Unless you’ve been living under a rock, times are tough for B2B marketers.
Every buying decision, whether it’s a new purchase or renewal, is under serious scrutiny right now.
The best place to start for B2B marketers is to recession-proof your messaging. You need to make sure whatever your company sells is positioned as a must-have product or service in any type of economy.
On DGU this week, get an inside look at we’re adjusting our messaging in the down economy at Metadata.
Listen to the full episode to hear what Mark and Alex learned so far, or keep reading for the show notes.
PS give episode 13 of Demand Gen U a listen (How To Develop Your Positioning and Messaging (And Make It Stick) if you missed it last year
Three top takeaways:
Takeaway 1: Look for internal and external signals first
It’s hard to filter out the doom and gloom talk inside the LinkedIn echo chamber from what’s actually happening in your world.
Are you getting more one-off collateral requests? Are you hearing more from Sales and CS? Is something not landing nearly as well as it used to?
Are new objections coming up more often on calls? What’s happening to late stage deals? Are they falling through at the 11th hour?
Listen to what Sales and CS are hearing when they talk with your buyers right now. Spend more time wherever your buyers live so you know what’s keeping them up at night.
Sometimes the signals are right in front of you, too. We found a TON of signals in our DEMAND Community.
Takeaway 2: Keep it simple and make small shifts
Don’t assume you have to overhaul all of your messaging. It might just require a few tweaks.
Interview 3-5 customers that match your best-fit account profile and primary personas.
Ask them what would happen tomorrow if they couldn’t use Metadata? What would stop working? What’s the risk to their company?
Find a few sellers at your company who want to test new messaging. Look for sellers who are interested in helping out and will give you direct feedback after they try it out.
The key here is to limit the number of cooks in the messaging kitchen (as it always is). It can get crowded real quick and it leads to overthinking.
Use qualitative findings to make small shifts before you swing big and miss.
Takeaway 3: Help your Sales team arm their champion internally
This is a big one. It’s the first time we’ve prioritized doing this at Metadata, too.
This time last year, three people were involved in buying decisions at the companies we were marketing to. A year later, there are anywhere between 7-10 people involved in the same decision.
The reality is, your sellers aren’t the ones selling to these new people involved either. Their champion is.
Work with your Sales team so they have talk tracks (and content) for the new people involved in the buying decision.
We interviewed our CFO and a few other new roles to figure out how they make buying decisions and what they care about right now.
You’d be surprised how much you can learn from talking to people at your own company.