B2B AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT - PERSONALISATION

The future for B2B Marketing - B2Me

The battle between the differences of B2B and B2C marketing has long raged. For years opinions have been strong on the merits and differences between the two. The arguments around need and want; the impact of the DMU (Decision Making Unit) in B2B, the channels and media open to big budget B2C brands not accessible to B2B. The battle is over. B2B and B2C are to be laid to rest at the hands of a more personal approach – It’s all about B2Me.

Why? Simple. Too much information, too little time. Or more precisely too much marketing! Now this may sound strange from a company that makes its way by producing these marketing communications. But it’s true. Media and channels continue to grow exponentially, each reporting to be the golden bullet, each rapidly becoming saturated.

So this raises the inevitable question; how do you get your messages to stand out? The three R’s; relevance, reach, response.

Relevance

Businesses and the individuals within them are different so your marketing needs to treat them this way. It may sound harsh but people only really care about one relationship; the one they have with the brand. Your marketing content and engagement needs to address them based on their own needs and function. A operations director in retail has a different set of needs and agenda than an financial director in IT. It’s still staggering to find businesses trying to adopt a “one size fits all approach” to their communications. Or not being able to target individual sectors and the different types of audience within them with messages that are relevant to them. Relevancy = return.

Reach

It’s always been true, but the importance of customer data and audience engagement, attention and retention is going to grow ever more important. Opt-in is no longer reserve of database; it’s now the entire brand. Your brand content needs to add value to such an extent that your audiences WANT to be engaged with the brand in whatever media. Which raises a further important dimension to the challenge. The diversification of media will impact individuals’ preferences. Whist its true each generation becomes more capable of consuming information from different sources at one time, we are still only human. People are choosing their channels. For some it will be social, for others video. Hell some people might even still want to turn the printed page! It’s no longer enough to engage or deliver content in a single media. They need to be repurposed in different media, each taking into consideration the dimensions of the media and channel of execution.

Response

Marketing is no longer a monologue it’s a dialogue and you need to be ready to listen and respond. Learn and gain insight through the myriad of metrics available. Don’t use social media if you’re not prepared for a conversation. Don’t work hard on your content and then give it all away for nothing. Give the audience an irresistible reason to engage with you and make sure there’s a channel open for them to do so! Remember digital media is always on 24/7/365.

The fourth R - Reason

With true product differentiation is becoming harder to define. It’s as much about how your brand does what is does, as what it does. The brand story and more importantly is actions are becoming THE differentiation. Though leadership is one of the cornerstones of content marketing - but actions speaker louder than words. It’s no longer good enough for marketing to be charged with conveying the brands the messages. It is down to the entire business to develop and deliver them. Through a proven methodology Origin help their clients navigate their way to creating marketing communications way from A to B. Identifying the most relevant message and delivering it through the preferred media of the audience in a creative and engaging ways.