Do you remember the Avis Car Rental advertising campaign in the early sixties? The one that said “We Are Number Two But We Try Harder“? The company still uses the “We Try Harder” part of that tagline. The campaign put Avis back in the black after being in the red for over a decade. This is a classic example of a winning brand positioning strategy where the company is truthful (that they are not number one, but number two) and yet makes a compelling statement of why customers should choose them over other players (because “we try harder”).
Why am I bringing this legendary campaign into my blog article? Because I believe that close to fifty years later, the same fundamentals of marketing stand true; especially in B2B marketing.
- Don’t pretend to be something/someone you are not.
- Be the best that you can be—and tell your target audience what you are doing to become better every day.
- Most importantly, CONNECT with your customers and prospects—ENGAGE them with your value proposition
(And yes, I was around in the Swinging Sixties, but hey I loved it!).
Content is the ONLY Constant
Online marketing and social media are changing the rules of the game. Go to market strategies have to evolve and adapt at the speed of light. You can win or lose a prospect in less than a second—the time it takes to click away from your website or blog. BUT, having said that, there is a definite crossover between the traditional, offline brick and mortar world and the lightning fast online world—Content. Clichéd as it sounds, content is still king. It is the only constant between the old and the new worlds of B2B marketing. A recent Forbes study captured the sentiments from 15 CMOs of big brand companies who, without exception, agreed on the importance of content in their marketing initiatives.
There are no surprises here about why content is so important. What better way is there to communicate, connect, engage, inform and finally, convert?
Seth Godin wrote on his blog recently that consumers are not “waiting for a better mousetrap”. It’s true. Why should people care whether you are the best in your industry or not? It’s possible that you are. But if a potential customer does not find a solution to their problem in what you have to offer, they are not going to buy. Actually, let’s take a step further back—if the prospect has not even identified a pain point yet, why would they even seek a solution? If you remember from past blog posts, I’ve mentioned that the existence of a real pain point is one of the criteria of a true lead.
Once you know the prospect’s pain points, your B2B lead generation strategy can focus on communicating features and benefits to wrap your offering in the VALUE PROPOSITION that customers seek. As a B2B marketer, you can employ the best tools and techniques that are available but if you haven’t nailed the message, you can keep trying and yet your prospects aren’t going to listen to you. You’ll only be adding to the “noise” that is already a nuisance for them and ultimately, they’ll shut you off.
So what can you do to prevent being lost in the crowd and drowned in the noise? As a smart demand generation expert, you need to:
- Ask the “new” question of your prospect.
- Reframe the problem—peel the onion layer by layer until the prospect’s pain really hurts in all the right places!
- Reposition your solution so it becomes the only one they want to choose—maybe not the BEST in the market, but the one that will work for them.
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