‘Flippening’ will usher in a Golden Age of B2B marketing

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Should you be optimistic about the future of B2B marketing?

We are optimists, believe it or not. We believe that B2B marketing is at the peak of a Golden Age, a glorious revolution that will begin with a very important event.

And we call this event… the Flippening.

To understand Flippening, you must first understand the three numbers that explain everything wrong in the B2B marketing industry.

80%, 95%and 8%.

One, 80%. If you talk to a financial analyst, they will tell you something like 80% of your share price is based on cash flows 10n years into the future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Wall Street is not fleeting. The market values ​​businesses in their future cash flows.

Second, 95%. According to our research at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, almost 95% of consumers are not ‘in-market’ to buy your products right now. That means that effective marketing works primarily by reaching 95% of customers who are not yet in the market, which increases the likelihood that your brand will be remembered when those customers enter the market at some future time. .

Contrary to conventional wisdom, delivering short -term sales is not the most important job for B2B marketers, as only 5% of customers are willing to buy today. The most important job is to influence 95% of future consumers to generate future cash flows.

And finally, 8%. According to LinkedIn data, B2B marketers spend approximately 8% of their budgets on brand awareness goals. Something like 92% of B2B budgets are focused on short -term, bottom funnel goals like lead generation.

This so-called performance marketing can get sales from in-market buyers, but it has no effect on subsequent buyers. Brand marketing is better at building long -term memory structures that define future sales.

85%. 95%. 8%.

One of these numbers has 0% meaning. If 80% of your stock price is based on future cash flows and 95% of your buyers are future buyers, why only 8% of your budget be spent on brand marketing, which increases sales to future from future consumers? Why would you spend 92% of your money chasing 5% of your customers? Isn’t that a huge wrong allocation of capital?

Yes!

But don’t worry, the correction will come.

Prepare yourself for Flippening.

The Flippening: When 8% brand becomes 51% brand

So what flip is Flippening?

Flippening is the magical moment when B2B businesses realize that brand marketing creates more financial value than short -term performance marketing, and B2B CMOs are starting to allocate at least 51% of their budgets. brand marketing.

Flippening will bring about a positive chain reaction, which will be good for everyone in B2B.

The brand transition will benefit businesses, as the brand 1) increases long -term and short -term sales, 2) improves pricing power, 3) reduces talent acquisition and retention costs, 4) opens up growth in new categories, and more.

Sales do not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales have plagued marketing throughout eternity.

By creating more commercial value, marketing can enhance its status within B2B organizations. Instead of sitting in the basement, coloring in our whitepapers and sales collateral, marketing will return to the boardroom with the decision makers.

Lifting the funnel will also make the job of B2B marketing a million times more enjoyable. The problem at the bottom of the funnel is that marketing has to ‘share’ its success with sales. And as Gandalf tells us: “There is only one Lord of the Rings, and he does not share in power.”

There is only one department that can get credit for delivering short -term sales, and that is the sales department. Sales do not share power. The bottom of the funnel is the land of Mordor, where sales have plagued marketing throughout eternity. The top of the funnel is the Shire, where marketers can enjoy such fun little hobbies. Marketing has a monopoly at the top of the funnel. We are the only ones who can influence future consumers in size through brand advertising.

Flippening will even benefit performance marketers, by lowering their valuable cost-per-lead and by increasing their budgets. That’s right – we don’t believe that brand growth will come at the expense of lead generation. It is incremental. Businesses need to influence ‘out-market’ buyers and capture in-market buyers. Flippening will increase the overall marketing budget. Performance marketing will receive a smaller slice of the bigger pie.

Yum!

Performance branding is the path to prosperity

There is only one thing that prevents Flippening – we are brand marketers.

To fulfill the dream, B2B brand marketing needs to rise to the occasion and position itself in a different way. There’s a reason the brand only gets 8% of the budget right now – most so -called ‘brands’ aren’t particularly effective or compelling.

For example, many brand marketers say their goal is to increase ‘brand love’. Whenever a CMO uses the phrase brand love, a marketing effectiveness angel is on fire, finance removes some zero in the brand’s budget and orders another’s sales. lobster dinner.

News flash: people don’t like brands here on planet Earth. Here on planet Earth, people choose brands out of pure laziness, buying whichever brands are easiest imaginable in a buying situation. And what does love have to do with that? Absolutely nothing. CFOs don’t take brand love seriously, and rightly so – it’s not a serious idea.

If brand marketers want to increase our budgets, we will need to distance ourselves from brand love and brand goal fanatics. Celebrity CMOs have been able to turn brand marketing into an arts and crafts project for aspiring astrologers. You need an MBA from Hogwarts just to understand what most brand marketers say, let alone how their work helps the bottom line. Thanks to these people, the brand has a serious brand problem.

Whenever a CMO uses the phrase ‘brand love’ an angel of marketing effectiveness is ignited, finance shaves some zero in the brand’s budget and orders another’s sales. lobster dinner.

Instead, we need to embrace what we call ‘performance branding’. Performance branding is brand building designed to maximize profits, not love. It is based on empirical research by experts such as Professor Jenni Romaniuk, which is financially structured, and measured using market -based metrics such as voice share, cost per reach, and category entry points, which measure possibility of your brand being conceivable in a buying situation. Performance branding reaches every consumer in the category with a great creative brand that grabs attention and connects the brand to buying situations. Its brand goal is to generate future cash flows.

There is a new generation of B2B brand marketers who are applying these ideas. Serious marketers, like Colin Fleming at Salesforce, Jennifer Chase at SAS, Lisa Joy Rosner at Oracle, Brent Reinhard and Chase, Jim Lesser at ServiceNow, Sumit Virmani at Infosys, Richard Maclachlan at Workhuman, Antonia Barton at BT, and more . We hope to write about their work in future columns, but for now, let’s just say these marketers are the reason we’re hopeful about the future of B2B. The industry needs more examples of great B2B brand building, and these marketers are setting new and higher standards.

The future of B2B is bright, and the future of B2B is brand.

Flippening is approaching.

Peter Weinberg and Jon Lombardo are the heads of research and development at the B2B Institute, a think tank on LinkedIn that studies the laws of B2B growth. You can follow Peter and Jon on LinkedIn.

Mimi Turner, head of EMEA and Latin America at The B2B Institute on LinkedIn, will speak to a panel about how B2B marketers can deliver greater impact and gain more influence at Festival of Marketing: Transform. The event will take place March 23 to 25 at The QEII Center in London and online, and there are several ticket options. Visit the website for more details and to book your place.

The Power to Change



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