Over the past 20 years, best practices for increasing the effectiveness of B2C advertising have been well-researched, while B2B marketing remains relatively neglected ground.
Many professionals question whether the same guidelines can be applied in B2B as in B2C. In this sense, most of them agree that the advertising strategies that have been widely discredited in B2C are still used normally in B2B.
The UK Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) database is one of the world's best sources of information on marketing effectiveness, collecting campaign effectiveness data from the past nearly 40 years. This database currently contains nearly 1,500 marketing and advertising campaigns, including details on creative goals and strategies, budgets, media, and most importantly, business results.
Although this database contains mostly cases of B2C strategies, we have been looking for clues that help us understand which strategies work best and which patterns are interesting and can be useful for B2B marketing.
Five key principles driving growth in B2C that also work for B2B businesses
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Invest in SOV (Share of voice)
Share of Voice is a KPI (Key Performance Indicator) that identifies the level of fame, knowledge on the part of potential customers and the reach of your messages and offers your brand or company has in the market compared to competitors.
There is a strong relationship between the growth of the market share and the investment in advertising, measured as “share of voice”. The relationship is very similar to that seen in B2C, which implies that advertising works in both B2B and B2C.
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Balance between brand and activation
Advertising spend must be balanced between long-term brand building and short-term sales activation (eg, lead generation). Investment is needed in both, but it seems that in the case of B2B marketing investment in sales is more important and an investment of 40% distributed in campaigns aimed at increasing brand awareness and 60% in sales activation is suggested.
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Expand your customer base
Long-term growth depends on expanding your customer base, rather than trying to upsell existing customers. This means that, in addition to targeting your existing customer base to increase their purchases, you should primarily target new potential customers and their prescribers.
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Maximize brand awareness
The degree of awareness of your brand in the market indicates the speed at which your brand reaches the minds of your potential customers in the face of a purchase situation. This degree of knowledge that the market has of your brand is caused by a great notoriety and identification that customers associate with your product or service category. Campaigns that encourage the shopper's “readiness of mind” more strongly tend to be more effective.
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Harness the power of emotions
Emotional campaigns (those that try to make prospects feel more positive about your brand) are more effective in the long run than rational campaigns (those that try to communicate information). The types of emotional approaches required will be very different in B2B from B2C, but the same principle applies to both. This is because emotional campaigns are better for brand building. However, rational campaigns are better for short-term sales activation, so a balanced campaign will incorporate both.
In conclusion, with a quick analysis of campaign results listed in the UK IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) database, we see that B2B marketing works very similarly to B2C.
The ingredients for effectiveness (high visibility, wide reach, and high mental positioning) are the same in both worlds. B2C and B2B require very similar combinations of brand building campaigns and rational activation campaigns. And both worlds respond in much the same way to changes in the investment we make in each of them.
Of course, within each type of strategy (whether B2B or B2C), the results will not be the same and we will find variations depending on the size of our potential customers: SMEs probably behave differently from large corporations or the public sector, but the patterns of success will be very similar. In fact, it's normal for B2B marketing to seem to work much like B2C marketing, since B2B buyers are people, after all.
At PGR Marketing & Tecnología we are specialists in generating IT leads for B2B companies and we will be happy to help you focus your marketing efforts on your most valuable potential customers, highlight your value proposition for them and achieve conversions over time.
