🔥 B2B Marketing: 🔥?

Good morning!

I rethought this note for the back end of 2022.

First, the story:

Why should people care about B2B marketing? That’s where all the money is! 💵 💵

Why it matters: B2C marketing has always been the sexy part of marketing. But new data shows that B2B marketing is where it is at.

• Healthcare marketers will spend $1.4B on ads in 2022.

• B2B growth in Asia is estimated to be north of 12%.

• Marketing trade journals have started covering B2B seriously.

How we got here: B2B marketing has been underfunded…for years. In most businesses, the C-suite doesn’t trust their marketing team because marketing has been positioned as:

• The coloring-in department.

• Too tactical.

• The folks that are fun, but you don’t know what their job is.

Change the conversation: B2B marketers can change their perception:

• Focus on strategy: “Where to play? How to win?”

• Talk about profits: A 1% increase in price can grow profits 8%+.

• Emphasize brand power: Show that the choice isn’t sales v. brand, but both.

Strategically speaking: To win in B2B, executives need to:

• Focus on value: Contextual differentiation is where you’ll win.

• Challenge the status quo: B2B doesn’t have to be boring.

• Marketing matters because that is where the money is. So act like it.

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What I’m doing? Each morning, I read articles that will help me be better at strategy. I make notes that I might not use ever again.

Instead of doing that and piling up notebooks full of random asides, I challenged myself to analyze one story a day. That’s what this is.

One story, with my analysis and actions: condensed so I force my thinking to be clearer and so that what I share can be digested in 2 minutes or so.

If you enjoy it, let me know. If you really enjoy it, share it.