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18: The Failed B2B Ad Message: Your Solution Is Not A Solution Without A Problem (Problemotional Advertising)
42 Plays11 months ago
Advertising is a battle for perception in the buyer's mind. And there's only 2 types of perceptions that really matter. How are they created? How does it affect the entire business' success?
If you prefer to read the article or watch the video:
https://blackcamel.agency/humphub-research/the-failed-b2b-ad-message-your-solution-is-not-a-solution-without-a-problem/
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Transcript
Introduction to Alternative Content Formats
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Hey, what's up, guys? This is the audio and video version of the article below. The failed B2B ad message. Your solution is not a solution without a problem. The exact same content as the article below. I'm just simply reading it out loud. Depending on how you prefer to consume content, perhaps this is a better way to do it. Otherwise, you can just read the article below. All right, here we go.
Challenges in B2B Growth and Perception
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What's wrong in B2B companies? The year is 2024 and most of B2B struggles with three key parts of a sustainable business. The first is growth. They struggle to attract qualified sales calls or demos with the intention of buying
00:00:35
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Second part is profitability to get leads that actually end up buying the marketing costs are too high and the third part Scalability the sales cycles are extremely long and the lifetime value is too low. Is this a marketing problem? Is it a sales problem? a product problem, a customer success problem. Surely if the pains are experienced in the entire business, there must be a variety of problems in each department, right? And perhaps that plays a part in it. But we've actually found that there's one underlying factor that affects the entire business' success.
Need vs. Nice-to-Have in B2B Perception
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And that is perception. And perception is created from the very first advertisement buyers see from you. The problem is that most B2B companies do advertising that makes buyers perceive them as an interchangeable and nice to have service. Buyers perceive you as nice to have, not a need to have. When they don't need your product or service, there's no urgency to book a call with you, there's no urgency to buy, and there's no urgency to get started after buying. They might see it as somewhat important, but not urgent. And when there's no urgency, need to haves are always prioritized. When it's perceived as nice to have, people ask, how much does it cost? When it's perceived as need to have, people say, name your price. When it's perceived as nice to have, people say, let me think about it and get back to you. When it's perceived as need to have, people say, tell me what you need so we can start today. Buyers perceive you as interchangeable, not irreplaceable.
00:01:57
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You might see your service as unique and amazing and think that it can't be found anywhere else. But if buyers see it as a commodity that performs the same function as other services, why would they book calls with you and not the 20 other options? Why would they buy from you, not the 20 other options? Why would they pay such a high price to you, not the 20 other options? The reality could be that your service may actually be better than the rest and completely different to other offerings. But what matters is the perceived reality of the buyer. No amount of telling buyers that you're amazing and better will change that.
The Power of Problem-Focused Advertising
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B2B marketers say people buy from people they trust. You need to show the benefits, not the features. You need to reduce the perceived risk of buying. You need to give value. You need to show how you help. Your brand colors need to create a brand identity. You need to show that you're an expert in the industry. But here's the thing. You can have all of the above and still be perceived as an interchangeable nice to have. How come?
00:02:48
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How you're perceived by buyers depends on the focus of your message. Is a problem focused or is it solution focused? And at what point of the buying journey they received that message? Why? Perception starts from the first moment buyers are introduced to your brand and to your solution is not perceived as a solution without the perception of a problem. Remember, the decision process that initiates the buying journey starts with the problem. And 95% of your target addressable market is out of market, meaning they're not ready to buy. That's because they aren't aware of the problem or of how the problem is causing them their current
Effective Top-of-Funnel Strategies
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pains. When you make your solution the focus of your top of funnel ad messages, buyers perceive you as an interchangeable nice to have service. When you make the problem the focus of your top of funnel ad messages,
00:03:34
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Buyers perceive you as the irreplaceable need to have solution. Just a side note to be clear, we're not advocating for never talking about the solution. The farther the buyers go into their buying journey, naturally, the more they will need to understand the solution to that problem. But in the beginning of the journey, the message needs to be focused on the problem. We call this buying journey alignment. In the beginning of the buying journey, the focus is about the problem and then it transitions into being about the solution. The difference between the two messages is the difference between ad campaign budget waste and ad campaign success. Advertising the solution and the top of funnel results in being perceived as an interchangeable nice to have, which results in being deprioritized and ignored, which means few high intent inbound calls. No one needs something that doesn't solve a problem because they don't perceive the problem.
00:04:22
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A lower win rate prospects see you as one of many possible solutions and longer sales cycles. Without pain, there's no urgency or prioritization, which all leads to ad budget of waste.
Common Advertising Mistakes in B2B
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Marketing the problem and the top of funnel results and being perceived as an irreplaceable need to have, which results in buyers demanding the solution from you without considering anyone else. And that results in more high intent inbound calls because painful problems need solutions. Higher win rate, prospects see you as the only obvious solution. They're not considering anyone else. And shorter sales cycles. Painful problems force urgent action and prioritization. So when you put those three together, add campaign success. So in this article, we're going to break down each of these outcomes with examples and how they're achieved through the right message.
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This way, if your ad campaign is using the wrong ad message, you'll be able to clearly see how it's costing you a shit ton of money, which is the first step in changing your strategy and making sure you don't keep wasting that shit
The Dangers of Generic Promises
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ton of money. But first, how does marketing the solution without first marketing the problem make buyers perceive you as an interchangeable, nice-to-have service? We call this big mistake the solution promotion trap, which we talked about in our first article, why most B2B advertising fails. We can basically split this solution promotion trap into three actions. Making the message about your brand. Look at us. We're awesome. Making the message about your service. Look at us. Our service is the best. Or making the message about your product. Look at our product. It's the best. And the reason we sum up these three actions as marketing the solution is because they describe and promote the brand, service, and product as a solution.
00:05:59
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Here's a tangible explanation with examples for how we create the perception of being an interchangeable, nice-to-have service. When you make the same generic promises as everyone and invite a comparison to others in your category, you're perceived as interchangeable. When what you say can be said by anyone, it means nothing. It also gets you perceived as interchangeable. Let's take a look at these three different messages from a social ah few different social media tools. One single platform for social media. Message one. Best social media and online presence management platform. Most innovative and revolutionary product guaranteed excellence for your businesses. Message two. The all in one AI marketing calendar for content, social and beyond. and That's message three.
00:06:39
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If this is the first thing you see from their brands, if you even read them in the first place, you will see the companies as the exact same thing. Why? Is there a social media management tool that doesn't promise to be all in one? Is there a social media management tool that doesn't think they're the best? Is there a tool that doesn't promise organization? It's making the same generic promises about their solution. Most attempt to show that their brand service or product is incrementally better, faster, easier to use than others in a category. They say the best employee communication tool or we get you results five times faster than other franchise marketing services. Easiest to use client onboarding platform.
00:07:19
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Christopher Lockhead calls this the better trap. It's pretty logical. If buyers know we're the best brand with the best service, they'll buy from us, right? Well, like usual, big companies completely forget to consider the buyer's point of view. When seen from the eyes of a modern digital buyer, suffering from choice overload, too many choices and all of the same promises, All this tells them is that you are completely interchangeable. When you say you're the best kind of ex, it's only telling them you're not different from any other ex. Remember, marketing is not about reality, it's about the perception of reality. Trying to convince buyers that you're the best doesn't change their perception.
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because no one believes you. So that is an example of inviting a
Creating Urgency Through Problem Highlighting
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comparison. So both of these mistakes here get you perceived as interchangeable. So what creates a perception of being nice to have when you don't address a painful problem? Benefits, products, services, and brands are all nice to have. It'd be nice to accelerate growth. It'd be nice to unleash our potential, whatever the fuck that means. It'd be nice to have an all-in-one platform for whatever category. It'd be nice to work with a brand that puts the customers first. Why isn't any of the ad messages that I just listed a need to have? Because it doesn't address any current pain or potential pain created by a problem. Anything else can be deprioritized and pushed off for the future. So now that we understand the difference between the perceptions of being irreplaceable need to house or interchangeable nice to house, let's compare how it affects what your marketing and sales teams care most about. Financial outcomes, inbound calls, intent,
00:08:51
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win rates, sales cycles, and customer acquisition costs. First outcome. When you market the problem, you get more high-intent inbound calls. That's because painful problems need to have solutions. This is the outcome that the marketing team would like to hear. When the painful problem you solve becomes visible and understood by the buyers, they demand the solution from you. This is why we don't just say you get more booked calls or demos. You get more high-intent booked calls. Let's look at an example. Before working at Black Camo Agency, I offered a LinkedIn demand creation service. One of my B2B clients, a franchise marketing agency, in the first few months of launching their LinkedIn ad campaign
00:09:32
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was getting several qualified and high-intent inbound book calls each week. Prospects weren't being begged to get on a call. They weren't being tricked to get on a call with fancy schmancy sweet talk. They most certainly weren't downloading an ebook on industry trends, only to then be called by a sales rep. So what did we do? The client and I marketed the problem, and we educated about it. The message was about the problem. And as a result, buyers were going out of their way to book a call because they realized it was a problem they needed to solve. They saw that the problem was causing them tons of pain, resource waste, and marketing strategy confusion. These weren't calls to buy a $10,000 rebranding package.
00:10:09
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There were deals that result in $100,000 to $300,000 in monthly recurring revenue for years down the road. The best part is that the monthly ad spend to get all these was below $1,000 a month. They could have made an advertising message that said, we know franchise marketing more than anyone. Could have said, look at us. We're on a mission committed to excellence. Or here's an e-book on general franchise trends. Or we're the best franchise marketing agency. Instead, they said, here's your problem and the pains it creates. Buyers don't perceive the brand as an interchangeable, nice to have service. They perceive it as the irreplaceable need to have solution to a massive problem. A valley is not a valley without a mountain. The yin cannot be without the yang. A solution cannot exist without a problem.
00:10:54
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When someone shoves a solution in your face, you ask, often subconsciously, why should I care? And because it doesn't tell you why you should care, you scroll on. The problem is what makes buyers care. Solutions don't inspire action. Problems do. That's because problems are about them, the buyers. Your solution or your product brand or service, is about you. Problems are what initiate the buying journey. A problem that people can't go around. A problem that causes them pain now. A problem that will cause even more pain the longer it goes unsolved. A problem that, if unsolved, will prevent them from achieving their
Linking Problems to Increased Value and Success
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desired outcome. A problem that, when solved, unlocks specific benefits. Again, this is why a solution to a problem is a need to have.
00:11:36
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So a general rule of hoof, I'd say general rule of thumb, but we are black camels. The more visible the pain and the clearer it is that the problem causes that pain, the higher the perceived value is of your solution. An increase in perception of the value of your solution results in an increase in high intent booked calls. Remember that. Outcome number two of marketing the problem. When you market the problem, you get a higher win rate. That's because when you own the problem in the buyer's mind, prospects see you as the irreplaceable and obvious solution. This is the outcome the sales team would like to hear.
00:12:11
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In most B2B companies, marketing and sales hate each other. Marketing says, we have to produce more leads because sales sucks at closing them. Sales says, we need more leads because marketing sucks at getting leads that actually want our product or service. It's a bit of a chicken or the egg dilemma. But instead of continuing with the costly blame game, perhaps we should consider that both are wrong. Maybe we shouldn't try to be getting more leads just to increase a number in a platform dashboard. But maybe instead, we should be trying to attract leads with the right perception. Let's look at an example. Clary, the enterprise revenue platform, decided that instead of evangelizing their solution, what it does, why it's better, and why people should buy it, they should market the problem.
00:12:50
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They could have said, we help you save money, or we're the best, or look at us, look at my logo. But instead, they framed the problem like this. In times of uncertainty, most companies only focus on one thing, cutting costs. That's only half a strategy. A full strategy requires managing costs and revenue. Actually, it's not simply managing revenue, it's managing time to revenue. the time it takes to set up your tech stack, harvest relevant signals, analyze, act, and drive revenue. And legacy systems are not purpose-built to optimize time to revenue, which wastes time and results in revenue leak. They made buyers realize the painful problem that they have to show them that they need a solution, their revenue platform, and that they were the only obvious solution for it because no one else understood the problem like they did.
00:13:35
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It's what contributed to increasing their win rate by 64%, as well as decreasing customer acquisition costs by 67%. How could changing the ad campaign message have such a high impact? After all, the win rate is a sales metric, right? Sure, the quality of your sales team naturally has an impact on the win rate, obviously. But if the leads that are being fed to your sales team don't understand the problem you solve and think they can find something similar elsewhere, then there's only so much a good sales rep can do. You don't need more leads. You need leads with the perception that you're an irreplaceable need to have solution. Great salespeople already know that.
00:14:11
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They need to educate about the problem and connect it to their solution. It's lesson number one in sales. But although this is obvious for salespeople, us marketers have forgotten the importance of the problem. To achieve true alignment, both marketing and sales need to work together to make the problem highly visible, own it in the buyer's mind, and connect it to the solution. What does it mean to own a problem in the buyer's mind? The fifth law of marketing and the 22 immutable laws of marketing published in 1993 by Al Rice and Jack Trout is called the law of focus. To quote them, you burn your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept. It's the ultimate marketing sacrifice. When buyers think of your brand, the instinct is to think of that concept. In B2B, that concept should be the problem. We need to narrow the focus to the problem, claim it, and own it. Let's use an example we're all familiar with to understand why. You're feeling sick. You go to the doctor. You list all the symptoms and pains that you feel. The doctor diagnoses you with the fake example syndrome. Yes, this is a fake disease we've created as an example.
00:15:17
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making you aware of the problem that you have. She explains why fake example syndromes exist, how it causes the pain you feel, the consequences of not curing it, the different treatments for it, the different scenarios in which a certain treatment is best, what most people suffering from it do, etc. In simple terms, she educates you on the problem and shows her understanding of it. From your perspective, someone that best understands the problem best understands the solution to it. something tied very closely with psychological bias called expertise heuristic when you market the problem buyers aren't thinking where else can we get the service they're thinking thank you expert how do i solve this problem and this has a huge effect on the win rate because you're no longer perceived as interchangeable when you're perceived as interchangeable buyers might get on a call or two with you
00:16:03
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But then you get ghost because they decide to buy a perceived to be similar service or customers won't pay you a premium price because they think they can get the same thing for cheaper elsewhere. And we say perceived to be similar as a reminder that marketing is a battle for perception, not
Accelerating Sales with Problem Marketing
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reality. Your service might be the best solution, but buyers might not see it that way. So another general rule of hoof, of camel hoof, number two, the more you show your understanding of the painful problem and make them aware of it, the more they think you are the only one that can solve it properly. This means less ghosting and deal loss. Outcome number three of marketing the problem. When you market the problem, your marketing funnel and sales pipeline moves faster.
00:16:44
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Painful problems force urgent action and prioritization. This is another outcome both your marketing and sales team would like to hear. What's the difference between going directly to the emergency room right now and your yearly checkup a year from now? The emergency room visit is a need to have and their yearly checkup is a nice to have. What creates the difference in perception? The awareness of a problem that causes pain now. Let's say you're preparing dinner at home. Your five-year-old keeps distracting you. You're cutting up some carrots, but you can certainly look over at your kid because he's pulling on your not-so-kid-friendly cat's tail. And, oops, you look back at the cutting board. That wasn't a carrot. Silly you. That was your finger. Now, let's look at the two possible reactions to your realization that you can no longer give high fives. Only high four and a halfs.
00:17:30
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Possible reaction number one. Darn, I just cut off my finger. Gee whiz. My clumsy or what? There's blood everywhere. I've got my yearly checkup next Thursday. Got a bunch of other stuff I'd like to do this week before I get to that. Or possible reaction number two. ah Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! Get me the fucking hospital right now! If you're like most functioning humans, you would experience the second reaction, expressing urgency and prioritization. That's because you would experience a rather acute feeling of pain, realize the problem that's causing that pain, and foresee the consequences of not solving it, bleeding out from a lost pinky. But unlike in this metaphor, with our own physical body, in business, it's a lot more difficult to connect the pains with the problem causing it.
00:18:14
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We need someone else to make us aware of a problem or make it more visible and show how it's connected to our pain. Just like how HubSpot showed us how our pains were caused by outbound marketing. Salesforce showed us how our pains were caused by on-premise CRM. Slack showed us how our pains were caused by channel-less work communication. And perhaps, yes, maybe maybe we were already a bit aware of these problems, but each brand made it much more visible. and showed their understanding for it. Real urgency versus superficial urgency. In 2024, the only way to create real urgency and prioritization is to make the problem highly visible from the first interaction and to emphasize how the pain caused by the problem will continue or worsen if left unsolved.
00:18:59
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Unfortunately, most B2B companies don't do this. They market the solution before the problem. But then they realize that their solution itself is not enough to create urgency and prioritization. So they resort to superficial urgency, and which we can define by the manipulation of a sense of urgency in marketing or sales messages that don't genuinely reflect a true urgency or necessity. Phrases, tactics, and techniques like limited time offer, sales end soon, or only two onboarding spots for clients left this month. But when you attach limited time offer to something people don't really feel like they even need in the first place, it doesn't create much urgency. And just like buyers have built up a resistance to ads because of ad overload, they've built up a resistance to these tactics because of superficial urgency overload. When the human brain is overloaded with information, whether that be ads or promises of limited time offers,
00:19:49
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its defense mechanism is to ignore the high majority of it. Superofficial urgency simply doesn't work like it used to. The lack of urgency in buyers is most visible in sales conversations. But it starts in the marketing funnel, or the research stage, from the very first moment you interact with them. Urgency in the marketing funnel, in the research stage. According to Forrester Research, 68% of B2B buyers prefer to research on their own online. 60% prefer not to interact with a sales rep as the primary source of information. So what this means is that a buyer might meet the criteria to be ready to buy but doesn't go out of their way to do their own research because it's not clear to them why they should. The reality could have been that they had the financial means and should have bought the service three years ago, but they didn't.
00:20:35
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because nothing was creating the urgency and prioritization that was pushing them along in the buying journey. Let's compare two buyers. Buyer A sees your attention repellent ads over and over, marketing your solution in an extremely boring way. Great, that service would be nice to have. But I've got other pressing matters right now. I'll keep scrolling. And only after three years of seeing your ads over and over again, they finally end up clicking through to your website. It took three years to initiate the buying journey. Buyer B sees your problem-emotional ad, where you make the problem visible and memorable. Oh wow, that's a big problem that I have. I didn't even realize I'm losing a bunch of money right now.
00:21:12
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And then they click through to start learning more about the problem and how to solve it ASAP as soon as possible. Instead of taking three years to initiate the bind journey, they start now because they understand the painful problem, which tells them why they should start now. We use this little example to explain that by marketing the problem, it doesn't just speed up the sales cycle. It also speeds up the marketing funnel. If 68% of B2B buyers prefer to do their own research online, we need to get them to start doing their research now. There's no sales rep that can urge them along. If we go back to our buying journey graphic from the beginning,
00:21:46
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We can see how buyer A didn't care about the solution and buyer B did. Buyer A was still in the unaware stage and buyer B was in the problem aware stage. If the problem is not well established, buyers remain in the unaware or problem aware stages longer, delaying their progression to the solution aware and decision stages. Part two, urgency in the sales pipeline, the conversation stage. Yeah, it sounds good. Let us think it over a bit and get back to you. I definitely see how it helps. We just have more pressing matters right now. Hey, something came up. Can we reschedule the call for next week? Does any of that sound familiar to you? Maybe if you're not in sales, it won't be super familiar, but to your sales team, maybe. The buyers that you're in contact with might be interested, but they push it off into Neverland, always politely reassuring that they're interested.
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apologizing for being busy and blaming emergencies until eventually they're no longer responding to your messages. If you've heard any of this coming from your prospects, that's a big red flag.
Profitability Through Problem-Driven Marketing
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What they're really saying is, we don't think buying is an urgent priority. And this isn't the fault of the sales team. It's because the problem wasn't well established in the buyer's mind from the beginning. Many sales gurus will argue that the best way to shorten the sales cycle is to reduce friction. The typical solution to the lack of urgency in both areas are quick-fix tactics that only result in incremental improvements. At BlackCamel, we're more into big fucking improvements. But hey, you know, maybe incremental is more your thing. We'll only judge you a lot.
00:23:13
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Outcome number four, this is a shorter one. When you market the problem, you achieve lower customer acquisition costs. When your ads are effective, less ad spend is needed and profitability is maximized. This is the outcome your CFO would like to hear. This one isn't rocket science. When you're perceived as an irreplaceable need to have, get more booked calls and demos that close more and faster, you can reduce costs from ad spend, ads that work don't require as many eyeballs, sales training, No need to train sales when buyers are already handing you money. Travel costs. No need for constant traveling when buyers buy from fewer meetings. And sales reps and marketers' salaries. No need to hire more to get the results you want. Just to be clear, we are not advising you to let your sales reps and marketers off.
00:23:58
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We're just saying that you won't need to hire more to get the same results. Growth, profitability, and scalability are all achieved when your advertising has the right message, but only when it's actually heard and remembered. So what we're saying about the problem is important in creating the right perception. But what about how we're saying it? Just because we're advertising the right message doesn't guarantee that the message is heard. remembered or shared. This is where the second part of problem-emotional comes into the picture. The emotional part of problem-emotional. This article focused on the message about the problem and the next article we're going to talk about how to communicate the message emotionally.