me?

I liked this article and agree with most of what you had to say. Can you recommend a presenter on this topic for a marketing workshop my company hosts?

Thanks!

Hi Julie,

I have to say you are absolutely right. First off, you’re using research to form conclusions and to help us marketers make decisions which is more than half the battle. Second, you are correct that the audience is fragmented and requires very different kinds of methods, content and approaches.

I am specifically referring to the gap that exists (we do not have a gap in traditional outbound!) in many marketing organizations and the need for fresh, courageous voices to talk about how they are coping with that change. I used examples from my own company, a couple of other technology companies and a consumer brand. But I think there should be more.

To be clear, I am not recommending we abandon traditional techniques. In fact, I think events are becoming more important. What I am asking for is for marketing leaders to address the gap, to share their learning and to help us all identify the best way to meet the complexities of today’s buyer landscape.

I appreciate the comments and thanks for adding to the conversation!

Best, Michael

In ITSMA’s recent How Buyers Consume Information Study, we asked 465 senior executives at large enterprises across 4 continents “Which information delivery channels or formats do you typically prefer?” While the best ways to reach the Social Buyers are online and social, the traditional buyers still favor face-to-face (events and sales calls), websites, and even hardcopy reports and brochures (!!)

All this is making the marketer’s job very complex.

Julie

Hi Baxter,

I was certainly not suggesting any CMO spend any significant amount of time on Twitter or any other social tool. But we need Social CMOs who can use those tools to listen to the market. I don’t think sitting in the ivory tower and dictating social activity to a team of interns is the best way to become a more social business. People who use social tools, GET what it means to be social. But don;t confuse my encouragement of use as a recommendation that it is the BEST way to spend their time. It needs to be part of the balance.

I hope that helps to clarify!

Great insights Eric. I thought about adding a line about how “the B2B marketing funnel needs to widen to meet the market” or something like that but I wasn’t sure the analogy was gonna work. But I think it’s what I meant when I was thinking about it. It is exactly what you said: we need to close the audience gap and stop being so darn insular and focused on internal goals. Your post gets right to that point!

The thought you start with here, on transitioning beyond “leads”, ties well to my post this morning on lead generation versus demand generation.

What strikes me here is B2B isn’t, broadly speaking, focused on creating demand by changing the audience’s perspective through conversation, relationship and (gasp) broader marketing. Looked at this way, I believe B2B’s digital gap is really an audience gap. As Tony points out, we need to understand the audience, and then we need to go meet them on their turf, not force them to come to ours.

It’s particularly notable that you label this a B2B gap. B2C marketers appear to be closely this gap much more quickly than B2B. To me, that’s disappointing, as B2B sales has always been about relationships and marketing has included significantly more 1-1 communications. I hoped to see B2B marketers pushing this evolution more than they have. Or maybe I should say, I hoped to see more B2B marketers than just yourself and a small handful of others pushing it!

Great perspective, enjoyed the post and the personal addition of a bit a of family insight!

Eric

I agree with you 100% on the skills gap in marketing. I wish I wrote more about it here, from the marketing geek side: https://wp.me/p1IvyS-S

Baxter

I think the future is now as well. A recurring theme this year will be the need to let go of traditional and make the move into the future. Key will be to balance important social business aspects with new understandings of buyer behaviors. I hit on similar themes in my recent article As The World Churns for CMO’s (https://buyerology.com/buyerology-now-blog/world-churns-cmos/). My views are more managerial in nature but hit on some similar themes. One call to action I would add to yours is to balance analytic with qualitative predictive buyer modeling to get the 360 degrees rounded view of the buyer – badly needed for CMO’s today. Excellent once again Michael!

Tony