Selling technology solutions to enterprises has always been a contact sport, yet in today’s digital world I think engagement and interactions are far less rich and meaningful than they were in the pre-internet days. It seems we’ve reduced digital engagement to “demand generation”, which looks to me a lot like the worst of consumer direct marketing applied to B2B.

So much “demand generation” reduces our interactions to an ‘offer-response’ dyad in which clever marketers use techniques to drive opens and clicks at the cost of richness and real value. I’m told constantly that emails much be short, that content must be punchy and heaven forbid you don’t title a post or email with wording that isn’t optimized. If that’s the approach, why don’t we just start using titles and subject lines like “Add more length and girth to your CRM” or “Get the hottest girls by using our PaaS”. Hey, you’ll get a lot of “opens” right? That’s the goal isn’t it?

As I write this, I’m thinking, “I’d better go find some data to stick in here”. It’s at this point in a “good” blog post that I’m supposed to insert a good graphic, right? Sure, I’ll do so but if you think that’s all it takes for content marketing success, you are kidding yourself.

Digital offers the possibility of engaging your prospect accounts in thoughtful and deep ways with your thought leadership and value proposition. Yet it seems that most of B2B marketing is about opens and clicks rather than the client’s issues, aspirations and problems. And of course, buyers are simply responding less and less to this superficial approach to engagement.
Email to prospects is now getting a .1% response rate according the Direct Marketing Association. Is this what your marketing team calls success? If so, perhaps it’s time to rethink B2B Digital.