B2B marketing – 7 uncommonly practiced common sense issues

1. Social media is NOT another demand generation channel. By now most B2B marketers have found the social media ‘channels’. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most of them have started using it as another channel added to their arsenal, to push content out and, hopefully, to generate leads. Unfortunately, social media is not a passive media where you can shove the content in. If you are not ready to engage with your customers and prospects and start having contextual conversations, please stay away from social media. If you are not ready to accept anything else other than purchase orders from your consumers, social media is not your cup of tea.

2. Lead nurturing takes time, and patience. No matter how smart your scoring mechanism is, nurturing a lead from the top of the funnel to a qualified sales opportunity will take time. Get used to it. Rushing or jumping steps there will not only undermine your whole effort, you might just drive your prospects away.

3. No one is interested in your products. Everyone wants to have a solution suitable to their business context. The idea is very simple and old, but, unfortunately many of the marketers have yet to get their act straight. If you are still selling boxes without mapping your product with your prospect’s business context, you are most likely to fail, no matter how glamourous your marketing campaign is.

4. Personalization of content is not about putting ‘first-name’ variable in your mass mailing campaign. If your campaign is not meeting the ‘personalized’ and contextual need of your ‘audience’ and presenting a compelling story, you are unlikely to hit a home run.

5. Reliability, responsiveness and right messaging still matters. Period! Zappos success did not come from Twitter or Facebook only, they make good stuff and provide fanatic customer support. Social media is an excellent medium to tell your story, provided you have a story worth telling.

6. ROI and matrices are necessary evils. It’s hard, and there is no magic formula. In a world of numerous touch-points, it’s difficult to specify the ‘right-mix’ by numbers. One size doesn’t fit all and it will take time to find out the measurements suitable to your business. But it’s absolutely essential. Take time, modify, and adapt. Rinse and repeat till you get the right combo. Be careful about what you measure. You might get the result and it might kill you.

7. Without context you are just another spammer. In social media or in mass mail campaigns – if you are not talking to your prospects in their language, if you are not addressing their pain points – stop spamming! Stop and listen to them first before you pick up your megaphone.

Do you have any ‘not-so-common’ common sense issues of B2B marketing bothering you?