5 Mistakes Business-to-Business CEOs Make in Marketing

As an industry expert who’s had the privilege of advising hundreds, if not thousands, of B2B CEOs over my career, I often notice recurring misconceptions about marketing. There is a common belief among companies that their unique problems can’t be solved with conventional tactics. Some excuses are all too frequent and they’re simply not true.

It’s important to keep in mind that any business (big or small) today has access to powerful digital strategies, which can really give them the edge. In this article, I want to talk about the most frequent marketing mistakes in more detail so you know how best to utilize your resources for success and achieve the best return on your investment.

Mistake 1: Looking at Marketing as a Cost Centre Rather than a Profit Centre

One common mistake B2B CEOs make is investing in their marketing based on the allocated budget rather than the lifetime value of a customer. While it’s easy to estimate the profit from hiring another sales representative, you can’t estimate immediate ROI by trying a different marketing strategy. You need to monitor progress and tweak it all the time based on the reaction of your audience. Also, what works for your competitors will not necessarily work for you. And what worked for you once might get zero results the next time you do it. In a sense, marketing is a combination of creativity and psychology. That’s why adjusting your efforts to the budget reduces your chances for success. It should be the other way around.

Mistake 2: Treating Your Website as a Brochure with Texts and Images

We’re way past the times when people only visit your website for pretty pictures and location. Your website is a digital storefront of your business. And as your customers explore their options, they research the alternatives from cover to cover. Make no mistake: They will check your website, directories and social media. Based on their findings, they will make their buying decision, and you won’t even know. Remember that by the time your prospects reach out to our sales team, they have already completed most of their buyer’s journey.

Mistake 3: Making Future Strategic Decisions Based on the Failed Attempts

It’s smart to learn from your mistakes. However, when it comes to digital marketing, people often generalize and find faults in the wrong things. Let’s say you tried blogging for a couple of months but only wrote 300-word-long blogs while Google requires 500 to 3,000 words to have a blog ranked for keywords, would you consider blogging a mistake? Or if you started a podcast and gave up after 10 episodes, would you say podcasting doesn’t work? When you implement a strategy and it doesn’t work, make sure you identify the real reason behind the failure before you move on to something else.

Mistake 4: Being Unwilling to Share Your Knowledge With Your Customers

This is a very common concern among our B2B clients and I can understand why. When advised to share their insider information with a wider audience, many B2B CEOs and marketing leaders take it literally. They don’t want to share their insights or business processes for fear that their competitors will use them or that their prospects will solve their problems on their own. While this is a valid concern and you certainly don’t have to reveal trade secrets, we always advise looking at it from a different perspective. Your customers are trying to solve their problems. Will they find advice from you or from your competitors?

Mistake 5: Undervaluing the Brand Equity

Many business leaders underestimate the value of a brand and hardly ever consider it as a measuring rod for why they should invest in digital marketing. However, even if you don’t get enough leads in the process, you’re still building your brand. With a well-established brand name, you can create long-term customer relationships as well as higher profits and ROI over time. Once your brand is really known for something positive, it can stand out in a crowded marketplace and differentiate itself from the competition.