Crystal Clear Communications Blog

Do salespeople buy into your marketing strategy?

How about the scientists and engineers in research and development (R&D)?

And do you find support from executives in the C-suite?

Weak internal buy-in is a common obstacle to B2B marketing success. Here’s how to fix that.

How B2B marketers can improve the odds

To clear the path and empower marketing:

• Ally with sales, service, finance, product and R&D leaders.
• Unearth unique insights into customers, prospects and influencers.
• Position your brand distinctively to get ahead of the pack.

Build a big tent to co-create your brand’s marketing mission, strategy and message.

In my B2B Mastery workshops from the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), you can learn a step-by-step process to blaze the trail to success. A real-world B2B playbook provides the tools, tips and templates to help your brand grow.

Align with key leaders from sales and other departments

When you build a big tent and invite all the key decision-makers in, you build a foundation for marketing together. Co-create a one-page marketing strategy and a Message Map that hooks audiences in 7 seconds.

Co-creation helps you gain deeper organizational buy-in. When other leaders get a voice in marketing, it triggers the Ikea effect – a cognitive bias that prompts people to attach higher value to what they helped create. Your strategy and message become even more succinct, focused and aligned when others are on board from the get-go.

Who understands the audience best wins

“B2B customers are shifting toward consumer-like purchasing behavior. They’re also demanding a much more sophisticated buying experience and are willing to walk away if they don’t get it,” finds McKinsey’s 2024 B2B Pulse Survey.

Buyers want an omnichannel experience. They now use an average of 10 interaction points with brands, twice as many as in 2016, as you see in this chart:

“At any given stage of the buying journey, one-third of customers hope for in-person interactions, one-third want remote communications, and one-third prefer digital self-serve options. The rule of thirds holds true across all geographies, industries, and company sizes, all types of buying occasions from new to repeat purchases, and across high- and low-value purchases,” McKinsey says.

On multimillion-dollar purchases, B2B buyers continue to convene big buying committees that can stretch out decision cycles. It’s crucial to map out the buying committees so you can ally with the appropriate decision-makers to maximize your brand’s chance of winning the customer.

To speed favorable decisions for your brand, find out exactly what customers need and gain crucial buyer insights by applying buyer persona research.

As marketers get to know your customers face to face in trade shows, events, demo rooms and at their locations, you gain even greater credibility.

Meet customers and learn to speak their language

Direct contact helps you put customers’ needs first, speak their language and teach before you sell – so  your brand jumps ahead of the pack.

To stake out a distinctive market position, focus on the 3 kinds of benefits customers seek – functional, experiential and symbolic benefits.

By building up these benefits, you can build your distinctive brand message with confidence:

• Deliver a brand message that’s crystal-clear, even to non-experts.
• Make your message compelling, since emotions drive most decisions.
• Keep your message consistent across media, to build credibility and trust.

Consider all 40 of the objective and subjective elements of B2B brand value, as seen through the eyes of your customers. Since only 9 of these elements are objective, you’ll find 31  subjective ways to add value to your brand.

Use storytelling strategically to unlock even greater subjective value for your brand. Customers are willing to pay premium prices to gain specific subjective benefits.

Build your B2B playbook with 10 strategies

To maximize marketing impact, select B2B marketing strategies that best fit your brand’s needs. Our proven B2B playbook, which we cover in the ANA’s B2B Mastery program, covers these strategies:

1. Content marketing
2. Demand generation
3. Sales enablement
4. Account-based marketing
5. Trade show and event marketing
6. Thought leadership
7. Employee branding and employee ambassadors
8. Subscription marketing
9. Channel marketing
10. Customer communities.

Using these strategies, you can design and deliver a consistent end-to-end customer experience that brings your brand promise to life and builds your competitive advantage..