Overly technical.
Impenetrable lingo.
A bit dry.
If you're honest, are these the adjectives that come to mind when you think about B2B marketing? Why is it that B2B is often so uninspiring? That, while informative, it lacks humour, or authenticity, or a sense of the brand that you can remember.
Well, B2B can be a tricky proposition. Brands marketing to business customers often need to communicate niche and detailed messaging. You’re talking to professionals in the field, people with clear objectives in need of concrete solutions. As such, it’s easy to get lost in descriptions of key features and obscure product specs, while the stuff that’s really engaging and persuasive to your customers gets left by the wayside.
At Flying Object, we decided a long time ago that ads like this weren’t serving anybody. Luckily, there is another way!
FLO’s Cardinal Rules for Non-Boring B2B
Our B2B philosophy that can be distilled into the following central tenets:
- Businesses are people too
Brands picturing their business customers need to avoid falling into a trap of imagining a faceless organisation in the abstract. The businesses you want to work with are made up of individuals - you’re talking to people with feelings and emotions, and you need to invest creative energy in delighting them just as you would with B2C. We find that featuring people (individuals, their voices and their perspectives) in content, ads and editorial helps tie the idea to the personal register that works so well.
- Don’t be afraid to be funny
B2B can feel like serious business - and it is! But all those individuals making up a business like a laugh as much as the next person, and it’s possible to inject a bit of humour into marketing without undermining the credibility of your offering. Of course, you have to use a bit of discretion as to what fits, but even just a hint of quirkiness, a light-hearted touch or knowing tone invites your audience into a warmer relationship with your brand.
- Show don’t tell
Imagine you’ve just met someone at a party and you’ve asked them what they do for work. Even if you’re genuinely interested, there’s nothing worse than getting stuck listening to your new friend go on about the intricacies of their job in boring detail. It’s the same with a B2B ad. The audience wants to know about your offering, but you need to keep descriptions snappy. This can be hard when there’s a lot of important information to convey, and this is where we like to show rather than tell. Illustrative elements and creative graphics work wonders here, and we’re big fans of a visual metaphor to express something complex.
- For the love of god keep it interesting
B2B customers are busy people who receive a lot of messaging on a day to day basis. It’s crucial your ad is genuinely engaging and watchable, otherwise it won’t cut through or be remembered. Try to avoid the usual business cliches of executive talking heads in an office setting. You’re more likely to capture attention if you take a risk, mix things up and subvert peoples’ expectations.
Putting these principles into action
We know these cardinal rules hit, because we have history with creating interesting and inspiring B2B.
Google have often come to us for help describing the benefits of a new product. Remembering our people-first approach, we usually profile one of their existing customers.
Our video with Lush showcased the brand’s use of Google Cloud technology to reduce their environmental impact by creating packaging-free stores and products. By heroing their journey, and tying all the storytelling into Lush’s handmade philosophy, we were able to show, not tell, the real world impact of the product. We made sure to take advantage of Lush’s gorgeous products to create impactful visuals too.
In the same way, we used eBay as a real life case study of Google’s AdSense in order to market it to other businesses. We recreated an eBay user’s journey using quirky, visual storytelling to show a positive and non-interruptive relationship between advertising and the audience, and demonstrate how AdSense helps brands attract attention in a busy online environment. Shot along the canals in Amsterdam, there wasn’t a boring office in sight.
To take a totally different example, we worked with DeepMind earlier this year to raise awareness of their groundbreaking AlphaFold technology among scientists, scientific institutions and research groups. We created Unfolded, a content campaign which told the stories of scientists already working with AlphaFold to demonstrate its potential impact for researchers in different fields. By leaning into the human interest aspects of the stories - heroing the individuals involved in the research rather than the research itself - we engaged the attention and captured the emotions of other scientists who could benefit from the technology.
You can see more of our work with B2B marketing clients on our website.
So go forth, make fantastic B2B ads
All this is to say that it's entirely possible to make ads that clearly and memorably describe your offering to business customers, while also surprising and delighting them with emotive stories and creative visuals.
We love empowering brands to do just that - it’s something of a speciality of ours. If you’d like to tap into our B2B superpower, we’d love you to get in touch.