Why many people fail at B2B marketing

B2B (business to business) marketing is a big challenge for many. Especially if it is services and not a physical product you are marketing. The biggest mistake many people make is trying to market their product or service to other companies. 

Why it is wrong to market to other companies

A company is an institution without feelings and ambitions. It consists of many unique individuals with different motivations, challenges and tasks.

If you try to market your product to a company, you generalize everyone who works in the company, and you end up with a message that does not hit anyone.

Impossible to engage a business

For how can you engage a business? How will you find and help the challenges a company has? It’s not possible. A company can neither be engaged, helped nor challenged.

You need to create marketing for the people in your business

 Why is B2C (business to consumer) marketing so much easier? Yes, because these are people we market to.

These are people we write the message to. They can be engaged, motivated and challenged.

Discard the terms B2C and B2B

Distinguishing marketing between companies and people is madness. Today’s technology allows you to easily get in touch with everyone.

You can tailor the message to the individual and thus give your marketing value to the recipient as well. Identify the challenges they have based on the responsibilities they have in their job.

“It is an impossible task to market to a company – that is why many people fail with their B2B marketing”

Whether you sell motorcycles or engineering services, there are individuals you communicate with. Many people forget that. Which results in unengaging and sterile marketing to the corporate market.

Therefore, reject the terms B2C and B2B. Instead, build relationships with the people you target through marketing.

Marketing to companies in practice

Let’s look at a simple method you can use today to improve your business marketing:

1. Review previous sales and identify the roles of decision makers in previous sales.
2. Take the two roles that were most represented in point 1, and write down 10 typical challenges they have that are relevant to your product or service.
3. Call previous / existing customers to go through the list of the 10 challenges you wrote down. Take away the 7 challenges that were least important.
4. Now you are left with 3 challenges that you can help decision makers (individual) with.
5. Create campaigns, update your website and write messages that address the 3 challenges. Make yourself a Skybert by your favorite decision maker ( read more about how to make your Skybert ) and write to him / her.

You will probably experience a completely different response to your marketing now that you are actually writing to engage, challenge and motivate the people in your business.

Good luck with marketing to companies

If you follow some of the tips in this blog post, we are sure that your marketing will be many notches better than your competitors. Good luck from us in Mathisen Marketing!

Here you can read more about digital strategy and the importance of having a good marketing plan before you start your marketing in full.