Leveraging B2B buying motivators
Developing B2B marketing communications for bottom line results.
All marketers understand the need for getting the right messages to the right people. What’s not so straightforward is defining the messages and who should be getting them.
Marketers need to be looking at what their market is buying, because B2B marketing is not about selling, it’s about buying.
An incisive approach to defining relevant and motivating messages is to identify how B2B products, services and processes contribute to customers’ success. As marketers wishing to understand buying motivators, we need to look at what is being bought, how it affects customers’ success, and who is buying it: the What-How-Who of Buying.
What motivates buying in B2B? Fear?
A lot has been written about how fear is a key buying motivator in B2B – fear of not making the right choices and the subsequent consequences for those involved in the buying decision. The old adage that it’s safe to buy IBM is often trotted out to support the argument that, in B2B, fear is the key. And this is further supported by the idea that minimising fear by minimising risk is a key element in successful B2B marketing.
Surely, this can’t be true in the age of the information superhighway, where customers and user-groups are swapping experiences and opinions on the likes of LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter? Given all the information that is available about B2B companies and their products and services, I’d agree that confusion may be present in the buying process, but I’m finding it hard to accept that fear is still a factor.
No. Fear does not motivate B2B buying – Value does.
Communicating the Value produced by products, services and processes is a sure-fire way to differentiate a B2B company from its competitors. It’s also a guaranteed way to cut through confusion in a rational way that will motivate the market to listen and to buy.
In B2B, Value comprises Five Factors: Response, Service, Time, Quality and Price. These are the criteria that influence and motivate B2B buying decisions. In order for marketers to address these criteria – to start ‘talking’ to the motivators – we need to analyse how products, services and processes deliver Value in relation to each of the Factors.
How to start analysing Value
Begin by choosing a product or service and the way in which it is supplied. Then start a review of your selection in terms of the definitions for each Value Factor, as listed a little way below.
This review should include a performance-ranking of 1 to 5, with 1 being ‘poor’ and 5 being ‘exceptional’. By exceptional, I mean being at least equal to your competitors or better than them.
Here’s an example for ‘Response’: if you think you’re better than the competition in listening to how you affect customer’s success, then you score a 5.
But: you need to support your ranking with an honest statement as to why you should score a 5… To help get the process started, here’s the type of questions you should perhaps be asking around ‘Response’:
- How do you identify and then meet your customers’ needs?
- Who manages your communications with customers and what are the results of this communication?
- In terms of customer expectations, how do you rate yourselves at fixing problems and delivering the outcomes the customer wants?
- How does your performance in these areas compare with your competition?
The Five Factors of Value:
1. Response
- Continual communication with customers: listen to how you affect their success
- Identify and meet changing customer needs
- Speed of problem solving and solution delivery
2. Service
- Accessibility: an open and reassuring organisation
- Clear product information and project status
- Pro-active and innovative
3. Time
- Competitive lead times
- Dependable
- Consistent delivery format
4. Quality
- Consistent products, services and processes
- Meets the brief or specifications: fit-for-purpose
- Achieves the customer’s operational goal
5. Price
- Competitive
- Rational
- Structured
My suggestion is to begin by involving senior sales people in the analysis. Then, once you have built a series of rankings and supporting statements, begin broadening the process by canvassing opinions from other core functions such as finance, technical, production and distribution.
It is a simple approach, but it produces bottom line results: marketers can deliver fact-based messages that go to the heart of what B2B markets are really buying.
It’s also an enlightening process and is the first step on building an understanding of how to produce marketing messages that constantly address B2B’s five buying motivators.
The results will also start to generate guidelines as to the audiences that should be getting these messages.
Read more about Value in B2B marketing:
How Value protects margins Marketing is not about selling, it’s about buying
Outcomes make the difference The commercial power of brands in B2B
Back to The Long Hello: making B2B marketing work for the bottom line
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