Gatherers versus Consumers

B2B, Marketing, psychology, Uncategorized

Gatherers – I heard this term today, while listening to the Morecheeselesswhiskers podcast with Dean Jackson. I heard this in the morning and now its evening, this term is still ringing in my ear and the implications it can have in marketing.

Dean’s logic was that we are hardwired genetically to be gatherers. Since historic times, when human beings started staying in caves, they would take food and store it in the cave so that in case it rained or for some reason they couldn’t go out hunting the next day, they would have food for the family.

At that time if they found some bananas, they would “gather” it and take it to their cave. Till now that characteristic has not changed. People end up buying things, they never use, so that they however have it – just in case – gathering. If you are an avid reader like me, you may also have a lot of books which you have never read, but you bought them, so that you don’t end up missing them- another sign of gathering.

Consuming on the other hand is about something which we actually use.

Now here comes the interesting part. You can utilize this psychological concept in your marketing. How many times have you observed people offering you a free book. Chances are that you ended up taking that book by providing your email address. There’s also a very large chance that you didn’t read much of that book even though the title of the book had interestedyou earlier. So you gathered it but didn’t consume it.

So how can it be used. You offer a product worth “gathering” and in return get them to give you their emails to which you can then prospect on a regular basis. So now I have to think in terms of how I can create an item which is easy to gather which can help me generate leads.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

The advantages of a Single Target Market

B2B, Marketing, Product Management, segmentation, single target market

Once you have identified your niche and segmented the market by usage, you may be left with a very small portion of the overall market which you had originally thought.

In context of the B2B space you should at least have a bundle of around 100 accounts to start out , as your minimum economically viable market, to test your offerings. You can build this to a maximum of a thousand. Anything more will be unmanageable if you’re a small company.

Once you start of with this bundle of 100 accounts, you get to learn and adapt your offerings extremely quickly. Within these 100 if you keep sustained education based marketing, you will be able to create a “brand” for yourself. While B2B marketing is a slow process because of the inherent inertia of a complex structure like an organisation, you can also be sure that within a typical period of 3-5 years 50% of these prospects will be looking for a new vendor for the services you offer.

Once you’re able to get into a conversation with one prospect, you can quickly identify the challenges and mould your future communication with the new understanding. As you grow, your interactions, your learning compounds at a much faster rate because all the prospects are similar in nature. So the challenges they face could be similar and the solutions that you deploy can also be deployed faster.

Which helps you reach critical mass faster and you’re able to quickly dominate that market before moving to th we next market.

Till next time then .

Carpe Diem!!!

Persistence is a critical aspect in B2B marketing – 2

B2B, Customers, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, persistence, Triggers

In yesterday’s post I had mentioned Dean Jackson’s philosophy on 100/1000 leads – where 50% of them will change the incumbent in the next 3 years. The only challenge is that we don’t know which ones will. Its a game of patience int he B2B space.

Changing an incumbent need not be the exact category of what you sell. The “incumbent” in the B2B space is about how the customer presently gets the job done.

If presently someone licks a stamp on their tongue before sticking it on the envelope, then this is the incumbent , if someone is trying to sell a franking machine. Now until the person whose tongue is used to lick the stamp quits for a better job ( a trigger) or someone in the company realises that keeping this person only for the “licking” is an expensive option (another trigger) your messages for the franking product or services will not work.

However whenever a trigger takes place with respect to the incumbent, if you are present in front of the customer, then you become the first person they will call.

So you need to have the persistence and marketing stamina , to ensure that you are in front of the stakeholders on a regular basis. In case of B2B this is one way you build your brand. The other aspect is to make your messages “instigating” the dissonance. Slowly hammering away at possible problem areas.

Tomorrow we will look at another aspect of this persistence story.

Till then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Persistence is a critical aspect in B2B marketing

B2B, Marketing, Marketing Stamina, messaging, persistence

As a marketers we generally like to send out a message and expect to get a response. Very few times you will get some response, but in most cases it takes a long long time.

Earlier I used to hear numbers like 7 to 12 contacts before a contact will respond. So people used to talk about running multi touch campaigns between email, voicemail and cold calling. However especially after Covid struck and a lot of people were working from home, the primary means of connecting has been email or to a certain extent Linkedin.

While I don’t have statistics on how many touch points you need to have before a response is received I got some research done on different geographies for response to emails. On an average its taking more than 20 email messages to be sent (these are cold emails) on different service lines before a given service line attracted a response.

Now this is a critical aspect if you are getting into the B2B space. As I have mentioned multiple times earlier in different posts, B2B buying is not impulsive so even if the message is interesting, you may not get a response. The second aspect to be kept in mind is that identifying the right person in the hierarchy who can act on the message. Designations can be deceptive.

So you need to have marketing stamina to be in the game for the long haul. As Dean Jackson says – look at it as a 3-5 year project. Out of a bunch of 100/1000 leads at least 50% will change their incumbent vendors. You only don’t know which ones will. Tomorrow we will look at another aspect of this.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!