The Marketing Reset: Changing to a B2B Digital Selling Strategy

22 October 2024

B2B Digital Selling Strategy: Summary

This article critically examines the prevalent B2B digital selling marketing strategies, their inherent flaws, and the effectiveness of alternative strategies. Key considerations for any business include understanding their Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM).

The article highlights the failure rates of start-ups and businesses receiving investment, arguing that current marketing strategies are fundamentally flawed. The average annual turnover per employee for software companies stands around $140,000, far below the figures achieved by giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.

A major point of contention lies in the failure of businesses to generate substantial growth through marketing automation, lead generation, or Account-Based Marketing (ABM). It is suggested that the B2B sector has been following strategies and software initially designed for B2C organisations, creating confusion and underperformance.

The author suggests that B2B organisations shift from digital marketing to digital selling, arguing that the strategies, mechanisms, expectations, psychology, and outcomes for both are fundamentally different. Traditional digital marketing is for consumers, whilst digital selling is for B2B’s who need to educate their prospects, and the author also questions the effectiveness of SEO in this regard.

The proposed solution is a ten-point plan for B2B companies to embrace digital selling and will lead to you understanding and full extent of The System. This includes open access content, enabling prospects to buy without typical salesperson interaction, use of social media and LinkedIn, live show broadcasts, podcasts, video content, mini-studio technology for salespeople, live chat on business websites, and ceasing unproductive practices like telesales and PPC.

This article asserts that adopting these steps could dramatically reduce costs and wasted resources while increasing sales, reach and exposure. By eliminating friction and blockages, prospects can get to know, like, and trust your business more easily.

This radical new approach - A B2B Digital Selling Strategy - can be piloted in parallel with traditional methods, allowing for constant review and the elimination of waste. It holds the promise of better times ahead, making businesses more efficient and profitable in their B2B engagements.

Introduction to a New B2B Digital Selling Strategy
Why B2B Digital Marketing Strategies Fail
- The 500 Point Checklist for B2B Marketing
Learning from Previous Marketing Strategy Mistakes
The 18-Month Chief Marketing Officer Tenure
- Hiring & Firing the Wrong People
- Salespeople Failed to Learn B2B Digital Selling
The Reason Why B2B Digital Marketing is Dysfunctional
- Are You Running Your Business or is Marketing?
Understanding Your B2B Digital Seling Strategy
Knowing Your Total Addressable Market for B2B: TAM SAM SOM
Financial Statistics AGAINST Digital Marketing Performance
B2B Marketing Automation Challenges
SaaS and PaaS Marketing Strategies
Ten Point B2B Digital Selling Plan
Conclusion
Digital Selling FAQs
Five Key Takeaways

Introduction to a New B2B Digital Selling Strategy

The word ‘marketing’ is received by businesses owners with rolling-eyes! Everyone’s a marketer, most marketers think they know it all. Most marketers not only think they’re directing the narrative, but they’re also being told they are by the marketing industry.

If anyone were to say B2B Digital Marketing is dysfunctional and doesn’t work, the entire marketing industry would disagree and yet the business owners and shareholders would say, “hmmmm, interesting someone would actually say that because we’ve never seen any genuine revenue attributed to digital marketing, only a black hole where loads of money disappear”.

Naturally marketers are not responsible for poor business results, it’s the fault of the salespeople who can’t sell, right! So says every marketing department in the world...

…Here’s another one; Businesses should expect to fail because they don’t invest enough in marketing. How can a $10m turnover business expect anything by only apportioning $60k to a marketing budget, rant’s the marketer on a LinkedIn video!!!

It’s time to call out marketing, but not simply from an accusatory perspective, because there’s more to B2B Digital Selling than meets the eye.

Why B2B Digital Marketing Strategies Fail

Every business owner wanted, or should I say ‘wants’ marketing to work. If it did, then they would naturally make more money. However, from the beginning of the Internet, everyone wanted digital marketing to be the equivalent of the golden goose laying the golden eggs and if it did and you knew of the UK comedy series ‘Only Fools and Horses’, the character Del-boy would tell his brother, “This time next year Rodney, we’ll be millionaires!”

They’re not gonna like this… but it’s the fault of all the marketers. They saw an opportunity and if you know Frank Kern, jumped on it, and made repeated irresistible offers that B2B’s couldn’t walk away from.

Business bought into the ‘snake-oil’ marketers were offering. And as a ‘Norf Lunduner’ would say “you was mugged”. Year after year marketers bought out new software that we were being told was, of course, essential. Marketers did a great job of selling these multiple layers of software which are now called Marketing Technology Stacks (MarTech Stacks), and no one bats an eye, it’s simply accepted and the de facto standard for all businesses.

The 500 Point Checklist for B2B Marketing

To give an indication of how bad it’s got, every business needs to implement some very serious checklists to stay on point to cover the 500+ active tasks to rank online as a player in any market, B2B or otherwise. I clicked on an SEO site called Hobo who were selling checklists and the free lists added up to 770 items, you can see for yourself here.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Pr0kjCQc93qrDFJyLA-FuhIOLeFFGNCDPOkGzeQxo-8/edit#gid=583039907

Rather than create everything from scratch, I did my own research to show you what other businesses were saying about the work required. Two infographics below are from a company called Red Web Design and another from Pinterest for written content. Combined they are too much for any organisation, let alone a single department: -

228 items for websites - https://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2023/02/09/ultimate-web-design-checklist-228/
200 items for SEO - https://blog.red-website-design.co.uk/2015/02/11/seo-ranking-factors-the-complete-list-google-doesnt-want-you-to-see/
80+ Content items - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/31032684925881577/

It is unsurprising that marketers think they run everything when they can reply to any criticism by saying “just look at everything we have to do!”

But it doesn’t stop there. Now add in the multiple layers of demand generation requirements via marketing automation platforms. Then add in account-based marketing integration and their new upcoming A.I. and don’t forget, for all this to work you still need to devise and implement your Google AdWords for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) that will need to be A/B/C split-tested for every imaginable persona and option.

Of course, you’re aware that your PPC needs to link to a landing page platform, so your team is able to A/B/C split-test and multi-variate test every landing page and format!

If that wasn’t enough, while you’re at it, you still need to implement a reverse IP look up solution so you can spy on browsers and stalk them when they don’t give their details. This is now done by matching B2B IP addresses against consumer purchasing data-lake information that can cross-reference the same IP address against mobile telephone numbers to enable your telesales and BDR’s to call people at home on their mobiles.

And finally, once your people get a whiff of interest from a prospect, your gifting/bribing API needs to be set up in conjunction with your CRM to enable initial little bribes to be provided to various prospects, your A.I. has identified.

That’s a marketing stack. It’s a hotch-potch of multiple software programs - SaaS - that the marketing industry have done a great job of convincing everyone to buy, who all say you cannot compete, unless you have all this software.

Below is a well-known and well-used infographic from the Chief MarTech website. It shows the growth of MarTech from 150 in 2011 to 11,500 in 2023.
https://chiefmartec.com/2023/05/2023-marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-11038-solutions-searchable-on-martechmap-com/

Most CMO’s don’t know how it all works together and they in turn hire and fire people who profess to know. Just look at your annual turnover for the past ten years and see if the digital marketing stacks ever made a penny of difference.

Learning from Previous Marketing Strategy Mistakes

Back in the 80’s there was a man called Sir John Harvey-Jones who was the CEO of ICI, now owned by AkzoNobel. He did a television series called ‘The Troubleshooter’ and would analyse businesses and their infrastructures to help them get out of problems and become more profitable.

If he were to see that marketing had become a 500-point process, just to write and publish an article online, that must be adhered to or face failure, he would have jumped up and down in fury at the ridiculous nature of digital marketing for B2B’s.

What makes this worse is that no one within virtually every B2B could ascertain if a new CMO or senior marketer person is qualified or able to carry out all 500 tasks, therefore the new employee wins the position on personality and previously unverifiable performance and not ability.

The 18-Month Chief Marketing Officer Tenure Problem

Over the past seven to eight years, the average tenure of a CMO is a mere nine to eighteen months. This is because they confirm they can do all that is expected of them as detailed in the second or third hand job description, they parachute into the business and get everyone jumping through hoops, and are either expected to execute an existing marketing plan or attempt to implement their own. If it’s the former, it’s not their fault it failed, but they were not confident or vocal to explain the existing plan's faults.

If it’s the latter, they have three months to get their feet under the desk and define a new plan, twelve months to execute their plan and three months to find a new job before they’re pushed because it was no better than the last.

The short tenure only proves boards of directors are getting quicker are firing CMO’s but are unable to break out of the failing digital cycle because, to their knowledge, no alternative strategy exists.

If a CEO or a board of directors are 'enlightened' about the potential of a B2B Digital Selling Strategy, they will be infinitely more adept at weeding out the fly-by-night CMOs who are simply job-hopping for their next couple of years.

Hiring & Firing the Wrong People

There is no other department that has so many activities based around doing one job, i.e., writing one single article. And because there are so many, no one can gauge their effectiveness, to the point that a CFO would primarily be the person who finally says, “look guys, this marketing stuff really isn’t working out, perhaps we should get someone else in and perhaps we might have some better luck”. Then they’re back to square-one.

Today most B2B marketing departments are run based upon bravado. Over the past twenty years, boards of directors have learned marketing buzzwords and accepted them, probably thankful they don’t have to do the marketing donkey work.

Scratching the surface, CEOs, equipped or armed wth an alternative strategy such as B2B Digital Selling, makes marketing department heads and their entourage quake-in-their-boots. B2B Digital Selling Strategies exposes the staggering waste of financial resources over the past ten years simpley because marketers cojuld not be bother to investigate alternatives that actually make the company money.

Simple suggestion; keep the salespeople, and fire the marketers - thank me later...

Salespeople Failed to Learn B2B Digital Selling

In my opinion, because marketing has become such an unmitigated mess, it’s enabled a variety of things to happen. Salespeople were only too happy to relinquish cold calling and telesales. No one wanted to be responsible for an activity that could only achieve a success rate of 300-1 in finding an interested prospect.

The 300-1 figure above is based upon the statistics of a BDR being able to make approximately sixty calls per day and allocate five minutes preparation time to each call. The preparation includes analysing all the firmographic data to ascertain if the suspect/prospect is worth calling. Sixty calls per day equates to 300 calls per week.

Because marketing were sending out emails, monitoring the contact page and implementing marketing automation, they became responsible for ‘first-contact’ and the generation of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) via contact capture forms. Little did anyone know that 80-90% of all B2B’s confronted with registration forms, would click away because they, we, knew we would be cold called, and we did not want to broadcast what we were doing because it’s confidential.

In basic terms 80-90% of all your marketing efforts and budget are wasted and you don’t even get out of the starting blocks.

Any self-respecting salesperson would or should make it their business to find out and learn what strategies and tecniques these 'third-parties' called marketers were raving on about. this is especially important when another department becomes responsible for the salespersons target. It is impertive salespeople learn about B2B digital Selling Strategies so they can provide valuable input to the ongoing challenge that is generating new business.

The Reason Why B2B Digital Marketing is Dysfunctional

B2B organisations should see getting business from Google as a bonus to any existing activities, but it is not! Business owners have been conditioned to focus on digital activities in the hope that business will materialise from it but are deliberately shielded (by uncommunicative marketers) from the fact that B2B buyers don’t buy in the same way as consumers.

It’s not that I am saying Google are wrong, far from it; the opportunities they have created are staggering. However, B2B buyers think and buy differently to the narrative that is promoted by big-tech, Mar-Tech. Yes, it works in the consumer world, but its time businesses took stock of what has been happening to them and called "time-out"!

The poor performance of marketing automation meant that pay-per-click success rates were distorted, in the beginning at least. As you know, PPC needs to link to landing pages and then to the email registration forms to access the content. Hence the 80-90% bounce rate from registration forms.

When B2B’s do complete the forms, the browser normally only gives the main published number of their company, which means their receptionists would be inundated with sales calls and not the person who downloaded the content, rendering telesales useless (and unwanted). The natural next step for the browser was to unsubscribe.

The continued lack of new business meant the marketing SaaS companies had further opportunities to create yet more software such as Account Based Marketing (ABM), or spamming boards of directors or anyone they could identify via LinkedIn and Zoominfo.

They doubled down and now offer reverse IP look-up from the likes of Demandbase, Lead Forensics and Candii, combining gifting from the likes of ReachDesk, and finally data-lake consumer transaction analysis to identify CEO’s mobile telephone numbers from Congnism and Bombara.

Marketing initiatives are to generate interest and leads. Salespeople do the rest. Marketers, who have never personally fronted the business or sold the company’s product in a one-to-one scenario are full of bravado with strategies that don’t work and attempt to be assertive with their peers when it comes to justifying their efforts.

It’s only when all the marketing processes are exposed does one realise that all the interconnectivity is dysfunctional, expensive, and unworkable.

Are You Running Your Business or is Marketing?

Marketers still say they’re driving the narrative. As an experienced salesperson of many years, I know that no self-respecting salesperson would think that bribing a prospect, or should I say ‘gifting’ them to keep them interested, or deceitfully obtaining the mobile telephone number of a CEO to call them at home or on a weekend, are acceptable practices.

It smacks of desperation and is unsurprising as marketers (who are now responsible for ‘first contact’ and are paid on their respective KPI’s and not the sale), are gagging for attribution – a descriptive word that attempts to justify their activity and steal away any effort or ‘attribution’ from salespeople.

Understanding Your B2B Digital Selling Strategy

Everyone is Google’s Customer – Not Yours!

A B2B Digital Selling strategy still requires an element of work to the successfully achieved and completed by your existing marketing team. Every marketing department has someone responsible for content. Let’s start with written content. To achieve the maximum engagement, reach, and exposure, the content needs to be optimised for the search engines, as you know.

With all the changes over the years and recent months, I want to make sure we are all on the same page and agree that at this moment in time, when a prospect is online, they are not your suspect or prospect, they are already a customer of Google!

Google wants to ensure their customers receive the best and most authentic experience they, Google, can provide. Your website and your content are Google’s product, not yours! If the product is not up to scratch Google won’t show it to their customers.

To ensure you can present a reputable, engaging, well written article there are many, many parameters required, I previously mentioned the 500+ point checklist. Can you now see that your efforts are to deliver accurate content to Google, to ensure ‘dwell time’ of their customers on the Google platform?

This is why they have Rich Snippets and the “People also asked” section. It keeps people on Google’s platform for ‘dwell time’ and not your website.

The same applies to LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok etc. They all want and need their visitors to stay on page to enable them to keep serving up their own pages and adverts not yours.

Businesses think Google et-al are free. They are not because YOU are the product!

It’s not all bad, but you must understand how to play the game and understand what it is they want, what it is YOU want and what you will get out of it.

Topical Authority & SEO Content Clusters

Starting with the most basic element of using the internet – i.e., search. Having one article, no matter what it is about, it probably won’t get indexed or ranked within the Google Search eco-system.

However, having a website about a given subject, and having multiple pages organised in clusters about a variety of associated subjects and arranged in such a way it enables a browser to look and learn, that is what Google is after and that is what most B2B’s do not do. Yes, I have an article on Topical Authority here.

EEAT - Expertise, Experience, Authority & Trust

Another area Google is hot on is Experience, Expertise, Authority and Trust (E-E-A-T). They want to ensure they send their customer to a genuine, referenceable, and upstanding website. This is another of the many hoops we all must jump through, however, by adhering to these requirements, adds to the likelihood of your pages not only getting indexed but more highly ranked and therefore being served to potential prospects.

But don’t forget, even if you don’t get ranked high enough, you are still doing everything possible to deliver the best possible experience to your prospects when they do arrive at your website from whatever method you choose. Learn more about E-E-A-T here.

Understanding Who is Searching for Your B2B?

Firstly, it is important to define what are you attempting to achieve? I know you want traffic to your website but are you trying to educate prospects or are you trying to help them identify you as someone they could buy from? This is called search intent and plays a critical part in B2B websites because it determines if you're set up to establish contact and subsequent appointments or make an online sale!

Next, about Google Search, is to determine who is looking for you? You need to know what the current search volume is and what keywords are your identified prospects looking for.

Once you have identified these numbers on Google Search Console, head on over to Google Analytics and compare the figures against your actual traffic. If you have any forums or support desk software, it’s best to discount this as the figure cannot be used towards generating new business.

Who in marketing can prove what they’re doing and the results they’ve been getting over the past 12 months that directly relates to the generation of new business? You’ll be shocked how poor or even non-existent they are.

This is why so many marketing departments want to establish attribution. They want to convince the CEO and boards of directors that they’re needed and are doing a constructive job and not simple getting on with busy work that never delivers any real successes.

Google Search Console Confusion

As a business owner, you need to be aware of this information. Everyone who creates content for their website should know about Google Search Console (GSC). This data platform, very much like Google Analytics, provides information about your pages, what keywords are being searched for and so on. There are some basic parameters you must adhere to: -

First your website must have the ability to create the following sitemaps: -

XML – Determines the frequency the Googlebot visits
Mobile
Video
Images
News (Optional) in the following

The sitemap tells Google which pages you want to be indexed. After the sitemap has been submitted to Google, the following classifications will apply: -

Discovered – Pages submitted via your sitemap
Crawled – Not Indexed
Crawled – Indexed
404 – Page Not Found
Variety of other statuses

The above seems all quite typical for Google and website developers and most web administrators in B2B settings (I hope!).

Once a page has been crawled, Google will determine if there are the required keywords in the URL, Page Title, Article Title (H1), Subheadings (H2, H3). The Body Text must contain a percentage density, or repetition of the keyword and semantically connected words too.

The formatting of the page and visible presentation is determined by the frequency of H2, H3 subheadings, bullets, number lists, and frequency of <p> which determine the number of paragraphs and of course the other words used and their length to ascertain the complexity of the words and therefore readability.

However, there is a problem. Once a page has been crawled and indexed, you think your work is done and Google will now rank your page and present it on their Search Engine Page Result Pages (SEPRs) to a browser who has entered in their keyword search. No so.

Google will index and un-index at an alarming rate. One month in my case, I had 323 pages on my sitemap and had 240 pages crawled and indexed and believed it was going to continue to rise. Two months later that figure dropped to 157 pages indexed. What is surprising is there is no explanation and the date which appeared on GSC when the pages were first crawled, remained the same, which means unless you are manually charting this process week by week as I was, you would be hard pressed to see the pattern.

How Effective is SEO for B2B Exposure?

Imagine you have appointed an SEO company or consultant to sort out your online visibility and increase organic search engine performance. They perform an SEO audit and identify failing pages, keyword usage and topical authority etc. They present their work when finished and you can see the pages discovered, crawled, and indexed and so on. You pay them and a month later Google un-indexes all the work they did. What do you do now? Challenge the SEO consultant or challenge Google (If you work out how to contact them let me know the number too please!).

Here's another scenario, someone writes an amazing article, and it is shown to members of the board. They all endorse the article and are in total agreement that it represents the business, product, strategy etc. Say Google indexes it, everyone’s happy and then two weeks later it’s un-indexed and invisible. The work and effort are wasted as no one outside the business will find the content unless it is independently promoted, even though, from a technical and professional perspective the article was 100% accurate.

Perhaps you have created significant content to sell multi-million-pound software or products. It is the same Google Search that will index and rank your content as it will a retail website selling jeans. You may or may not pay for pay-per-click, but the retail site pays Google for the image pay-per-click and remarketing to exist. They get ranked and your content does not. What do you do?

These scenarios are not an acceptable way to run a business. If either of these were presented to an investor, they would dismiss it as unworkable, unreliable, and impossible upon which to build a business.

Open Access Content for B2B or Pay-Per-Click?

Basing the success of a B2B organisation on Google SEO and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) is not the way forward. Organic SEO is too hit and miss and inconsistent to be a viable strategy. PPC scares off 80-90% of B2B enquiries because they want to remain anonymous.

Your business must be self-sufficient in connecting with your audience or total addressable market. Any new business that comes in from organic SEO must be seen as a bonus. No one would accept an excuse from a business owner, who had put their life savings into a business, to blame Google for their failure! Therefore, don’t rely on them to deliver new business to you. They won’t and it’s not their remit.

Google SEO and pay-per-click are essential for B2C. The B2C market is valued in the trillions and considering consumers are more receptive to using PPC than B2B explains why Google makes $2m per employee per annum. Naturally there is a calculation, but are they so successful because its pay-to-play and Google earns on more transactions per head than any other organisation on earth?

On a final point, organic SEO is the main process for written content. Not everyone wants to read, they also want video, podcasts, and live streams, which renders typical search ineffective for B2Bs because they don’t embrace it.

Whilst Google will serve YouTube videos, they’re not there yet serving up podcasts at scale or live shows – that’s your job!

Google Search Generative Experience (SGE)

There are multiple players in AI, from Claude, to Co-Pilot, to Gemini and of course ChatGPT with their $10b investment from Microsoft.

Last year Google announced the launch of SGE which means it is applying AI to its search capabilities to orchestrate its 12 billion monthly searches. https://blog.google/products/search/generative-ai-search/

What SGE means is that Google will corral its content to deliver a better experience for its customers (now can you see who the customer is!) by delivering ‘answers’ to searches direct to browsers.

Now we see Rich Snippets as a direct result of using structured data within content. SGE will take elements of content and deliver it to browsers in a new format of the search engine results page (SERP).

Whilst SGE is great for the consumer, I don’t know what will happen to B2B search related queries. If it changes to SGE too, then it will filter out more businesses. If it stays as it is, we’re back to square one and no better off. However, it is essential you/we, keep fully aware on these developments.

Your Total Addressable Market for B2B: TAM SAM SOM?

Taking the above search criteria into consideration you will have made it clear from the inception of your company who your target market was. Now you need to factor in: -

How big is your total addressable market (TAM)
Where is your serviceable addressable market (SAM)
Who is going to be your serviceable obtainable market (SOM)

Now take any of the above figures you discover from the TAM, SAM and SOM and calculate 1% to perhaps 15% (if you’re lucky), who will represent the actual percentage of businesses who are looking each week to begin their buying journey for your type of product.

But it doesn’t stop there. Now factor in the number of competitors you have in your geographic region and their respective salespeople. This is your business model potential in a nutshell:

TAM/SAM/SOM x 1% / Competition = Opportunity - 80-90% (buyers not liking forms!)

It is very clear something fundamentally is wrong with B2B digital marketing, however, with most marketers attempting to hang on to their jobs, it explains why these statistics or basic business development parameters are not popular or indeed discussed.

If it were simply a series of off-beat calculations being bandied around to try and get businesses to buy some new software or such-like then it could be dismissed easily, but there’s more.

700,000 business start-up every year and 500,000 fail. 20% fail in the 1st year, 30% in the second, 50% in the third and by year ten, 91% of business will have failed according to the Financial Times. Of businesses who receive investment, 40% go bust, 75% fail to achieve their own targets and 95% fail to achieve an ROI for the investors.

In the UK the Department for Business Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) did their own calculation, and I correlated the sizes of businesses and their respective turnovers. The figures below represent the whole of UK business.

I researched the largest software companies around the world, took their turnover, and divided it by their employees. The average turnover per employee per annum (p.e.p.a.) is approximately $140,000 or £120,000.

In the screenshot below, I looked at business process management (BPM) companies. There are some very big names in the list and yes, they also do BPM.

I chose not to include some of the very largest, those with >$1b turnover as many of them have significant numbers of employees in the tens of thousands and would skew the figures downwards to $25,000 p.e.p.a. and seeing as I’m directing this towards business in the UK, I wanted to make it more relative.

To put the above into perspective, Amazon achieves $349,000 ARR-FTE., Microsoft is $1m and Google is $2m.

This confirms there is a model, that businesses can adopt, that can radically change their earnings ratios, but few B2B’s know how to adopt this new approach as it means a change in strategy, which invariably fails to happen because many C-Suite members are quite happy with things as they are. I’ll let you be the judge on that one!

Financial Statistics AGAINST Digital Marketing Performance

Referring just to the UK, 700,000 business start-up every year and 500,000 go bust.

The failure rates are as follows; 20% in the first year, 30% in the second and 50% in the third year and by the tenth year 91% of all business go bust. Data from the Financial Times.

Of business who obtain investment, 40% go bust. 75% never achieve their own targets and 95% fail to achieve an ROI for the investor. Data from Harvard Business Review.

As I mentioned in my own research using the business process management software industry (lo-code), the average was $140,000 per employee per annum.

If looking purely at B2B SaaS, the average is closer to $90,000 ARR-FTE according to GP Bullhound and SaaS Capital.

No one’s crushing it! Everyone’s grafting and trying to generate whatever business they can from wherever they can and they’re not scaling up through marketing automation, demand generation, lead generation or ABM. But there is a solution/alternative!

B2B Marketing Automation Challenges

I must admit it is difficult to identify exactly which element, which piece of software should be termed the Emperor’s New Clothes, as there are so many. Big Tech, MarTech have convinced B2Bs to invest in Marketing Automation SaaS, however, in broad terms they have used the ROI statistics from the consumer industry to make the sales.

The marketing industry has simply done what it is supposed to. It has created products and got people to buy them. Just because they told you it would work, doesn’t mean it will. Like I said, they’re not strictly telling lies, they simply telling you what you wanted to hear. Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware!

I hope you can see why your business needs to be in control of what’s happening in marketing. However, agreeing to go along with 500+ activities for SEO alone, to try and get right, means you are probably leaving it to chance!

It is imperrative you are brutal when it comes to analysing your actual ROI. Don't be fooled by smooth-talking marketers! You need to know exactly how many demand generation clicks are arriving at your landing pages, how many complete the forms, how many unsubscribe and finally, how many actually become customers. It was years ago Forrester said that less than 1% of prospects who filtered through the so-called funnel, became paying customers!

SaaS and PaaS Marketing Strategies

For nearly twenty years B2B organisations have struggled to master digital marketing and to put it bluntly, we have all been sold a pup. The strategies and software were all initially designed for selling products to consumers and B2B have played second-fiddle to all the ideas and plans to grow B2C organisations.

Confusion has arisen because MarTech companies have used large successful organisations as examples of their software working as intended. However, a large insurance company is touted as a B2B and uses marketing automation, but it is selling to consumers via PPC on Facebook or Google AND uses a marketing automation platform.

The easiest way to describe this situation is as follows: -

Digital Marketing is designed for B2C
Digital Selling is designed for B2B

The strategies, mechanisms, expectations, psychology, and outcomes are different for both. The points below are the most import revelations I believe any business will encounter. They will determine the future of every B2B organisation or salesperson who takes note: -

B2C transactions are based upon emotion and paid from personal finances
B2B learns first before purchasing from company funds based upon an ROI

Search intent for B2B is based upon two main factors; Prospects want to learn about a product or service, or they want to find someone to deliver a product or service.

Selling B2B requires you to educate your prospects in a structure you have already established works because you have salespeople who are proving it every day when they sit in front of or speak to a prospect. Salespeople make decisions based upon direct interaction which will never follow search criteria, certainly not 500+.

If you choose to use Google search, you must create content according to the 500+ points mentioned earlier. Yes, you will post your content on your website, but no one can guarantee Google will index and rank it.

There is only one option or alternative open for B2Bs, which is to fully embrace digital selling and approach your total addressable market direct – just like direct mail, but better!

Ten Point Digital Selling Plan

Remove all marketing automation forms, making all content open access
Edit your website content to teach prospects why and how to buy, without speaking to a salesperson
Create 300-450 adverts to auto post on social media promoting your content
Start a LinkedIn banner and email campaign inviting TAM to watch live show
Broadcast a weekly live show with live chat and support
Convert the live show to a podcast
Create videos to replace all sales activities (presentations/demos)
Provide salespeople with mini-studio technology for best engagement delivery
Set up live chat on website to handle any and all enquiries
Cease telesales, BDR’s, PPC, SaaS and other unnecessary marketing budget items, including personnel.

B2B Digital Selling can reduce your total marketing expenditure, including headcount, by up to 70%-80% and exponentially increase reach and borderless engagement.

Conclusion

This article brings together most of the components that explain why B2B technology, SaaS and Services new business development has never enjoyed the success that B2C organisations have. Yes, I know there are fewer business than people on the earth, but nevertheless we’re simply talking ratios not just turnover.

The above ten-point-plan dramatically reduces monthly costs, human resources and wasted time. It increases reach and exposure as soon as the messaging starts and eliminates friction and blockages from every quarter enabling prospects to get to know, like and trust you and your business.

There is a lot to take in. For the past twenty years we have all become used to typical business practices, even though they were not working in our interests, only those of the big tech, MarTech operators.

Finally, now you have a choice. Now you can approach new business differently and even begin the above in parallel, analysing and reviewing your progress and eradicating any waste.

There are going to be some amazing times ahead. You can do this. If you want to fast-track digital selling, get in touch with me and we’ll work out a plan of action. Meanwhile, look at our web page specifically on Digital Selling.

Digital Selling FAQs

Q: What is the Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM)?

A: The Total Addressable Market (TAM) refers to the total market demand for a product or service. The Serviceable Available Market (SAM) is the portion of the TAM that can be reached or served by a company's products or services. The Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is the portion of the SAM that can realistically be captured by a company.

Q: What are the implications of the failure statistics mentioned for start-ups and businesses receiving investments?

A: These statistics highlight the significant risks associated with starting a new business or obtaining investment. The high failure rates suggest that many businesses struggle to achieve their targets or deliver a return on investment for their stakeholders. This underscores the importance of effective marketing and business development strategies.

Q: Why is the average turnover per employee per annum (ARR-FTE) significant?

A: The ARR-FTE is an efficiency ratio that indicates how much revenue each employee generates for the company. This ratio can provide insight into a company's operational efficiency and productivity levels. Comparing a company's ARR-FTE to industry averages can indicate how it's performing relative to its competitors.

Q: How do B2B and B2C digital marketing strategies differ?

A: B2C marketing strategies often leverage emotional decision-making and impulse buying, primarily targeting individual consumers. In contrast, B2B marketing targets businesses, necessitating a more rational and ROI-driven approach. B2B buyers typically conduct more extensive research and have longer decision-making processes.

Q: What is digital selling and how does it differ from digital marketing?

A: Digital selling involves using digital tools and platforms to develop relationships with potential customers, understand their needs, and ultimately make a sale. Unlike digital marketing, which often focuses on mass communication and lead generation, digital selling involves more direct, personalised interaction with prospects.

Q: What is the purpose of removing marketing automation forms and making all content open access?

A: The idea is to reduce barriers for potential customers. Marketing automation forms can sometimes be seen as intrusive or burdensome, possibly discouraging some prospects. By making all content open access, you can ensure that more people can engage with your content.

Q: How can sales activities be replaced with video?

A: Video and live streaming can effectively convey information about products or services in an engaging way, which can support the sales process. They can demonstrate how a product works, address common questions or concerns, and showcase customer testimonials. Thus, video, and live streaming can supplement or even replace some traditional sales activities.

Q: Why should a business cease PPC and other traditional marketing activities?

A: The article suggests that for many B2B companies, traditional marketing tactics like PPC might not be the most effective way to reach their target market. It proposes that a more direct, personalised approach, such as digital selling, could yield better results. This does not mean that these tactics are ineffective for all businesses; it's about finding the most suitable strategy for your specific context.

Five Key Takeaways

Understanding Market Scope: Recognising the size and potential of your Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) can provide a realistic perspective on your business's growth potential.
High Failure Rates in Business: A significant proportion of start-ups and companies receiving investment do not survive in the long term. Such statistics underscore the importance of effective marketing and business development strategies.
B2B vs. B2C Marketing Approaches: Business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing strategies require different approaches. B2B buyers usually base their purchasing decisions on an ROI analysis and in-depth understanding of the product or service, while B2C buyers are more likely to make decisions based on emotion.
Redefining the Role of Digital Selling: The article proposes shifting away from traditional marketing automation and embracing digital selling, particularly for B2B companies. This involves using digital tools to develop relationships, understand prospects' needs, and make a sale, providing a more personalised and direct approach.
Adapting to New Business Practices: The proposed 10-point digital selling plan suggests a dramatic departure from traditional business practices. It encourages openness (such as removing forms and making content open access), adapting sales techniques (like using video and live streaming), and leveraging modern digital tools (such as mini-studio technology and live chat). This strategy aims to streamline operations, reduce costs, and increase engagement with potential customers.