🥱 More Acronyms in B2B *sigh*
According to new research from LinkedIn’s B2B Institute and WARC, B2B brands need to focus more on making explicit and clear promises to their customers (PTTC… I know, I know, I don’t think it needs an acronym, not everything needs to be acronymized but here we are). In fact, according to their report, B2B firms that make a genuine and communicable promise to their customers have a 48% chance of increasing their brand’s health.
Think about it, how many times have you seen a business give you some vague, salesy pitches and advertisement? Sure, they sound interesting, but then afterwards, once the adrenaline of listening to the pitch has died down and someone asks you what they actually said, you find you can’t pin down their entire point.
💗 The Heart of the Problem…
David Tiltman, SVP of Content at WARC, opened the Making a Promise to the Customer report with the bold claim, ‘Marketing has a language problem’. He goes on to say: ‘The industry uses the terms ‘brand’ and ‘brand building’ liberally. As an industry, we have built up an arsenal of knowledge about their power. Yet these same terms are not well understood outside of marketing. Nor is their power to support the commercial agenda of a business.’
It’s a big report, so we won’t cover every little detail here (we’ll stick a link to the end of the article), but he’s not wrong. B2B firms are typically very growth-oriented, and that’s not a bad thing, but when you’re stuck in the growth mindset, you run the risk of losing sight of your clients and customers. You might spend loads of money on advertising and marketing, only to find that you’ve wasted about half of your money, and you’re not sure which half was wasted.
‘B2B businesses spend a lot of money on marketing and advertising,’ says Mimi Turner, Head of EMEA at the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, ‘and they’re typically very comfortable spending it at the bottom of the funnel where you get measurable results. It’s much more of a struggle to have the debate at the top of the funnel about what value this creates.”
🙏 Make a Promise Your Customers
I hate that I’m about to do this, but I’m going to use a Mad Men analogy. There’s a very famous episode of Mad Men where Don Draper, the protagonist of the show, pitches his advertisement idea to Kodak for their projector. The client wants to advertise it as a wheel because they think it’s interesting imagery. But Don, ever the genius ad pitchman, uses the projector to show pictures of his family, tugging on their heartstrings and ultimately claiming that it’s not a wheel at all, rather it’s a time-traveling carousel.
‘It takes us to a place where we ache to go again,’ he tells them.
That’s the promise. With this machine, you can go through old memories and relive them. That’s its purpose, that’s what it does.
Now look, I know I could give you a bunch of real-life examples, but that’s all in the report here; it’s not why you’ve come here. You’ve come here because we offer some creative takes on recent B2B news. Have to think about whether you’re making the best use of your language in marketing – are you giving them direct promises and reassuring them?
The promise you make to your customers, if nothing else, means trust.
Sam Hollis is a Writer for Fame, SaaS Marketer, as well as his own fictional short stories. He lives and works in Birmingham with his three cats and his dog (way too many pets, if you ask us)