March 27, 2023

Pragmatic Advice for B2B Marketers, Take a Deep Breath and Don't Panic

If you're a B2B marketer or a marketing consultant, here's some advice for you. Don't panic.

The economic landscape is volatile. Prospects are taking their time before making purchases. Budgets are being reined in.

Meanwhile, your CEO, CFO, and the VP of Sales is telling you that they need you to generate leads.

They need you to do marketing that moves the needle and does it quickly.

The reality, however, is that many prospects are not ready to make a purchase.

Your product is not a priority, and as a result, they're not going to do what you want them to do, at least right now.

In other words, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.

You can do marketing that is insightful, prescriptive, and delivers lots of value.

You can attract and engage the right prospects, but you can't force them to do something that they don't want to do, or they're not ready to do.  

If prospects aren't going to make purchases, what kind of marketing should you do?

My advice; do marketing that establishes your company as a trusted go-to resource. Do marketing to build brand awareness.

When people are ready to make purchases, you'll be among the four or five companies that they'll consider.

Do marketing that involves experiments, that allows you to test and iterate and change directions

and be agile so that you can see what works and what doesn't work.

Do marketing on the brand side. Update your positioning, improve your messaging, see if you can optimize the existing marketing channels.

This is the time to be patient, be pragmatic and understand that the market, it is what it is.

It's not as robust as it was in the second half of 2020 and throughout 2021. Conditions are different. What you have to do is wait until the economy rebounds,

wait until prospects are in a buying mode again. It's hard advice to accept, but it's the economic reality.

Now is not the time to panic. Now is the time to dig in, look at the long term and position your company so when things get better, you'll be there.

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