Marketing Insights: B2B Marketing Deadly Sin #1 - Forgetting About the Audience

by Rick Whitmyre,

president and a principal,

Tiziani Whitmyre, Inc.

During an agency lunch discussion, our focus turned to a subject that brings tears to the eyes of marketing executives: mistakes. Not minor gaffes; but money-wasting, product-killing, even career-ending mistakes.

As we shared our war stories in this highly therapeutic session, some major themes emerged. Much of the marketing waste and carnage we’ve observed has revolved around one of five fundamental problems.

Together, we called these blunders the "Five Deadly Sins of B2B Marketing." From that luncheon discussion, we developed a free white paper for marketing and public relations executives to download, review, and think around. You can download your own copy at http://www.tizinc.com/DeadlySins.

In the meantime, we'll use this blog to outline the "Five Deadly Sins," as discussed in our white paper, one at a time -- in the hopes of stimulating additional thought and comment.

Let's begin.

Our first entry, appropriately enough, focuses on Deadly Sin #1, which we've identified as "Forgetting About the Audience."

In fact, didn’t a former president say, “It’s about the audience, stupid?” Maybe I’m stretching the paraphrasing, but repeatedly we see B2B campaigns created with little understanding of the target audience, market, or customer.

A common complaint we hear: “Our CEO wants to communicate with one group while the sales manager is focusing on another.”

It’s agonizingly difficult marketing and selling to the customer’s corporate bureaucracy.

Scores of people are involved in the purchasing cycle: from manufacturing managers, IT professionals, and purchasing agents to vice presidents and C-level officers. Team-buying initiatives have created empowered armies of evaluators that put your product or service under microscope.

Who are these decision makers? Who are the key influencers? The answer can be anybody or everybody.

At one industrial client, when we discussed the target audience with a product manager, he was thinking about an engineer. But when asked the same question of the Chief Marketing Officer, he viewed the customer as a plant manager or vice president of manufacturing. Shop-floor sell or executive sell? Or both? A common dilemma.

We witnessed one client successfully market its solution to a customer’s plant engineers, only to have the deal killed when senior executive approvers had never heard of their brand.

Does your organization just assume it knows who is buying its products or services? Before launching the next campaign, take the time and discipline to map the customer’s buying process. Identify the key influencers and decision makers. Determine the customer’s buying drivers. Understand why they choose one product over another.

Gone are the days when could carpet bomb the entire market with advertising and direct response. With B2B marketing resources shrinking to nano-dollar proportions, defining the audience is critical. Target precious resources with pinpoint accuracy at the decision makers buying your products and services.

We've developed a free white paper to help marketing executives avoid these money-wasting, product-killing, and even career-ending mistakes.