What We Learned from Peter Weinberg
Social Media Day 2018 may be over, but we are still buzzing on the inspiring talks of this year’s event. One of our returning presenters, Peter Weinberg of LinkedIn, gave a compelling presentation on B2B Marketing Trends. We appreciated his insights on what is trending, and how exactly we can use these trends to grow a B2B business. Read on for our key takeaways!
Build a Dynamic Persona
Most personas are developed through guesswork – and it shows. This leads to marketing that is not customer-centric and only 3% of buyers say advertising is relevant to them. To accurately understand your audience, you need to develop data-driven personas. Look to the demographics of who is viewing your content on your website and social media profiles – find their age, the type of content that they are looking for, their job titles, and develop your personas through these findings to have the most accurate target. Once you understand who your customers are, you can begin to understand what they actually care about.
Be First to Mind Among Potential Buyers
Being the first to market something isn’t enough. Don’t compromise the quality of your marketing in a rush to be the first to market something. If your end product is subpar, no one will remember it anyway. To avoid this – invent your own category – you don’t need to fit into already established boxes! Being the first product to come to your consumers mind is much more important than being the first product to be released.
Develop Repeatable Franchises to Breakthrough
Marketers can get obsessed with being new. Always wanting to try new things, run a new campaign, and introduce their audience to something fresh. Unfortunately, new isn’t what sells. What works is relating to an audience through relevance and familiarity. 63% of C-Suite Executives want relevance from thought leadership, and 34% want originality. But what does that mean for B2B marketing? We want to invest in a familiar franchise and find methods to make new things more familiar. In fact, only 1 in 5 new ad campaigns outperform old ad campaigns. Consistency is key- your ads are more likely to resonate with your audience if they are similar to ads you’ve ran before.
Reach Undervalued Audience Segments
It may seem like the best audience to go after is high level executives, but the undervalued audience is significantly more effective. Target the junior level employees to look for individual contributors. These lower level employees are still growing in their careers, and targeting them will help you grow alongside them as they become a decision maker in their industry. This audience also has buying influence. For example, 55% of current tech buyers are individual contributors.
Reach Those Audiences in Premium Contexts
Everyone wants to save some money – even in advertising. As always, you get what you pay for. When you see something heavily advertised, it is evidence to the consumer that it is a high quality product. Signaling is the most well proven strategy in all of advertising, and by far the least well known. Consumers translate an expensive advertisement to mean a great product. This is why Apple always chooses to buy the most expensive ads for their products. Running your ad in premium contexts signals to your audience that your product is of high quality. While you may have to spend more money initially, the payout will likely be better.
Balance Brand with Demand for Optimal Results
The battle in B2B is between lead generation versus brand awareness. This war isn’t worth the fight; it is best to negotiate using the 60:40 rule to synchronize brand and demand that will drive exceptional performance. It is important to consistently represent your brand accurately, even when trying to expand your audience. Brand and acquisition work together instead of one or the other. B2B decisions should come from an emotional place, because the stakes are much higher, and the costs of bad decisions matter more.
