"B to B" messaging vs. consumer messaging

“B to B” marketing for considered purchase markets is different than “Consumer” marketing for impulse purchase markets. Your company’s success depends on doing both well; the individual user has to value the product advantages and the Enterprise purchaser has to approve the economics of the purchase. The Enterprise purchase decision for your product or service is frequently a million dollar decision, so it will not be made without considering timing and options.

In many companies Marketing is responsible to provide leverage to the sales channels for revenue generation, which extends significantly beyond the “awareness” focus of normal consumer marketing. Unfortunately in many companies the processes and criteria for B to B marketing is too influenced by consumer marketing’s focus on awareness generation and does not extend its marketing to meet the requirements of supporting the sales cycle through closing.

Effective considered purchase marketing requires both compelling and believable messages for the sales channels to achieve cost effective selling.

If we expect our sales channels to encourage our customer to initiate a project that could require our product we will also need to provide information on the expected value to the customer from that project initiation as well as some indicators of project completion requirements. This program description is much more “actionable” than the usually “directional” customer values associated with impulse purchases. A compelling and believable message requires evidence to support the specific claims being made.

The customer needs to have measures of both the advantage and the differentiating resultant customer value so that the values promised can be compared against competitors. The company’s decision to initiate a project or not is done by a group of managers who compare the proposed project value to the customer over another project’s value. The expected values need to be specific and tangible so that they are able to be compared with the alternatives. They will use real metrics to compare vendors and those vendors’ advantages. The value to the customer of those advantages will then be evaluated and compared against each other.. If we do not provide the information the customer wants and needs, the customer will develop it for themselves as time permits. Worse, perhaps your competitor will provide it. “Directional” metrics that are not comparable are not very useful in this stage of the sales cycle. Each product claim will probably be assessed for accuracy, so evidence for each claim is required information or alternatively a lot of time and trust will need to be provided by the sales channel.

If a company only uses Consumer “impulse” marketing principles this will never be met since the vast majority of consumer marketing’s focus is on achieving awareness, not the closing of the sale.

The impact of not providing customers and Sales with persuasive customer sales messaging, or not answering these key buying questions, is enormous. It is the main reason why most customer messaging is ineffective.

The impact of ineffective messaging is shown in market research studies like these:

"Over 65% of sales leaders feel they're losing business because they don't have a compelling value proposition."
Miller Heiman, Sales Best Practice Study, 2006

"80 to 90% of marketing collateral is considered useless by Sales."
Proceedings of the Customer Message Management Forums, published by the American Marketing Association, 2002 and 2003

"As much as 40% of a sales rep's time is spent creating presentations, customizing messaging, and preparing for pitches."
CMO Council Study, 2004