Clicking With B2B Customers: 4 Lessons From B2C Marketing

In a hilarious 2014 television commercial for Adobe’s suite of marketing tools, a downtrodden encyclopedia publisher kicks production into high gear based on a sudden, unexpected surge of clicks. Vendors around the globe—paper mills, shipping companies—are conscripted for the expansion frenzy. Unfortunately, it’s revealed that the clicks are all coming from a baby playing with an iPad.

The aim of the ad was to persuade businesses to use more sophisticated analytics in their marketing. It was memorable not just because of its storytelling and humor, but because breakthrough B2B broadcast spots were—and still are—rare.

A decade later, the message still resonates. B2B marketers generally trail their B2C counterparts when it comes to personalization, using contextual targeting and intent data, and other effective methods. Having spent most of my career running marketing campaigns for major consumer brands before joining a B2B company, I see the great opportunity that deploying B2C techniques presents—as well as the roadblocks in the way.

B2B marketers generally work with smaller budgets, of course. Target audiences are smaller, selling cycles longer, and buying decisions are typically made by committees rather than individual consumers. And the services and products offered by B2B brands are often complex and technical.

But businesses are run by people, and persuasion techniques that work with consumers can be applied just as effectively to business purchases. Some tools from the B2C toolbox for B2B marketers to deploy include the following:

Become Storytellers

B2C marketers so often do a brilliant job humanizing, dramatizing and contextualizing their messages. Lively content (whether tickling the funny bone, like that Adobe commercial, tugging on heart strings, or something in between) has a way of crystalizing an issue revealing pain points and opening the curtain on solutions that motivate audiences.

Yet it’s fair to say that the B2B world could improve its storytelling in marketing materials, thought-leadership posts from executives, product-demonstration videos—you name it. Is the messaging clear? Engaging? Does it make the recipient pay attention or get back to scrolling on their phone?

One excellent B2C storytelling method that many B2B brands use well is showing how real customers have benefitted from a product or service. Because all messaging needs to tell a compelling, human story.

Embrace Hyper-Personalization

Effective marketing to consumers is all about making them feel known and catered to. In the B2B world much of the personalization work is handled by sales staff, who are experts at getting to know influencers and decisionmakers and building relationships. That’s why they have entertainment budgets—taking a prospect to the ballgame or a nice restaurant can pay off in the long run. The question is, how can marketers do similar work at scale?

With big data and artificial intelligence, much of personalization can be automated effectively. Emails, website experiences, product demonstrations, proposals and other communications tasks can be modeled toward individuals so that recipients feel they are known and understood by sellers.

With its ability to analyze customer data and customize campaigns, Salesforce is a great example of a firm that can provide the kind of tools B2B needs to personalize communications with clients and prospects. They’re not alone: The marketplace is rife with vendors who specialize in data-driven customization, and B2B brands should be taking advantage of the best tools.

Put Data to Work 

Analyzing online behavior of prospects is at the core of B2C marketing—a consumer who has been researching camping gear, for example, can expect to receive relevant content, advertisements, and offers from outdoors retailers. In the B2B world, too, intent data can take some of the mystery out of identifying not only which companies might become customers, but which individuals within those companies are best to cultivate—and when.

Many B2B brands do a good job of capturing intent data from inbound traffic to their websites, or reactions to advertisements and social media content, but a smaller number take advantage of high-quality third-party data, which uncovers interest from broader online activity. Good intent data doesn’t only identify prospects—it reveals where they are in the buying cycle.

The middle-funnel area is where B2C marketers excel, and it’s where their B2B counterparts have the most to learn from them. And by using tech tools more effectively, B2B brands can make their ABM campaigns more personal, timely and relevant.

Be Disciplined and Integrated

If there is one caveat worth adding to these suggestions, it’s that simply pressing a button isn’t enough. These methods and tools need to be integrated into the B2B brand’s operations and culture. And though that takes time, money and commitment, lessons from the B2C world are there for the taking.

Can a business laugh, be moved to tears, or feel excitement? No, but the people who work there and buy their services can be. B2B brands that use data, technology and good, old-fashioned storytelling to identify and cultivate the right people, to engage with them on a human level, can take their marketing to a new level. It works in the B2C world, and it can work in B2B too.

Karna Crawford is CMO of the fintech company Marqeta.