Some B2B firms are realising Byron Sharp was right on distinctive assets versus differentiation all along. A slew of recent research underlines that buying committees are increasingly buying on brand, not product features – and they've usually made up their minds before the first marketing qualified lead (MQL) lands with sales, rendering MQLs increasingly redundant. IT firm Logicalis ran the numbers on its own campaigns and found only 21 per cent of its potential customers were even aware of it – and that a single percentage point awareness gain would drive massive revenue growth. Moreover, six in ten of its potential customers couldn't recall a single ad from any of its competitors in the last 12 months – presenting a major opportunity to start optimising to awareness and driving conversion via bolder comms. "Funnily enough, I didn't find much resistance," says head of marketing, Lara Barnett. ABB global digital marketing and content chief Sophie Neate says the engineering giant has dropped MQLs as a KPI altogether and is now getting more joy out of other metrics while creating and personalising content across a much broader range of buying committee stakeholders. Stuart Jaffray, MD of B2B specialist agency Green Hat, urges brands to go all out on distinctive brand assets, brand awareness, mental availability and recall. Plus, forget the answers you wrote in your last ten RFPs and instead look at the questions – and develop content around them. Then the buyers will come to you.
