Let’s say it’s late 2024. Time flies so fast.
As you plan your marketing strategy for 2025, consider the team you will join or build.
When considering your next hire or agency selection, do you prefer someone with deep expertise in a specific area, or someone driven by curiosity to gain a deep understanding of the subject areas your company specializes in?
Your initial reaction might be: “It depends.” That’s absolutely right.
But in recent years I’ve noticed something disturbing. Many B2B marketers who work for brands with highly specialized or technical topics don’t try to understand those topics.
For example, I recently worked with a new CMO at a B2B technology company focused on engineering. When I asked the marketing team how well they understood the solution they were selling, he told me he wasn’t sure. He admits that he has not yet fully mastered them himself.
But here’s the thing: He’s studying hard. He immerses himself in the industry and understands customers, competition and technology.
However, he didn’t bring his team along for the ride. The real kicker? When he offered them learning opportunities, few accepted him.
They don’t care.
Does anyone care what we do?
There has been a lot of tea poured out over the years about customers not caring about our products. this Work to be done framework explains it perfectly: customers focus on solving problems their needrather than the product itself. A quote from Theodore Levitt illustrates this point well: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole.
Some of CMI’s earliest articles on content marketing discussed how Customers care about their needs, Not yours. David Meerman Scott has spent the past decade writing about how no one cares About your product, except you.
But lately, marketers don’t seem to care about their products anymore. They become more like agents – focusing on optimizing various parts of the customer journey without asking what real value that widget has to the market. The product is just a prop in their mission, not the star of the show.
Recently, I asked the senior marketing director of one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure companies to tell me about the space and the company’s competition. He responded, “Oh, I don’t know much about that. My job is to make sure prospects get into the pipeline. I can put you in touch with our subject matter experts.
He wasn’t trying to make things difficult. He doesn’t think it’s important to have such a deep level of product knowledge.
Increasingly, I find that B2B marketers view their efforts as intellectual puzzles. Bringing together the internal and external pieces of creativity, process, data, and measurement is the intellectual challenge they must solve in order to move up (or stay) in the game. They lack emotion and interest in the products or industries they work in.
B2B marketing used to be a team sport
I don’t blame the marketing people. The reason many of them don’t seem to care has to do with most companies’ lack of investment in cultivating curiosity and their unwillingness to learn deeply.
Too often, businesses view content and marketing professionals as replaceable pawns. Then they were surprised when their practitioners felt like chess pieces – unmotivated, unmotivatedand are unwilling to know the details of the game.
Maybe I crave a form of marketing that no longer exists. I still remember the heated arguments among the marketing teams 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, B2B marketers were passionate about their industry. In high-tech companies, marketing teams are excited about what their company is doing. marketing leader This is ensured – they conduct training, bring in guest speakers, and provide journal subscriptions and ongoing industry education to keep everyone engaged.
Product Marketing will promote the product’s innovative new features to an excited sales support team. Brand and demand generation teams constantly learn the ins and outs of the industry; everyone becomes (to some degree) a subject matter expert on the topic. Marketers attend retreats where they poke fun at their competitors and brainstorm ways to compete with them as if they were a rival sports team.
The marketing team cares. deep.
But that brings us back to the question: us care? As you plan your marketing for 2025, are you willing to work with someone who: Professional skills Or the curiosity to become an expert? Is this difference important?
I think so.
B2B customers demand better
It should be important to care about the company’s business themes.
Recent survey results from Marketing Week B2B Marketing Current Report (Subscription required) Explain why. Research shows that the most in-demand skill among B2B marketers is customer insights, with 54.4% of respondents ranking it No. 1. This is followed by business focus (46.9%) and creativity (30.3%)
Empathy ranks at the bottom.
At first glance, this may seem inconsistent with the idea that caring about a company’s business themes is important. B2B marketers in this study seemed to prioritize Data-driven customer insights Go beyond an emotional understanding of the subject matter and customer experience.
Then I remembered This eye-opening article From B2B marketing expert Ardath Albee. she emphasized Research shows only 1% of C-level buyers Believe that the B2B marketing they encountered demonstrated “a meaningful understanding of the human experience.” Essentially, none of them felt understood. No empathy.
When you compare Marketing Week’s findings to CMI’s Latest B2B Researchthe picture becomes clearer.
The content creation challenge cited most by B2B marketers is “creating content that truly drives action.” Meanwhile, the biggest use of generative AI among B2B marketers is “brainstorming new topics.”
Most tellingly, 88% of B2B marketers who consider themselves successful said that the key to success is “understanding the audience.”
When you put all of this together, things start to make more sense.
Today’s B2B marketing is as dry, beige, and bland as a bowl of unsweetened oats. We use data to drive all emotion and empathy in our content. We don’t know which topics will resonate because we’ve stopped trying to understand them ourselves.
Instead we Rely on generative artificial intelligence Tell us what to write about a topic we barely understand.
Successful B2B marketing should have point of viewconsistently generate emotion, and demonstrate an understanding of the human experience, shouldn’t our marketing teams be at least a little bit the same?
Fighting casual indifference
Again, I don’t blame content and marketing practitioners, although we are the only ones who can solve this problem. I’m not suggesting that people “quit quietly” that people work hard enough to get through it. I know many B2B marketers who have gone above and beyond to solve complex intellectual puzzles on topics they didn’t even care about.
The problem is that many people don’t understand why it’s important to explore the ins and outs of their industry.
I call it “casual indifference.” It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. Does this happen when companies stop trying to get their marketing teams excited about business topics? Or is it a lack of interest from marketers? Is it both?
A mid-sized technology company held a training program to attract participation and generate interest among its marketers. It conducts formal internal events and provides all marketing teams with opportunities to attend industry conferences.
Twenty years ago, when I was the chief marketing officer of a small technology software company, enterprise Web content management wasn’t the most exciting topic to me. I was coming out of the world of film and television.
However, I believe marketing teams need curiosity, a willingness to learn, and industry knowledge to connect with customers. We hold regular meetings to help them (and me) understand the industry, the technology, and why competing in this space should be challenging, fun, and engaging. I immersed myself in learning everything there is to know about enterprise web content strategy and management. It turned out to be the foundation for my career today.
Interest, not fanaticism
You don’t need to build a craze around your brand. Businesses don’t have to have this built into their company’s DNA, either. However, they should provide comprehensive education about the space.
For example, Salesforce uses One-year Marketing Cloud Education Program About the world of Software as a Service.
But I’m less concerned with branding efforts and more focused on content and marketing endeavors. I can’t imagine working for a company whose business I don’t care about (or at least try to care about). That’s why I love my job now. I have a front-row seat to many industries and their key players.
I also realized that when I didn’t care about the product or industry, I was less effective. Marketing leaders should feel a greater responsibility to teach and Motivate their team Get as excited as possible about their business and marketing’s place in it (and stay connected).
You spend a lot of time trying to get customers to care about what you do. But if your content and marketing teams don’t care as much about your customers, you won’t succeed.
This is your story. Let’s talk about it.
Featured related content:
Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
