A new report by Badger Communications and TRA highlights the lacklustre style of the typical ‘same-same’ B2B marketing. The report is a deep dive into how B2B marketing can be made to stand out when so much of it tries to fit to a mould.
Download the report:
TRA: https://mainframe.tra.co.nz/new-zealand-b2b-marketing-report-2020
Badger and TRA talked to local decision-makers across different industries and found what cuts through the market of ‘safe’ B2B marketing.
Matthew Masters, the founder of Badger Communications says the report showed what got B2B marketing noticed more was the emotional aspect.
“To an extent this is a vindication of something we’ve been saying for years. Businesspeople are people first, so their reasons for choosing products and suppliers are human, and often not all that rational. As marketers we do ourselves no favours if we simply regard them as some kind of automated decision machine.”
“There’s a big opportunity for B-to-B marketers to get comfortable with standing out. Distinctive, emotive advertising will get business customers to notice and remember your brand”, Carl Sarney, co-author and Head of Strategy for TRA says. “Our report provides evidence on why this approach works, and guidance on how to do it in the New Zealand market.”
The report covers the ‘sameness’ of B2B marketing, which tends to speak to business owners as businesses, rather than emotionally driven humans.
Although ‘sameness’ is safe, the report highlights that humans are hard-wired to look for patterns and broken patterns get our attention fast. So if you want to get noticed, you need to get comfortable with standing out.
“In B-to-B, advertising on its own doesn’t often close a sale. All the business people we spoke to were regularly interacting with people to help them make decisions about which suppliers to buy from…
• Sales reps
• Co-workers
• Friends in the same industry”
The report concludes that, “In a category void of emotional engagement, telling emotional, human stories instead of rational business stories will break the expected pattern, getting your brand noticed and remembered.”
To find out more about the role of emotion in B2B advertising and how it will engage the emotions of everyone in your market read the full report here.
Badger Link: https://badger.co.nz/btob-report-download
TRA Link: https://mainframe.tra.co.nz/new-zealand-b2b-marketing-report-2020
