Why Your B2B Marketing Isn't Working

Are you frustrated with how muddy marketing seems to be these days? Yeah, me too. I’ve been in B2B marketing for 13+ years including the creation and acquisition of my own growth marketing agency - and I sincerely miss the days where lead generation was as simple as a first touch conversion from a social ad or Google search result. But if the landscape didn’t keep on changing, we probably would be bored… right?

Here’s what’s making marketing hard.

1. People are tired of being marketed to (and they’re smarter)
It used to be simple to stand out on a LinkedIn feed or pop up first in a Google search. Just serve them a relevant white paper - right? As advertising has become more accessible and is much more active, decision makers have started ignoring ads.

2. Privacy is making targeting difficult
There’s a clear battle for data and tracking consumer behavior. B2B marketers want it, but consumers don’t. Every iPhone had the option to opt out of cross-app tracking after iOS 14 was introduced, Google has gone back on their cookieless future, and people are more active in protecting their privacy. In turn, targeting has gotten worse.

3. AI is in play
From bid strategies to copy creation, AI is being implemented on every platform. For example, there is strong belief through a ton of A/B testing that Google favors Performance Max campaigns. Although it makes implementing ads much easier, it makes our ability for precision much harder. How do we know if the right ad is being served to the right audience?

4. Your marketing isn’t talking to your sales team
This is the most common issue we come across. Marketing is operating in a silo and frustrated that they are delivering leads. At the same time, sales is saying all of the leads are unqualified - or even worse, they aren’t seeing the leads at all. Marketing and sales need to join together and operate as Team Revenue.

Taking a step back, the reality is that marketing (and revenue generation) is just a series of calculated tests.

Here’s what we’ve found to be effective through our campaigns.

1. Be story driven
How do you cut through the fat of bland ads generated by AI? You capture attention by telling a great story. This could be through authenticity, or by being quirky, whatever your schtick is. The goal here is to connect with your audience and see what resonates (gets the most interaction).

If you’re working in B2B marketing, you know that your target audience is overtly resistant to marketing. They do however, have issues - and you have a solution for them. Focus less on your features and more on how you can provide value.

2. Create a target list and stick to it
This is where we always start when it comes to creating an audience. Who do you actually want to work with? Create a defined list with company names and build an ABM (account based marketing) list. Your entire sales and marketing team should know this list by heart - if they aren’t clear of the company names you’re targeting, your list isn’t defined enough.

Our favorite tactic is to run our company list, refined by role and/or tech stack through ZoomInfo to generate a list. Then, we’ll read over the list and filter anything that doesn’t look right. We’ll circulate this list with the entire team in a meeting, and get to work on activating these ideal clients.

As a bonus, ZoomInfo has one of my favorite tools - WebSights. This will literally show you who was on your website (even on your demo page) so you know who knows that you exist, and more importantly, who you can continue to nurture.

Imagine how excited your sales team will be when you say 6 members from the supply chain department from Rivian (who is on your target list), are landing on your demo page.

3. Do the hard work
Like I mentioned, marketing is a series of calculated tests. You can have all of these ideas, but implementing and measuring results can’t be replaced by more ideas. Make a decision on strategy, execute, measure, and repeat.
A common issue we see is moving on too quickly. Did you actually give your target list a fair share of attention? This should include display ads, social ads, email campaigns, and phone calls - yes, phone calls. Don’t just run a campaign for a week and bail, make sure you’re working your target list before you make assumptions. Even better, take your learnings or feedback from leads and adjust your campaigns.

To wrap this up, here is an example of a simple B2B campaign that we’ll help our clients run.

Step 1: Define your target list

• Industry: Higher Education
• Role: IT Department, Manager and Above
• Geography: In the US

Step 2: Define your story and messaging

• Example: “We help higher ed IT teams onboard/offboard staff with one click, improving your security, while IT managers saving time, money, and headaches”

Step 3: Production

• Create the content
  • A whitepaper, blog or webinar
• Create the ads (all with the same messaging)
  • Gifs
  • Statics ads
  • Clips from webinar
• Create a set of remarketing ads with more good content, or brand oriented to stay top of mind
• Create a landing page with informational assets and conversion form
• Create 3-4 email drip campaign
• Create a baseline script for sales team with follow ups

Step 4: Launch Ads to ABM list, actively update sales team

• Deploy your campaign using StackAdapt or LinkedIn in tandem with drip emails
• Deploy your remarketing campaign at a lower budget (it’ll be a much smaller audience) to stay top of mind for anyone that has interacted
• Outbound sales team will make phone calls alongside target accounts with intent

Step 5: Measure and report

• Measure which ad type are getting the most interaction and leading to conversions
• Check your form fills/CRM and ZoomInfo WebSights for who is interacting with you
• Marketing team communicates a weekly report at the sales meeting, sharing which new target accounts are interacting with us

Want to Riff?

Thanks for tuning in! If this got your wheels turning, or if you have an idea buzzing, I’m always happy to chat. Just drop me a note at alan@riff.agency.