The Power of Empathy in B2B Marketing

Lynette Saunders, Senior Analyst, Econsultancy

My experience

12 years of experience within the areas of Usability, User Experience, Web Analytics, Product Management and Marketing.

1. Quest for a great customer experience

2. Content marketing as a priority and

taking an audience-first approach

3. Optimising the customer journey

4. Importance of brand building and

connecting with your customers

5. Key takeaways

Agenda

““

McKinsey

Turning your company into a top quartile B2B digital player can increase revenue by 3.5%.

Quest for a great

Customer

Experience

Most exciting opportunity for your organisation in 2019?

3%

1%

2%

5%

2%

4%

7%

8%

8%

7%

21%

13%

19%

5%

1%

2%

3%

4%

5%

6%

7%

10%

10%

12%

15%

20%

None of the above

Voice interfaces

Engaging audiences through virtual or augmented reality

Reaching and understanding mobile customers

Internet of Things (IoT) / connected devices e.g. wearables, audience tracking

Utilising artificial intelligence / bots to drive campaigns and experiences

Multichannel marketing

Social marketing

Using marketing automation to increase efficiency and yield

Video to increase brand engagement

Data-driven marketing that focuses on the individual

Creating compelling content for digital experiences

Optimising the customer experience

B2B B2C

Source: Digital Trends Survey 2019

Improving the customer journey

experience from average to

exceptional can lead to a 30-50%

increase in KPIs eg. likelihood to

remain/renew or to purchase

another product.

B2B customers have rising expectations for consumer-like experience, influenced by improving B2C customer experiences

Customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator

.

What should B2B companies be focusing on?

Source: https://home.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmg/uk/pdf/2017/05/b2b-customer-

experience-report.pdf

• Demonstrating a fundamental understanding of

the client’s business, objectives and strategic

direction.

• Continual focus on reducing the costs and effort,

removing barriers, making interactions easy and

enabling self-service.

• Meeting and/or exceeding expectations.

• Focusing on trust building moments and

nurturing the trust in the relationship.

• Building strong, empathetic personal

relationships across stakeholders.

Source: B2B Digital Transformation

““

Hiten Shah, Founder, Kissmetrics

Your approach to your customers is a

reflection of your company’s mission. It’s not

just about product-market fit, but positioning,

marketing and sales. A customer-centric ethos

will keep your entire company focused on

building the best product possible

Source: https://hitenism.com/amazon-working-backwards/

Getting the balance between consistency and change

• Continual investment in customer experience.

• Collaboration with fintech partners.

• An insight driven culture

• Opportunities from big data.

• The future role of insight

Source: https://nunwood.com/excellence-centre/publications/uk-cee-analysis/2018-uk-cee-analysis/

Maersk adopting a customer centric approach

“Digital innovation has given us a chance to convert a bunch of transactions into a seamless experience. As part

of a global effort, Maersk UAE began this journey nearly three years ago, to support the ambition of creating

virtual counters that customers could access from anywhere and use any time.”

Ways companies are overcoming challenges

• Breakdown siloes with greater collaboration between sales and marketing teams to be successful.

• The transformation plan is defining what the technology stack is.

• Ensuring everyone in the business has a responsibility for customer experience and understanding their role in improving this is key.

Taking an audience-

first approach

Top three digital priorities in 2019?

5%

2%

4%

4%

7%

7%

7%

10%

11%

12%

13%

13%

14%

15%

16%

18%

18%

19%

21%

21%

28%

None of the above

Voice interfaces

Audience management

Programmatic buying / optimisation

Customer scoring and predictive marketing

Unifying online and offline data

Account-based marketing (ABM)

Mobile engagement and optimisation

Conversion rate optimisation

Ecommerce

Search engine marketing

Multichannel campaign management

Lead management

Marketing automation

Customer data management

Content management

Targeting and personalisation

Video content

Customer journey management

Social media engagement and analytics

Content marketing

Social marketing is shifting towards

emotionally engaging content and

storytelling because strong

emotions increase content’s

“spreadability,”

Oregon Web Solutions

Source: Digital Trends Survey 2019 (B2B)

Content starts by understanding your customers as people

Old way marketing

• Who can we sell our products to?

• How do we convince people to buy?

• How can we get them to buy again?

Customer-first marketing

• What problems do we solve?

• Who has these problems?

• How will customers find our solutions?

Cisco’s audience-first content marketing model

Source: https://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2018/09/martech-creative-content/

Pirelli uses content marketing to bridge its five-year buying cycle

Storytelling is one of the most powerful strategies in strategic marketing

Source: The Future of Marketing, Storytelling for Marketers

GE’s Inspiring stories through ‘Together we work’ Youtube videos and Content Hub

Optimising the

customer journey

Developing a deeper understanding of the customer decision journey

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/follow-the-customer-decision-journey-if-you-want-b2b-sales-to-grow

Potential to boost sales by an average of 5-10% and

customer retention by an average of 30%

Source: https://econsultancy.com/how-to-use-econsultancy-s-b2b-customer-journey-mapping-canvas/

Value Proposition

Canvas

Source: Learning from Digital Disruptors Best Practice Guide

Uberfication of deliveries

• Amazon and Alibaba: One big logistics network vs. many small logistics companies

• The freight-share model – hurting or helping the environment?

• The MIXMOVE model: Linking carriers and shippers the eco-friendly way

Source: https://www.mixmove.io/blog/4-business-models-that-are-disrupting-the-parcel-delivery-industry

Uber rewriting how goods and people move from one place to another to be the Amazon of transportation

Enhance service offerings with value-added services

B2B company that sells construction materials

• Offer a site planning tool to enable someone to do their entire build out in a way that helps them estimate the

amount of plumbing materials they need.

• Ideally, all those products, or a good proportion of them, are available for sale by that B2B company.

Food supplier

• Buying a point of sale system and then implementing a restaurant menu management programme. The aim

would be to give this to all of their customers so that they know any time inventory got low or was running

out quickly.

• A restaurant could set up auto replenishment and get what they need from the supplier the next day - would

not run out of inventory after a busy period and able to minimise spoilage.

Ways companies are overcoming challenges

• Bringing together insights and teams across the business to help marketers to better understand the customer journey.

• Working through proof of concepts and MVPs in small agile teams to prove value of making improvements.

• Make the customer journey easy and transparent with one point of reference.

Connecting with

your audiences

What audiences desire through a brand interaction

Source: https://business.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/business/en-us/marketing-solutions/cx/2016/pdfs/Rethink-The-B2B-Buyers-Journey-v03.08.pdf/

Connecting with customers’ emotions

Source: https://www.econsultancy.com/blog/68722-how-ai-will-impact-marketing-and-the-customer-experience, https://hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions

Customer empathy

Source: Learning from Digital Disruptors Best Practice Guide

RS Components uses video to bring inspiring customer stories to life

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/generalDisplay.html?id=fortheinspired/customer-ambionics

• Gained over 75 million impressions, with over 2 million video views across YouTube and social media.

• Generated over 500,000 engagements by way of likes, comments and shares.

• Business was able to drive 110,000 visits back to its website.

DHL using Innovation

centres

Source: https://econsultancy.com/lego-to-bmw-how-brands-have-used-co-creation-to-earn-consumer-trust/

Offering a personalised online experience will be vital

Key considerations for personalisation

Part of an overall Digital Strategy

1

Clear goals and objectives

2

PIE:

Potential, Importance, Ease.

3

Start small and focus on quick wins

4

Customer journey

5

Test and learn approach

6

Source: Harnessing the Power of Personalisation

Increasing the proportion of VIPs in the base and CLV

Objective: To increase customer lifetime value and increase the proportion of VIPs in the base.

Actions: Using AI and predictive analytics to search for patterns of behaviour that current VIPs exhibit, identify other customers with similar behaviour and market to them with targeted messages.

Results:

• Proportion of VIPs in database went from 3.2% to 5.3% in 8 months.

• By increasing VIPs over eight months value of database grew by over 86%.

• Customers identified as likely VIPs increased lifetime value of 198%.

• 34% increase in customer lifetime value in 12 months.

Source: Marketing Automation Best Practice Guide

Looking ahead, which of these do you regard as the

most exciting prospect in three

years’ time?

3%

5%

6%

9%

12%

16%

19%

30%

4%

5%

8%

14%

14%

21%

34%

Other

Voice interfaces e.g. Amazon Echo, Google Home

Enhanced payment technologies e.g. mobile wallets, e-receipts

Blockchain-based functionality

Engaging audiences through virtual or augmented reality

Internet of Things (IoT) / connected devices e.g. wearables,audience tracking

Utilising artificial intelligence / bots to drive campaigns andexperiences

Delivering personalised experiences in real time

2018 2019

Looking ahead, which of these do you regard as the most

exciting prospect in three years’ time?

Source: Digital Trends Survey 2019 (B2B)

It is still Day One says Jeff Bezos, Amazon

• Customer obsession

• Passion for invention

• Thinking long-term

• Operational excellence

• Focus on results not process

• High velocity decision-making

• Embrace external trends

Source: https://www.amazon.com/p/feature/z6o9g6sysxur57t

Key takeaways➢ Evaluating performance against the Six Pillars of Customer Experience.

➢ Delivering on the customer experience is the responsibility of everyone.

➢ Understanding customer journeys, removing pain points and making it easy to do business with you.

➢ Putting customers at the centre and permanent in your development process.

➢ Having a good understanding of customer problems from not only a functional, but also from an emotional point of view.

➢ How you can move customers from highly satisfied to fully connected.

➢ Think about your value proposition and identifying any value-added services to enhance your service proposition.

➢ Identifying how your content supports each stage of the customer decision journey and optimising different content types.

➢ Personalisation is the future of experience. Identify points in the customer journey which can be personalised to demonstrate how you can meet their needs.

➢ Identifying your high value customers and how you can increase these and their lifetime value.

➢ Philosophy of it still being Day One.

Lynette SaundersSenior Analyst, Econsultancy

Email: lynette.saunders@econsultancy.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lynettesaunders

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Resources

Resources• Digital Trends 2019

• Overcoming B2B Digital Marketing Challenges

• B2B Digital Transformation

• Learning from Digital Disruptors Best Practice Guide

• Content Strategy Best Practice Guide

• Online Video Best Practice Guide

• Guide to Digital Marketing Tools

• Marketing Automation Best Practice Guide

• Optimising Programmatic Campaigns

• B2B Social Media Best Practice Guide

• Ecommerce Best Practice Guide

• Harnessing the Power of Personalisation

• Understanding Customer Lifetime Value

• Maximising the ROI of Digital Marketing

• User Experience and Interaction Design for Mobile and Web

• Storytelling for Marketers

• Trust, Transparency & Brand Safety

• A Marketer’s Guide to Chatbots

• A Marketer’s Guide to AI and Machine Learning

• Digital Shift

• Future of Marketing report

Source: https://econsultancy.com/how-to-use-econsultancy-s-b2b-customer-journey-mapping-canvas/

Understanding Customer Lifetime Value

• 5% increase in retention rates translates into 25 to 95% improvements in profit.

• Finding a balance between ROI and CLV.

• Understand CLV to help predict the total worth of a customer.

• Understanding of customer data and customer journey.

• Senior buy-in and collaboration.

• Taking small steps, keeping it simple.

Source: Understanding Customer Lifetime Value

• How social media can play an integral part in

communicating with your audiences.

• Which platforms are appropriate.

• Which types of presence they follow, engage with.

• What they care about and which key messages the

business wishes to deliver.

• The social platform mix and activity should be user-

focused.

• Mapping the role that social media plays in your

customer journeys e.g. retention and advocacy for

active/loyal customers.

Using social media in the B2B world

Source: B2B Social Media Best Practice Guide

Maersk leading the way in social engagement

Source: https://linkhumans.com/blog/maersk-line,https://econsultancy.com/q-a-how-maersk-line-created-a-brilliant-b2b-social-media-strategy/

Importance of brand building and connecting with your audience

Source: https://www.marketingweek.com/2019/06/06/b2b-marketing-inspire-consumer-marketing/

Bringing our

Purpose to Life

Leveraging B2C personalised marketing in B2B content

• Personalised content

performs 42% better than

non-personalised content. (Hubspot)

• Double-digit returns in

marketing performance and

response.

(Forbes’ Publish or Perish

analysis)