B2B Advertising, Who Needs It?

When and how should you advertise? If at all?

The only thing I can promise is that I will continually contradict myself, and you may wind up very confused, so to avoid the latter, I’ll start with two solid truths about advertising.

1. Advertising is a poor substitute for personal selling. But it is a marvelous means to pave the way for personal selling.

2. Only spend money on advertising you can afford to lose.

Advertising does work, the question is, to do what? Well at the very least, advertising that is compelling, memorable and relevant will build your brand. And what is the business case for that? Ah, that’s the tricky bit.

It depends upon the size and maturity of market, life cycle of product being advertised, if there is an exit strategy for the business and a range of other issues. To start with, let’s list the things that advertising is good for, in other words, the results it has generated for those who have used it. You can then use that list to try and place a dollar value next to it.

Things to achieve by advertising

· Position the business as a leader in the market

· Build the brand in order to own something specific in the market

· Support sales people, making them look like winners

· Support sales people who are afraid of cold calling

· Reduce the number of steps required in the sales process

· Position the business for investors/exit strategy and pump up the value of the company

· Make the business attractive to potential quality employees

· Create a sense of pride with existing employees

· Reach a huge number of people quickly with a specific message

· Pound into the market a specific message they can’t argue with

As a summary, advertising is an excellent way to inflate the value and importance of your business. The business case becomes apparent by:

· Number of sales made

· Quality of talent attracted

· Size of valuation for the business with investment capital, Management Buy Out or with a trade sale — what is the brand worth?

· Value of IP that directly leads to sales with customers or is sold or invested in, i.e. trademarks

· Increased performance and motivation with sales force

· Increased pride and performance of employees

· The number of people in the market who know you

· When asked, the number of respondents who articulate in one form or another the brand perception you have been working on

Advertising — the bastard child of science and creativity

On one hand, advertising is very scientific with metrics able to be applied. You reach x amount of people and gain x amount of responses. However, there are a number of factors, such as, how hot is the product? A cure for cancer will get an almighty response, even if the advert is simple text, with no thought to style or brand.

How hot is the industry? Again, in boom times, advertising may have hardly any effect at all, yet when you pull the ad, that is when you notice a difference or you might not! The fact is however, by advertising you are reaching a lot of people and telling them exactly what you want them to hear. What is the exact value of that?

You have to manage your expectations with advertising. Opportunities will arise that you had not considered. For example, you advertise with the expectation that you will attract new clients. The reality is, you might gain an enquiry from an unknown company looking to be sold, which has some key technology that will set the market ablaze for you.

Where advertising in B2B gets crazy is the creative execution. A lot of adverts are created to make the author feel good.

Kill your darlings

In the world of creating ideas to sell other company’s stuff to other companies, “kill your darlings” is vital advice to heed.

Sadly, not everyone can pull the trigger.

It’s about not being focused upon your own taste and what you think is relevant for creative execution of your brand strategy; rather recognizing what will provide you with an advantage over the competition. Strangely, you would imagine that a business owner, CEO or senior decision maker would take business performance seriously enough to ignore his or her own whims. But I can tell you this is not the case.

Some of the smartest, brightest individuals you could hope to lay eyes on can fail to squeeze the trigger. Even after months of creating a bullet proof strategy, getting the product right and setting up sales channels, they cannot sign off on creative that even if it is proven to work by focus groups, because they have a thing for “blue.”

You know when you have crossed the line, when your approach to approving creativity takes on the guise of a fashion show. Parading various ideas, concepts, logos, colours and who knows what else to all and sundry. And then you start fielding comments about personal preference, taste and meanings. I had to once listen to an engineer demand that rowing should be the most fitting concept to display teamwork, because you guessed it, he was a rower.

When judging and deciding upon creative ideas, make sure that you do so on a solid basis of asking the right questions. Such as – “Does this provide us with a relevant point of differentiation?” “Does it fulfill the brief?” “Will this be compelling, memorable and relevant to the target audience?” And the big one, “does it enforce our brand strategy?”

It is best to kill your darlings, because when it comes to creativity, they can kill you.

Using business media for advertising

Business to business media can be trade magazines, sections of the daily press relevant to you (health, IT, business), TV and radio programs, such as business news, cable TV channels that are industry specific and so forth. Again, which one depends upon who you need to reach.

The most popular and obvious are industry specific magazines, which are used regularly for work purposes by more decision-makers than any other medium, research of 550 decision-makers suggests that 87% are regular users.

A key strength with B2B is the fact that people within a specific sector share many similarities. Therefore a magazine that caters to a specific interest stands a good chance of being regarded as an essential medium to keep up-to-date with what’s going on in their industry, stimulates ideas that readers can apply in their own work, which speaks with authority and hopefully independence.

A downfall with trade publications is the practice of advertorials, if you buy advertising, you get an article written. Often the articles come directly from the author, with little journalistic input.

It is important to gain ownership of a media. The worst thing you can do is to hop in out of different media channels. It takes time and consistent effort to gain benefits from advertising, so again, only spend what you can afford to lose and stick with it. You’ll gain better bargaining power, so build a relationship with the media outlets to gain special extras, future discounts and your lion’s share of editorial.