Cookie: nuove norme in vigore dal 10 gennaio
Who Is the New B2B Buyer and How Do You Connect with Them?
We all know that Millennials are out-of-control college kids doing shots on Spring Break. And Gen Z are the 10-year-olds currently being raised by TikTok, right?
Hold onto your hats: The youngest Millennials are in their late-twenties. The oldest Gen Zs are 25 — that means they’re out of school and in the workforce. These two demographics are the fastest-growing cohort of B2B buyers.
And they don’t think like Boomers or Gen Xers.
So how do B2B marketers reach these mysterious digital natives? Here are a few pointers.
How to Connect with the New B2B Buyer
You don’t need the latest slang to speak authentically to younger audiences (though I find the new slang totes yeet). Just keep in mind these preferences.
1 — Omnichannel or Bust
Digital natives grew up with the Internet and Gen Z grew up with social media. They’re used to having the answer to any question at their fingertips. They’re also accustomed to multi-threaded conversations: For example, they can start with a social media direct message, continue in text, and end with a quick call. If the only way to interact with your brand is on a phone call, you might as well insist people use semaphore.
Here’s how dramatically the landscape has changed: In 2016, the average B2B buyer used five different channels to interact with suppliers. In 2021, the average was ten channels.
But it’s not just about how many channels you’re on; it’s the experience you provide across channels. Omnichannel means that instead of thinking in terms of channels (ie, Facebook, SMS, chatbot, voice), you think in terms of a single conversation. Every person who interacts with a buyer on behalf of your brand should have access to the entire conversation history.
If someone can interact with the brand across multiple channels with a single seamless experience, they are more likely to choose your brand at decision-making time. That’s especially true for younger demographics, but it also applies across the board.
[bctt tweet=”“If someone can interact with the brand across multiple channels with a single seamless experience, they are more likely to choose your brand at decision-making time.” — Joshua Nite @NiteWrites” username=”toprank”]2 — Multimedia Is Mandatory
In the last few years, B2B marketers have finally pulled away from the static white paper or downloadable eBook as their primary content focus. While these old standbys still have a place in the marketing mix, top-of-funnel content must be more engaging to earn attention.
Video, audio, motion graphics and interactivity all help your brand’s story to come to life for your buyer. In a way, it’s an “omnimedia” approach; Gen Z and Millennials are used to seeing all different types of media in their social feeds. They don’t think twice about, say, a video embedded in a text document — it’s the expected experience.
For inspiration: Our client Prophix wanted a futuristic-feeling asset to promote the idea of AI in Finance. The end project includes animation, video, and an interactive audio feature.
3 — Sincerity Is the New Snark
Ironic detachment hit its peak in the 1990s. From Friends and Seinfeld to Wayne and Garth, it was all about delivering maximum sarcasm with minimal emotional investment. The Gen X motto — if we committed to something as uncool as a motto — would have been, “Oh well, whatever, never mind.”
If you’re a product of the Age of Detachment, it’s time to re-engage. Caring is cool again — feeling emotions, talking about them, supporting other people and lifting them up, the whole package. Think more Ted Lasso and less Chandler Bing.
In short, digital natives want to see the people behind your brand. They want to know your brand’s values and purpose, and they want to see those values in action. If your brand is too stand-offish, it won’t read as professional; it will seem impersonal.
4 — Let Down Your Gates
The conventional wisdom used to be that any substantial asset should be behind a gate. Give away a few tidbits, a blog post or two, but keep the really valuable stuff behind a lead gen form. Give away the trailer and sell the movie.
That approach doesn’t fly with Gen Z and young Millennials, for one simple reason: They already have unlimited access to an enormous amount of content on any subject imaginable. The odds are slim that any brand’s new eBook would be novel and useful enough to earn a form fill.
Our agency has found consistent success by giving away the good stuff and gating an add-on. For example, client Mitel has this beautiful interactive asset that they offer without a gate: The Future Now of Work. One added benefit is that the influencers featured (more on that later) are more likely to share an ungated asset, too.
Consider making your best content as easy to access as possible. For your lead gen forms, offer a download like a checklist, template or other useful tool.
5 — Find the True Influencers
To reach younger people with influencer content, you need to go back to the original meaning of “influence.” It’s not about who has the biggest following or the most retweets — it’s who actually inspires their followers to take action.
The career “influencer” with a million followers may look enticing, but the YouTuber with just 10,000 passionate subscribers is a better bet. Look past the numbers and look at who is actively engaging with their audience, building community and trust in their thought leadership.
Even better, look for influential people who are passionate about the subject you want to cover, people who share your brand’s values and point of view. Instead of paying them to endorse a product, invite them to co-create content with the brand. The end result is bound to be more engaging, more useful, and something an influencer will be excited to promote.
The Kids Are Alright
Look, I get it: It’s still weird to me that people can be born in the 90s. Now, suddenly the 2000s kids are hitting the workforce. It’s tempting to shake my cane and demand that they get off my lawn.
As a marketer, however, I’m glad to see them. The digital natives aren’t going to settle for boring, overly promotional, or insincere content. It’s going to be a challenge to make sure our marketing meets and exceeds their expectations. But it’s a challenge that will ultimately make our marketing better for everyone — even cynical Gen Xers like me.
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The post Who Is the New B2B Buyer and How Do You Connect with Them? appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
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Nicolaporro.it e il giornalismo copiaincolla
Il sito di Nicola Porro,
E questo è un brano dell’articolo uscito ieri, 9 gennaio 2022, su Nicolaporro.it e firmato da “Redazione” e da Paolo Becchi e Giovanni Zibordi (
Versione in formato testuale per agevolare il confronto:
(il mio articolo) Dagli Stati Uniti arriva un esempio tragico di questa regola: secondo quanto riferito da The Center Square, il direttore della compagnia assicurativa OneAmerica, Scott Davidson, ha detto che i tassi di mortalità attuali sono “i più alti mai visti nella storia di questo settore, e non solo alla OneAmerica” e sono saliti del 40% rispetto ai livelli pre-pandemia fra le persone in età lavorativa. Visto che OneAmerica gestisce polizze vita, questo dato è cruciale per la sua attività. Davidson ha aggiunto che non sono gli anziani a morire ma “principalmente le persone in età lavorativa, fra i 18 e i 64 anni.” “Tanto per darvi un’idea di quanto questo sia grave” ha dichiarato “una catastrofe da tre sigma, ossia una di quelle che avvengono una volta ogni 200 anni, comporterebbe un aumento del 10% rispetto al valore pre-pandemia, per cui il 40% è inaudito.” In altre parole, negli Stati Uniti in questo periodo c’è una sovramortalità eccezionale: qualcosa la sta causando.
(quello di Nicolaporro.it) Dagli Stati Uniti arriva infatti la notizia che il Ceo compagnia assicurativa OneAmerica, Scott Davidson, ha detto che i tassi di mortalità attuali sono “i più alti mai visti nella storia di questo settore, e non solo alla OneAmerica”: sono saliti ora del 40% rispetto ai livelli pre-pandemia fra le persone in età lavorativa. Visto che OneAmerica gestisce polizze vita, questo dato è cruciale per la sua attività e gli attuari e gli statistici impiegati dalle assicurazioni sono molto motivati a stimare in modo corretto la mortalità perché è il loro business. Davidson ha aggiunto che non sono gli anziani a morire ma “principalmente le persone in età lavorativa, fra i 18 e i 64 anni.” “Tanto per darvi un’idea di quanto questo sia grave – ha dichiarato – una catastrofe da tre sigma, ossia una di quelle che avvengono una volta ogni 200 anni, comporterebbe un aumento del 10% rispetto al valore pre-pandemia, per cui il 40% è un valore inaudito.” In altre parole, negli Stati Uniti in questo periodo c’è una mortalità eccezionale: qualcosa la sta causando e il Ceo Davidson non avanza ipotesi.
Persino il link della definizione di “tre sigma” è identico. Ma guarda che strana coincidenza.
Per gli immancabili cretini assortiti che insinueranno che potrei aver copiato io retrodatando il mio articolo: copia del mio articolo salvata su Archive.org il 4 gennaio 2022.
Non ho altro da aggiungere.
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Three of the Biggest Opportunities to Elevate B2B Marketing in 2022
Even if 2020 and 2021 didn’t throw buckets of uncertainty, accelerated digital transformation and massively shifting buyer behaviors and expectations on marketers in the business to business world, B2B marketing is not without challenges.
From “boring to boring” to woefully behind B2C, there’s more than enough opportunity for us in the B2B marketing world to raise the bar.
For example, 90% of B2B companies feel their customers completely believe in and rely upon their commitments, but in the professional services industry only 67% believe that. It’s even lower in the financial services industry at 57%. Forrester
I think you’ll agree that what we have in 2022 is a distinct opportunity to elevate B2B marketing, especially by connecting with customers on a more human level authentically and inclusively.
Each year at TopRank Marketing our B2B content marketing agency focuses on a specific theme. In 2022 I’m sure you’ve guessed it: Elevate.
Making a dent in the way an entire industry does what it does is an ambitious goal to say the least. But as Steve Jobs has said,
The ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world are the ones who do. – Steve Jobs
For our part, we’re committed in 2022 to advancing the meaningfulness, the purpose and impact of B2B marketing in three ways:
Elevate B2B Marketing Experiences
B2B marketers are creating more digital content than ever with expectations of performance in the spotlight of every executive pulling the tigger on rising digital budgets. But what good is that “great content” if it isn’t meeting the expectations of buyers? I mean, there’s a lot of thought going into creating highly relevant, useful content but expectations have changed. What B2B marketers are delivering from a marketing experience standpoint isn’t meeting the needs of today’s digital first buyer.
75% of personalized engagement strategies will not meet ROI goals – Forrester
Customer engagement is a big part of the marketing experience brands create for customers. As referenced in the Forrester article. 70% of marketers are adopting an always-on digital engagement strategy in 2022 and lack of buyer insight is a key reason why those engagement and experience efforts will fall short. Part of the solution is a smarter marketing technology, but also soft skills like empathy and the follow through of customer insight in the form of relevant topics, questions answered in content, digital content formats and signals of credibility. Our research on B2B influencer marketing found that 74% of marketers believe influencer marketing improves customer experience.
With the vast majority of B2B buyers now digital first in their preferences for content discovery, consumption and engagement, we’re leveraging customer insight to better inform content formats with episodic content for B2B brands as podcasts and livestream video shows as well as blog, social, interactive and thought leadership content that pairs brand executives with industry experts. Of course optimizing all of this content for search also improves the experience for customers by helping B2B brands become the best answer for the questions buyers are asking at the very moment they need solutions.
Humanize B2B with Authenticity
What good is your content marketing investment if it’s not believable? If it’s not trusted? Or what about if it’s not reaching, engaging and driving conversations? We’ve all heard plenty about how customers don’t trust brands or company advertising while they do trust peers and industry experts. Set aside for a moment, the misperception that popularity alone makes a person or a brand believable. Instead, we’re focused on bringing authenticity to the B2B content marketing world through brand, demand and thought leadership content co-creation and collaboration with influential subject matter experts and opinion leaders that customers actually follow, listen to and trust.
64% of buyers say that an organization’s thought leadership content is a more trustworthy basis for assessing its capabilities and competency than its marketing materials and product sheets – LinkedIn & Edelman
The deluge of content being produced in response to digital first buyer trends has increased the need for B2B brands to optimize their content for reach, engagement and trust. Our own research has found that 83% of B2B marketers consider influencer marketing because they want to be seen as thought leaders. Content collaborations between industry experts and internal subject matter experts and executives helps to humanize B2B brands by focusing on the real issues customers are dealing with.
Humanizing B2B in this way means authentic topics and voices that represent both strategic level thought leadership as well as thoughtful treatment of topics, challenges and issues buyers are facing vs. simply what marketing and sales want to push out into the marketplace.
Give Voice to Talent
Without question the status quo of the B2B marketing industry is holding on as long as it can to the comfortable and familiar ways of doing things. But doing the same things with the same people isn’t going to elevate anything in B2B, so we’re committed to empowering up and coming and underrepresented talent a place in the spotlight.
Nearly 50% of CMOs are women but only 12% are racially or ethnically diverse – SpencerStuart
What that means specifically is an emphasis on engaging the most talented and often overlooked B2B Marketers in a variety of ways on our blog, in our social content, in presentations at events and as we select influencers to work with our agency and our clients. We know many others feel the same way and that’s why B2B marketers are in a unique position to make choices about how they represent their customers in content, who they partner with in content collaborations and the influencers they engage.
A small example of giving voice to talent that we’ve implemented has been the lists of Women Who Rock in Marketing over the past 12 years with the most recent list focusing on women of color in B2B marketing. Not only are we publishing a list honoring marketing leaders every year, but we are following through with interviews, content collaborations and building a community of diverse voices in B2B Marketing.
Are you ready to help elevate the B2B Marketing Industry?
Of course there are many more ways we could help elevate the B2B marketing industry and in fact we are still holding true to the goal of creating great experiences that inspire in all the work we do for clients like LinkedIn, Dell, SAP and one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world.
We feel there are particular opportunities for our team, clients and community to drive the industry forward in the areas of giving voice to talent, humanizing B2B with authenticity and elevating B2B experiences. We believe this focus helps us elevate our work, the impact we have for clients and the business community at large. But we can’t accomplish these big changes alone.
Won’t you join us in making more meaningful and less mechanical marketing experiences? Not only are we hiring multiple B2B marketing roles, we’re also really interested in working with B2B brands that resonate with the idea that we can do better for our customers, our peers and the industry. To learn more, let’s have a conversation!
The post Three of the Biggest Opportunities to Elevate B2B Marketing in 2022 appeared first on B2B Marketing Blog – TopRank®.
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Intervista a Simone Mongiardo, General Manager di save NRG. Ci sono dei vincoli previsti dal Codice dei beni culturali e del paesaggio? “Il D.Lgs. n.42/2004, definendo i beni culturali e…
L’articolo Superbonus: le regole per i palazzi d’epoca scritto da Paolo Brambilla proviene da Assodigitale.
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