“Why is marketing so often a headache for CEOs?
Why is it so tough for B2B companies to get marketing right? I hear dozens of horror stories a year: The CMO who only lasted 9 months because he or she spoke in platitudes. The marketing team that is good at tactics but too far removed from the market. Sales departments (and sometimes CEOs) that wonder what marketing actually does. Campaigns that generated poor results. Those can be challenges for sure.
In 20+ years as a marketing leader, working with, assessing and advising hundreds of companies and conducting nearly 700 customer interviews, I’ve found that the root cause of these challenges is often the same: “B2B marketers are talking past their customers.” Studies validating this issue have been done by McKinsey Consulting and others.
Companies win because they have better customer insights.
There’s something too many companies assume, guess or simply overlook before they start investing in marketing:
What does the world look like from the customers’ perspective? What they are really thinking, what they actually need (vs. what you are selling), how they describe their challenges in real-world language and how they make decisions.
Once you have these insights–we call them Elevator Rants–you can translate them into relevant and differentiated products and services, positioning, value proposition and messaging that will be hyper-relevant to their target audience. Knowing the customer doesn’t solve all marketing and sales problems–but it certainly makes marketing and selling a whole lot easier.
Honest answer:
When’s the last time you met with a customer when you weren’t trying to sell something or resolve a situation?
Some of the CEO “Elevator Rants” we hear:
The ROI on listening.
Better engagement across all channels.
Increased campaign metrics.
Increased sales win rates.
Improved return on marketing investment.
Reduced marketing waste.
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“Bob is is relentless, in a positive way, about using a customer as the reference point (‘what would the customer think?’). This really rooted us with the audience and prevented us from sounding like we were talking to ourselves.”
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“In meeting with Bob for just an hour or so, I got precious new clarity on our go-to-market strategy and priorities—something I’d been wrestling with for two years (with multiple marketing resources).”
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“He applies business savvy and experience to make marketing a good investment rather than simply a series of activities that may or may not have the desired result.”
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“Great results came from our deep engagement using Bob’s ‘customer listening’ approach, because it got right to the heart of the true value of our product–from the customer perspective–beyond fuzzy platitudes.”
Read the entire story here.
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“The feedback from every Partner, as well as my assessment of the effort, was outstanding and led to tangible results, including the partners’ satisfaction with their NAFCU partnership.”
Read the entire story here.
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“Rather than focusing on tactics like SEO, email, print or events, Bob started by getting us to look at our motives. In other words, spending a dollar on traditional marketing meant not investing in, say product development, support, or an additional sales person.”
Read the full story here.
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“You rarely find this combination of strategy and creativity in one resource.”
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“We got actionable customer insights that led to powerful creative concepts.”
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“The changes to our positioning and pitch made a huge and immediate difference.”
Read the entire story..
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“Bob synthesized our story so it clearly presents what we are about and makes our marketing more effective.”
This Inc. 5000 CEO did something shocking to “decommoditize” his business: He listened.
To get your customers to listen to you, you have to listen to them first. Get a complimentary Elevator Rant diagnosis.
Or just reach out to chat.
