When we market, it can be easy to fall into the mindset that the only person we’re reaching is the direct consumer. However, marketing has a far reach and can impact others in ways that aren’t always clear at first.
Think of how many people see your marketing efforts every day: how many people walk past a sign, read a tweet, or even view a webinar that you put on. Although these people may not act on your call to action or become a paying customer, they still interact with what you do–and this is a powerful opportunity to engage in a meaningful way and even help out the community. In this post, we showcase three actors who are impacted by the marketing we do: an employee of the client company, the business that client company works with, and the person that that business serves. We also provide examples of B2B companies and campaigns who have gone above and beyond to reach these actors with a meaningful message.
Even though B2B companies don’t deal directly with consumers, they’re still marketing to people, and smart, socially conscious B2B marketing knows how to empower those employees. For example, IBM’s marketing campaign A Smarter Planet relied on employee voices from both their own workforce and the companies they work with in order to lend a human voice to their products. However, this also raised the employees’ profiles and introduced them as thought leaders in their field, creating trust in their opinions and IBM’s products.
This is the easiest impact we see: in B2B marketing, your entire job is to grow your client business! However, growth can come in unexpected places as a result of your actions: say a project goes unexpectedly well, and as a result, your client takes your advice to hire more data scientists to increase their chances of success. Just from one marketing project, you’ve created jobs and expanded your client’s in-house analytic abilities. Or perhaps a successful project brings in more revenue for your client that they later use in philanthropic endeavors. Your marketing has just contributed directly towards a social good!
Who is the end consumer of your product? As we talked about last Friday, B2B businesses provide the backbone of so many facets of daily life: we make sure cables connect, machines can talk to each other, and consumers can access information they need to succeed. Let’s look back at IBM’s A Smarter Planet campaign: they profile a Brooklyn principal who used IBM’s technologies and resources to help students get associate’s degrees in applied sciences and become competitive job seekers in the science field. This kind of creative application of B2B products shows that the possibilities to impact consumers is boundless.
Our marketing creates business growth, strengthening relationships between clients and the businesses they work with and allowing for more employee stability. Next week, we will look in-depth at different case studies and analyze their contribution to the greater good.
Photo credit: geralt via Pixabay
(Click here to expand)
