4 Powerful ROI’s to Use in B2B Marketing
Feb 14, 2024
I’m writing right after the Super Bowl. A great game and millions watched the ads… and Taylor too… It's been a weird year.
This year, a 30-second ad commanded a record $7 million, not including production costs. And yes, CBS announced that they sold out.
As much as I enjoy this pinnacle advertising holiday, it is an annual reminder of a hard truth in my world of sales and marketing. I’ve rarely worked with companies with $7M to spend on a 30-second slot. However, I have worked a lot with companies that assumed a bigger marketing budget was the missing piece of their success puzzle. That’s true from time to time, but in my experience, the missing piece is much more likely to be their core messaging, not their budget.
That’s really good news if you need to reignite your marketing and sales performance this year.
To get you started, here are the 4 key B2B focus areas your messaging should exploit. With them, you can sharpen your value proposition to cut through your crowded and noisy (they all are) market far more efficiently.
Ready, let’s get your marketing unstuck.
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1. Financial ROI
In B2B, your marketing must talk about how your product/services SAVES or MAKES money for your ideal customer.
What is the financial benefit of doing business with you? How can you demonstrate that value to their top or bottom line? The best brands do some digging to put a real dollar amount to this impact, even if it’s an estimate (and as long as it “feels” credible to a knowledgeable buyer.)
Another key question in thinking of Financial ROI is to contemplate the ROI of alternatives they might otherwise turn to—and why is your offering the better choice for their top or bottom line?
2. Time ROI
Along the same lines, how do your products/services SAVE or MAKE time for customers? Time can be a make-or-break variable for many businesses. This is true both in terms of efficiency as well as market timing.
In terms of efficiency, time is money when it comes to a team’s output. Does your offer help reduce costs by way of saving time? What other value could your customer create with the additional time they realize?
As for market timing, there are many industries where responsiveness is a key factor in winning market share. As the saying goes, “The guy selling snow shovels in December beats the guy who shows up in March.” If your ideal customer needs to speed up their responsiveness to be competitive, how does your offer solve that problem?
Give it some thought – What specific time-sucking errors, delays, or bad processes are common in your industry? How do you bypass them to save your customers hours of time?
(Bonus points if you quantify the money they save because of that saved time.)
3. Hassle ROI
Money and speed are critical, but never underestimate the relief of a hassle-focused ROI. Decision-makers are constantly frustrated with solutions that don’t work as expected. This is a powerful value proposition when you’re looking to make an impression.
One way to approach this is to address the hassle they’re experiencing inside their own business. I’ve seen many examples of this ranging from:
- Staffing problems
- Clumsy technology or processes
- Inaccurate data and reporting
- Lack of key skill sets available internally
How can your external solution provide a smoother experience that aligns with their goals? Specifically, how does working with you present a better solution than solving their challenge internally?
The other side of this equation focuses on the hassle they may have experienced working with other vendors. This is a great opportunity, though it presents some challenges in terms of messaging. You have to rebuild trust broken by others in your category. How can you demonstrate your ability to fulfill your value proposition’s promises?
4. Risk ROI
When you look at a football team, all it takes is one or two weak links to create serious vulnerabilities. Even a star quarterback becomes a risk if his left tackle is shaky.
Your ideal client faces a similar challenge: their business operates as a system that delivers value to their customers. A weak link can threaten the system as a whole. In recent years, we’ve seen massive disruptions to supply chains, credit access, and many other challenges.
In some cases, your best value proposition might be as a risk-mitigation partner. That’s not necessarily a break-glass-when-needed insurance policy. It might just be that you have a more reliable structure to preserve your own role in their business system. This is especially prevalent if your customer looks for lower cost suppliers overseas. We’ve recently seen how international partners are subject to economic volatility and geopolitical conflict to an increased extent.
Understand exactly how your offer fits into their business system, and show your positioning lowers the risk of their operation faltering.
Need to get your messaging dialed in?
If you aren't addressing these four things clearly, consistently, and with specificity, your prospects will go to someone who is. So, make sure you're talking about them.
But if you feel like your answers to these questions are kind of "yawn"...
Like the same answers any other player in your category would give…
I have 2 suggestions for you.
First, watch our recent webinar with Jacob Baadsgaard of Disruptive Advertising. Their team is the #1 most reviewed marketing agency in the country, growing in 10 years to serve clients like Adobe, KPMG, and Guitar Center. He and I broke down how to get your marketing back on track and produce results.
Second, there’s no substitute for a 1-on-1, you-focused strategy conversation. I invite you to grab 30 minutes of my time where I bring 30+ years of tactical experience to bear on what’s holding you back right now. We’ll review your current focus, brand positioning, and creative marketing strategies to reignite revenue growth.
I’ve helped stuck clients generate hundreds of millions in new revenue. We’ll get you started in the same direction.
