B2B marketing is usually viewed as buttoned-up, uneventful, calm, and maybe even a little boring. This need not be! In today’s episode, Scott Trobaugh and Cliff Lewis talk to me about how to make B2B marketing weird – and what that really means.
Cliff and Scott are MarketingProfs veterans who have appeared on several of our B2B forums.
You will find that I use the word “performed” rather than “presented” because your sessions are true accomplishments. Elaborately designed, perfectly choreographed, and effortlessly delivered, they include costumes, puppets, sound effects, and more.
These guys definitely made the funniest marketing presentations I’ve ever attended (I was lucky enough to have a small part in some of them).
And this is where the “strange” element comes in. As Cliff tells us, “weird” doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s just an acronym for deviant thinking.
Most of human thinking can be viewed as either convergent thinking (“closed” mindset) or divergent thinking (“open” mindset). Addressing your audience from a place of divergent thinking creates a more open environment that leads to communications that lead to even divergent thinking.
In short, when you present something strange and unexpected to your audience, you’re not only grabbing their attention, you’re preparing your audience’s minds for change.
Anything from the use of puppets in your presentation to the (very valid) claim that Mr. Rogers is the patron saint of B2B can be weird, and everything in between. But being weird to be weird isn’t enough. As Scott puts it, “If you want to get weird, you have to tie it back to the authentic.”
And this authenticity is what sets brands apart. It is the customer approach. The conversation with customers and prospects. The search for opinions. It’s about really understanding who your customers are, what they’re looking for, and how they’re getting hurt.
Hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as I recorded it!
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To see Scott and Cliff’s presentation (puppets and everyone), Wonderfully Weird Ideas: How to Catch, Tame, and Exercise ThemVisit the MarketingProfs B2B forum from April 7th to 8th, 2021.
Now, listen to the entire show from the link above or download the MP3 file and listen as you wish. Of course, you can also subscribe to the Marketing Smarts podcast in iTunes or via RSS and never miss an episode.
This episode was brought to you by Terminus and Adverity:
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| Leader of the account-based movement, Terminus helps marketing, sales, and customer success work better together to drive a successful go-to-market strategy and exceptional customer experiences. Terminus offers the best data, channels and analysis on one platform and supports powerful go-to-market teams. We pride ourselves on supporting over 1,000 customers on this mission. To learn more about how Terminus can help you grow your business, visit terminus.com. | Adverity is a smart marketing analytics platform that helps data-driven marketers make better decisions and improve performance faster, easier. By transforming isolated data into actionable insights, Adverity reduces the complexity of optimizing the ROI of marketing spend. Adverity supports marketing intelligence from some of the world’s leading brands and agencies, including IKEA, Red Bull, GroupM, Unilever, SAP and Forbes. To learn more or to book a demo, visit adverity.com |
“Marketing Smarts” themed music composed by Juanito Pascual from Signature tones.