B2B Marketing During "These Unprecedented Times" is Exactly Where It Was Headed Anyway
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I know, did your eyes roll a bit too at that turn of phrase?
These unprecedented times.
When we feel like we lack vocabulary to describe a phenomenon, we default to ambiguous descriptors like this. When it feels bigger than us and far broader than the world we knew, we default to: Uncertain Unprecedented Challenging Troubling Difficult Tough Times™ (via Mark St. Amant.)
Unprecedented means without previous instance. The root, precedent, is something used as an example for the future.
The truth is, for businesses, we already have vocabulary to describe what's happening around us and our organizations. Marketing was already starting to push organizations to inhabit the kind of place in this world that many brands are adopting now.
And that means B2B firms may have everything they need to be positioned well for the difficult, tough times ahead and the eventual rebound post-pandemic.
For example:
1. Cuts and the chopping block were approaching
More than 80% of US B2B buyers said they were concerned about a recession in 2020.
This was a survey from November 2019, before COVID19 reached American soil.
B2B buyers were already leaning towards cutting products/services which aren't considered essential, well before the pandemic came into the picture. Marketing's job has always been to ensure products are deemed essential must-haves, positioned in a way that the buyer could not live without, partnering with CS to ensure adoption post-sale.
If we haven't done a good job of this pre-pandemic, we likely have little hope of surviving the recession-budget chopping block (Hi Sara) now.
2. Stress and the need for buyer enablement
Over a year ago, more than half of US adults surveyed felt we were living in the lowest point in our nation's history that they could remember (APA). Compounding this anxiety was the frenetic pace of our average workday.
Pre-pandemic, workers switched between tasks 300X a day while using 56 different apps/websites (RescueTime study.) Add the modern problem of a 24/7 news cycle, and it's clear that information overload was affecting buyers well before the pandemic hit.
But, if stress and anxiety was a critical problem then - it's only been made worse now.
For businesses hoping to press on, it's important to understand the impact this stress has on B2B buyers:
Higher levels of stress in the brain prohibit reflection, contemplation, or thoughtful decisions. This condition was named Continuous Partial Attention by Linda Stone. Author Steven Berlin Johnson writes:
"It lets you cast a wider net, but it keeps you from really studying the fish."
This Continuous Partial Attention comes at a price - both for us, and our buyers.
In times of perceived crisis, our brains cry out for information to help us survive, stemming from our very evolution (Shyam Sundar).
Translated to the B2B buyers journey, we know (ad nauseam) that the average buyer guides themselves through 60% to 90% of the "traditional sales funnel" before ever contacting a brand. (That stat is attributed to Forrester but frankly it's been quoted so frequently across so many blogs now that it's become more akin to an old wives tale. But the sentiment remains true. Self-directed buyers do research. Groundbreaking.)
In response, B2B brands are producing more content than ever before. (Also groundbreaking.)
Here's the rub: Research from CEB found that “B2B buyers may be better informed than ever but they’re deeply uncertain and stressed.”
Dumping more content onto overloaded buyers won't help their purchase decision, especially now when they are working remotely from the other members of their buying committee and anxiety is blocking reflection, contemplation, and thoughtful decision-making.
The consequence was described in HBR pre-pandemic, in 2017:
"...decision makers pushed into unproductive, open-ended learning loops by the deluge of information.
With each iteration they work harder to ensure that they fully understand the requirements and the alternatives.
More information begets more questions, with the result that customers take longer and longer to make a purchase decision—if they ever do."
Gartner's "Buyer Enablement" perspective is critical, now more than ever (damn, even I can't get away from some of these phrases.) Simply put, buyer enablement helps buyers buy.
We were headed in this direction pre-pandemic. Now, it's incumbent on marketing teams to create content that helps to simplify a buyer's decision. Consider interactive content such as:
Calculators
Diagnostics
Benchmarking tools
Simulators
Recommenders
If your insight is locked away in PDFs, you’re missing the chance to experiment with experiential content, and help the buyer get to the personalized information they need, faster, even within long cycles. For example, see what TriComB2B did with Flowserve's virtual plants.
If this pandemic forces us to be more deliberate, intentional and prescriptive with our content, good. It's only accelerating a trend that had to come.
3. Mission-driven, value-add pivots
The vast majority of B2B firms have enabled remote work environment for their employees to ensure business continuity. That by itself demonstrates a commitment to customers, but across the B2B world, the bar is being set even higher.
The pandemic has, in many ways, brought out the best in some B2B companies.
Others are too busy pandering to the pandemic to realize they're squandering an opportunity to demonstrate character, prove integrity, and strengthen current/potential buyer relationships now for the long-term.
It's been encouraging in the midst of so much fear and loss to see how organizations are reaching well beyond their scope in "normal times" using existing resources in creative and helpful ways. They're asking:
What levers are available to help buyers during this time?
Some examples:
Microsoft has a stated mission to "empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more." When I sat down with Microsoft US CMO Valerie Beaulieu a year ago in Bellevue, it was right there on the front wall of the office I was visiting.
But, more than decor, the company's mission has guided decisions made during this time.
The firm is clear about how it's responding to COVID-19, including value-add pivots like activating 2,000 Microsoft Store employees to instead perform remote live software trainings. In the last month, retail employees have virtually trained 65,000 people in government, health care, education and finance on using Microsoft Teams.
(Note: I'm also relieved and encouraged that the company is addressing its role in preventing the spread of harmful misinformation on LinkedIn - read more about their efforts here. Twitter is starting similar measures.)
Salesforce quickly stood up a resource center, Leading Through Change that includes webinars, videos, ebooks and more all devoted to helping business leaders through this time. Topics include managing a marketing team remotely, running virtual events from home, connecting with digital-only customers in retail, and restructuring service operations from home. These topics are well aligned to the Salesforce suite of software tools, and draw from their expertise with customers.
The firm is also hoping to be a source of insight and technology for the recovery and reopen efforts. They also brought forth (in record time, it seems) work.com, a centralized hub of new apps, content, and resources to help workplaces come back to business safely.
These apps are to include a workplace command center bringing data and processes together, shift management and planning to ensure safety, contact tracing if an outbreak does occur so that businesses can track contacts of individuals within sites and locations, and more.
Emerson is responding to the pandemic with free training courses for contractors and technicians, who may be lucky enough to look at this time as a window of opportunity for professional development. The professional education offered runs from 4/22 through 5/6 on topics like refrigeration cycle and installation best practices. Read more via TriComB2B.
Cisco is not only one of the firms at the center of the sudden spike in remote working and all the security/efficiency headaches it creates, but it has also allocated $210M in product and $8M in cash to the coronavirus response.
I know those numbers are staggering to the average small or medium-sized firm wondering how to help and where they have a place in the response. One move that serves as a great example, speaking volumes beyond cash: Cisco set up a brokerage to help healthcare organizations get networking equipment for free. Companies can donate unused wireless equipment with healthcare facilities that may need it. (Computerworld)
10x Management, a freelance developer hiring agency, has partnered with WhyHunger and software engineers Greg Sadetsky and Colin Wren to develop a comprehensive, crowd-sourced open-source interactive map of free meal sites in the U.S. Updated daily. (Computerworld)
Useful, timely, helpful, and leveraging the unique resources offered by these firms.
You love to see it.
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Keep this going.
These examples demonstrate a direction our beloved/despised industry needs to take. Only 4% of US consumers believe the Marketing industry operates with integrity. The institution of business is deemed capable, but untrustworthy. On the flip side, nine out of 10 Americans surveyed expect companies to engage in some kind of community support during the crisis (Just Capital.)
Brands are serving as relevant, helpful resource for buyers, deploying content and tools with the customer's best interest in mind during the pandemic, using the specific expertise and capabilities of each vendor. This serves to demonstrate both the leadership as well as integrity of these brands.
Most importantly, they demonstrate the fact that action speaks louder than words. When every B2B brand is "here for you" in "these unprecedented times," action creates differentiation. When every buyer starts the buying process with a measure of skepticism, these moves earn trust.
From this perspective, these times aren't unprecedented, not to firms who have been paying attention, constantly aligning themselves to the shifting needs of customers, and who have strengthened the muscles in their organizations that allow them to adapt quickly and deploy creative, bold solutions like these.
They know a brand is comprised of all of the experiences buyers have with an organization, not just the words we use.
I hope this becomes the new normal. I'm here for it.
"The coronavirus could be the biggest global challenge since World War II. In the wake of that conflict came the question: “What did you do during the war?” That question will be asked, forcefully, of both government and business, once the COVID-19 battle has been won. Business leaders need to ask it of themselves now."
I love finding new examples of marketing that is not pandering to the pandemic. Please do share what you, or a brand you know, is up to!
And in these unprecedented times, if you'd like a somewhat weekly, moderately irreverent, but always interesting newsletter, you can get on the list here.
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Additional resources
An updated tracker of marketing's response to coronavirus (AdAge)
Scott Monty's editable tracker of corporate goodwill efforts during COVID-19
DidTheyHelp.com calculates how a company or celebrity behaves during the Coronavirus pandemic, including a list of heroes and zeroes.
Watch my talk on Pandering to the Pandemic from the recent FutureXSummit from MITX:
For a laugh