Imagine it's the end of 2024. Oh wait, that's it. How the time flies.
As you plan your marketing strategy for 2025, think about the team you will be part of or building.
When considering your next hiring or agency option, do you prefer someone with extensive expertise in a specific niche or someone who is curious and has a deep understanding of the subject areas your company specializes in?
Your first response might be, “It depends.” And that’s absolutely true.
But I've noticed something disturbing in recent years. Many B2B marketers who work for brands with highly specialized or technical topics don't try to understand these topics.
For example, I recently worked with a new CMO at an engineering-focused B2B technology company. When I asked how well the marketing team understands the solutions they sell, he told me he wasn't sure. And he admitted that he didn't fully understand it himself.
But here's the thing: He was trying to learn. He immersed himself in the industry and got to know the customers, the competition and the technology.
However, he didn't take his team with him on the trip. The real kicker? When he offered them the opportunity to learn something, almost no one took him up on it.
They didn't care.
Does anyone care what we do?
A lot has been spilled over the years about customers not being interested in our products. The jobs-to-be-done framework explains this perfectly: customers focus on solving their needs, not on the products themselves. The saying often attributed to Theodore Levitt sums this up well: “People want Don't buy a quarter-inch drill. You want a quarter-inch hole.”
Some of CMI's first posts on content marketing are about how customers care about their needs, not yours. David Meerman Scott has been writing for a decade about how no one cares about your product but you.
However, recently marketers don't seem to care about their products anymore. They have become more like special agents, fully focused on optimizing their parts of the customer journey, without ever asking themselves what the widget's actual value is to the market. The product is just a pillar of their mission, not the star of the show.
I recently asked a senior marketing executive at one of the largest cloud infrastructure companies in the world to give me an introduction to the company's space and competition. He replied, “Oh, I don’t know much about it. My job is to make sure leads get into the funnel. I could put you in touch with one of our subject matter experts.”
He wasn't trying to be difficult. He didn't think it was essential to have such in-depth product knowledge.
I'm increasingly finding that B2B marketers view their efforts as an intellectual puzzle. Putting together the internal and external pieces of creativity, process, data and measurement is an intellectual challenge they must solve to rise (or stay) in the game. They lack emotion and interest in the products or industry they work in.
B2B marketing used to be a team sport
I don’t blame marketing practitioners. The reason many of them don't seem to care is both because most companies don't invest in fostering this curiosity and because they're unwilling to delve deeper into learning.
Companies often view content and marketing professionals as interchangeable chess pieces. Then they are surprised when their practitioners feel like chess pieces – unmotivated, disinterested and unwilling to learn the details of the game.
Maybe I long for a version of marketing that no longer exists. I remember the passionate debates between marketing teams 15 or 20 years ago. Back then, B2B marketers were passionate about their industry. In high-tech companies, marketing teams were thrilled with their companies' performance. Marketing managers made sure of that: They hosted training sessions, brought in guest speakers, and provided magazine subscriptions and ongoing industry training to keep everyone motivated.
Product marketing would promote the product's innovative new features to an enthusiastic sales enablement team. Brand and demand teams constantly learned the intricacies of the industry; Everyone became a subject matter expert (on some level) on the topic. Marketers attended retreats where they mocked the competition and brainstormed ways to compete against them as if they were a rival sports team.
Marketing teams took care of it. Deep.
But that brings us back to the question: Do we care? When planning your marketing for 2025, would you rather work with people who have specialized skills or with the curiosity to become an expert? Does this difference matter?
I think that's true.
B2B customers demand more
It should be important to take care of the business theme of your company.
The findings in Marketing Week's latest State of B2B Marketing report (subscription required) show why. According to the study, customer insight is the most in-demand skill for B2B marketers, with 54.4% of respondents ranking it first. Close behind are commercial focus at 46.9% and creativity at 30.3%.
Empathy ranks at the bottom.
At first glance, this seems to contradict the idea that it is important to care about your company's business theme. In this study, B2B marketers appear to prioritize data-driven customer insights over emotional understanding of issues and the customer experience.
Then I remembered this insightful article by B2B marketing expert Ardath Albee. She highlighted research showing that only 1% of C-level buyers believe the B2B marketing they encounter demonstrates a “meaningful understanding of the human experience.” Basically, none of them feel understood. There is no empathy.
When you compare Marketing Week's results with CMI's latest B2B study, the picture becomes clearer.
The content creation challenge most commonly cited by B2B marketers is “producing content that actually drives action.” Generative AI is now most commonly used by B2B marketers to “brainstorm new topics.”
Most tellingly, 88% of B2B marketers who consider themselves successful say the key to that success is “understanding the audience.”
When you put it all together, things make a little more sense.
Today's B2B marketing is as dry, beige and bland as a bowl of unsweetened oatmeal. We pulled all the emotion and empathy right out of our content. We don't know what topics will resonate because we've stopped understanding them ourselves.
Instead, we rely on generative AI to tell us what to write about topics we barely understand.
If successful B2B marketing should have a point of view, consistently generate emotion, and demonstrate an understanding of the human experience, then shouldn't our marketing teams have at least a little of that?
Fighting unintentional indifference
Again, I don't want to blame content and marketing practitioners, even though we are the only ones who can fix the problem. And I'm not suggesting that this is a “quiet give up” where people try just enough to get by. I know many B2B marketers who go above and beyond and solve complex intellectual puzzles on topics that don't interest them at all.
The problem is that many don't understand why it's important to explore the details of their industry.
I call it “accidental indifference.” It's a chicken and egg situation. Does it happen when companies no longer try to get marketing teams excited about the company's issues? Or is it due to a lack of interest from marketing staff? Is it both?
A mid-sized technology company stimulates the engagement and interest of its marketers by conducting a training program. It runs formal internal campaigns and offers all marketing teams access to industry conferences.
When I was CMO of a small but technical software company 20 years ago, enterprise web content management was not the most exciting topic for me. I had just come out of the world of films and television.
However, I believed that the marketing team needed curiosity, a willingness to learn and industry knowledge to engage with our customers. We held regular sessions to help them (and me) understand the industry, the technology and why competition in this space should be challenging, fun and exciting. I immersed myself in learning everything I could about enterprise web content strategy and management. It turned out to be the foundation for my career today.
Interest, not fanaticism
You don’t need to build fanaticism around your brand. Companies don’t have to build this into the company’s DNA either. However, they should provide thorough education about the space.
Salesforce, for example, puts all new employees through a year-long marketing cloud training program about the software-as-a-service world.
But I'm less worried about brands' efforts and more focused on content and marketing careers. I can't imagine working for a company whose business I don't care about – or at least try not to care about. That's why I love my job now. I get front row insights into many industries and their most important players.
I also realized that I'm not as effective when I don't care about the product or industry. Marketing leaders should feel more responsible for teaching and inspiring their teams to be as excited (and as connected) as possible about their company and marketing's place within it.
You spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get customers interested in your work. But if the content and marketing teams don't care about your customers at least as much as your customers do, you won't succeed.
It's your story. Say it well.
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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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