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PROFESSIONAL SERVICES BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT AND MARKETING INSIGHTS

| less than a minute read

In B2B marketing, you're selling promotions

In B2B purchasing, one of the main reasons a product gets bought over the competition is that one product is viewed as a safer bet than other potentially better offerings. A thought captured rather nicely in the phrase "No one ever got fired for buying IBM" but as Tomas Tunguz comments below, to drive growth, you need to do better than just competing on reputation. That's when you're effectively selling the personal advancement of your clients. You need to convince the client that if they buy your product, they are going to look like rockstars.

To help with this, if your firm creates content that helps your audience to mitigate risk or to make better decisions going forward, they will begin to see your organisation in the role of a Trusted Advisor. From there, it is a very small (and very safe) step to bring you into the room.

Remember, you’re in the business of selling promotions and many businesses value continuity over innovation. To reach the early/late majority of the software buying market requires different tactics because unlike the early adopters, early/late majority buyers aren’t looking to change. There’s the risk of a failed deployment, the risk of picking a suboptimal vendor, and the risk of budget overruns.

Tags

content marketing, content creation, b2b marketing, trust, authenticity