How Your B2B Marketing Strategy Can Pack an Emotional Punch

Gone are the days where B2B marketing was all about rationale as well as numbers. More than ever before, business customers are looking for partners who they can build a meaningful relationship with, not just a transactional vendor-customer plan. In fact, it’s been shown that B2B marketing initiatives which tap into people’s emotions are seven times more successful at driving long-term relationships as opposed to purely rational messaging.

This shift is only augmented by today’s rapid digital transformation. As 70% of buying decisions are now made through various brand interactions prior to the customer getting on a call. It’s essential to build trust, respect as well as cultivate a meaningful partnership from the beginning.

The fantastic news is that B2B marketers can create meaningful experiences with prospective customers by championing the power of both data and creativity.

Leverage The ‘Emotional Motivators’

Whether you’re in B2C or B2B, emotions and feeling are still the number one factor driving buying decisions. Don’t believe us? Research which was conducted by Les Binet and Peter Field for the B2B Institute demonstrates that B2B strategies which appeal to emotions are seven times more effective at driving long-term sales, profits as well as revenue than rational messaging.

Individuals purchase with emotions and clarify with logic. Leveraging the strength of emotions in your marketing can assist your brand stand out, generating new connections with your audience as well as providing your marketing team with a new dimension in order to enrich the marketing success formula.

However how exactly are marketers able to craft messaging and campaigns which speak to the heart of their audience? The phenomenal news is that it’s possible to target the feelings which drive customers’ behaviours. In a study that was conducted across hundreds of brands in dozens of categories, Harvard Business Review calls them “emotional motivators” and defines their importance as a fundamental way for a firm to gauge its customers’ future value.

Make A Digital-First Connection

First thing’s first. Marketers who want to connect emotionally must deeply understand their audience in order to send a message that truly resonates. This means using readily available data in order to drive customer-centricity as well as leveraging firmographic segmentation (such as the use of data that factors in geography, client-size) to support data on individual buyers, to best understand exactly who you are trying to reach.

Once identified, shaping and delivering the correct narrative is best achieved with a digital-first approach. This gives brands the opportunity to digest analytics as well as gain insights that help personalise content, enabling you to position your organisation as a reliable problem solver for your customers’ critical business challenges. Consider that customers are looking for insightful content that they can put into action in real-time, with 80% of business decision-makers preferring information from articles over sponsored ads. In this way, well-built educational content emerges as a key part of any emotionally successful marketing strategy.

In fact, across the board from sales to buyers, b-to-b marketing strategies are significantly improved by digital tools. Sales interactions are going increasingly remote, for instance, making digital interactions more important than ever. While previously it was all about competing with your competitors, now, you’re competing with your customer’s last best online experience. Meanwhile, buyers expect a seamless experience from the top of the buying funnel through to becoming a customer.

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