B2B buyers spend months researching purchases before making a decision. In that time, companies without a strong marketing presence or differentiation blend in with the pack, leading the buyer to choose a brand that stands out from all the rest.
Make sure that you do with these 3 tips.
How to differentiate your B2B marketing
1. Use humor to increase memorability
B2B buyers take in a lot of information when researching a purchase, and, if you don’t do enough to differentiate yourself from the competition, chances are, you won’t stand out.
But using humor in your marketing will capture their attention in any stage of the buyer’s journey. In fact, over half of all customers say they will remember an ad if it’s funny.
Using industry-specific jokes, observational humor, and light-hearted commentary will dial-up the smart and confident attributes of your brand and feelings of happiness, making our audience want to share your ads with others.
2. Personalize and target your campaign
A prospect is less likely to pay attention or even remember your ads if it does not seem relevant to them.
The key to increasing relevance is segmenting your target audience and aligning your messaging. Consider segmenting by industry if you want to improve sales within a specific market, or you can separate prospects by location if you need to market specific pieces of equipment in a region (like snow plows, for example).
Once that’s covered, the next step is personalizing for each individual prospect.
This may seem overwhelming, but it’s often easier than you might think. For example, with both direct mail and email marketing, there are companies that can use your contact list and personalize each piece of content that you send out.
Research has shown that personalization increases open rates and other engagement metrics.
To determine the content a particular prospect might like to see, look into the data you’ve gathered through CRM, surveys, or proprietary data services such as EDA and RigDig to find pain points, goals and other business priorities that will make your marketing resonate with them.
3. Tell a captivating story
B2B customers are much more emotionally connected to brands than their B2C counterparts.
If you want your marketing strategy to stand out, you need to build on that connection with a captivating narrative centered around your customers or their needs.
While customer testimonials are important, you need to go deeper and do more storytelling to be impactful. Multipart videos centering around one or a few individuals overcoming adversities and finding success are a great way to do this. For these types of videos, your brand should not be the focus.
Taking the time to foster a personal connection between the subject and the customer and getting buyers invested in the subject’s story will make your brand more memorable and improve customer relationships as a byproduct.
Conclusion
You need to make your marketing stand out from your competitors’ in a way that’s memorable to buyers. Making them laugh with a humorous campaign or telling an inspiring story that they’ll relate to is a great way to engage them and form an emotional connection with your brand. On top of all that, personalization is key when creating a campaign that speaks to your prospects, causes them to engage, and makes them remember you.
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