B2B marketing is hard enough when you’re an established business selling proven products and services.
Things get exponentially worse when you’re a new entrant or you’re trying to sell a new solution—or both.
In this post, we’re going to set aside the issues related to being a new player and focus on what it takes to market a new idea to a B2B audience.
Let’s dig in.
Four factors contribute to making the marketing of new B2B solutions a daunting challenge:
1. Entrenchment – Buyers are reluctant to switch away from solutions they recognize or have used before.
2. Risk – Rightly or wrongly, buyers perceive deploying a new solution as inherently riskier than choosing something proven—irrespective of the potential benefits.
3. Compatibility – Whatever you’re selling must play nicely with other elements of the buyer’s business.
4. Support – Buying something new often means going through a learning process during implementation, which is made better or worse by the level and quality of support a vendor provides.
Your job is to persuade potential buyers to let go of their familiar teddy bear solutions because the rewards outweigh the risks, the new solution will fit nicely into their setup, and your company will support them every step of the way.
A fifth factor has recently been lobbying to join the party:
5. Access – It can be difficult to convey your message to the person or people responsible for buying the kind of solution you’re trying to market.
We’ll explore why this additional factor is becoming such a challenge in a moment. First, let’s tackle the other four.
Very rarely is a B2B buyer trying to solve a challenge that has never been solved before.
Similarly, they’re seldom looking for solutions that previously haven’t existed.
Instead, they’re looking to replace an existing solution with something similar but new.
Whether the existing solution broke down, wore out, or could no longer keep up with the owner’s requirements, it is front and center in the buyer’s mind when considering what to purchase next.
They start with things they already own—or have purchased in the past—and go from there.
The more similar a new solution is to those they have previously experienced, the easier it will be to gain their approval.
Your new solution is different because, well, that’s part of creating something new.
Although you might have incorporated features from existing solutions into your new offering, it won’t sit quite as comfortably in the buyer’s mind.
There are two approaches to persuading your buyer to let go of their familiar solution—the teddy bear that makes them comfortable—and to embrace something new: attraction and rejection.
Attraction involves demonstrating the positive side of the things that seem to be different about your new solution, so that it feels more enticing and is easier to embrace.
Rejection involves highlighting the deficiencies inherent in their existing solution, so that it feels less comfortable and is easier to let go.
Human brains are wired to treat upside potential and downside risk differently.
We discount (under value) upside potential and exaggerate (over value) downside risks.
This asymmetry means that a small risk of something not going as planned can scupper a deal with a high probability of delivering bountiful upside.
It’s why incremental improvements usually aren’t enough to persuade a buyer to replace or switch away from a proven solution.
This problem becomes particularly acute in high-risk environments, such as the energy and chemicals industries where a seemingly minor failure can escalate into a catastrophic incident.
Lengthy analyses are performed to ensure new solutions meet stringent qualifications and quality standards before they can be introduced.
But even under circumstances where the worst outcome has minimal financial consequences (and does not threaten human safety), the buyer’s brain is programmed to treat every rustle in the bushes as a potential hungry lion.
B2B decision-makers are particularly focused on the bottom line. Therefore, conveying a clear financial return on investment (ROI) is essential. Wherever possible, use real data from completed projects to model cost savings, efficiency gains, and potential revenue growth for the potential buyer.
You should also emphasize any long-term benefits of adopting your solution, such as its scalability, how it helps to future-proof their business, and how it contributes to sustainability.
To tackle the asymmetry challenge, two helpful approaches are outsized return and risk assessment.
Outsized Return means designing your solution to deliver a step-change in performance to the buyer. This might mean 10 times more performance, not 10 percent more. That improvement should directly impact something of importance to the buyer. In other words, something that’s on their list of OKRs or KPIs, or on the scorecard that determines their annual bonus.
Risk Assessment means helping your buyer objectively assess the real risks inherent in adopting your new solution and showing them what a worst-case scenario really looks like.
The old saw “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” comes into play when a buyer isn’t sure how well your new solution will integrate with other parts of their company’s process.
Why risk changing this element—even if the new solution seems attractive—if it might screw something up elsewhere?
This fear of unknown, unintended consequences is especially prevalent in organizations where individuals have limited understanding of how other parts of the organization work.
It’s also a factor in loosely managed, seat-of-the-pants companies where things happen “because that’s how they’ve always been done” rather than in compliance with documented procedures.
Whichever situation you’re facing, develop clear technical documentation (including websites and videos) that illustrate how your solution fits into buyers’ current processes without causing disruptions.
In addition, focus on interoperability and case histories.
Interoperability involves designing your solution to be natively compatible with as many existing systems and processes as possible. You will need an in-depth understanding of how existing solutions work and how your new solution will be deployed. If there are industry standards (or recommended practices) covering your solution, invest in complying with—and preferably being certified as compliant with—those standards. This can be time consuming and expensive but it carries a lot of weight.
Case Histories are factual examples of your solution having been successfully implemented by other customers—preferably co-authored by the customers themselves. They should provide a before-and-after account of what challenge the customer was out to solve, how your solution was chosen and implemented, any hurdles that had to be overcome, and how things turned out well in the end.
In the B2B realm, relationships are paramount. B2B buyers are much more likely to purchase from a brand, company, or person that they know and trust.
This affects their belief in the value proposition and risk assessment we discussed earlier, as well as their confidence that you will come to their rescue if they run into difficulties with the new solution.
Long before marketing your solution to them, your company must focus on building strong, trust-based relationships with key decision-makers at your target customers.
This often requires attending industry events, participating in trade shows, and engaging in thought leadership activities that establish your presence and authority.
You must also demonstrate a deep understanding of their business objectives, which can often only be acquired through regular, extended conversations.
To help reassure potential buyers that you’ve “got their back”, emphasize authenticity and offer a performance guarantee.
Authenticity means being genuine in every interaction. Your customer-facing team should be conveying accurate information and making promises that they believe. B2B buyers are human beings, wired to detect any BS. Giving relevant, helpful, accurate information will earn their trust. Gaslighting them with inflated promises will do the opposite.
A Performance Guarantee involves committing your company to making things right if the new solution doesn’t deliver what it says on the package. The details will vary widely from business to business and solution to solution but should always state how quickly you will respond—and how—if the solution isn’t working as it should.
And now to the emerging fifth challenge...
While traditional marketing channels remain important, our world is dominated by digital marketing because of its unparalleled reach and targeting potential.
Content marketing, search engine optimization, and digital ad campaigns can all be used to reach your target audience.
However, there’s a catch. Every Tom, Dick, and Harriet is doing the same thing.
Today, a one-person marketing department with a minimal budget can churn out prodigious amounts of passable content thanks to ubiquitous high-speed internet and AI-enabled content creation tools.
This means that digital channels are inundated with content, much of it duplicative.
How on earth is a company supposed to promote its new solution when their message is getting drowned out on every channel?
Moreover, how can you hope to get your prospective buyer’s attention when they are tuning out most of the content due to digital marketing fatigue?
As we mentioned in the introduction, this is a relatively new challenge—and one that is getting worse by the week—so we can’t easily point to proven solutions.
However, two things bear mentioning: channel selection and having a point of view.
Channel Selection means focusing your efforts (and investment) on a small number of channels where you believe your target buyer goes to find information. This is in stark contrast to many companies' desire to be seen on as many channels as possible. By concentrating on a few—we recommend no more than three—channels, you can appear more regularly, with higher-quality content, and measure the results to see what happens.
Having a Point of View is how you can elevate your content above the fast-flowing river of banal, AI-generated slop. When a content production tool—usually some sort of GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer, a type of AI model that can generate human-like text)—is used to write content, it contributes nothing original. Instead, it cleverly regurgitates information parsed by its LLM (large language model) from existing internet content. Thus, your company can differentiate itself by producing content that offers a unique point of view. This need not be anything groundbreaking but should at least offer an opinion that is either concurrent with or counter to the prevailing narrative in your sector.
Here’s a quick summary of the ten tactics we’ve suggested are essential when marketing new solutions to B2B buyers:
1. Attraction – demonstrate the positives of your new solution to make it more enticing and easier to embrace.
2. Rejection - highlight the deficiencies in existing solutions so they feel less comfortable and are easier to let go.
3. Outsized Return - design your solution to deliver a step-change in performance, i.e. 10x more, not 10% more.
4. Risk Assessment - help your buyer assess the real risks inherent in adopting your solution and show them what a worst-case scenario really looks like.
5. Interoperability - design your solution to be natively compatible with as many existing systems and processes as possible.
6. Case Histories - provide examples of your solution being successfully implemented—co-authored by the customer and illustrating its compatibility with other products and solutions.
7. Authenticity - convey relevant, helpful, accurate information and make believable promises to earn buyers’ trust.
8. Performance Guarantee - commit to making things right if your solution doesn’t deliver as promised, including how quickly you will respond—and how—if it isn’t working properly.
9. Channel Selection – focus on a small number of channels (up to 3) where your target buyer finds information, so you can appear more regularly with high-quality content.
10. Point of View - differentiate yourself from generic, AI-enabled content by offering a unique point of view—either concurrent with or counter to the prevailing narrative in your sector.
Image credit: Adobe Stock
