Laura Ramos, Vice President, Principal Analyst serving B2B Marketing Professionals, Forrester

B2B buyers are acting more like consumers and they are not interested in hearing about how special your products and services are or how you’ve invented something that will define a whole new market category. They simply want to know how you are going to solve their problems, and whether you’ve done it before. But how do you win the attention of more discerning and digitally-sophisticated buyers amid a cacophony of competitive claims? How do you break down their resistance to your overtures and prove you have the chops to help resolve their most pressing business issues? By returning to the lost human art of conversation our content holds the key to creating this customer-engaging dialogue. 

In this presentation, Forrester analyst Laura Ramos showed how most B2B marketing content fails to captivate buyers and start a meaningful conversation that leads to business opportunity. Laura discussed how to adapt your message as buyer needs change from early-stage problem awareness to consideration, adoption, value realization, loyalty and advocacy.  She also explored why marketers must think and act according to a new set of engagement rules to win, serve, and retain customers before more agile competitors get there first.  

Laura Ramos was an informative and eloquent speaker who really captured the audience’s attention through her analytics and dissection of the current trends of B2B marketing. 

Really Get to Know Your Market

• Really get to know your buyer and the market that you’re reaching, to tap into emotions and understand people’s feelings towards a product or service.
• Treat your customers like you would treat your friends and family. You should be communicating with the same level of respect and you should want to hear their thoughts and ideas.
• Become customer-obsessed, and try to adopt a customer-driven mindset.

Too Much Material is Useless                               

• 65% of companies share too much material, and 59% of this material is useless.
• Material needs more substance over style...but that’s arguable.
• Millennials don’t take the time to read heavy material.
• Establish a dialogue, not a monologue, through your material.

Key Takeaways

1. Humanize your content, to reach your audience on a deeper level.
2. Give them something that they can take away from: no more useless information.
3. When you become customer-obsessed, the game changes for your company and, ultimately, your target.