In B2B Marketing, Experience Matters

When it comes to developing marketing content for the B2B market, targeting by experience level matters. 

This is the conclusion of a survey of 700 global business executives by The Economist Group, which found that B2B prospects from Generation Next (up to 10 years business experience) have very different preferences and motivators than Business Veterans (more than 10 years business experience). In fact, when it comes to marketing content and channel preferences, there can be up to 35 percentage points difference.

Among the differences between the two?

	Generation Next	Business Veterans
Are turned off by content with feels like a sales pitch	46%	69%
Prefer content in the form of articles	69%	91%
Find research reports helpful	30%	65%
Find white papers helpful	12%	37%
Favor video content	21%	12%
Prefer other multimedia such as infographics	12%	24%
Spend at least four hours per week perusing business content	31%	57%

Source: The Economist Group

In other differences, 41% of business veterans think company reputation holds more weight than colleague recommendations (10%). Meanwhile, only 28% of Generation Nexters think company reputation holds more weight than colleague recommendations (27%).

People are people, whether they are in a business context or a home and family context.  When crafting your next B2B campaign, remember that targeting your content by experience demographic matters as much as market vertical, job position, or other traditional demographics.

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How Do You Spell Success? C-O-N-V-E-R-S-I-O-N

When you think about evaluating the success of a marketing campaign, what comes to mind? For many marketers, it’s response rates. However, that just because someone “responds” by contacting you doesn’t mean that the campaign was profitable. The true measure of success is whether they actually buy something. That’s why one of your most important measures should be conversion rate.

Let’s say you’re a gourmet store in the heart of a college community. You just launched a line of breakfast items that includes pastries, breads, and gourmet omelets. You develop a campaign of 10,000 direct mailers that invite students to request an email- or text-back coupon for 25% off one of the new items. As an incentive, you offer a chance to win concert tickets to see the band Little Mix, which soon will be performing in the area.

Initially, you’re thrilled by the response rate. A whopping 32% of students requested the coupon. Then the excitement fades. Although more than one-third of students responded, only 3% actually visited the store and redeemed the coupon. When you work out your ROI, you didn’t even break even.

Let’s say you had targeted the local community instead. 

Let’s say the response rate is lower—8%—but it’s an affluent community with a high percentage of recipients working in and around the university. Of those who do respond, 32% redeem the coupon and try the new breakfast. From this pool, the number of conversions is 150% higher than the college student pool. Your cost to produce the campaign is the same, but your ROI is vastly different.

This simple example illustrates the power of the conversion rate. Initially, who wouldn’t prefer 32% response rate over 8%? But the conversion on the back end ends up being the deciding factor in the profitability of the campaign.

So don’t think response rate — think conversion!