Kiaran Geen, APAC President; Samantha Cunliffe, Managing Director ANZ; and Jake Hird, APAC VP of Strategy & Solutions at Dentsu B2B, share the insights and trends from this, the fourth global edition of the Superpower Index Research, which promises “a unique perspective on the B2B buyer and the difference between winning and losing”.
While business-to-business marketing, or B2B, may not have the profile of the big advertising media campaigns for B2C, it is certainly big business and a major economic driver across many categories.
In this episode, we discuss the latest trends in B2B and how marketers should respond to them.
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The logical way to do it is to think about just regular positioning and getting that message in front of the right audience just on a reasonably regular basis and just being consistent over time.
Transcription:
Darren:
Hi, I am Darren Woolley, founder and CEO of TrinityP3 Marketing Management consultancy. And welcome to Managing Marketing, a weekly podcast where we discuss the issues and opportunities facing marketing, media, and advertising with industry thought leaders and practitioners.
If you are enjoying the Managing Marketing Podcast, please either like, review, or share this episode to spread the words and wisdom from our guests each week.
Business-to-business marketing or B2B may not have the profile of the big advertising media campaigns for B2C, but it is certainly big business and a major economic driver across many categories.
But what are the latest trends in B2B and how should marketers respond to these trends? The Superpowers Index research promises a unique perspective on the B2B buyer and the difference between winning and losing.
Now, in its fourth global edition, it provides insights into the major trends happening in B2B marketing. To discuss the Superpowers Index and drive into the trends identified in the research this year, please welcome to the Managing Marketing Podcast, APAC president of Dentsu, B2B Kiaran Geen.
Kiaran:
Hi. Nice to be here, Darren. Great to share with your listeners the research we’ve got.
Darren:
Thanks, Kiaran. We also have managing director ANZ, Samantha Cunliffe.
Sam:
Hi, Darren.
Darren:
Hi, Sam. Thanks for joining us.
Sam:
Thanks for having me.
Darren:
And finally, last but not least the APAC VP of Strategy and Solutions at Dentsu B2B, Jake Hird. Welcome, Jake.
Jake:
Hi, Darren. Thanks for having me.
Darren:
Look, a great piece of research that is put here and the fact that it’s four years makes it interesting because you’re able to then start to look at trends, which is good.
I’m just wondering, could we start with talking about where the inspiration came from? Why was this so important? Because there are other organizations that do something similar. I think it’s Deloitte and IBM have something similar, but not to the same level of depth.
Kiaran:
I think when we initially started the Superpower research four years ago it was because there was nothing in the market that talked about customer’s intent with a brand and what a brand needs to do to sell their products.
And I think B2B marketing has for a long time be focused on pure selling. It’s linked to a sales organization, and you’ve got to sell you’ve got to make a difference in an organization. But B2B marketers didn’t have the robust research as to how to link their brand messages to what their customers wanted, and then now in 2024, what that experience looks like for their customers.
So, I think that’s been the backbone of why we’ve started this report. It’s to fill in the gaps that didn’t exist. B2B research is really poorly funded. I think there is a couple ways as you mentioned, but you compare that to the plethora of consumer-based research. CMOs in a consumer world are very, very well educated.
But there is just that lack of knowledge and I think B2B marketing has fallen behind because of that. And hopefully this research can fill in some of those gaps for marketers.
Sam:
Yeah, and I think just to add to that, and to Kiaran’s point around the lack of funding, particularly in this region, or even if you get into Australia, I think there’s some global research or some U.S. research, but there’s very limited insights or statistically viable research at an Australian level or an APAC level to actually understand what’s happening in our market and how people are reacting or, or relating to those brands in this space.
Darren:
And Sam, that’s one of the things I noticed is the breadth and depth here. Like there’s quite a significant sample, and in each of the main markets that you appear in, so that it makes the insights quite robust, doesn’t it?
Sam:
Correct. Because I think having general benchmarks are useful to a point. However, if you really want to understand a market in your context or how you can make actual change that is relevant to you, you have to get down to that level. Otherwise it’s not that useful.
Darren:
Yeah. And Jake it is true, isn’t it? That from a global perspective, B2B marketing feels like it’s very American. The U.S. market feels like the home of B2B marketing with salespeople marching out and knocking on doors. And quite a … probably less sophisticated, but that’s the image that that comes across. How’s it translate into the APAC region?
Jake:
Yeah, look, I mean, the research definitely shows that what happens in the U.S. does not categorically happen in APAC. And if you drill down even further, it does not happen at the country level. And if you drill down even further into the countries, because the research we have covers four different categories.
So, obviously it’s professional services, manufacturing, financial services, and technology. Every one of those categories has different points of a buyer experience at that country level. So, we’re able to see, as Sam said, that really granular level, how different it really is, and how different messaging stands up to individual category buyers.
And I think that’s really important because again, we see a lot of clients often with a global level, they put out a big sort of one size fits all marketing strategy that come out to the U.S. without looking at that kind of local nuance.
And sometimes it’s economic, but a lot of the time it’s cultural. And again, it’s not missing that cultural gap is really important because that has the impact significantly changed the outcome of your B2B marketing.
Darren:
Well, Australia is quite an interesting market, isn’t it? And I’m speaking culturally in that sometimes we feel a little bit American often, more often we feel quite English probably because of the heritage of where Australia.
But increasingly the influences of the Asian market and particularly Southeast Asia’s having a big impact. Are there any obvious insights or trends that support that, do you think? Or is that just my gut instinct.
Kiaran:
I mean, I’ve been in an APAC role now for almost 10 years, so I feel quite APAC centric. But Australians don’t, and I think you’re right, the influence in our country is definitely American or British. It’s not Southeast Asia. Certainly not Japan.
But the research that we’ve got here, we spend a lot of time to make sure that we can understand those nuances. Japan is a very different market to the U.S., very different market to Australia. India, an emerging market that has so many cultures in just the one country. I think that the research focused on India has multiple outcomes.
But yes, I think, in Australia, we don’t necessarily associate with Southeast Asia as much as we should, but certainly the buying choices and even our own cultural split now in Australia, we are much more Southeast Asia than we are English or American.
And I think you see that in the messaging, in the brands and also B2B marketing and the brands that have existed in Australia. There’s no legacy anymore. The research shows that, there’s no legacy to a brand. There’s no loyalty to a brand.
The people making purchase decisions for B2B today make those choices. And they’re 25 to 30-year-olds. They don’t have that same brand loyalty that maybe some of us older folk do. And I think those nuances on top of the country nuances are really important, especially when we’re looking at APAC briefs, you’ve got to think about four different outcomes for the four different markets that you might be deployed in.
Darren:
Yeah. I love how Europeans always think that they’ve got this complex moment.
Sam:
I know.
Darren:
And then you go, have you been to Asia-
Kiaran:
It’s all different.
Darren:
We’ve got multiple currencies, multiple languages, multiple cultures even in one country. So, it is quite a complex area and particularly as you say in B2B where relationships are such an important part of the of the consideration list.
Look, it’s probably a good leaping off point because I noticed the report had three really key insights. And so, perhaps if we start talking about those, the first one being winning in B2B is now harder than ever. Who wants to jump in on that?
Sam:
I’ll kick it off. And look, I’ve been working in B2B for a long time now, and I think it is such a hard point at the moment to win in B2B. It is so complex and there are so many different factors that are impacting the complexity of B2B marketing and how to win.
One of those is the decision-making time of purchases in B2B is getting longer and longer. And that’s anything from if you’re selling to SMBs right up to enterprise organizations. It’s getting longer and longer each year, even in Australia.
So, we just touched on the point of the differences between the U.S. versus APAC for Australia. Australians are actually quite slow and reluctant to make change in a B2B context. And what we’re seeing is that on average, at a global level, it’s taking up to sort of 380 days to make a purchase decision.
But in Australia it’s up to 416 days for somebody to make a purchase decision. So, from day one, when they’re thinking about making a decision in their organization, it can take over a year for that purchase to come through.
Darren:
And I think I’ve shared this previously, but when I read the report and saw that, it instantly resonated because back a couple of months ago, we had two proposals that have been in the marketplace approved within a week of each other.
Because the thing to remember is I’m a B2B marketer for my own business. And I have to keep reminding procurement that I’m actually a micro multinational. I may be in lots of different countries, but we’re actually a micro business because we’re under 50 people globally. But anyway, these two proposals approved within a week.
And then I look back the date on them was November, two years ago. So, it had actually taken over 18 months to get approved. I just couldn’t believe it. Even though we have one of those lines in the terms and conditions that said this proposal is valid for 90 days. It’s just completely ignored when they get to it.
Sam:
Yeah, totally. And yet I think, so you’ve got those long decision making times, but marketers in particular need to report back to the business or set goals at a quarterly cadence. And quite often there’s a disconnect between actually measuring how is marketing having an impact and where is the success?
Because we should be looking at marketing’s impact in a year as opposed to what is happening quarter and quarter because it takes longer than that.
Darren:
Yeah. Jake, is this something that just occurs in big enterprise businesses? Or is it across the board?
Jake:
No, look, the study takes into account where it includes smaller businesses, mid-size, right the way up to large enterprise organizations. But at the end of the day, the challenge is always the same. Particularly at that kind of mid to large, and again, enterprise organization.
The number of brands being considered as part of a purchasing process is actually growing. I think this year it’s up 62% globally which is staggering year on year. So, again, whereas people have been just — if you put that into context, whereas if someone’s looking at six brands maybe as part of a supply selection that’s now almost 9-
Darren:
9 or 10. Yeah.
Jake:
So, it’s significant. And I think that affects the length of time that Sam was talking about. And we’re seeing that increase across businesses of all sizes apart from obviously micro businesses, which are a little bit different.
And then the other part of that as well, particularly in that kind of larger organization side, the buying committee, again, we’re seeing an increase of the number of participants on those buying panels.
There’s lots of stats floating around, but our average globally against, again, every size business is just over seven, so let’s say seven. But I’ve seen numbers that go all the way up to sort of 25/30. So, again, that’s increasing year on year. And that becomes more complicated because you’ve got more stakeholders to manage, more brands to assess over a sort of a longer length of time.
And the other part of that is actually when you put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Our research shows that customers are very frustrated by that process themselves. They want to be able to make decisions quickly. And I think that goes into like how we’re positioning.
I think at the end of the day, it does fall on marketing to position correctly, to speed up those sales times. And the key thing for me with the research is actually we’re able to see the impact if we get these kind of different kind of points of weaknesses fixed along a buying journey.
The outcomes are there from shorter sales cycles even with existing customers, improve products and services upsell and even improve MPS scores. Like we can actually really make a difference
Darren:
To shorten those. See, because the thing Jake, that really impacts me then was that behavioral intelligence shows that when you’ve got a larger group of people trying to make a decision about more variations, they’re more likely to make poorer decisions.
Because what ends up happening is that they won’t necessarily choose the best or the most outstanding, the more decision makers involved, and it’s proven time and time again in social research, the more likely they are to go for the lowest common denominator.
Because having big decision making panels means that to get the majority, you have to get the solution that appeals to the most number of people. And so, it’s almost counterintuitive, but it seems to be driven perhaps by increased nervousness or insecurity about making those decisions.
Jake:
Hundred percent. A hundred percent. I think the LinkedIn buyer research that they’ve done, which is quite complimentary to ours they talk about the fear of messing up as opposed to the fear of missing out.
And I quite like that sort of FOMO expression. And I think that’s really important. And to me, it actually goes back to when you actually look at the stats again. This isn’t even in our research. I think it’s HBR did it a few years ago.
40% of sales fall through, they don’t close because people can’t agree on what they want to do to move forward. And rather than, as you said, making a decision that benefits the business or them as a collective group because they can’t agree, they just closed off entirely. And again, I think that reflects in the sales time and again.
Darren:
Kiaran, it must be interesting watching clients struggle with this. You’ve laid down this research that shows they’re dealing with more competitors in consideration, bigger panels of decision makers, and a longer timeline. What are some of the things that they can do?
Kiaran:
Well, I think just hearing you guys just talk about that, and I was just thinking, and you add the complexity of APAC, we’re consensus builders. If you look at our societies, I think we’re consensus builders versus an American who is very top down, like we’re going to go in this direction.
I think a lot of business decisions here with the broader panel, everyone’s got to be along on that journey. And I think that’s where marketers or where we challenge clients that we work with, marketers forget that they need to educate from the lowest member of an organization involved in a purchase decision all the way up to the CEO.
You can’t focus on the c-suite in our markets. You need to have that messaging at that base level. It’s almost like we all grew up with intel inside. You need that sort of grassroots, that’s a safe choice from day dot at the base of an organization if you are going to accelerate and be chosen at the top of that organization.
So, I think for me, that’s one of the things, and you think about that over, I think the Australian research is 416 days is the buying cycle. The average size in Australia is about eight or nine. How do you influence someone for a year and a half?
And not someone, sorry, I misspoke. How do you influence 10 people for that longer time who have varying backgrounds. They don’t understand the utilization of the product most of the time, but they’re like, how will this impact me in this organization? And how do I build consensus inside of my organization so that the safe choice is the right choice?
Because the safe choice, as you’ve said, is not often the right choice. So, how do we do that? Again, we’re talking about this a lot.
Sam:
Yeah. I would say, as a marketer, do you actually understand your perspective customers? I think what we see as a general sort of go to market is our marketers have pretty tight budget. And so, I’m from a media background I see a lot of marketers being, “If this is my budget, I’m going to invest it all into media.”
Yet what are they … you’re going to market without having a true understanding of who your potential customer or potential customer group is, there has to be more research and investment into truly understanding who your customer is.
We would always say, try and spend 5% of your marketing budget in bespoke custom research so that you can have a true understanding around who your prospective audience is and what are their driving behaviors and how can you potentially influence them is going to make your 95% of your budget work way harder.
Kiaran:
Or even take another 10% and add to different messaging. Build your content. Build your a test and learn.
Darren:
Test and learn.
Kiaran:
I think that’s one of the things that the research says as an outcome. I mean, research pieces are great, but what’s something you could do tomorrow? The last part of the research is like, have a hypothesis, test that.
And if you spend, and this is one of the challenges we have, I can put together the best media campaign in the world. But if I’ve got 55-line items on a media schedule and you give me one asset, how is it going to be successful?
Your sales team is going to come at you because you don’t have a pipeline. You’ve got no marketing influence pipe. And I think that again, is just something that this research hopefully helps with. Spend five, 15, 20%, 25% so that you actually understand your audience, generate a message for that audience, and then challenge your agency to execute that message.
Sam:
Don’t just have messages that just show products and features, because that’s not going to be relevant for-
Jake:
No. The big flip here that we’re seeing as well is for the first time ever, we’re seeing that personal decision drivers have overtaken professional ones.
Darren:
So, what’s that mean, Jake?
Jake:
So, really what we’re doing is we’re looking at what the individual motivations are of the buyers within say, a buying audience or a cohort. And previously we’ve seen things like price or product functionality. There being the business drivers, even things like cost savings and efficiency, does it connect with the current infrastructure I’ve got?
If you’re a technology brand they’re what we would call the business decision drivers. Collectively that’s what the business needs to buy a product. Whereas now it’s been overtaken by personal decision drivers. So, things like, is the company I’m buying from, does that align with my personal values? Are they ethical? Are they going to help me as an individual be better in my career and give me the knowledge I need to succeed?
Like they’re very sort of personal things at an individual level. So, again, to Kiaran’s point, it’s not just one buyer collectively as a business, it’s actually lots of individual buyers all with these different motivations that come together.
And the tipping points happened, and it trickles down into the messaging. And as Sam said, if you’re just talking about product that has a place maybe towards more bottom of funnel, potentially, or even with the sales team. But when you’re trying to build brand resonance over time, you have to align with individual motivations.
Darren:
It always surprises me when I work with procurement teams, and they build this very factual scorecard for choosing a particular vendor or supplier. And I see people filling it in, I’m observing them.
And you can tell that a lot of it is actually driven by their emotional feelings. How do they feel about that vendor? They’ll mark the scores up and down, irrespective of what was presented. And I’ll give you the worst-case example, was in a choosing a media agency, this group of people, buyers gave them a very high score for strategy. When at no point had they ever been presented with anything about strategy. They just naturally filled-
Kiaran:
They were like, “Oh it’s a 10.”
Darren:
They just filled it in because they felt aligned to the values and the culture and the chemistry, it was a positive thing. So, I think perhaps what the research is saying is more and more business buyers are actually more in tune or willing to acknowledge that yes, there’s a rational part which is just getting the product.
Is the product fit for purpose? But then there’s this higher-level decision making around what does that reflect as far as me as a buyer?
Kiaran:
And I challenge your listeners because I understand what it is from my survey of my clients. How many times have you given us or your agency a brief that highlights your company’s ethos versus the product you’re trying to sell?
So, if the tipping point is now more people make a B2B choice based on these personal drivers about the environment, and all of our clients have those messages, we never get asked to present that to a customer.
So, there is a clear disconnect, to Sam’s point earlier around, understand what’s important to your customer and then deliver a campaign on that. So, I challenge all of your listeners, I challenge our clients. Let’s start work on that because it’s now statistically more important than features.
Sam:
Even in Australia, which was-
Kiaran:
Even in Australia.
Sam:
I thought that might be a stat which was-
Kiaran:
We’re very skeptical.
Sam:
Yeah. I thought, Australia, maybe it’s going to be more rational. We are pretty practical as a nation, but even in Australia, those personal decision drivers outweigh the professional. Which was one of the whoa moments that I found in the report.
Jake:
But it does vary from country to country. So, like sustainability for example, in America is actually quite a big thing, whereas in Australia it ranks quite low. We are more about sort of values and lining up with personal ethics and those-
Sam:
And personal growth.
Jake:
And personal growth. So, again, I think this goes back to the importance that Sam said, benchmarks are great, but really, really understanding who you are talking to and what’s going to resonate with them.
When you understand that that’s half the battle, because that allows you, during the time of being out of market to position in the right way so that immediately when there’s a need for that service or that product, you’re going to be top of mind.
Darren:
Well, I was going to pick up on that in that, what you’re saying about the length of time and the number of people, the next insight is brand has never mattered more. And it seems almost logical.
And it’s great when you get research that just feels logical. And we’ve heard a lot from B2B marketers where often they’ll struggle to get money or resources to actually build a brand. There’s very much this, the same as B2C marketers struggling between the long and the short of it.
B2B marketers are struggling between hard sales and building long term opportunity. What were the insights from that?
Kiaran:
I was just going to say, I’ve had conversations with clients where they twist themselves in a knot to not say the B word.
Darren:
Right.
Kiaran:
And that’s where brand sometimes sits inside of a B2B organization. And Jake and Sam can go into a lot of the data points, but there has never been a better time.
So many people are making these choices for such a long period of time, and they really don’t understand your brand at all. Even if you’re an existing client or customer of that brand, they just don’t understand what your brand is and how you can actually help them. So, Jake, I know that you are the numbers guy on the brand.
Darren:
Yeah. Tell us how brand stacks up because I do know a lot of organizations struggle with the concept of brand.
Jake:
It’s kind of two points. I think the first is how you demonstrate the value of building brand over time because it does take time. And I think there’s a couple of ways in into that, and I’ll talk about that in a second.
And the second point is actually it is front of mind for marketers. And again, this year is quite a pivotal time because the research has shown that brand certainly of the last year has jumped up to be the number one priority for marketers.
And things like, lead generation, demand generation has actually dropped down to numbers five or six. So, again, brand is at front of mind. I think people are struggling to actually understand how to build it. Because again, you said at the start, B2B often has limited budgets, and obviously much longer sales cycles that are more complicated.
And there’s kind of two paths to do that. The first is we can just up the budgets and blast the market with frequency and recency. But there is a tipping point to that. Whereas it’s actually the logical way to do it is to think about just regular positioning and getting that message in front of the right audience just on a reasonably regular basis and just being consistent over time.
So, it’s not like a huge spike at the start and then maintaining it all the way along. It’s just regularly sort of going into market reminding people of the right message and the right kind of communications that you want to convey around your brand, not the product.
And aligning with their expectations, which goes back to the motivations point. And a key thing to do that is thought leadership, and again, it’s not just a white paper. It’s ironically podcasts.
Darren:
Yeah. The good old white paper, download it here. Give us your email address that will spam the hell out of you-
Kiaran:
72 page type document.
Jake:
There’s lots of different formats to do thought leadership. And again, the key thing there is don’t make it difficult. White papers are fine, just don’t gate them. You’re not trying to get a lead generation as — don’t confuse lead generation with brand, basically. I know you’ve got lots of opinions about that.
Sam:
Yeah, no, I think I’d just add to that in terms of when you are creating thought leadership, make sure it’s actual thought leadership. I think it can’t be driven by … the content can’t be driven by marketing. You need to get down to subject matter experts.
And understanding that there is resource challenges or getting your stakeholders involved. Understand that there are challenges with that. But there are sort of increasingly really quick roots where you can get a thought leader to just be a spokesperson and promote that across LinkedIn and start getting that engagement within the environment.
But I think that’s one of the biggest downfalls in terms of make sure it’s proper thought leadership because that’s what people are craving. I think you’ve only got a really small percentage of your potential audience in market at any one time. So, they’re not going to be interested in those products and features at any one time. But they’re always going to be interested in category challenges and category issues.
So, if you are at the front foot constantly talking about those category issues, category challenges, when that prospective client does start that 416-day process, you are going to be front of mind and they’re going to be like, “Oh, I feel really safe potentially working with this brand because they really understand my challenges.”
Kiaran:
And I think it’s in the research at the start, and we talked about it last week, but 93% of your customers are currently not looking to buy. So, let’s talk about the 416-day journey for the 7% that are.
So, that’s why brand in that regular cadence over a long period of time doesn’t need to be a flashy billboard. It’s leadership in a category needs to be there because your customers don’t know they want to buy from you yet, they’re going to get there though.
Jake:
It’s such a white space. Again, because we are talking to buyers as part of the research at a global level, again, only a quarter of three and a half thousand decision makers say that thought leadership is thoughtful and leading. That’s the reality. It’s like-
Kiaran:
Do that, thought leadership.
Jake:
Exactly.
Darren:
Give me a definition.
Kiaran:
Thought, make it thoughtful and make it category leaders.
Darren:
I have to be honest; I didn’t refer to myself as a thought leader until someone else had said it. I felt that the self-proclaimed thought leaders, the ones that I worry deeply about.
But to use an example, and this is quite old now, it’s almost 20-years-old. The pool guy in North Carolina who found that he was answering the same questions over and over again, started a little blog where it answered those questions in simple, plain language and ended up having so much business that he had to do a blog that said, “If I can’t do your pool, here are the 12 people I’d recommend,” and what a great statement of confidence, right?
Kiaran:
Thought leadership.
Darren:
And so, it doesn’t have to be boring. I mean, the thing that annoys me is that we talk about white papers and even podcasts, there’s millions of podcasts, but there is opportunities to really cut through and communicate the essence or the values of an organization in quite a compelling way without defaulting back to just being the same old, same old.
Sam:
Yeah. Correct. And I mean, one of the big takeaways is there’s just this sea of sameness in B2B at the moment and the report, and again, I can go to the statman if he’s got it up in terms of, B2B marketers think that they’re doing a really good job in terms of communicating that brand and having a really clear message in market.
Yet the disconnect between what B2B marketers think they’re doing and how your customers are perceiving that brand message, the gap’s huge. It’s like 70% drop off in terms of that consistency.
Jake:
I do actually have the stats. It’s wonderfully balanced because you’ve got 71%, which is a very specific number. I know marketers running around all high fiving each other that they’re doing a great job.
Kiaran:
“We’re great.”
Jake:
Yeah. “We’re fantastic.” Down the pub, Tuesday afternoon. But 68% of buyers, so it’s almost an equal amount of buyers are saying, “No, you’re crap.” And that’s it.
Sam:
Can’t distinguish.
Jake:
Yeah. Can’t distinguish.
Kiaran:
You look the same as everyone else.
Jake:
A hundred percent. So, there’s a real sort of breakdown in our perception. Again, I know this is talked about a lot in marketing anyway, in general, like we’re always in our little own intrinsic bubble.
Which is why, again, I think that, to Sam’s earlier point, actually really just investing and understanding who you are talking to as opposed to just sitting in a whiteboard with a bunch of your peers scribbling out what your ICP is or what your kind of persona is, go deeper like segment by behavior. Like segment by like category buyers, really drill down into what they want and what they do.
Kiaran:
And one of the points in the research that is different for our area in APAC is on the fact that a potential customer of yours wants to be better skilled because they’re buying your product. They want to learn, thought leadership is that.
You are providing them with experience and knowledge. You are ingraining yourself into their vernacular. And that’s thought leadership is rarely thoughtful and very rarely leadership.
Darren:
But I’ve seen a number of times where B2B marketers are hesitant to give away the 11 secret herbs and spices. That in wanting to educate the buyer, there’s this concern that if we go too deep into what makes us better, that there will be opportunities for competitors to either negate it or copy it.
And so, there is a fear, there’s a big overlying fear here about standing out from the crowd because that could mean you end up diminishing your differentiation long-term. What do you think of that?
Kiaran:
If you are not doing it, your competitors aren’t, what makes you think a competitor is going to be able to catch up? Because you’re talking about organizational alignment and I think a lot of B2B marketing for me, and some of the challenges we work with for our clients is organizational alignment. Whether it’s ABM, whether it’s thought leadership, it requires a whole of business.
Your competitors can’t interrupt their business that quickly. You’ve got a five-year head start if you start now.
Darren:
And own it.
Kiaran:
And own it. There can only be one leader.
Darren:
There’s also the power in catch up.
Kiaran:
Correct.
Jake:
But also conversely, again, you just said our 11 secret spices and herbs is, like you’re talking about your business again. You’re not talking about necessarily what the customer wants. And again, when you start thinking about competitors, and I heard something quite recently, which I thought was a great expression, which is like, just be truly customer centric and be competitor aware. And then the rest of it comes out quite naturally.
And I think again, it just goes back to like, don’t talk about yourself. Talk about what your customers want. Like what are their pain points in plain English matched with what are their sort of personal motivations and drivers.
And that becomes your comms playbook. And then it becomes a very easy conversation. Because again, nobody else is doing it. The research shows that. So, that will give you the competitive advantage. Don’t worry about what other people are doing.
Darren:
But Jake, there’s also a conflict in a way between sales and marketing. Sales want to be everything to everyone. And marketers want to be deeply loved by a smaller group of people because as soon as marketers become everything to everyone as well, you become nothing to everyone.
So, there’s also that dynamic that plays out more in B2B because the two functions are often, much closer together than they are in B2C.
Jake:
Well, you say that actually, I think LinkedIn put out their research last year that shows, I think it’s only 16% of sales and marketing teams are aligned. They’re both talking to different customers, which is insane.
And I think at the end of the day, sales are great. I love the whole concept of sales alignment and marketing, helping sales work better because that’s at the end of the day what B2B marketing is. Therefore, but I think as part of that process, I think marketing often has to sort of start thinking about taking the lead to create that customer alignment, to actually close that gap between who we are talking to and what we’re saying.
Because there’s always going to be a natural handoff process to sales at some point. It doesn’t matter what the category is or what the industry or business size is. But making sure that we are aligned at the point of that handover, and we can get to that point and give sales the leading edge that they need to continue that conversation.
That’s what it needs to be like. That’s the future I think of need to be marketing in my mind.
Darren:
Excellent. The third trend was experience matters. And I have to say, I’m just wondering what you mean by experience. Does that mean we all need experiential agencies to come and help us create a brand experience?
Jake:
No, not at all. I like this because I come from an experience background. So, I think what we do as part of the process again, of the research, we look at what that bio journey looks like and we’re able to categorize certain touch points or certain sort of stages that people go through from initial kind of need or identifying the need right away to a contracting stage.
And across that journey, year on year, the experience is getting worse across all of those stages. But what we’re talking about here is like, it’s not necessarily our job to fix every single one of those experience points.
And sometimes we can’t because again, sales often owns the contracting stage or after initial point of engagement, it becomes an SQL and it goes off into the sales funnel somewhere. So, we can’t fix the entire experience.
But as Kiaran said earlier, what we can do is we can identify little moments of touch points or channels or different interactions or messaging, and we can start to form a hypothesis around where we can fix and improve. Where marketing has ownership of that. And where it’s good we can make it great because you’re going to see big improvements.
And if it’s bad or broken, then we fix it and we make it good. And again, you’ll see improvements, but it goes back to the idea of if we can zero in and find those little hotspots of interactions where you’re going to see the biggest gains and marketing can control and own that.
And we fix the experience again, could be like a messaging, could be like a website touch point. It could be like an email, it could be anything in effect. But you fix that, you hypothesize it, fix it, test it, and see what happens.
We are talking about it’s almost like journey led transformation. We’re fixing the experience at those critical points.
Kiaran:
And I think, is it fair to say from the research, I remember when we presented this to a group, you had a number of big brands and just focused on the Australian research and this experience led and the different stages in that experience.
I think of, let’s say there was a hundred panels of red, orange, and green. I think there was two green boxes, the rest were red. So, it’s not like you need to do much to improve that. And I think the business outcomes if you improve even one moment, are significant, but there is so much opportunity and it’s really important that that experience and what your customer experiences when they engage with you has never been more important.
Sam:
Yeah. And that there is actual business impact that can come off the back of that. So, I think to Jake’s point, and the great thing about this, this research is it maps out those key sort of engagement points along that purchase path. And one of those key engagement points is the initial engagement or initial interaction with a supplier. Which takes up a big chunk of that decision making timeframe.
What the research shows, if you are a best of breed brand who has optimized that initial interaction between sort of a prospective customer and that brand, you can shorten that sales cycle by 16 weeks, which is really substantial.
And so, again, if you’ve sort of looked at, and again, look at the break points or what is that win/loss ratio or how is your prospective audience sort of engaging along that experience, pick a point where there is that drop off, optimize that point and it can have significant impact in terms of shortening that sales cycle.
Darren:
There’s a opportunity in this for every advertising agency in Australia because a lot of clients say, “Oh, I went to the website and sent a email through the website to the agency and no one ever got back to me.”
Kiaran:
I mean, don’t get me started. I went to … and I tried to press the contact us, the button didn’t work. So, I had that fixed.
Sam:
We optimized.
Kiaran:
Yeah. We optimized. I had a hypothesis we’d get more leads if that button worked. We tested it. It’s working.
Darren:
Excellent. Good to hear that it’s not a problem for B2B. Look, the research is terrific. How can we get it into the hands of B2B marketers? Obviously, they can download it, can they from a website or?
Sam:
They absolutely can.
Darren:
Okay. Well I’ll put that in the show notes. But also, Kiaran, you mentioned before about the idea of doing being able to use the research with a hypothesis. Is this something just for your clients or they prospective clients if they’re listening to this and want to come and try this out? Is that something you are open to?
Kiaran:
Well, absolutely. I think for us, the three of us are B2B purists. We have all come to B2B space in a very different way. And for us, this podcast is about thought leadership. We want marketers to be challenged about what their perceptions of their brand, their customers think about their brand, what marketing looks like inside of their organization.
If you are a marketer that wants to think like that, then we love to have those conversations. I think they are transformational and they’re much more rewarding than answering a media brief that is maybe for a lot of money but is never going to challenge the things that matter to a brand’s customers.
So, yeah, absolutely. I think, as I said, there’s practical outcomes. There’s a lot of individual companies that were measured in Australia and around the APAC region. We’ve got very specific messagings and points where we can help you tomorrow. So, love to have the conversation.
Darren:
Fantastic. Look, thank you the three of you for taking the time and sharing this. There’s a lot more information in the actual report, so I’d recommend everyone get a chance, any B2B marketer should be downloading that and having a look. But thank you to Sam, Kiaran and Jake for joining me today on Managing Marketing.
Sam:
Thank you, Darren.
Kiaran:
Thank you.
Jake:
Thanks very much.
Darren:
Before we go, quick question, of all the brands that you see, who do you think is doing really cut through B2B marketing, particularly in Australia?
