Hello. Hola. Guten Tag. It's Fresh Salmon, your favorite B2B marketing newsletter helping you level up your marketing game in less than 8 minutes.

In today's edition, I'd like to share a few of my top B2B marketing hot takes 🌶️ 🌶️ 🌶️.

So, let's get started. . . . 

1) F**k The Channels, F**K The Funnel, Optimize for Buyer Paths

B2B buyers' journeys today are complex. 

Thanks to digital evolution, 70% of B2B buyers fully define their needs on their own before engaging with a sales representative. 

In fact, 44% of B2B buyers identify specific solutions before reaching out to a seller.

Don’t take my word for it, check this graphic by Gartner showing the B2B Buying Journey - 

In spite of this, marketing leaders spend a lot of time determining whether the lead came from an inbound or an outbound source.

There is not one attribution software in the world that can 100% accurately determine the buyer journey and conversion path. 

In today’s world, buyer journeys and conversion paths can’t fit into one of the boxes: Inbound vs Outbound. 

For example, a prospect saw a LinkedIn ad and downloaded the ebook. Now they were getting nurturing emails and the periodic newsletter, but for one year they didn’t ask for a demo. 

However, a BDR from the outbound team reached out to the same prospect via phone in the 13th month, and now the deal is moving forward. 

Is this an inbound lead or an outbound lead? 

I believe this question is irrelevant. It is the buyer journey, or more specifically the path to conversion, that is relevant. 

As an example, suppose we know that people who attend two virtual events, watch three product marketing videos on our website, and read at least eight editions of our weekly newsletter, convert 70% of the time to won deals.

By optimizing for this specific conversion path, we can convert 70% of people into customers. It is not an optimization of a channel, it is not an optimization of a funnel. In this case, you are optimizing the buyer journey so the conversion path can be replicated. 

This is the future of attribution. Not the source attribution, but the buyer path attribution.

The next unicorn in the world will be the company that provides marketers with buyer paths and conversion probabilities. 

Marketers who master replicating the best conversion buyer paths will win the most deals.

Until then f**k the channels, f**k the funnel. Optimize for Buyer Paths!

2) Brands Should Rerun Popular Old Advertisements

Not all advertisements are effective. 

As a marketer, I can assure you that more advertising campaigns fail than succeed.

Therefore, I believe there is a huge missed opportunity here for brands to rerun popular old advertisements. 

What do I mean by that?

The answer is pretty simple. If Apple Computers ran a successful advertising campaign in the 1980s, it should run that campaign again. In 2023.

What makes you think that would be a good idea? That's not going to work. You will hear people say that, but let me tell you why that will work.

Firstly, you have the real data at your disposal. No guesswork is involved. A brand knows exactly what advertising has worked in the past. As with a new advertising campaign, there will be no testing involved to see if it works.

Secondly, it will help differentiate the brand from others, and it will help cut through the noise. The advertisement will be reminiscent of a different era, which will make it stand out.

Last but not least, brands will be able to use storytelling to support their messages. Telling the story behind an advertisement's making back then, along with why it was so successful, can generate a great deal of PR for the company. Definitely a story worth telling. That's what people love!

In my opinion, it is a great advertisement hack. What do you think? 

3) Marketing with the Market 

In marketing, people must be understood as people and not just as consumers, customers, members, and users.

It is all about getting people to tell other people about a brand.

When one observes an individual from the perspective of a consumer, they are observing them through brand usage, one of the thousands of brands fulfilling their needs. Brands are rarely interesting to most people, and people don't define themselves by them.

Taking a consumer's or user's perspective, one evaluates and benchmarks one's brand against others in similar categories. Trying to understand a person through category dynamics may lead one to miss what they are really looking for, which is why categories get disrupted.

Therefore, my belief is that try to educate your target audience about the category, not your product. The one who educates the audience on a category is perceived as the leader of that category. 

And you can’t achieve that goal effectively if your intent isn’t framed correctly. This means it’s only possible when you think about your marketing as "Marketing with the Market" instead of "Marketing to the Market", a subtle but very important difference.

This approach is a complete game-changer!

Once you are in a "Marketing with the Market" mindset, the competitors do not matter to you anymore. You focus efforts on real comprehensive marketing on educating the target audience, making them smarter, and helping them achieve more in their lives. 

That’s when word-of-mouth is created. That’s when legendary brands are created.

More importantly, that’s when profits are created.

Are you ready for “Marketing with the Market”?

Interesting Thing That I Read Last Week

Here is another example of complex attribution from a friend and LinkedIn connection, Amrita Mathur (VP of Marketing at Superside). Also, if you're reading this, Amrita, 👋👋

If you like such thought-provoking marketing content, give Amrita a follow on LinkedIn.

Tweet That I Noticed Last Week

What Do You Think?

This concludes this edition of Fresh Salmon.

I would like to hear what you thought of today's newsletter.

Also, let’s connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Cheers,

Vivek

PS. I love you ❤️