainability. So, your sustainability claims must take this diversity into account.
The Public Inc. Survey identified five consumer segments based on the percentage of their purchases that are conscious, i.e., purchases of "products or services made with consideration for social, ethical, or environmental factors."
The researchers found that only 9% of the surveyed consumers made conscious purchases at least 75% of the time. Forty-five percent (45%) of the surveyed consumers made conscious purchases less than 50% of the time.
Three Ways to Make Sustainability More Appealing
Based on the findings of the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study, there are three steps you can take to make sustainability claims more compelling for potential buyers.
Step 1 - Link sustainability claims to "conventional" product performance claims
The NYU-Edelman Study evaluated the appeal of sustainability claims and conventional product performance claims (which the study report calls "category claims").
In this study, product performance claims were found to be "paramount and non-negotiable" and were more compelling than stand-alone sustainability claims.
However, the researchers also found that claims that combined sustainability and product performance elements extended brand reach and were the most compelling claims tested.
Step 2 - Make sustainability personal
Both the Public Inc. Survey and the NYU-Edelman Study found that sustainability claims were more appealing when they expressed how sustainability provides tangible benefits to the buyer or to the people or things the buyer cares most about.
Specifically, the NYU-Edelman Study found that the surveyed consumers cared most about themselves and their families (health, well-being, etc.), saving money, local farms and farmers, their children and future generations, and sustainable sourcing.
Conversely, both studies found that science-oriented claims like "carbon neutral," "net zero," and "bio-degradable" did not perform well with consumers. The NYU-Edelman Study did find that the performance of science-oriented claims is improved when they are tied to a personal "reason to care."
Step 3 - Emphasize the aspects of sustainability that deliver present-day benefits
The Public Inc. Survey found that consumers are more likely to respond to sustainability claims that focus on immediate or short-term benefits.
As the report's authors put it: "They [consumers] want to know how their purchase makes their life better or easier now, not in some distant future."
A Final Point
Marketers who include environmental claims in their marketing communications must ensure that they have adequate scientific evidence to support those claims. And the same is true for environmental claims used on product packaging.
Without such supporting evidence, you run the risk that your company can be accused of greenwashing, which refers to making false or misleading claims about the environmental impacts of a product or company to make it look more environmentally beneficial than it actually is.
In the United States, the Federal Trade Commission is the federal agency primarily responsible for regulating environmental marketing claims, and all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia have laws prohibiting false or deceptive advertising that can be used to combat greenwashing.
Equally important, the number of private class-action lawsuits involving allegations of greenwashing is increasing, and some have resulted in the award of substantial financial judgments against companies found to have engaged in greenwashing.
The important lesson for marketers is: Only make an environmental claim if you have the evidence to back it up.
The top image is a version of the universal recycling symbol and is in the public domain. Accessed via Wikimedia Commons.
(The political backlash against ESG and other aspects of so-called "woke capitalism" is creating a conundrum for some marketers. On one hand, the backlash is real, and marketers would rather not attract the attention of anti-ESG partisans. On the other hand, recent research continues to show that a majority of people are concerned about the environment and generally support actions aimed at improving sustainability. In this post, I'll discuss the current state of support and opposition to ESG, and in my next post, I'll describe how marketers can make sustainability messaging more effective.)
The ESG Backlash is Real . . .
The political backlash against ESG, the practice of using environmental, social and governance factors to assess a company's performance and impact on society, is undeniable.
Earlier this year, President Trump issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to shut down diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and end DEI performance requirements for federal contractors and grant recipients.
At least 21 US states have enacted anti-ESG laws in some form.
Several high-profile US companies - including Meta, Walmart, Target, McDonald's, Ford, Citi, Harley Davidson, and Tractor Supply - have scaled back or otherwise modified their ESG policies.
While various versions of "corporate social responsibility" have existed for decades, the modern ESG construct entered the business mainstream following the publication of an influential 2004 UN report titled "Who Cares Wins."
In the following decade, numerous research studies were published showing that sizable majorities of consumers and business buyers were placing great importance on the environmental and social track record of companies when making purchase decisions.
As a result, some marketing leaders became enamored with "purpose marketing" and began incorporating environmental and social claims and themes into their marketing campaigns.
It's not surprising that the current political environment is causing many marketing leaders to question the wisdom of using ESG-related messaging in their campaigns.
While a healthy dose of caution is warranted, most companies should not abandon ESG-related messaging altogether. That's because not all ESG-related marketing messages are equally polarizing.
But It's Not Universal
ESG is an umbrella concept that covers a wide range of issues and initiatives, and public attitudes toward those issues and initiatives vary greatly. So far, the most intense public opposition to ESG has tended to focus on social initiatives such as DEI.
In contrast, several recent research surveys have shown that most people are concerned about environmental issues and want to buy products and services that are environmentally sustainable. One of the more recent and most robust surveys I've reviewed is the "2025 Conscious Consumer Report" by Public Inc. (the "Public Inc. Survey").
The Public Inc. Survey
The Public Inc. Survey was an online survey of more than 3,000 adults (ages 18+) in the United States and Canada conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Public Inc. The survey was conducted July 11-24, 2004 among a nationally representative sample of 1.510 US adults and 1,508 Canadian adults. Survey data was weighted by age, gender and region using the latest available census data for each country.
The report states that the precision of the survey was measured using a credibility interval and that the survey is accurate (overall) to within +/- 2.0 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
The results of the Public Inc. Survey reveal broad interest in environmental issues and widespread support for sustainability.
76% of US respondents agreed that climate change poses a serious threat
70% of US respondents said that companies should be doing more in terms of sustainability and ethical best practices
79% of US respondents believe that being purposeful in how they spend their money is one of the best ways to motivate companies to change
68% of all respondents agreed that sustainable products improve the health and well-being of their children and family
65% of all respondents agreed that sustainable products improve their own lives
58% of all respondents said they would pay more for products and services that are ethical and sustainable
Perhaps most important, fully three-quarters of the respondents identified themselves as environmentally conscious consumers.
At first glance, these survey findings suggest that using sustainability claims in marketing should be an easy decision. Unfortunately, however, these findings don't tell the whole story.
First, it's important to recognize that these findings may overstate the breadth (or at least the intensity) of public support for sustainability. And second, other findings in the Public Inc. Survey suggest that the sustainability claims marketers have been using have not been all that effective at driving increased sales of sustainable products and services.
I'll address these issues in my next post, and I'll describe four attributes that will make sustainability claims more effective at driving revenue growth.
Many marketing pundits are advising B2B marketers to connect with potential buyers on an emotional level. And at first glance, this advice appears to be sound.
In their often-cited paper, "The Long and Short of It," advertising effectiveness gurus Les Binet and Peter Field wrote: "Emotional campaigns . . . produce considerably more powerful long-term business effects than rational persuasion campaigns."
But emotional messaging alone is not a guarantee of marketing success. While most successful marketing messages will evoke an emotional or psychological response in potential buyers, not all messages that induce an emotional response will produce desired business outcomes. Here's why.
Emotional Marketing that Missed the Mark
Budweiser's 2015 Lost Dog Super Bowl Ad
Budweiser's Clydesdales have become one of the most iconic images in U.S. advertising. The Clydesdales debuted in a TV ad during the 1986 Super Bowl, and they've appeared in numerous Super Bowl ads since. Dogs (and puppies) have also been prominently featured in many of these classic ads.
Such was the case with the "Lost Dog" ad that aired during the 2015 Super Bowl. This ad featured the Clydesdales and an adorable yellow Labrador puppy. Here's the ad.
Source: TrueColors via YouTube
The Lost Dog ad took top honors in USA Today's Ad Meter poll for the 2015 Super Bowl and made Budweiser a back-to-back winner. The 2015 ad was a "sequel" to Budweiser's 2014 Clydesdale/puppy Super Bowl ad, which won the USA Today poll for that year.
Given the popularity of the Lost Dog ad, you would think Budweiser considered it an overwhelming success. Well, not quite.
In a 2015 article in Advertising Age(subscription required), Jorn Socquet, then the USA Chief Marketing Officer at Anheuser-Busch InBev, offered this assessment of Budweiser's 2015 Super Bowl ads: "Budweiser aired two very different spots in last February's Super Bowl, and we learned that content focused on the quality of our beer was most effective in generating sales."
Socquet went on to say that while everyone loved the puppies, "they have zero impact on beer sales. Those ads I wouldn't air again because they don't sell beer."
Coca-Cola's 1979 "Hey Kid, Catch" Ad
Coca-Cola's "Hey Kid, Catch" TV ad debuted in the fall of 1979 and was re-aired during the 1980 Super Bowl. It depicted an encounter between the Pittsburgh Steelers' Hall of Fame defensive end, "Mean" Joe Greene, and a young fan. Here's the ad.
Source: stiggerpao via YouTube
This ad ranks high on the emotional content scale, and it was highly regarded in professional advertising/marketing circles. The ad won a Clio Award for being one of the best television commercials of 1979, and it has been listed as one of the top ads of all time by multiple sources. The ad gained international notoriety when it was re-filmed in several other countries using local sports figures.
As with the Budweiser ad, you would think Coca-Cola viewed this ad as successful, but again, this assumption wouldn't be accurate.
Sergio Zyman was the Chief Marketing Officer of The Coca-Cola Company when the Hey Kid, Catch ad was aired. In his 1999 book, The End of Marketing As We Know It, Zyman explained his decision to pull the ad off the air.
"America loves it! People talk about it for weeks. The critics rave about it. . . The ad is so hot that Coca-Cola marketers all over the world want to translate it . . . The company should run it forever, right? Wrong. Coke doesn't run this ad forever. In fact, Coke pulls the ad altogether and launches a new campaign . . . Why would Coke do that? . . . The answer is simple. I know because I am the person who did it. My job as a marketer for The Coca-Cola Company was to get people out of their houses and into restaurants and stores to buy more Coca-Cola products - and the ad just wasn't doing that."
Why Didn't They Work?
What went wrong with these highly popular and critically acclaimed ads? Both were designed to touch viewers' emotions, and they clearly succeeded. So, why didn't they drive increased sales for Budweiser and Coke?
Why Motivation Is Critical
The short answer is that they were high on emotion but low on motivation.
The Budweiser and Coke ads illustrate a principle that is often underappreciated by marketers: Emotion can be a powerful tool in marketing, but emotional messaging without a motivational message won't produce the desired business results.
Basic concepts from the decision sciences explain why motivation is so critical to marketing success.
The Science of Motivation
Recent advances in the decision sciences have established that motivation is the primary driver of all human behavior.
The American Psychological Association defines motivation as "a person's willingness to exert physical or mental effort in pursuit of a goal or outcome." In a business context, a goal can be to solve a problem, satisfy a need, or get a particular "job" done.
As humans, we are motivated to pursue a goal because we expect to receive a reward if the goal is achieved. Neuroscience research has shown that the human brain has a "reward system" that's activated when our brain processes sensory inputs that signal a reward we value.
Research has also shown that our brain automatically scans our environment for information that aligns with our goals. So, in essence, our brain causes us to pay attention to information that's closely related to our goals.
Goals can be categorized in several ways, but two categories are particularly important for marketers. First, goals can be functional or psychological.
Functional goals relate directly to the core task or job a potential buyer wants or needs to get done. If my computer printer dies, my functional goal will be to determine what kind of printer I need and acquire a replacement. Functional goals can usually be described in terms of the features or attributes of an existing product or service category.
Psychological goals are more general and arise out of basic psychological needs that humans are always motivated to satisfy. Such basic needs include security (safety, trust, etc.), autonomy (success, superiority, power, etc.), and excitement (adventure, fun, etc.)
Goals are also either explicit or implicit.
Explicit goals are those we set and pursue at a conscious level.
Implicit goals operate at a subconscious level. We are motivated to pursue implicit goals even when we aren't consciously thinking about them.
Implications for Marketing
These principles of human motivation and decision-making have major implications for B2B marketers. The most important lesson is that the ability of any marketing message to resonate with a potential buyer is determined not by how emotional the message is, but rather by how closely the message aligns with the buyer's goals.
Therefore, your most critical job as a marketer is to craft marketing messages that will build mental associations between your company/brand/product/service and the goals of your potential buyers.
Using emotion in marketing messages is powerful because it makes your messages more memorable. That's particularly important in brand marketing because at any given point in time, most of your potential buyers, usually more than 90%, aren't actively engaged in a buying process.
You're communicating with these "out-of-market" buyers in the present, and you're hoping they will remember your message at some point in the future when they're ready to begin a serious buying process.
The bottom line is that effective marketing will convey the right motivational message in an emotionally engaging way.
An Example of Motivation Well Used
W.W. Grainger, Inc., the Fortune 500 provider of industrial MRO supplies, is currently running TV ads that illustrate how marketing messages can effectively tap into the goals that drive human motivation in an emotionally engaging way.
Several Grainger ads use the same overall theme, and some of the ads are available on YouTube. I've included links to a few of the ads at the end of this post, and I suggest you take a few minutes to view these videos. Here's one of the ads.
Source: Grainger via YouTube
To be clear, I have no relationship with Grainger, nor do I have any "inside information" about the strategy that led to the development of the ads. My comments are based on an analysis of the ads themselves.
The most important feature of all the ads is that front-line maintenance personnel are made the "heroes" of the narrative. The visuals show men and women in blue-collar working clothes, usually wearing hard hats, not executives or managers in business suits.
In the above video, the hero is portrayed as someone who always sees the big picture, not just a maintenance job, and who is capable of handling "whatever comes his way and has Grainger on his side."
This narrative appeals directly to the human psychological goals of being viewed as competent and having one's value to his or her organization fully appreciated. The ad also directly links Grainger to the achievement of those goals.
The tagline used in all of the ads - "For the ones who get it done" - captures the central theme of the ads in a memorable, concise, and effective way.
The key point illustrated by the Budweiser, Coke, and Grainger ads is: Emotion will make marketing messages memorable, but motivation is what makes them commercially effective.
Over the past several months, I've come to believe that we need a new operating model of B2B marketing, one that more accurately reflects how businesspeople actually make buying decisions. My conclusion is based on four proven truths about B2B buying.
At any given time, only a small percentage of a company's potential customers are actively engaged in a buying process for products or services like the company provides.
A buying trigger is almost always required to prompt potential buyers to initiate a buying process, and marketing activities alone usually won't be sufficient to trigger a buying process.
When a buying trigger occurs, most business decision-makers will create a mental list of potential vendors they believe are worth considering. This initial consideration set is formed before any research is done, and it's based on the mental impressions a buyer has formed from past interactions and experiences.
Most business buyers make most of their purchases from companies in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)
These ground truths reveal some of the major disconnects between current B2B marketing practices and the real-world behaviors of business buyers. Today, for example, many B2B marketing programs are designed to persuade potential buyers to begin a buying process, even though the evidence shows such programs are largely ineffective.
Companies are also spending substantial resources on programs designed to engage decision-makers who have already begun a buying process. In contrast, B2B marketers are investing far less in programs designed to get their company into buyers' consideration sets, even though that's often decisive for winning business.
The Real Goal of Marketing to "Potential Future Buyers"
If marketing can't usually persuade out-of-market buyers to begin a buying process, what should marketers try to accomplish with these individuals, and what kind of marketing works best for this purpose?
Numerous studies have shown that a strong brand will significantly influence the future decisions of out-of-market buyers, but marketers need more specific guidance to create effective programs for this audience.
To achieve success with out-of-market buyers, the starting point is to recognize that the people we call out-of-market buyers aren't actually "buyers" in any meaningful sense of that term. They may become buyers in the future, but they aren't buyers today. Therefore, they shouldn't be expected to behave like people who are actively engaged in a buying process.
In these circumstances, your ultimate objective when marketing to potential future buyers is to have your company included in their initial consideration set when they become active buyers.
To increase your odds of achieving that objective, you need to use marketing messages and tactics that will increase the mental availability of your company.
The concept of mental availability is closely associated with Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In his book, How Brands Grow, Sharp defined mental availability as ". . . the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."
Mental availability is, therefore, different from simple brand awareness. It refers to the likelihood that a business decision-maker will think of your company when he or she experiences a buying trigger and decides to begin an active buying process.
Message Attributes that Boost Mental Availability
Your marketing messages must exhibit three attributes to create mental availability.
They must clearly link your company to the needs or challenges your potential buyers are most likely to experience.
They must be memorable. You're communicating with out-of-market buyers at a given point in time, and you're hoping they'll remember your messages at a future point in time when they perceive a need and are ready to begin a buying process.
They must be easy to consume, and most should be brief.* Remember that out-of-market buyers aren't actively looking for the information your messages are providing. So, they won't be inclined to spend much time or effort consuming content about a topic that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.
I discussed these attributes in more detail in this recent post.
The Takeaway
Initial consideration sets will include the companies that potential buyers mentally associate with specific needs. It's these associations that create mental availability. Therefore, your job when marketing to out-of-market buyers is to build and refresh the memory structures that link your company to the needs or challenges your potential buyers are most likely to encounter.
*****
*There are, of course, exceptions to every rule, and that applies to the rule that marketing messages for out-of-market buyers should be brief and easy to consume. High-quality thought leadership content can also be very effective with out-of-market buyers. In the 2024 B2B Thought Leadership Impact Report by Edelman and LinkedIn, over 75% of the surveyed B2B decision-makers and C-suite executives said that a piece of thought leadership content has led them to research a product or service they weren't previously considering, and 54% said that an organization's thought leadership content has prompted them to research the organization's offers or capabilities.
Image courtesy of Mike Lawrence (www.creditdebitpro.com) via Flickr (CC).
Over the past two-plus decades, account-based marketing (ABM) has evolved from a niche marketing discipline used mainly by large IT services firms to become a core component of marketing at many B2B companies.
The Information Technology Services Marketing Association (ITSMA) (now part of Momentum) coined the term "account-based marketing" in 2003, and ABM soon became a central focus of its research and consulting.
ITSMA defines account-based marketing as ". . . a strategic approach to designing and executing highly-targeted and personalized marketing programs to drive business growth and impact with specific, named accounts." [Source]
The popularity of account-based marketing has grown dramatically because B2B marketers perceive that ABM is highly effective. In the 2023 Global State of Account-Based Marketing survey by ITSMA and ABM Leadership Alliance, 81% of the respondents said ABM programs deliver a higher return on investment than "traditional marketing initiatives."
As originally conceived, ABM was viewed as a special approach to marketing that would be used with a company's most valuable customers. Within a few years, however, the successes achieved by early ABM adopters prompted marketers to look for ways to scale account-based marketing so that it could be cost-effectively used with a broader range of accounts.
In its 2016 Account-Based Marketing Benchmarking Survey, ITSMA documented the rise of three distinct types of ABM - strategic ABM (a/k/a one-to-one ABM), ABM Lite (a/k/a one-to-few ABM), and programmatic ABM (a/k/a one-to-many ABM).
This three-part framework has become the standard way to describe account-based marketing, but the reality today is that one-to-few and one-to-many ABM aren't materially different from state-of-the-art conventional outbound B2B demand generation marketing.
This is not true for strategic ABM, which embodies a very different marketing approach. With strategic ABM, marketing activities and programs are components of a multi-faceted management plan for a single customer account, and they are customized for that account.
Strategic ABM Still Rules
While one-to-few and one-to-many ABM have broadened the reach of account-based marketing, the linchpin of any successful ABM initiative is still strategic ABM.
Strategic ABM remains the most widely-used type of account-based marketing, and most ABM thought leaders and practitioners agree that strategic ABM - if done well - will generate a higher ROI than one-to-few or one-to-many ABM. Put simply, it's hard to have a high-performing ABM program if don't master strategic ABM.
The functional centerpiece of a successful strategic ABM initiative is the account management plan. With strategic ABM, a separate plan is developed for each account in the initiative. This is the first distinguishing characteristic of strategic ABM. It's truly one-to-one.
An effective strategic ABM account plan is also distinguished by the process used to develop it and the content it contains.
Developing the Plan(s)
Strategic ABM is often implemented in companies that already have a key account management (KAM) program. Key account programs have existed in some large B2B companies since the late 1950s. Early KAM programs were usually led by a sales executive, and their primary focus was managing sales opportunities.
The discipline of key account management has evolved substantially over the past six decades. Many companies now have well-developed KAM programs that are designed and executed by cross-functional account teams, and led by dedicated, senior-level account managers.
Today, the best KAM programs are focused on identifying longer-term growth opportunities in the account and maintaining the long-term health of the customer relationship, as well as on shorter-term sales opportunities.
In these circumstances, strategic ABM is essentially synonymous with key account management. A marketer becomes a member of the account management teams (usually no more than 5) and brings marketing expertise to the formulation of the account management plans. ABM activities are fully integrated into the account management plan so that the company has a single, cohesive strategy and plan for each key account.
Content of the Plan(s)
An effective strategic ABM/KAM account management plan is essentially a full-fledged business plan that is focused on an individual customer. The objective of the account planning process is to formulate a strategy and set of actions that will (a) protect the current revenue you are earning from the customer, and (b) enable you to grow the revenue you earn from the customer.
I used the term "business plan" intentionally because an effective strategic ABM/KAM plan is similar to the kind of business plan you would develop for any strategic move, such as the introduction of a new product or service, or an adjacent market expansion.
You can easily find dozens of business plan templates by performing a simple Google search. The framework that I've found works well for an account management plan contains six major components.
Customer Description
The objective of this portion of the plan is to provide a comprehensive picture of the customer's business operations, competitive position, organizational structure, and financial performance.
This portion of the plan should describe:
The market(s) the customer serves and the economic attractiveness and growth potential of those markets
The products and/or services the customer offers
The types of individuals and/or organizations the customer primarily serves
The customer's principal competitors
The customer's current and recent financial performance
The customer's business strategy and strategic priorities
Any recent or planned structural changes (expansions or contractions)
The customer's senior leadership team
If the customer is a public company, much of this information, including financial performance data, can be obtained from the customer's regulatory filings. If the customer is privately owned, financial data can be more challenging to obtain.
A mindset that I've found useful when preparing this portion of an account plan is to imagine that you are a stock analyst who is preparing an evaluation of the customer for investment purposes.
Current Relationship
This portion of the plan is where you describe your current position with the customer. What products and/or services do you sell to the customer? How long have you been doing business with the customer? How has the revenue you earn from the customer changed over the past 2-3 years? Who are your principal competitors for the customer's business? How strong is your current relationship with the customer? Most importantly, what "share of wallet" are you currently earning from the customer?
Relationship Objectives
This portion of the plan details your objectives for the relationship with the customer. Most of these objectives will be about increasing the revenue you earn from the customer, and those objectives are usually best expressed in terms of increasing the share of customer spend you earn in relevant areas.
You may also want to include more "operational" objectives. For example, if the customer has several business units and you are currently doing business with only some of those business units, you may have an objective to win business from a new business unit.
Threats/Barriers to Success
This is where you identify the events or circumstances that could throw a wrench into your plan. Obviously, you can't foresee every possible threat or barrier, but if you have deep customer insights and a realistic picture of your company's capabilities, you can identify many of the plausible events or circumstances that could derail your success.
Measurable Outcomes and Milestones
Every account management plan should include specific outcomes that are quantitatively measurable. Obviously, these outcomes will include your ultimate relationship objectives. For example: "Increase the revenue we earn from XXX by 15% in our next fiscal year." You should also include measurable outcomes that are milestones or leading indicators of progress toward your ultimate objectives.
Action Plan
This portion of the account plan details the actions you will take to achieve your relationship objectives. Your account plan should identify who is responsible for each action and specify a target completion date. This level of detail will enable the members of your account management team to organize their work, hold each other accountable, and track progress toward success.
Final Thoughts
It should be clear that developing this type of account business plan isn't a trivial undertaking. It requires a significant amount of time and effort, especially the first time it's done for a customer. That's why strategic ABM/KAM initiatives should be reserved for your most valuable customers.
The deep customer insights and level of focus resulting from the account planning process also go a long way to explaining why well-designed and executed strategic ABM/KAM programs deliver outstanding value and ROI.
If your company isn't in a potential buyer's initial consideration set, your odds of making a sale are no greater than 17%.*
To improve your chances of being included in buyers' initial consideration sets, you must increase your company's mental availability with prospective buyers.
Boosting mental availability requires marketing messaging and content that links your company to buyer needs and is memorable and easy to consume.
Why Initial Consideration Sets Matter
Creating an initial consideration set is an integral part of most B2B buying decisions, but most popular models of the B2B buying process ignore this pivotal step.
When a business person perceives a need to address an issue that may require a purchase, about 80% of potential buyers will create a mental list of companies they feel are worth considering before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers who purchase will ultimately buy from a company in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)
A potential buyer's initial consideration set is based on mental impressions that he or she has formed through touchpoints such as previous experience with a company, marketing messages, news reports, and conversations with colleagues and friends.
So, the perceptions that determine which companies will be included in the initial consideration set exist in the buyer's mind before he or she starts an active buying process.
What Is Mental Availability?
To increase the odds that your company will be included in your buyers' initial consideration sets, you must reach those buyers with the right messaging and content before they become active, in-market buyers.
More specifically, your objective is to increase your company's mental availability with your potential buyers.
The mental availability concept has been popularized by Byron Sharp and his colleagues at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. In his landmark book, How Brands Grow, Sharp provided a simple definition of mental availability: "Mental availability/brand salience is the propensity for a brand to be noticed or thought of in buying situations."
Mental availability is different from general brand awareness. It describes the likelihood that a potential buyer will think of your company in the context of a specific buying situation.
Many marketing thought leaders argue that effective brand marketing is the key to creating mental availability. While this is generally true, it doesn't provide specific guidance about what kinds of messages and content will be effective for increasing mental availability.
Messaging and content must meet three requirements to boost mental availability.
Link Content to Buyer Needs
First, the messaging and content must clearly link your company to specific buyer needs. As noted earlier, when a potential buyer perceives a need that may require a purchase, the buyer will create an initial consideration set of companies that he or she believes may be able to address the need.
The initial consideration set will include companies the potential buyer mentally associates with the specific need he or she is experiencing. It's these associations that create mental availability. Therefore, your job is to build and refresh the memory structures that connect your company to the specific needs your potential buyers are most likely to experience.
You can't predict what specific need will prompt a particular buyer to move into the market. Therefore, to increase mental availability, you need to build and refresh memory links that will connect your company to all the important buyer needs your company can address.
With broader mental availability, you increase the likelihood that your company will be included in the initial consideration sets of a larger number of potential buyers.
Make Content Memorable
Marketing messaging and content must also be memorable to increase mental availability. When your goal is to boost mental availability, most of the potential buyers you are targeting won't be ready to begin a buying process.
You communicate with those potential buyers at a given point in time, and you hope they will remember your message at a future point in time when they perceive a need and are ready to start a serious buying process.
As discussed earlier, your messaging and content must clearly link your company to the needs your potential buyers are likely to experience, but how you express those associations is critical to making your messaging and content memorable.
In B2B, we tend to describe the benefits of doing business with our company in rational, "businesslike" terms - and sometimes in technical, quantitative, or economic terms.
To make your messaging and content more memorable, you need to capture in a visceral way what a potential buyer with a particular problem is experiencing, and you need to describe how your company can make that problem "go away."
Make Content Easy to Consume
The third important requirement for content that will effectively increase mental availability is that it must be easy to consume. By "easy to consume," I mean that the content doesn't require potential buyers to expend much cognitive energy.
This attribute is important because most members of your target audience are not actively engaged in a buying process and therefore won't be inclined to spend much time and effort consuming content that (at the moment) isn't a high priority.
As a practical matter, this means that most mental availability messages and content should be relatively short. That's why the 30-second or one-minute TV ad has been a staple of brand marketing for decades.
In B2B, we have the leeway to use somewhat longer content to build mental availability because most business people believe that keeping current on industry trends and innovative business practices is important for their career progression. Therefore, many business people will be willing to invest more time and effort to consume content if it's relevant to their work or career objectives.
The Bottom Line
If you want to drive revenue growth, you need to get your company into the initial consideration sets of more potential buyers. To accomplish this goal, you must boost your company's mental availability with potential buyers, and that requires the right kind of marketing messaging and content.
*****
*Research has shown that between 40% and 60% of prospective B2B deals do not result in a purchase. (Dixon and McKenna, 2022) Research has also found that about 80% of B2B buyers have a set of prospective vendors in mind before they do any research. And 90% of those buyers ultimately buy from a vendor in their initial consideration set. (Bain & Co. and Google, 2022)
Let's be optimistic and say that only 40% of prospective deals do not result in a purchase. Of the 60% that do result in a purchase, 48% of the prospects will create an initial consideration set (60% x 80%), and 43% will ultimately buy from a company in the initial consideration set (48% x 90%). That leaves only 17% of prospects that will buy from a company that was not in the initial consideration set. (60% - 43%).
*****
Image courtesy of Affen Ajlfe (www.modup.net) via Flickr (PD).
The beginning of a new year is what behavioral scientists call a temporal landmark, a date that is more meaningful than others. Temporal landmarks often prompt us to make significant life changes or commit to pursuing new goals.
If you doubt the power of temporal landmarks, just consider how often we make "New Year's resolutions" to lose weight or begin a regular exercise program.
Like many marketers, I used the final few weeks of 2024 to reflect on what happened during the year and plan for 2025. My objective for this blog has always been to provide information and insights that are timely, thought-provoking, and useful. To achieve this goal, the content of this blog needs to evolve to account for the always-changing landscape of B2B marketing.
Another Year Dominated By AI
Artificial intelligence, specifically generative AI, was the hottest topic in marketing in 2024, as it had been in 2023. OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022 triggered an arm's race among technology companies to develop generative AI capabilities.
Spending on AI exploded in 2023 and continued at a blistering pace last year. In a November Forbes article, Beth Kindig, the CEO and Lead Tech Analyst of I/O Fund, wrote that AI-driven capital spending by four tech industry behemoths - Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon - will total about $240 billion in 2024, an increase of more than 50% compared to 2023.
Ms. Kindig's article also noted that AI-related capital spending will likely continue at these nosebleed levels into 2025 as the big tech companies build out AI infrastructure to meet demand that currently exceeds supply.
The capabilities of the large language models that power generative AI also improved exponentially in 2024. For a great overview of these technological advances, I recommend you watch this video by Christopher Penn, the Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights.
Generative AI is already having an impact on many aspects of business including marketing, even though we are still in the fairly early stages of AI adoption. AI will have an even greater impact on marketing this year as more AI-enabled software applications become available, the adoption of AI increases, and marketers become more adept at leveraging AI's capabilities.
How This Blog Will Change in 2025
I plan to make a few changes in my approach to this blog in 2025. Most of these changes are based on my decision to apply greater selectivity to the content I publish here. This means I will probably publish fewer posts in 2025 than in previous years.
Since 2023, I've published three types of posts here - research round-ups, book reviews, and general information/opinion posts. Here's what I'm planning for each of these types of posts in 2025.
Research Round-Ups
These posts typically include brief descriptions of two to four research studies. In 2024, my three most popular posts were research round-ups.
Most of the generally available research about B2B marketing consists of surveys of marketers. While this kind of research can be useful, research that focuses on the thinking and behaviors of business buyers is even more valuable.
This year, I'll be looking for surveys of business buyers, and I'll also be looking for studies based on research methodologies other than surveys, such as the study I discussed in my most popular post of 2024.
Book Reviews
I published eight book reviews in 2024, and while no book reviews made the 2024 "top 10" list, I believe books remain an important knowledge resource for marketers. I'll continue to publish book reviews this year, but I plan to be more selective when choosing books to review. Therefore, I'll probably publish fewer book reviews in 2025 than in 2024.
General Information/Opinion Posts
In January 2023, I published a post that made the following argument:
"Marketing success in 2023 and beyond will depend on marketers' ability to leverage the capabilities of technology and data science and to effectively apply the principles of behavioral science that describe how people make decisions. These two distinct, but complementary, abilities now constitute the yin and yang of high-performance marketing."
This argument is even more true today than it was two years ago. The smart use of artificial intelligence has the potential to drive remarkable gains in marketing productivity, but those gains won't be realized unless marketers also design and implement strategies that reflect how business buyers actually make purchase decisions.
I've published several posts discussing the cognitive aspects of B2B buying over the past few years, and I'll continue to address those topics in 2025.
Leveraging behavioral science principles in marketing is necessary, but some marketers believe more is needed. A relatively small but growing cadre of B2B marketers are arguing that the current paradigm of B2B marketing is out-of-step with how most B2B buying decisions are actually made.
These marketers contend that we need a fundamentally different approach to B2B marketing, one that is grounded in an accurate understanding of real-world market dynamics and buyer decision-making.
I largely agree with this point of view so I'll be discussing this topic in several posts over the next few months.
The 2024 update was based on interviews with 3,528 business buyers. Dentsu provided the interviewed buyers 30 decision drivers and asked them to rate the drivers based on how much influence each driver had on their buying decisions.
The three most influential decision drivers identified by the buyers were all characterized by Dentsu as personal drivers, and the firm noted that 2024 was the first time personal decision drivers outweighed functional drivers in overall importance. This finding led Dentsu to assert, "Brand has never been more important in B2B."
Other recent studies have also highlighted the importance of having a strong B2B brand. For example, Bain & Co. and Google surveyed 1,208 business buyers at U.S. companies in 2022. From 80% to 90% of the respondents said they had a set of vendors in mind before they did any research, and 90% of those respondents said they ultimately chose a vendor on their day-one list.
Therese Parkes with Google wrote that this behavior "means brand building and remaining top of mind during this process is essential."
The Great Debate
The relative importance of brand building vs. demand generation (a/k/a "performance marketing") has been the subject of a long-running debate in the B2B marketing community.
For nearly two decades, most B2B marketers have been primarily focused on improving the performance of their demand generation programs., and most of the B2B marketing literature published during that period was also focused on demand gen marketing technologies and techniques.
But despite this lopsided focus, interest in brand building has recently been increasing. Over the past couple of years, I've noticed a growing number of articles, blog/LinkedIn posts, and other forms of content addressing the importance of having a strong brand in B2B.
This increased interest has been fueled by several factors. A growing number of B2B marketers have recognized that business buying decisions are usually driven as much by emotional and psychological factors as by rational thinking processes.
B2B marketers are also recognizing that a strong brand can improve the performance of demand generation marketing programs, reduce the price sensitivity of business buyers, and strengthen customer loyalty.
The Birth of Brand Management
Most of what we've learned about building strong brands originated in B2C companies. In the 1930s, Proctor & Gamble invented the business function that would come to be called brand management, and by the late 1950s, brand management practices had been widely adopted by U.S. consumer package goods (CPG) companies.
In 1974, the Association of National Advertisers estimated that 85% of U.S. CPG companies (and 93% of those with annual advertising expenditures of more than $10 million) had implemented brand management functions and practices. ("Lessons from nearly a century of the brand management system")
Marketing is a recognized academic discipline that's been widely taught at the university level for decades. However, Professor Kimberly A. Whitler at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business argues that there's a "theory-doing gap" in marketing education.
"Most undergraduate courses tend to be theory or concept based, with few using tools or workshops to teach students how to create, build, or construct successful brands. Consequently, the vast majority of marketers discover what marketing is, and how to create marketing strategies and plans, from their employers on the job."
In her research, Professor Whitler found that almost all of the companies that excel at developing C-level marketing leaders were from the CPG or retailing industry. She offered an explanation for this finding in Positioning for Advantage:
"What do these developers of C-level marketing talent have in common? They all have systematic and science-based systems, processes, and approaches to building superior brands . . . The marketers in these firms are typically profit and loss (P&L) leaders in their firms and play an upstream role, often being expected to lead the development of the strategic plans that will drive growth. This differs from the nearly 50 percent of companies that treat marketing as only a sales activity existing just to commercialize the products that other firm leaders create."
Brand Management for B2B
Given the B2C origin and evolution of brand management, it's not surprising that many B2B marketers don't have extensive experience with the discipline. However, it's clear that brand building is becoming an increasingly vital aspect of B2B marketing success.
I'm planning to publish a short series of posts discussing a few of the basic concepts and principles of brand management. These posts will barely scratch the surface of a complex topic, but I hope they will encourage B2B marketers to learn more.
Last month, Content Marketing Institute and MarketingProfs released selected findings from their 15th annual content marketing survey. This survey was conducted between June 25 and August 16, 2024, and generated 980 responses from B2B marketers located (mostly) in North America.
The annual CMI/MarketingProfs survey has been one of my go-to resources for more than a decade. As with earlier editions of the research, the latest survey provides valuable insights regarding how B2B companies are doing content marketing and what practices are critical to success.
I've been a long-time advocate of content marketing. I've published over 200 posts about content marketing since I launched this blog in 2010. Over my 20-year career in marketing, I've watched content marketing evolve from a niche marketing technique to a core component of marketing at most B2B and B2C companies.
Given its widespread adoption and proven strengths, it might seem odd to suggest that the time has come for marketers to think differently about content marketing. But a change is needed and, in fact, is overdue.
I'm not suggesting that content-focused marketing is no longer effective, but I am arguing that it's time to stop treating content marketing as a separate marketing discipline and start focusing on how to use the rich diversity of content to support marketing objectives that will drive strategic business outcomes.
A Quick Look at Content Marketing Evolution
The Gartner hype cycle was developed to track the maturity of emerging technologies, but it is also often used to describe the evolution of marketing techniques and practices. In this framework, a new marketing practice usually receives a huge amount of hype when it first appears, which leads to the spread of inflated expectations for the practice.
When a practice fails to meet these unreasonable expectations, many marketers become disillusioned with it, and some abandon it entirely. In time, however, some marketers develop more realistic expectations for the practice and begin to use it productively.
We also often see a second pattern in the evolution of marketing practices that runs alongside the Gartner hype cycle. When a new marketing practice begins to gain significant attention, a gaggle of "experts" soon appears to help companies adopt and use the practice.
These experts usually describe the practice as a new and distinct marketing discipline. Some argue that the new practice should replace other marketing methods and that the "old" rules of marketing no longer apply. Over time, however, astute marketers recognize that the fundamental objectives of marketing haven't changed, and they begin to view the new practice as a tool for achieving those objectives.
This pattern is clearly evident in the evolution of content marketing. When its popularity and use began to grow, we quickly came to view content marketing as a distinct marketing discipline. Overall, this was good because it fostered the rapid development of a substantial body of knowledge about how to do content marketing effectively. The downside of this approach is that it made it easy to view content marketing as an end unto itself.
The essence of content marketing is using informative or entertaining content to, as CMI put it, "attract and retain a clearly defined audience - and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action." Such content is the "fuel" for marketing programs that are designed to achieve a variety of marketing objectives.
Most strategic marketing objectives - such as revenue growth and increased market share - have remained largely unchanged for many years. Therefore, what we now call content marketing is about using a distinctive kind of content to achieve long-standing marketing goals.
Focusing on "content as a vehicle for achieving marketing objectives" rather than on "content marketing" may seem like an inconsequential difference, but it has meaningful implications. For one thing, it should inform how we approach marketing performance measurement.
Measuring the performance of content marketing programs has been a hot topic for several years, and numerous marketing pundits have offered measurement frameworks for this purpose. However, most companies should not focus on measuring the performance of content marketing per se.
In virtually all B2B companies, marketing will be responsible for three core types of marketing communication programs - brand building programs, demand generation programs, and customer retention programs. In some cases, marketing is also responsible for developing content for the company's sales enablement program.
These programs are the mechanisms through which marketing achieves (or doesn't achieve) its strategic objectives, and the performance of these programs is what companies should measure. Content is an essential element in all these programs, but it is only one of several factors that will determine program success.
Therefore, metrics that focus only on content performance won't adequately measure program performance. A good marketing performance measurement system will include content-related metrics, but the primary metrics should be focused on the outcomes that each type of program is designed to produce and, ultimately, on the business impacts of those programs.
The Most Profound Marketing Practices Disappear
In a 1991 article for Scientific American, the late Mark Weiser, then the chief technology officer at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center wrote: "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."
Content marketing has been one of the most profound marketing developments of the past two decades. The development, management, and dissemination of content have become essential marketing competencies. Content marketing has been assimilated into the fabric of marketing and is simply the way marketing is now done.
I've been advising and supporting B2B companies for over twenty-five years. I work with clients to evaluate major strategic issues and initiatives, develop effective business and marketing strategies, and implement operational improvement programs.
In the B2B marketing space, my primary focus areas are strategy development, content development, marketing process improvement, and marketing performance measurement.
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