Adam Goyette Explains Why The B2B Playbook is Broken

Is old-school B2B marketing broken beyond repair? With every brand out there reading from the same playbook, it’s harder than ever to stand out and grab your audience’s attention.

So, what can marketers do instead?

In this special episode of Demand Gen U, Mark Huber, Head of Brand & Product Marketing at Metadata, speaks with Adam Goyette, Founder of Curdis, about why the standard B2B playbook should be tossed out. They explore some overlooked areas of marketing, common trends in online advertising, and how to do things differently.

To avoid relying on the same playbook as everyone else, tune in to hear Adam and Mark’s tips for B2B marketing success, or keep reading for our top takeaways.

Three top takeaways:

Takeaway 1: Small experiments = less painful misses

Experimentation is a crucial part of any type of marketing. But there’s just one problem…what if you get it wrong?

Wasted time, wasted money, poor results, a frustrated audience, unhappy CEOs…all of these things can happen if you experiment and it goes wrong. So, it’s understandable to be hesitant.

But what if it goes right? You could unlock the key to exponential growth.

It’s hard to guess which way your experimental campaign will swing, so Adam has a suggestion.

Start small. Try out small experiments before throwing your entire advertising budget at the wall. That way, if you lose, the misses are less painful. If you win, you can scale it up and apply your new-found successes across your entire marketing strategy.

This also helps to create a culture of experimentation in your team. By showing that the misses aren’t so painful, you can encourage your team to try new things without fear of them going wrong. Without that openness to try new things, you could end up with a stagnating strategy, so taking risks can pay dividends.

Takeaway 2: Think you know your audience? Think again.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make in marketing is assuming you know your audience. Vague assumptions are not something you should ever base your marketing strategy on because you could be barking up the entirely wrong tree.

Adam and Mark make a simple suggestion – go out and actually speak to your customers. Listen in to sales calls, ask them how your product is solving their issues and what they need from you.

By having real conversations with real customers, you could uncover a new marketing angle that you’ve never thought of before. You can also start to build a strategy that delivers on their expectations rather than your assumptions.

Another thing you can take from these conversations is how to speak to your audience in a way that resonates with them. Sometimes, you need to ditch the SaaS-speak and use the vocabulary your audience uses to get your message across without all the head-scratching.

Takeaway 3: Rethink common design and copy mistakes

What’s the first goal that an advert needs to achieve, whether on social media, emails, or website banners? It needs to grab attention enough for people to stop scrolling.

Marketing teams tend to focus on making ultra-polished videos or banners that they think will get results. But Adam and Mark have found the opposite to be true. It’s usually the unpolished stuff that gets noticed and performs the best.

One reason for this is that the modern consumer has become an expert in spotting ads. And let’s face it, no one likes ads, so they keep scrolling. Anything you can do to make an ad that doesn’t look like an ad is worth trying out. Go for more authentic content over polished content.

Another common marketing mistake is making ad copy an afterthought. Marketing teams can spend hours perfecting the design, researching when and where to post, what hashtags to use, and everything in between, but leave the copy until the last minute.

The common result, especially in the B2B space, is jargon-filled, vague copy that doesn’t really speak to the audience. Instead, make copy a priority. Remember, it needs to be interesting, fun, easy to read, and something that cuts through the noise. But most of all, it needs to speak to your audience.

For more tips on how to stand out and avoid doing the same thing every other marketer does, tune in to the full session.

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