Nicky Dibben

Deadlines may be a way to "entice prospects and customers to take action" (to quote the question), but why? A B2B world is about relationships and loyalty. It's not about FOMO and quick wins. So why would we use deadlines (which 99% of the time are arbitrary, meaningless and often misleading) to get customers to do something? A real deadline may be a webinar or something that actually has a calendar date, or a physical event that not only has a calendar date but a limited number of places. But FOMO and emotional manipulation has zero place in B2B marketing. Or any type of marketing. If you have to use FOMO or artificial deadlines, then your marketing (or your sales, or your product, or something else) is not fit for purpose.

If you're struggling to manage deadlines in your B2B marketing, then where's the disconnect? Were you woefully optimistic in how much you could get done? Are you trying to do things too quickly and messing them up, so you have to do them twice? Do you just not have the resources available? No marketing plan should be set in stone, and managing marketing deadlines is like any other form of project management: regular assessment of what's working and what isn't, regular reallocation of resources as needed, and regular prioritisation to make sure that the most important things don't slip through the gaps. Discipline is your friend here.

IS B2B marketing measurable? It depends what we are measuring. With typically long sales cycles, it is NOT possible to attribute a single sale to a single act of marketing. We can tell from a CMS where and when we first encountered a specific customer, but we could have 10 or 12 or more touchpoints from then to an actually purchase order being received. So in terms of measurement, all we can measure is tactics. How many emails were opened? How many "leads" did we get from a tradeshow etc. But while quantitative, these are not qualitative: how many leads were "good" leads for instance. That all being said, a good CMO knows how to allocate resources and how to balance the qualitative and quantitative to figure out what works and what doesn't.

B2B marketing is about so much more than generating leads. I wrap marketing around sales in four key ways. Top and bottom, it's best practice from a corporate perspective combined with customised support for different regions /vertical markets. Before and after the sales process, it's all the lead generation / brand awareness and then the customer advocacy / testimonials etc. And DURING the sales process, marketing is there to support any projects of discovery, message testing etc. Once we remember that one of the key roles of marketing is to give sales zero excuses to not do their jobs, then it becomes much easier to design a marketing function that is fit for purpose and then some!

B2B marketing is not the same as B2C marketing. Key differences we often forget are that B2B usually involves many stakeholders from the purchasing side, for instance, and sales cycles are typically much longer than in B2C. BUT, the worlds are starting to move closer and closer. As the B2B world realises that it's okay to be less formal, and to use storytelling techniques, and to generally be more "human", then we can learn from what has successfully worked in B2C. This is especially true in for instance social media. B2B brands can inject personality, opinions, and be more approachable and interactive than ever before, something B2C can do well. So examine B2C, experiment with new ideas, see what works and what doesn't. Learn from it.

B2B marketing has a history of being boring and dry, it's true. But free marketing is now available via social media for instance, and this has loosened up the once stuffy world. It's never been easier to inject personality into B2B marketing, and perhaps more importantly to experiment with different tactics to see what works and what doesn't. The risk is lower. No longer do websites or printed corporate brochures have to last years. So we can "play" more. However, this does not mean we should lose sight of the fact that professionalism still plays a part here. For instance, humour is subjective, and we should carefully consider whether that's appropriate in each instance. A lack of formality doesn't mean a lack of standards.