Marketing for B2B and SaaS companies has historically been pursued by pushing messaging, product ads, and content to the target market, tracking results and opportunities, and making tactical adjustments.
When sales leads and volume plateau companies pour more money into optimizing ad copy and increasing content. When that doesn’t work companies transition from lead-based to account based and now the latest buzzwords brand and revenue marketing.
Each new effort might produce a small jump in leads, but soon the increased investment in advertising outpaces the increase in revenue.
Years ago when I encountered this cycle of diminishing lead quantity and quality, I observed what I now refer to as “the false struggle” in marketing.
100% of our customers to date have seen positive ROI - and this starts with getting out of the false struggle and switching to a Buyer Led Growth approach. Book a call with our founder to see if you need a Buyer Led Growth Team.
The False Struggle in Marketing
B2B marketing has typically relied on mapping content and ads to pain points, then waiting for customers to encounter those pain points and seek out your product or service.
This might work for a while, but over time will plateau as you’re waiting for buyers to recognize their pain so that your content connects with their current state of mind. No one actively seeks to solve pain points they don’t recognize or they don’t see as severe enough to solve.
When this does plateau most companies get stuck in the “false struggle”. They transition from lead-based to account based marketing and pump out even more content and create new ads. All of this produces marginally better results.
The reality is you’re too focused on updating tactics. You’re looking for better ads, more content, and a new way to continue what you’ve always done. You’re assuming that growth occurs because you’re pushing content to your target market when the reality is most of your market doesn’t care enough to solve their problems.
ROI declines as ad investment increases and lead quality decreases. Marketing may be a growth multiplier, but it becomes obvious that it is not a growth maker.
Brand Narrative: The Portal to Successful Buyer Led Growth
Many years ago I found myself stuck in this cycle, chasing the 1% of B2B buyers that were actively looking for a solution to an existing pain point.
Then I started to think about the 99% of B2B buyers that were not in buy mode. They were not aware of any needs or pain points in their current business processes.
I realized that building demand from this 99% was the key to driving real, tangible growth - and that brand doesn’t start with awareness it starts with your narrative.
This approach will shift your focus away from what you’re selling and pain points. Instead, you will meet the buyer where they are in their current state of mind and inspire them to question the way they are operating today so they take action.
Brand narrative is the cornerstone of our Buyer Led Growth approach.
Your marketing strategy doesn’t focus on a customer product or pain, nor do you assume your buyer has a current need.
Instead, our Buyer Led Growth formula gives rise to your buyers’ needs. Your content builds trust between you and companies that have no idea that they need your product.
Your brand narrative will focus on content that speaks to the potential customer’s operating narrative as it exists today. It shows you understand their current beliefs and habits, and how they operate on a day-to-day basis.
Assume your customers don’t know about your software, don’t know they need it, nor realize it could help them.
Over time you build awareness of friction or pain in the customer’s current operating narrative and offer pain point focused content that addresses this newly-developed need.
Once you establish a brand narrative, you need to adjust the metrics you measure to benchmarks that best reflect the success of your campaigns. Take a look at the 16 Most Important KPIs to Measure in Your B2B SaaS Marketing Campaigns and learn the importance of replacing vanity metrics with metrics better suited to measuring growth.
Metrics such as Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Marketing Payback Period are just a few of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) needed to effectively measure the success of your buyer-centric marketing objectives.
Experience the Power of Brand Narrative
Effective marketing requires you to understand the key difference between brand marketing and brand narrative. Brand marketing focuses on building brand awareness and waiting for a need to develop, while brand narrative creates customer awareness of a previously undiscovered need.
Competing today requires that companies revamp and refocus their marketing strategy to a brand narrative, Buyer Led Growth approach.
Revamping your approach to Buyer Led Growth is intimidating. The shift from demand response to demand generation requires a completely new mindset.
You won’t give up your day to day paid acquisition strategies. But you will start to see that the best marketing isn’t about selling features, benefits, and products. It’s about focusing on the narrative and removing friction in the buyer’s journey.
Elevate Demand has helped numerous B2B companies transition to Buyer Led Growth and they’re seeing 5x inbound volume increases and record growth.
Brand narrative sets the stage for effective Buyer Led Growth. Don’t wait for the need to develop, be the one who makes the need develop.
Schedule a call with our founder and see if Buyer Led Growth will help your company.