If your field is B2B marketing, there’s a good chance your friends and family are clueless as to what you do for a living.
It’s been nearly a year since LinkedIn released its hilarious “No One Knows What You Do” ad campaign. In case you missed it, the two spots, “Cloud Sales” and “Acronym Daughter,” joke about buzzwords that confuse most people outside the marketing work—especially parents whose kids work in the B2B industry.
The playful videos share stories many B2B professionals face: our loved ones have a hard time understanding what exactly we do for work. Each story is united by a core message: parents might not know what their B2B kids do, but LinkedIn’s billon-member professional community does.
We all love a good story, and often the stories that leave a lasting impression are told with humor and empathy and, like LinkedIn’s ad campaign, feel genuine and relatable. This means LinkedIn took a page out of what many consider to be the B2C marketing playbook—leading with content that makes us laugh or smile—rather than leaning on the classic B2B script of product tools and features. And yet the crux of the campaign stayed true to a core LinkedIn value prop: LinkedIn is the place for B2B.
Related: We’re All Human, Even in B2B Marketing
If you think this can’t work for just any B2B brand, we’re here to tell you that it’s time for B2B marketers to embrace the core tenets of the cool-yet-casual B2C approach. Because the expectation among the digital-native generations who are moving up in the B2B workforce is that the line separating B2B and B2C marketing emotional, personalized, and creative storytelling—must fade away.
Run, Don’t Walk, to Create a Brand Story and Narrative
First, let’s validate some important B2B marketing must-haves. For the typical B2B conversation, your prospects need to know a few basics, such as how:
- Awesome your product features are
- Seamless their user experience will be
- Effortless it will be for them to achieve their goals and maximize their ROI
Now that we’ve cleared the air, here’s how B2B company Semrush addressed these aspects with a B2C mindset through its “My Life, My Terms” campaign:
- We have your back with a full-service marketing platform that helps you crush your goals—and make more time for your passions.
- Semrush starts the day off right with clear, actionable data across all your marketing channels.
- With easy-to-understand reports and clear data visualizations from Semrush, you’ll crush the meeting like the pro you are.
- The time and energy you’ll save on keyword research, position tracking, and online advertising can be spent on other areas of your life that matter most: friends, family, and personal passions.
The snippets above are pulled from Semrush’s sleek campaign landing page, an interactive timeline that takes users through a workday for Gaby, a real-life New York–based SEO expert. The purpose of the campaign is to emphasize how Semrush makes her work life easier—fear not, they give a nod to the all-important selling points B2B buyers need to hear—so that she has more time to enjoy life after work hours.
To be sure, “My Life, My Terms” is a very emotionally driven campaign, perhaps one that is more typical in B2C marketing. We’ll venture to guess that the campaign is targeting millennials and Gen Zers. And in case you haven’t already noticed, these younger generations are shaking up B2B buying.
Coming-of-Age Buying Power
Forrester Research’s 2022 Buyers’ Journey Survey found that millennials and Gen Zers comprised the majority of B2B buyers at 64%. One year later, the survey found that the share had increased to 71%. Forrester also points to the multiple dimensions of value these generations look for throughout the buying process that go beyond economics: functional value (making tasks easier), experiential value (providing a pleasant customer experience), and symbolic value (a sense of status or belonging).
This is starting to sound like LinkedIn’s and Semrush’s campaigns, am I right?
We’ve already talked about other research that supports the connection between emotions and decision-making. As more B2B buyers look and act differently than the generations before them, it’s a must for B2B brands to create more emotional connections with their customers—and it doesn’t hurt to make things a little more fun while they’re at it.
A Makeover for B2B Marketing
An opinion piece in The Drum asks the question: Why do B2B companies handle their customers differently than their B2C counterparts? TL;DR: There’s no typical B2B customer anymore; it’s all about making connections with people, plain and simple.
Whether you’re marketing fintech to banks, health tech to hospitals, or leadership development tools to HR teams, every customer is a person with their own ambitions and interests.
We firmly believe product-centric assets will always have a place in B2B marketing. But we also know that incorporating more B2C-style marketing can help move the acquisition needle for B2B brands.
Interested in dipping your toes into the B2C marketing waters? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s chat.