People are people

So, it's Sunday night. You're watching guilty-pleasure TV, making a conscious decision not to catalog the litany of junk food choices you made during the football game and generally being irresponsible-lite on your too-short weekend.

Tomorrow you don your suit. Ok, at least a clean sweater. Fill the gas tank, grab a Starbucks, commute to work. Does that fundamentally change you? Do you suddenly become Dr Spock - driven fully by logic and data - or are you still, pretty much, yourself? You - a person who digs simplicity and fun and motion and a really good email in your inbox?

The single biggest mistake B2B marketers make: forgetting people are people.

Even in a cube, we still value understanding how a product benefits us - selfish us. The us who bought the random throw pillow at Target this weekend. The us who is baffled by our 401k. Us who always wants desert even if we don't order it.

We still value things looking great and working great and generally adopting a consumer ethic of responsiveness and relevancy.

So, why does most B2B marketing feature a toad with a crown introducing 59 charts and enough lingo to lose the geekiest among us?

Here are three sites in the B2B space that I admire for adopting a consumer ethic of show/don't tell and generally building a brand experience even in these most practical of spaces (glue, janitorial supplies, and store signs):

Comments

[Jeff Packard]

Mr. Spock

[Shamir Adnan]

Nice... huhu

[Gavin Heaton]

Agree ... but it is a challenge to reposition. If you are a buyer on the B2B side of the equation a wrong decision can impact your career -- you may be purchasing something worth many thousands if not millions of dollars -- not a $5 bar of soap. The buyer must also be seen to do due diligence ... so there are pressures coming through at all angles.

Having said that, I do agree ... and I think there are huge opportunties for brands who get this right. We will, afterall, respond enthusiastically to the right approach no matter whether it is B2B or B2C.

[Scott P. DeMenter]

What most B2C advertisers don't understand about B2B are the little differences. Example (to steal from Bobby Bly's book, B-to-B Direct Marketing):
1. The business buyer WANTS to buy. In fact needs to buy. That's why God made purchasing agents.
2. The business buyer is sophisticated. They want--and can decipher--spec sheets, technical details, and in-depth content.
3. The business buyer will read long copy. Because of point 2, the copy usually needs to be long to provide the info necessary.
4. Business buying is multistep. It's not like selling toothpaste and beer. These are often very expensive and complex purchases.
5. Business buying involves multiple influences. That's why emotion plays less of a role in B2B--because it's not just one person's decision. They need to justify their decision logically to others who may need to approve and/or agree with it.
6. Business products are generally more complicated than B2C products. Selection, usage, and application mean purchases are not made strictly on impulse (unlike many B2C purchases).
7. Business buyers buy for their companies--and for themselves. This is where emotion comes in. But not how you think. Business buyers avoid purchases that will make their jobs more difficult, make their expertise less important, or otherwise make worklife a pain in the ass.
So it's true, most B2B looks rather unappealing when you're not the target audience. Which is as it should be. If it tried to appeal to everyone, then it would truly be rubbish. (Although to the point, B2B advertisers should better effort to humanize their corporate image. No one but a Klingon wants to do business with a Vulcan. Is there a Uranus joke in there somewhere?)

[Rob Mortimer]

Absolutely. I see so much B2B stuff and its almost all totally rubbish. Its as if they see managers and directors as robot business machines.

Yes they want to make a profit, but they are still human!