Digital natives aren’t like the rest of us. They are bringing entirely new behavioral patterns into the B2B buying process, and experienced marketers and sellers ignore this at their peril.
Call it “the consumerization of B2B.” We must treat buyers like the consumers they are in their personal lives, and develop new expertise in the media channels and messages that tend to work in consumerland.
This makes it more urgent to shift away from boring, old-school B2B messages about speeds and feeds, features and benefits and expand our outreach channels beyond the usual trade pubs and business media.
Buyers expect digital-first and mobile-first communications
The digital natives entering buying positions don’t care about how marketing has traditionally been done. They expect digital-first and mobile-first communications. They have scant patience for salespeople. They’d rather buy the way they buy from Amazon.
They want video. They want to be engaged and entertained. They expect the same levels of intuitive digital customer experience they enjoy outside a business setting, and can’t imagine why any idiot would design things any other way.
Yes, they are buying on behalf of their companies, but they respond the way they do when buying for themselves.
There are many drivers of this trend, like the widespread use of social media, which blurs the lines between the personal and the professional self. Those lines have been blurring in other ways, too. Think about the linking of personal and professional data records and the use of CTV advertising, where we can talk to individual businesspeople on their sofas at home.
Another driver of this trend is agencies, who are thrilled at the chance to ramp up their creative output and inject some emotion into business messaging for a change. The old adage still stands: “Business buyers are still people.”
tactics-have-emerged">What new tools and tactics have emerged?
B2B marketers following the consumerization trend have exciting new resources and approaches to choose from, including:
Extreme creativity
Just look at this Mailchimp ad extolled by the Clio Awards people. Mailchimp has been a quirky standout from the start, so this is nothing new for them. But it’s a hit and clearly shows the charm of consumer-like appeals in some business buying situations.
Omnichannel communications, with high degrees of personalization
Up to 63% of marketers are now comfortable addressing prospects using as many as three to six data elements, per Anteriad’s 2024 B2B Marketing Outlook. This is a remarkable level of message customization to an audience of one.
AI, everywhere
Now that we’re all familiar with generative AI for text, it’s time to explore AI as a video generator. One of my favorite new tools is Shuffll, which claims to generate all kinds of video on demand using content from your website.
Beware of going overboard
Consumer-y messaging strategies will get buyers’ attention, but on their own, they won’t end in a sale. These younger buyers still represent their companies and are still part of an ever-expanding internal business buying group. A room full of people who have different priorities and different ideas about what needs to be funded right now.
We still need to arm these digital natives with the white papers, research reports and case studies they need to sell your solution up the line to the CFO. Don’t forget to focus on gathering the contact and buying-role information we need to influence the other members of the buying group. It’s an encouraging leap forward that marketers have made great strides in identifying buying group members and inferring their roles via new digital tools.
Dig deeper: New ways to identify B2B buying group members
Consumerization is new, but the fundamentals are still vital
With all this change in the air, it’s easy to get distracted and lose focus. Here are some suggestions for how to deliver on the basics.
Maintain your authenticity and transparency
Buyers know what’s up. Don’t make them fill out a form anymore. We have other methods for discerning who’s doing what these days. Don’t create faked-up content, either. The whole point is to kick off a business relationship of trust, right? Don’t blow it.
Prioritize the points of leverage
Keep in mind the relative power of the three drivers of direct-response results. I hate to remind us, but creative — the art, copy and format of the message, where our agencies spend most of their time — is number 3. Don’t neglect such targeting and data accuracy (number 1). Give plenty of attention to your motivational offer, known in modern marketing circles as your “lead magnet,” which is number 2. Together, the target audience and lead magnet account for 80% of your results. Prioritize your time and effort in their direction.
Do more testing
In my experience, B2B marketers often avoid testing — sometimes for valid reasons, like small campaign volumes, but other times out of laziness. However, with today’s low-cost digital media, there’s no excuse not to do proper testing. Test your audience selection, your offers and your creative treatments. Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
This last point may just turn out to be an unexpected and welcome upside to the consumerization of B2B. Maybe we B2B marketers will finally become as disciplined about testing as our consumer marketing counterparts. Wouldn’t that be a positive outcome?
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