What is B2B Marketing? Principles That Differentiate You From The Rest [VIDEO]

What is B2B marketing? — It sounds like such a simple question.

[ Note: Learn or retain more by reading? We got you. Here is the video above in blog format. You’re welcome. ]

“Obviously, it’s B2B companies marketing to other B2B companies.”– And that’s true. But the problem is that it’s actually not that.

Actually, it’s individuals at B2B companies marketing to other individuals at B2B companies. The same principles of how you buy everything else apply with these 3 little differences that we found over the past four years.

“The Single Title”

The first key difference is your market can’t be everyone. We have a principle called “The Single Title.”

This means that within the entire addressable market, there’s one single title that’s probably best for your business and for you to address your marketing to. For us, it’s a demand generation person at a B2B software company.

Now, the VP of Marketing or the CMO might write the check — but traditionally, our champion has to come from within the team and is usually our point of contact. So for your company, think about it — Who is your point of contact? Who is your vendor person who manages the relationship? You need to figure out how to make that person your champion through your marketing if you want to be successful as a B2B company.

Creativity & Design Wins

The next key difference that we found to make B2B marketing incredibly successful is that creativity and design wins.

B2B companies have lied to themselves and have said, “We’re not sexy, we’re B2B. Our companies and our clients just want the data.” And yeah, that’s true — but they don’t want poorly designed unreadable boring data, right? That’s what everybody else is doing. If you embrace creativity and design in your B2B marketing, you instantly have a market differentiator.

For example, look at us at Directive Consulting — we’re an SEO, PPC, and a content company. We’re supposed to be “boring“. We don’t sell any video but we want to do something different so that we can engage with our audience. Ask yourself: “What can I do to engage with our audience and make a difference from the entire noise that’s out there?”

Quality Trumps Quantity

Lastly, the third thing that really separates B2B marketing from everything else is the principle that quality trumps quantity.

A lot of times people have this marketing strategy and they want to get their leads from 50 to 100 and they want to do it now — and that’s great — but if you could get your leads to 25 instead of 50 — and all 25 were right — I bet your VP of Sales would be a lot happier.

Once you understand how to get the quality right, that’s when you focus on the quantity. I’ve never seen simultaneously trying to do both be successful.

In conclusion, let’s focus on a single title, let’s be creative, and let’s understand that quality trumps quantity in B2B marketing.