Forget the Hype: Three fundamental things B2B marketers must do in 2017
The marketing hype machine is in full force. Articles warning us about the newest marketing trends in 2017 are everywhere; AI, chat bots, hyper-personalization, automation, IoT, and, of course, big data are among the topics du jour.
There is no doubt it’s important to keep up with the latest technology and how you can best leverage it. But in the midst of all the hype, and in order to ensure real results, we marketers first need to take a deep breath and make certain we've nailed our strategy.
While using technology can accelerate results, it can also accelerate the downside and inevitable failure of a flawed strategy. (This is not the “good” version of fail-fast you’ve been reading about.)
There are three things you can do right now to help ensure your strategy is sound:
Invest in improving your story and your content
Invest in understanding your customers
Invest in aligning with sales
In this article (part one of a three-part series), we will focus on the first strategy—Improving your story and content.
The Power of a Point of View
If you’re like most marketers, you’ve spent a lot of time during the last 2 years creating as much content as possible. And, no doubt, most of this has been created in the name of thought leadership—an essential part of any successful content marketing strategy.
While today’s decision makers have access to nearly unlimited amounts of information, the fact is that buyers ultimately want assistance finding the solution that is right for them. As Jeff Ernst, principal analyst at Forrester Research puts it: “Business buyers don’t ‘buy’ your product or service, they ‘buy into’ your perspective and approach to solving their problems.”
All too often, however, content is created in silos and built for a particular purpose such as alignment with a particular campaign or a particular stage of the sales cycle. As a result, an overall narrative is lost. Potential customers get your view on particular pieces of the puzzle but walk away without understanding your overall perspective and approach to helping them.
In order to unify your content and emerge as a true thought leader you need a powerful point-of-view (POV for short).
A well-built POV tells the story of your company’s category and why your company is different from everyone else in the category.
A great POV separates the companies and products that people love from the ones they basically tolerate. When you look around, you can see the differences in companies with a strong POV and those with a POV black hole. For example, SouthWest Airlines clearly has a point of view where United Airlines does not. Other examples are Apple vs. Microsoft and Whole Foods vs. Safeway.
A POV transcends thought leadership by providing a company an identity and culture. It helps to guide a company’s priorities and steers the company’s strategy. And it helps attract the right type of employees while helping them understand how their jobs align with the company’s mission and strategy.
Different vs. Better
A POV should tell the story of why a particular company is different. The authors of Play Bigger state it this way:
“Different forces a choice between what was and what can be. A POV built around better is about comparing your offering to something customers already know. Better reinforces the power of the category leader you’re trying to beat. A great POV takes you outside the better wars and sets you in a different space all your own.”
“When you seek different, you aren’t climbing someone else’s ladder—you’re building your own ladder and putting yourself at the top rung."
Crafting the POV
A well-built POV tells the story of your company’s category and why your company is different from everyone else in the category. If there are no differences between you and your competitors, then the best move is to create a new category and declare yourself its king.
Building the POV is more important and far reaching than simple messaging or an elevator pitch. The POV expresses the company’s overall strategy. As a result, it must be built alongside senior management of your organization. A POV needs buy in from the topmost levels in order for it to succeed.
A simplified version of a POV outline looks like this:
Market landscape
Current situation
Challenges and issues the situation presents
The imperative
What one or two problems companies must solve in order to win
Rewards
What companies win if they meet these challenges
The “juice is worth the squeeze”
The path forward
How companies can solve these problems
Typically a 3-4 step prescriptive plan or blueprint
Common thought leadership approaches tend to talk at too high of a level—identifying problems without providing solutions—or at too low of a level—how your product is better. A well-crafted POV identifies something that companies are not currently doing. It’s not about a slightly different version of a product, it’s about approaching and solving the problem in an entirely new way.
When designing your POV, ask yourself these questions:
How do you define who you are and what you mean to the world?
How do you want people to see you?
What’s the problem you can solve, and your way of solving it?
Then write it down and hone it until it sounds like a presentation that can be given within a ten-minute period.
A POV transcends thought leadership by providing a company an identity and culture. It helps to guide a company’s priorities and steers the company’s strategy.
The POV in Action
I worked with an e-commerce fulfillment provider on positioning and marketing an intelligent internet returns product. Their competitors were the top three express companies (think Brown and their ilk). I approached it by establishing a POV which, essentially, changed the rules of the game.
Our company's online returns service was similar to those offered by the other, much bigger, guys. We all collected customer data along with packages. However, our customers’ returns were handled by logistics executives and their focus was on the box, not the customer.
We knew we had to change the way everyone thought about the “returns” category. If we played by their rules, on their playing field, we would get crushed.
We created a playing field (category) that played to our strength. Instead of focusing only on moving boxes, we looked at what larger retail issues we could solve. Customer loyalty and retention were important metrics in the retail world and we knew customer attrition was high for customers who were returning merchandise. So we tweaked our data to provide retail marketers the information they needed to better foster customer loyalty and, in the process, created an entirely new language for the world of retail returns to go along with our slightly, yet significantly different take. And it worked.
Now when our competitors walked into their prospect’s office, they weren’t asked for the lowest transportation price available. Instead they were asked questions such as: What can you do to boost my customer loyalty? How does your system help me retain my customers? Needless to say, our competitors could talk transportation and boxes all day long but weren’t remotely prepared to talk about this stuff. These topics weren’t covered in their thought leadership pieces or their talking points. We were clearly differentiated.
Build Your Own Ladder
Once again, the authors of Think Bigger say it best:
“When you seek different, you aren’t climbing someone else’s ladder—you’re building your own ladder and putting yourself at the top rung. It’s not an easier path. In fact, it can be a challenging path. But ultimately it puts you in a more advantageous position.”
Your POV tells people what type of company you are, what makes you different, and why they should care. And if you’re entire company lives your POV, you will attract the right customers and be well on your way to winning your business category.
