19 CMOs/CEOs Reveal Big Changes in B2B Marketing

The ongoing "consumerization of B2B" has been the topic of many passionate conversations among marketers. The dominant discussion is based on the principle that businesses do not sell products to businesses, they sell to people—requiring that B2B marketers communicate with decision-makers in a highly engaging way. However, the conversation has now shifted to B2B marketers seeking ways to humanize their brands and connect with everyday people, not just decision-makers.

As a lifelong B2B marketer, I recently set out to get a better sense for how B2B marketing leaders and some CEOs are perceiving this trend, and how (or "if") it is impacting their day-to-day marketing activities. To learn more, I reached out to a sample of CEOs and CMOs in my network with one question: "How has the trend in consumerization of B2B changed your marketing behaviors?" Of course, it's only fitting that I answer the question too. Here's what we had to say:

Provide Professional Value: “We've altered the way that we create content at Siegel+Gale. We approach our target audience as people who are time pressed with difficult jobs to do. This has guided us toward taking a new lens to how we create blog posts, articles, or videos—always asking, ‘is this piece providing something valuable and actionable for our reader?’ We're continuously striving to produce content that is informative, educational, or provides our audiences with tips and tools that make their jobs easier.” -- Margaret Molloy, Global CMO, Siegel+Gale

Purpose Matters: “Consumerization of B2B means that purpose matters and requires that we engage customers in a dialog to turn them into brand advocates.” -- Nick Besbeas, VP Marketing and Customer Support, LinkedIn

Humanizing Brands: “B2B marketers need to remember that big glass buildings don’t buy software, people do. In the past, B2B marketers treated corporations as if they were one monolithic entity. Now we recognize they have varying needs and deliver messages based on audiences. We created an initiative called “Humanize the Brand” that encourages and enables SAP to communicate more consistently, more simply, and in ways that are more empathetic to our customers.” -- Jonathan Becher, CMO, SAP

Simple, Integrated Marketing: “The biggest changes are simplifying the message, a better adherence to messaging and positioning across the company, ‎and a broader use of social media to communicate the message.” -- Mark Wilson, SVP Marketing, Blackberry

Measurement Tools: “The biggest change is the use of measurement tools like attribution modeling, which connect individual person-level exposure to CRM conversions to better understand the ROI of advertising and communications touchpoints.” -- Randall Beard, Global Head of Advertising Solutions, Nielsen

Consumer Behavior: "In today's networked world, terms like B2B and B2C are no longer relevant—it is all about B2C. Whether you are a CEO or a CPA, you can be a consumer anywhere and at anytime. You can window shop, read and write reviews, bargain hunt, or bespoke until you drop. And when you go back to being a CEO or CPA, you want the same always-on, simple experience in your "B2B" world since there is no longer a distinction between what hat you are wearing." -- Marty Homlish, EVP and Chief Customer Experience Officer, HP

Tone + Voice: “Consumerization is changing the tone and voice of ADP's brand in multiple ways. It has not only changed what we say, but whom we talk to as we increasingly reach end users and not just decision makers through mobile and social channels.” -- Steve Hardy, VP NAS and MNC Strategy and Marketing, ADP

UX + Pull Marketing: “First, my perspective of what is ‘good enough’ for the user experience of a software product has dramatically changed. In today’s consumerized world, products must be designed to be intuitive to users and this requires an iterative design approach. Second, with the advent of social media and Google, 60% of the buyers journey happens before prospects engage with the sales team, therefore, we need to focus on answering the questions buyers will have, in the places they will look, early in their journey. Overall, there has been a radical shift in emphasis from push to pull marketing.” -- Richard Campione, President of Cloud and Data Services, ServiceSource

Forge Relationships: “We strive to get closer to the final end user. Avoid jargon. Forge the relationship. Create huge value for the customer.” -- Fred Niemeier, President of Energy and Fuels Metering Group, IDEX Corporation

Tailored Interactions: “As marketers, we don’t focus on B2C or B2B—it’s about leveraging technology to provide tailored information and interacting individually with customers and prospects throughout their buyer journey—that’s critical for consumer purchases and for complex technology decisions.” -- Debbie Murphy, VP Global Marketing, Zebra Technologies

Individuals: “The consumerization of IT contributed to the convergence of B2B and B2C to a path of B2i; the i stands for an increasing number of critical individuals that IT B2B marketers have to market to with B2C simplicity in order to gain and sustain relationship permission.” --Eric-Jan Schmidt, VP Global and Digital Marketing, Hitachi Data Systems

End User Marketing: “The biggest impact of consumerization of enterprise technology has been on product design and development, as well as the advent of bottoms-up business models. Inevitably, it has impacted how we market our products with increasing use of subscription-based pricing and greater focus on end user (vs. buyer) marketing to drive adoption and usage.” -- Rahul Sachdev, President and CEO, Get Satisfaction

Sharable Content: “B2B buyers are already ‘consuming’ information, just like consumers. We’re embracing their active role in the buying process by developing shareable content and stories.” -- Steve Handmaker, CMO, Assurance

Shifted Budgets: “The consumerization of B2B has enabled Kofax to adopt a consumer-driven positioning. We have shifted budgets, embraced customer versus product focused messaging, and shaped our brand voice to be more conversational and provocative.” -- Grant Johnson, CMO, Kofax

More Pull, Less Push: “B2B has always been a misleading term in that individuals within companies have always made the final buying decisions. What has changed in B2B marketing is the ubiquity and transparency of information and data that has made the B2B consumer more educated, informed and in control. The same is true in B2C. Marketing must therefore adapt to shorter buying cycles, faster reaction times and increased non-traditional competition. The ability to influence customers along multiple channels and formats in real time is now a required and critical marketing skill. In short B2B consumerization has required marketing organizations to move from ‘push’ centric to ‘pull’ centric.” -- John Dragoon, EVP and CMO, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Digital Drivers: “Even in such a traditional world, we are seeing the selling motion move from a sales rep meeting customers at trade shows to a digitally driven environment where customers’ preferences are already influenced by communities, campaigns, and online information prior to their first encounter with a sales person. This inflection requires our marketing team to rely more heavily on outside vendors with the latest in technology and expertise to help drive our marketing mix.” -- Bob Brahan, SVP and CMO, SGI

Personalization: “B2B marketing is finally recognizing the relevancy of B2C consumerism. For example, B2B’s growing emphasis on personalization, search optimization and sentiment analysis.” -- Gary Damiano, VP Marketing, Veeva Systems

New Technology: “It has made marketing engage more fully with the individual buyer, versus the company persona. Marketers are trying to appeal more overtly to the people involved in the buying cycle, leading marketing to optimize for mobile devices and the technology of the consumer, rather than the traditional desktop.” -- Chris Boorman, Chief Marketing and Customer Success Officer, Huddle

Consumerization Isn’t New: “What do people exactly mean by ‘consumerization of B2B’? It's one of those terms we invent or reinvent. I'd say it was always there, it's just that most B2B marketers were previously focused on a lot of the wrong things or not focused enough on the right things.” -- Shane Lennon, VP and CMO, Epiq Systems

If this topic intrigues you, Siegel+Gale recently published B2BNow—a study based on a survey of 9,500 consumers and 450 business decision-makers. The study demonstrates the benefits that B2B brands will accrue from building stronger connections to consumers. I shared this research in a prior post.

Thanks to the B2B leaders above for their insights. Now over to you: How has the consumerization of B2B changed your behaviors? Let me know in the comments below.

Excerpts from this blog appeared in The Economist Lean back, July 2014.

Margaret Molloy is the Global CMO at strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale.

@MargaretMolloy

Coy Gupta

Fostering growth through a strategy anchored in data and propelled by innovation, I empower organizations to elegantly convert complex technologies into significant revenue streams.

9y

Relationship building has not changed over the last 10 years, but technology has become and enabler for intelligent marketing organizations, between all the data points and mediums lies the right time for a hand shake, work smarter - listen to your data or get someone who knows how to. Then WiN more relationships! Thanks Margaret for sharing.

Like
Reply
Dick Borgo

Retired - CEO The RGBGroup, Inc.

9y

B2B or is it evolving to B2P (Procurement)???? More and more companies are turning over their purchasing investigations/decisions to corporate procurement groups and many have even outsourced this function. In these cases you are selling products/services to "corporations" and not to the real customers. These walls are becoming more difficult to climb, which leads to more commoditization and less innovation. This reminds me of a situation that I am sure every ACE hardware person runs into every weekend. One spouse sends the other to the hardware store to buy parts that they need to complete their home project. If think many of you know how this ends up!

Carter Holland

Chief Marketing Officer, Scale Up Strategist, GTM Advisor | Transformational Leader | SaaS, Supply Chain, Infrastructure, IT, CX, Healthcare, Media & Entertainment, HR | B2B, Enterprise & SMB

9y

Margaret – thanks for this insightful post. I think the challenge is layering the emotional connection on top of business value. Emotional marketing without the business value is usually fluff. I believe most B2B marketers understand that their messages must portray “business value” in order to move prospects through the funnel to purchase. But what many don’t know is that when prospects are comparing supplier business value messages and products, less than 15% actually see a real difference from supplier to supplier – and so they just can’t value the difference enough to pay for it. This is why those who are better able to position the “human” or “personal/emotional” benefits alongside (or on top of) the business value are better positioned than others to influence actual purchasing decisions

The brand experience is more greatly influenced by factors a marketer cannot directly control; therefore, enabling a positive brand experience through your entire employee base (even when they are not officially on the clock) has become much more essential. The Zappos model of employee first, while aspirational for many companies, is a valuable journey to take.

Leela Srinivasan

CEO at Parity | Helping brands tap into the power, popularity & reach of pro women athletes

9y

Interesting comments. Above all, B2B buyers want to be spoken to as if they were human beings, not monolithic corporation. They appreciate - gasp! - humor. They find conversational language appealing. They don't want to log into your software and think that 1991 is calling because it wants its UI back. And yes the content is clearly different from that which we take to our consumer audiences, which makes our challenge a fun one. One that I love.

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Explore topics