This is a selfie-obsessed world. Every change of shoes, airport or bar is captured on mobile phones and promoted on social media. But the biggest mistake a B2B brand can make is to constantly talk about yourself. The first and most important thing to realise is that no-one cares. Rule number 1 then in B2B Marketing is to stop talking about yourself.
If you’re trying to capture attention, given the competing and often contradictory messages customers face, then telling people about your latest gong, sales success, hire or charitable event, however worthy, just doesn’t cut it with today’s audience. We coined a little mnemonic ‘GOPHERS’ to try to get people to avoid the pitfalls. (Gongs, Offers, Products, Hires, Events, Results and Sales) You can read more about gophers by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
If 80% or more of your content is ‘Gophers’ it will come across as self-obsession or even narcissism.
But what else is there to talk about?
If you stop talking about yourself, then what is there to talk about? I agree that talking about your various successes (never failures!) is the meat and drink of Marketing, but that doesn’t make it right. Studies have shown that gophers might be good initially, but they don’t invite long term loyalty or engagement, another reason to stop using them.
What does work
Content Marketing (because that’s what we’re talking about) has a number of traits, completely opposite to Gopher marketing.
Storytelling and empathy come high up the list of what matters, as well as stuff that helps your customers do their job better. For a small B2B company my advice is to talk honestly about what you know best – helping your customers solve their everyday problems. If that means giving some of your knowledge away, then that’s even better. Try it. For starters stop using your blog as a way of telling the world about yourself and use it to help your customers.