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From Bland to Brilliant: How to Strategically Pivot Your B2B Brand
In an environment defined by market instability, rapid AI adoption, and more competitors entering the ecosystem all the time, it has become increasingly challenging for B2B companies to truly differentiate themselves. Unfortunately, many companies fall into the trap of deploying “play it safe” marketing tactics, ultimately drowning in the sea of sameness. So, how can B2B marketing leaders strategically rise above the noise to transform a generic market presence into a successful, category-leading brand?
That’s why we’re talking to return guest Pete Fairburn (Director and Co-Founder, Morphsites), who shares his expertise and proven strategies on how to strategically pivot your B2B brand. During our conversation, Pete highlighted the challenges B2B marketers face in differentiating their brands in a competitive market. He emphasized the value of understanding customer pain points, and how brands can create true value beyond just the product. Pete also discussed common pitfalls to avoid, such as mistaking activity for progress, and why deep thinking and customer research are paramount. He advised against “random acts of marketing” and recommended starting with small, achievable pilots. Pete also stressed the value of focusing on critical metrics such as customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), and conversion quality. He underscored the need to align marketing efforts with broader business goals to avoid competing solely on price.
https://youtu.be/SEgt1i2UuVQ
[03:06] Why copying competitors kills true differentiation.
[04:54] How short-term metrics create a risk-averse leadership mindset.
[06:06] The danger of mistaking marketing activity for actual business progress
[12:06] Using customer research to uncover pain points and speak their language.
[18:21] Elevate commodity products by removing friction outside your core offer.
[24:41] How to pitch new ideas to the C-Suite (Hint: stop using the word “innovation”).
[36:11] Why great marketing can never fix a weak or undifferentiated offer.
Companies and links mentioned:
TranscriptChristian Klepp, Pete Fairburn
Pete Fairburn 00:00
No human being really likes to admit they don’t know something, even if you’re a naturally quite humble person, it takes, it takes something to say, I don’t know what that is, or I don’t know how to go about that, particularly if you’re a business owner or a stakeholder, that can often be seen as a sign of weakness, to say, I don’t know something. And yet, actually, when you have the courage to say that you can, you can uncover some real things, and at the end of the day, particularly if you’re employing marketing professionals or an agency to help you, the whole reason you’re doing that is because you’ve kind of already admitted you don’t really know how to do this.
Pete Fairburn 00:32
Nice to be back, Christian. Thanks for having me again.
Christian Klepp 00:32
Great to be with you. You know we’ve been talking about this second interview for quite a while on I’m glad that we’re finally getting to pull it off, right?
Pete Fairburn 00:32
It’s definitely, it’s been a while. It’s been a whole world.
Christian Klepp 00:32
Indeed, indeed. So let’s just dive in. Because, you know, this is Pete, as I said before I hit record, this is a topic that’s near and dear to me, and I think it’s something that we contend with on a daily basis. I think there’s still a lot of clients out there and potential clients that don’t quite see the value in doing this yet, and hopefully, after this conversation, perhaps we’ll, we’ll change their we’ll win them over, right, like hearts and minds, as they say, right?
Pete Fairburn 00:32
That’s the hope.
Christian Klepp 00:32
In a, B2B environment fraught with unstable markets, AI and more competitors entering the ecosystem all the time, it has become increasingly challenging for B2B companies to stand up. Unfortunately, companies in this segment have a reputation for deploying play it safe tactics when it comes to their marketing. So how can B2B marketers help their brands rise above the noise and go from bland to brilliant? Welcome to this episode of the B2B Marketers in a Mission podcast, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Pete Fairburn, who will be answering this question. He’s the director and co founder of Morphsites, a company with a proven track record in helping businesses grow online by maximizing revenue potential and improving efficiency. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is. Okay, and here we are. I’m going to say, Mr. Pete Fairburn, welcome back to the show.
Christian Klepp 01:15
All right. So we’ll start with the first question, where I’m going to say that you’re on a mission to work with high growth brands that truly want to innovate and think beyond the ordinary. And I want to, like just under underline that part think beyond the ordinary, because I hope that we can talk about this at length today, right? Because for this conversation, I’d want to focus on the following topic, which is how B2B Marketers can help their brands go from bland to brilliant, right? So B2B open to interpretation, right? But let’s kick off the Let’s kick off the interview with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat them, right? So first question Pete is, why do you think many companies in the B2B space struggle to differentiate themselves from their competitors? And the follow up question is, why do you think this causes this risk averse mindset in most B2B verticals?
Pete Fairburn 03:06
Yes, it’s good couple of questions there. And I think most, most B2B companies that identify with this problem probably don’t have a marketing problem, or if they do have a marketing problem, it’s because the the issues started long before marketing even begins, and the they default. So they go, Okay, we’ve got similar products or similar services to these brands over here, and there’s nothing wrong with using coach brands to help you, but they’ll they may look at some in the same space as them and go, Well, that’s what they’re doing. So let’s do the same messaging, the same channels as them, because that must work, right? It must work because they’re doing it. But they’ve never really answered the question, Well, why would someone choose us over any of these competitors if price was removed? So if the only thing that differentiates you is your product, your positioning, your messaging, forget price, forget everything else. Why would they choose you? And there’s there’s two kind of camps here. If your product is genuinely desirable, genuinely distinct, the website’s job is just to create clarity around that. But if your product is not distinctive, it’s a commodity, you need to create advantage elsewhere. And many companies are in the second camp, but they operate like they’re in the first, and that’s why they struggle to differentiate.
Christian Klepp 04:37
And where do you think a lot of this risk averseness then comes from? Is it this whole like, well, we’ve never done any of this marketing before, so, you know, we’re not entirely sure what the outcome will be. And let’s, let’s, let’s play it safe. Where do you think this comes from?
Pete Fairburn 04:53
Yeah, I think you’re on to something there. One of the big problems with marketing is it’s measured on typically short term activity, right, rather than long term advantage. You know, every agency or every marketing department creates a monthly marketing report, and it’s right to do that, but it makes you focus on just that short term rather than longer term things. And that can shoot any initiative in the foot, and I think leadership, and that could be owner operators or marketing, CMOs, directors, that kind of thing. They fear getting it wrong more than they value getting it right. So safe decisions feel easier to justify than something that’s quite out of the box. So what you get, instead of genuine movement of the needle from this risk averse mindset is you get these incremental improvements. You get cosmetic changes, maybe, maybe a brand refresh from time to time, which is important, really important, but no meaningful differentiation.
Christian Klepp 05:55
Absolutely, absolutely and based on that, like just moving on to the next question, what are some of these key pitfalls that you think marketing teams should avoid, and what should they be doing instead?
Pete Fairburn 06:06
Yeah, I think one of the key things, and we see this a lot, is mistaking activity for progress, so doing more more campaigns, more channels, more content, more output, without changing the underlying offer. So there’s nothing wrong with doing all those things we know, particularly for organic search. I saw a post earlier today where you know cadence of content updates and releasing of information is as it always has been, something that search rewards, and I include both organic and LLM (Large Language Model) search in that, but if you’re just doing more of that without changing the underlying positioning, the underlying offer of your product or service, you’re not actually doing anything that’s meaningful. So I think that’s a pitfall over investing in the website as a surface layer. So that kind of comes into this. Again, it’s activity design tweaks, debating over platform instead of asking what actually makes us different from a competitor. So that leads into the other pitfall, I think, is skipping the thinking phase. And what I mean by that is the deep thinking, so having a very light hypothesis and jumping straight into a build or marketing without actually validating whether the idea is worth pursuing. So most wasted spend comes from building the wrong thing or taking the wrong strategy or positioning because you’ve just not thought it through properly and thought about your clients and what your customers and what they actually want.
Christian Klepp 07:38
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I wanted to follow up on that last one, skipping the the deep thinking phase, right? Like, we see this a lot, even with some of the clients that we work with, where they say, don’t need a brand strategy, don’t need, don’t need the marketing strategy, just just implement, right? Why do you think there’s a few, I won’t say many, but, like, yeah, you there’s a few B2B companies out there that have that mindset. Like, let’s just skip the planning stage. We don’t need the research. We know who our clients are. Like, tell me if you’ve never heard that one before, right? So we don’t, we don’t need that, right? Like, yeah, yeah. What do you think that is? What? Why do they just want to skip the planning and go straight to the implementation?
Pete Fairburn 08:24
I guess it can be for a number of reasons. It’s a sense of progress. It feels like we want to just get on with this. So why would we hold ourselves up by doing that? So that fallacy of we know who our customers are is often a point on that, but I think it underlines that reason of, well, you know, there’s time involved in this. And another clear thing, I think, is a lot of people an ideal customer persona or profile on ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) is something that the marketing world has talked about decades. It’s not a new concept yet. I am so often surprised at how few people know how to go about even doing a basic persona or profiling their customers. So when I think a lot of business owners or stakeholders say we know our customers, what they mean is, we’ve got a relationship with this, these accounts here, but they can’t put them into a profile. So there’s a degree of this is slowing everything up. We just want to get on with it. But there’s also a suspect, a degree of fear about, well, I don’t really know what I’m doing here, so rather than ask or get someone to help me, I’m just going to move on to the next bit.
Christian Klepp 09:41
Yeah, yeah, I think you’re going somewhere with that one. Do you find that sometimes it’s also perhaps the reason why there’s pushback there is because perhaps there’s a fear of, like, not admitting that. Look, I’ll just come clean. And we don’t actually, we don’t actually have this documented. We. Perhaps we know that there has been some change, or, like, some different market dynamics in things that have happened in the customer’s world that we’re not entirely privy to, but we’re too ashamed to admit that.
Pete Fairburn 10:13
Yeah, absolutely. I think we’re all no human being really likes to admit they don’t know something, even if you’re naturally quite humble person. It takes, it takes something to say, I don’t know what that is, or I don’t know how to go about that. And particularly if you’re a business owner or a stakeholder, that can often be seen as a sign of weakness, to say, I don’t know something. And yet, actually, when you have the courage to say that, you can, you can uncover some real things. And at the end of the day, particularly if you’re employing marketing professionals or an agency to help you, the whole reason you’re doing that is because you’ve kind of already admitted you don’t really know how to do this. So you should let the agency lead, because if you want the results, they should be leading that and helping you derive that. And every time we do it, you see, it’s almost like the the blindfold comes off and this new realization of the missed opportunity that’s come from not doing customer research.
Christian Klepp 11:13
Absolutely, absolutely. So we’re gonna slowly, like, unravel and uncover what this what the secret sauce of yours is right to go from bland to brilliant, but before we do that, I think we have to make the listeners understand that this is indeed a process, right? This isn’t something where you download an app and you click submit, and then presto, you’ve got the you’ve got the massive differentiation that you’re looking for, right? So talk to us, and you touched on it now a little bit, but talk to us about the importance of conducting that customer research. So in other words, how can this research help marketers and B2B companies identify those key points of differentiation to position themselves strategically? And I know that you guys have more sites do this as well. Like you know, you do a lot of these discovery workshops with with your clients. You know, before you even start building a website or writing a single line of code, so just, yeah, just walk us through that a little bit.
Pete Fairburn 12:06
Yeah. Well, it’s about understanding, really. So ultimately, a product or service that you have typically is going to solve a pain point or pain points for a client or a customer, depending on what you’re doing, and if you understand the pain points that your product addresses. And that’s normally where business owners and marketing teams are brilliant, because they do know their products, they do know their service, and they go, these are the amazing things it does. As a company, we work out in your direction, and we work with them for a number of years. Absolutely brilliant company who brilliant company who did do this process, and they describe this product and the benefits that come from it, and you can work backwards from there and work out, well, here are the pain points that this is solving, and by doing that, first of all, it makes your customer’s life easier, because you’re able to speak their language. So we’ve all had it where we’ve landed on a website, or we’ve received a piece of marketing collateral where we’ve gone. Yeah, I really resonate with this. I want to know more, because they’ve worked out what’s important to you. So once you’ve got that, once you understand who your customers are, where they are, in terms of, you know, channels, social, that kind of thing, how they’re finding out about you. Everything becomes faster, everything becomes less risky, everything becomes more profitable, because you can then tailor your initially, your website infrastructure, your information architecture, your messaging, your positioning, to those things. And if you do that along with a brand strategy, then you’ve got this beautiful alignment of your brand messaging, but also your digital positioning as well. So you’re speaking the customer’s language, they go, yes, you’re describing me, and then they’re much more likely to take whatever the next step is that you want them to do, and that’s where the differentiation comes in. If you’ve got a great product that kind of almost sells itself, then you just need to communicate that clearly and present it in a way that the customer can see that. So for example, we got a customer who they sell stone and marble furniture, very high end, beautiful stuff. They know who their clients are, and when a client sees it, they go, Yeah, I’ll have that. They don’t even want to know how much it is, because it’s fine. But if your product is interchangeable with countless competitors, you’re a commodity. And really, you know, how many times have we had a discussion where it’s like, well, what makes you different from your competitors? Your competitors? Well, we’re great at service, or, you know, we’re the cheapest. Well, a race to the bottom on prices. No one wins there. So you have to find a way to escape your category, and you do that by looking beyond the product or service in of itself. You look at things like all. Ordering, your logistics, your usage, your integration into your clients or your customers workflow, to see, okay, what? What’s the opportunity? So when you do customer research, particularly in the commodity, the interchangeable space, you come across pain points. And when you identify those customers pain points, you can put in in place other other parts of the platform, other innovations that may not be your core offering that but make it so easy to deal with you, or make it so much easier for the customer to complete their tasks that you make yourself much more attractable. Attractable, attractive to your attractive, attractively, attractive, attractive. Always my new word of the day.
Christian Klepp 15:48
Absolutely, absolutely, you did touch on something there. And I think that’s challenge that a lot of B2B companies are dealing with, right? Like it’s if they’re in a very heavily commoditized vertical, then, then it really becomes difficult for them to differentiate themselves beyond price, right? So I guess one way of doing it is perhaps differentiation in other forms. So like perhaps the way that they work with customers. Is there anything? Is there anything that they do in their workflow that’s differentiated? Do they put out, like, thought leadership pieces, right? Is there something where they, they do take a differentiated perspective? And I just want to draw a thin, a thin line in the sand there, like, a differentiator perspective doesn’t mean contrarian, right? Because you’ve got those two right? Like?
Pete Fairburn 16:38
I think, yeah, you can be contrary. There’s a big or there has been a big push recent years, particularly on places like LinkedIn and that to just be the contrarian. For the sake of contrarian, a lot of people have jumped on that bandwagon, and again, it works for some industries, but only if you know your client or your customer and know that that will all float their boat. If not, you can just alienate a lot of people.
Christian Klepp 17:06
Absolutely and I think one of my previous guests said it, so I can’t claim to have coined the phrase, but it’s performance marketing. Get it,
Pete Fairburn 17:14
yeah,
Christian Klepp 17:14
Getting up on stage and being a performer.
Pete Fairburn 17:17
That’s not where. That’s not a natural place for a lot of people, a lot of a lot of business owners, funnily enough, are introverts. They don’t want to do that, and they that. And it shouldn’t be the case that you build something on that, that basis.
Christian Klepp 17:30
Well, not only that, but I think it’s also a short term strategy, isn’t it? Because, like, how long, how much energy, how much battery power, right? If I’m going to use that analogy? Do you have to be a professional contrarian all the time? I think it’s draining, isn’t it to a certain degree.
Pete Fairburn 17:48
Unless you’re a particular personality type, but I can’t imagine anything worse.
Christian Klepp 17:52
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. You unpack that a little bit, right? But I want to unpack this, this question a little bit more, because, you know, you’ve got a lot of experience in this, in these different verticals across the B2B spectrum. So how can, how can B2B companies elevate and effectively differentiate their business? So you touched on it a little bit, but like, just walk us through it. What are some of the key steps that they need to take? Give us some examples of what they can do differently.
Pete Fairburn 18:21
Okay, so steps, first of all, you’ve got to be honest about your product. So you’ve got to say, Are we truly different, or are we actually one of many? Because sometimes you can, yeah, I’ve met businesses where they think they’re doing something quite unique. And you just like you. We meet a lot of businesses in our in our life, and it’s like this has been done before. So if you if you’re different, great, be honest. But if not, recognize that and then decide that’s your first step. But then from there, decide where the advantage comes. You know, if you’ve got a great product that is truly different, great. Is it your brand? Have you got a huge amount of brand goodwill and value? Is it the experience that you give people, or is it systems and tools that elevate the product that you do or the service that you provide to another level? So those are the first two steps. I think, then you’ve got to focus on customer pain beyond the product. And what I mean by that is, Where, where are they getting friction in their life? Where do they lose time, money, control, what would make life better for them? And then if you can build something that removes that friction, not just something that sounds good on paper, but actually has practical value and then only then communicate it, market it clearly across your website, your digital marketing, in your sales conversations once you’ve done that, because if you’ve done that work up front, it will resonate with with the right people. So some examples of that are you. For for the company I mentioned earlier, the stone and marble company, the product does the selling. You know, the website just needs to present it clearly and and it builds trust. And you know, when you’re then coming to select a platform, you don’t need anything particularly special, because the product’s doing all the work. But if you’re in a commodity space where the products don’t differentiate, we need to then look at that differently. So an example of many that we’ve done for a client is a commodity based product. They were in a race to the bottom like everyone else, but what they did is they stopped and did this customer piece. They listened to the challenges that clients were having, and they they then built systems around that, workflows that made the customer and the business’s life easier, that removed friction, that kind of locked them in because of this, what you would call a value add layer of digital services. But what that did is, not only did it lock in existing customers, but it attracted customers which they, in their own words, had no right to be going after, but the workflows that they built were powerful and made such a difference that they were able to win contracts much bigger than they could have ever dreamed, dreamed of otherwise.
Christian Klepp 21:18
Yeah, no, that’s that’s a really great example, and it almost, I would say, it’s focusing on what you do differently, but also being seen as the expert in the space. And I think that’s something that you keep hearing in B2B, right? If you are seen as the expert in the space, on the specific in the specific area, on the specific pain point, because a lot of it boils down to trust as well, right? There’s, it’s a lot, it’s, it’s almost like a trust building mechanism, right? Because if the if the prospect doesn’t trust what you say and what you offer, then there’s no, no amount of marketing is going to convert them.
Pete Fairburn 21:56
Absolutely, just on that is that you’re, you’re demonstrating by building trust, and that comes from you touched on earlier Christian things like thought leadership, pieces, blogs, content, if you can talk in a way that shows that you’ve come across this problem before, maybe not the identical problem, but a scenario that you have a framework for solving with your product that is business that in itself, builds builds trust. So customers want to hear, yeah, these guys, they get me because they’re already talking in this space, and I need to talk, be talking to them, or getting their product, or whatever it might be.
Christian Klepp 22:35
Well, all that, and also building on the on the trust, building mechanism pieces, the social proof, right? Like the testimonials, um, the videos, right? The case studies, proof that you’ve done this before. This isn’t your first um rodeo, as they like to say here in North America, right?
Pete Fairburn 22:55
Yeah, we say that in the UK as well. Yeah, yeah, we do, yeah, but it’s a, definitely, a borrowed one, but yeah, not my first radio and you’re absolutely right. Yeah, and a lot of people say we don’t have the time to invest in, like, video testimonials or things like that. But the reality is, you don’t need hundreds of them. You need three or four, because no one’s going to sit and watch 100 video testimonials if you’ve got three or four really compelling essentially, case studies or people talking about the process and the problems that you solve, or how great your product is that normally is enough to convince someone.
Christian Klepp 23:29
Absolutely, absolutely, just moving on to the next question, and we kind of touched upon this a little bit in the beginning, but I mean, you’ve definitely encountered this in your career. I’ve certainly like been in these situations more times than I care to count. So what am I referring to? It’s getting internal buy in, because we know sometimes, like on the topic of being risk averse, right? And a lot of that comes from senior management. It comes from the people within the organization that have to make the decisions and not to, not to blame them for, for this kind of mindset. Because, you know, at the end of the day, they are responsible for ensuring, I mean, this is like running a business, one on one, making sure the business is profitable. And if you if something comes across their desk that they don’t quite know anything about, or don’t quite understand, the knee jerk reaction is no, right? So over to you. You’ve been in these situations before. How do you get internal buy in to, you know, get out of this risk averse mindset and to to get the senior management on board with whatever the marketing team is proposing.
Pete Fairburn 24:41
Yeah, and the answer to that does depend on who in the organization you’re speaking to, obviously, if you’re speaking to decision makers, and often, as we know, can be multiple people or multiple stages now, but you’ve got that job to do. And I guess I’m coming at this really from how we would do it, but it is true in any business if, if you’re looking to innovate, don’t position it as innovation, because innovation is one of those words that’s bandied around a lot, and I see a lot of people glaze over. You know, we do, we do use that term ourselves a lot, but I’m trying to withdraw it from you some more, because it can mean so many things to different people. And a lot of people see that as spending a lot of money for no return. So you’ve got to frame it properly. You could say things like, look, we want to avoid being competing on price. So how do we do that? How do we create value that makes it expensive or challenging to switch so once someone’s locked into our system, not in some kind of Stockholm Syndrome way, but in a value based way that actually changing that, that just isn’t really an option for them. So stickiness is a really good way to think about it. We want to make it the price is not even the secondary thing. It’s right down the list of priorities because of the value we deliver. And then propose something small. So rather than going, Hey, we want to completely tear up our own our entire offering, and start again. Pilot something simple, something achievable, prove that it works, and then scale it from there. And if you do that, rather than selling an idea, and particularly business owners, hear a lot of ideas, a lot of pitches, show the impact. So if you do something small, prove it works. You can even, in some cases, do the fake it till we make it approach which is where you you you present the offering is available, see if it resonates with your target audience, and if it does, then start delivering it in some way, even if you have to do it manually for a while, while you’ve you’ve established the demand for it. But again, it all goes back to, if you’ve done your customer research, you probably don’t need to do that.
Christian Klepp 27:05
Absolutely, absolutely. There’s some really good points that you brought up, which I’ve jotted down. And these are words that I myself, Pete, I’m trying to avoid saying, If I’m in, if I’m in a room with a client, like, for example, adding value. That’s such an overused term, and I think thanks to LinkedIn, but it’s, it’s something where I feel that the adding value piece is obvious. The reason why they’re coming to you is for your expertise. So the adding value bit is, is something that’s expected. So rather than saying adding value, I try to frame it or package it in the way that it’s like we demonstrate, you demonstrate the expertise towards the target market, and you you instill that confidence in them, that you do have the solution to their pain points and challenges, and that, I know that that’s a little bit wordier, but that sounds a little bit more, at least from where I’m sitting, more compelling than saying adding value. The second thing which you brought up, which I think is really important for marketers to keep in mind, and they probably don’t have to phrase it this way, because it can come across as condescending, but there is a bit of education involved, right? Because, let’s just assume I mean, at least in my experience, and I’m sure it’s the same in yours, 9.5 times out of 10 and B2B, the members of the senior management that you’re dealing with, none of them have a marketing background. They’re either going to be the finance related engineers, CIOs (Chief Information Officers), CTO (Chief Technology Officers), CISOs (Chief Information Security Officers), etc, right? With with little to no experience in the marketing field whatsoever. So there has to be some education there, but it has to come across as like, I’m not, I’m not doing marketing one on one with you. But it’s saying, like, Listen, this is the reason why we’re proposing this, that this is the reason why, this is why it’s in your interest to pay attention to this. And it’s about something that you mentioned earlier. It’s understanding your audience, right? So for the marketers themselves, it’s almost like internal customer service. Who sits in the Csuite on the board in the senior management. Do you know who they are? Do you know what their roles are, their responsibilities are, and you tweak those presentations based on what you know they are going to look for or what they care about, right? I think more often than not, a lot of marketers tend to fall into this trap where they start dropping all these like acronyms, and they don’t do themselves any favors with that, right? And throw throw in all this like marketing jargon that will just go past these people’s heads, right? So it’s a question of packaging it for the right audience, right? I always, always go back to that, like you got to package it the right way.
Pete Fairburn 29:47
Yeah, there’s a really good technique. Can’t remember. I learned it probably a decade ago. It may, yeah, I can’t remember who, so many people I’ve been inspired by. My time, but sometimes to do that without the target person feeling like they are being patronized with marketing 101, to frame rhetorical questions. So if we were able to do this, and we could do this, and then increase our margin on this commodity product by this much, what would that do for our bottom line, and the chances are the brain is answering that question, even if they don’t say it out loud. So again, it’s about showing impact or potential impact, rather than an idea which you’re just showing you thought it through and that you’re thinking commercially. And I think that’s what sets really good marketing teams, apart from others, I think we’ve we’ve touched on this before, is when they’ve got that commercial awareness that actually the job of marketing is to help contribute to the bottom line, rather than just vanity metrics, then you start making statements and framing things in a way that business owners and Those who are responsible for the stock of a business go, okay, they get it, as opposed to impressions, clicks without actually any impact assessment.
Christian Klepp 31:13
That’s it. That’s it. And I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s such a nice segue to the next question about metrics. And I always call this one the Love it or hate it question for marketers, because some marketers are very data driven, so they’re happy to talk about it at length, and others try to, like, walk around it, right?
Pete Fairburn 31:30
Yeah,
Christian Klepp 31:31
but in terms of, like, helping B2B companies differentiate themselves in the market and go from this bland to brilliant, what are some of these metrics? And I know we can go down a deep rabbit hole with this one, but like maybe some top three to five metrics that you would say they should pay attention to.
Pete Fairburn 31:49
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any rocket science here. I think it’s ones that have a direct impact on commerciality. Before I list these, there is the caveat that there are times where things like brand marketing and other non attributable things are important, but that again, comes down to knowing who your audience is. I mean, for example, someone like Airbnb do a lot of brand marketing, but they can because they know who their audience is and they know where they sit. So it’s not to say other other channels aren’t important, but when it comes to metrics, it’s things like nothing surprising here, customer acquisition cost versus their lifetime value. How much does it cost you to get that client, and how much are they returning? And within that as well, is this surprises me a lot. Make sure you’re factoring into that the not just the the the raw revenue, but the margins or the markup, the cost of actually getting that truly so it’s not just the ad spend or the creation of the content. How much are you paying your agency? No, how much you paying your marketing team? Factor that in, and you can be have be honest. Because if you’re honest and you can make adjustments, conversion, quality is a good one, not just volume. So looking at, well, okay, we had this many people, I don’t know, fill in the inquiry form or download the ebook, whatever your metrics are that you know, lead to something typically, but okay, of those, how many actually were a quotable opportunity? How many of those actually completed a deal? How many of those do you retain, or do you have repeat business from? What’s the average size of your deal? What’s your sales cycle? Link those the metrics that matter, I think, as a rule of thumb, if it doesn’t connect to revenue or retention along the line, don’t, don’t necessarily just eliminate it, but question it and say, Is this a metric that is actually telling me anything that A gives me comfort or B tells me there’s a problem that I need to improve on otherwise, it’s probably meaningless,
Christian Klepp 34:03
absolutely, absolutely. So we’re talking about metrics that are linked to, like revenue, to sales, to potential conversions, right? Revenue, obviously being the being the end objective. But like, as we know, in B2B, and you just mentioned it, the sales cycles can be, can be much longer. So you know, how many, how many leads are coming into the pipeline, right?
Pete Fairburn 34:25
Yeah.
Christian Klepp 34:26
How many conversations are we having? How many of those conversations are converting, right?
Pete Fairburn 34:31
Yeah,
Christian Klepp 34:31
Versus the ones that aren’t or are dropping off, right?
Pete Fairburn 34:35
But also, I mean, yeah, absolutely, all of those things. Again, it’s, it’s having, it’s always good for any, anyone in this space, be it business owner, marketing,
Christian Klepp 34:46
yeah,
Pete Fairburn 34:46
stakeholder, to make sure they understand the business metrics that they’re working with. So revenue is one thing, but margin and profitability are absolutely key, because we’ve seen it before. Again, I’m sure you have where you have business. Is that are busy fools. They’re taking. They’re converting loads of low value deals, one offs, but they’ve never aligned on where the high revenue work is. We once had a client who were busy dealing with inquiries every day, and they were converting them, but they weren’t. They weren’t moving the needle. They were barely profitable, and yet, there were massive opportunities they were missing because a couple of key stakeholders weren’t talking about how to offer to this really high margin longer sales cycle, but really high margin stuff. But once you start understanding where your profitability lies and where your costs are, and perhaps products or services that if you just leaned on a little bit, could dramatically increase your profit line, then you start getting interesting results.
Christian Klepp 35:49
Yeah, yeah. Well, thanks for pointing that out. That’s absolutely paramount, right margin of profitability. Okay, for this next question, I would have asked you to get up in Hyde Park in the Speaker’s Corner, right? But in the interest of time, just what is the status quo in your area of expertise that you passionately disagree with, and why?
Pete Fairburn 36:11
The belief that better marketing can fix a weak or undifferentiated offer so you can optimize endlessly, but if you’re interchangeable, you’re just competing harder for the same result. So I really feel for a lot of marketing teams, because they’re often asked to outperform competitors without being given anything structurally within the business that’s meaningfully different to say. So they’re literally they’ve got no point of difference. So it doesn’t matter how crack your marketing team is how good they are. If you are interchangeable, and there’s nothing different about you, you’re on a hiding to nothing.
Christian Klepp 36:48
Exactly, exactly. You can throw whatever analogy you want at that, right, like lipstick on a pig, build a facade, right? All of that, right? But that’s that’s absolutely true. That’s absolutely true. Pete, once again. I mean, this is a great conversation. Loved having you on for a second time. Maybe there’ll be a third. Who knows, right? But thanks again for coming on. Please. Quick introduction to yourself and how people out there can get in touch with you.
Pete Fairburn 37:12
Yeah, so I’m Pete Fairburn. I’m the co founder and one of the directors at morphsites. We build websites, platforms and integrated systems, along with supporting digital marketing, a big part of what we do, though, is focus on the thinking first. So everything that we’ve talked about today is baked in. We’ve got a proprietary process and set frameworks that help us deliver really meaningful changes. So if you want a conversation, that’s how we do things. We don’t pitch, we talk. Can help you.
Christian Klepp 37:44
Fantastic, fantastic. So once again, Pete, thanks so much for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.
Pete Fairburn 37:50
Thanks, Christian, thanks for having me.
Christian Klepp 37:52
All right. Bye, for now.
On this podcast, we’re on a mission – to change and disrupt the way people think about B2B marketing one insightful conversation at a time. Get inspiration from interviews with B2B marketers and industry experts who share their stories, achievements, thoughts on trending topics, and give B2B marketing tips and recommendations. This show is hosted by Christian Klepp, Co-founder of EINBLICK Consulting.
Pete Fairburn: No human being
really likes to admit they don't
know something, even if you're a
naturally quite humble person,
it takes, it takes something to
say, I don't know what that is,
or I don't know how to go about
that, particularly if you're a
business owner or a stakeholder,
that can often be seen as a sign
of weakness, to say, I don't
know something. And yet,
actually, when you have the
courage to say that you can, you
can uncover some real things,
and at the end of the day,
particularly if you're employing
marketing professionals or an
agency to help you, the whole
reason you're doing that is
because you've kind of already
admitted you don't really know
how to do this.
Christian Klepp: In a, B2B
environment fraught with
unstable markets, AI and more
competitors entering the
ecosystem all the time, it has
become increasingly challenging
for B2B companies to stand up.
Unfortunately, companies in this
segment have a reputation for
deploying play it safe tactics
when it comes to their
marketing. So how can B2B
marketers help their brands rise
above the noise and go from
bland to brilliant? Welcome to
this episode of the B2B
Marketers in a Mission podcast,
and I'm your host, Christian
Klepp, today I'll be talking to
Pete Fairburn, who will be
answering this question. He's
the director and co founder of
Morphsites, a company with a
proven track record in helping
Christian Klepp: I'm happy to
repeat them, right? So first
businesses grow online by
maximizing revenue potential and
improving efficiency. Tune in to
find out more about what this
B2B Marketers Mission is. Okay,
and here we are. I'm going to
say, Mr. Pete Fairburn, welcome
back to the show.
question Pete is, why do you
think many companies in the B2B
space struggle to differentiate
themselves from their
competitors? And the follow up
question is, why do you think
this causes this risk averse
mindset in most B2B verticals?
Pete Fairburn: Yes, it's good
couple of questions there. And I
think most, most B2B companies
that identify with this problem
probably don't have a marketing
problem, or if they do have a
marketing problem, it's because
the the issues started long
before marketing even begins,
and the they default. So they
go, Okay, we've got similar
products or similar services to
these brands over here, and
there's nothing wrong with using
coach brands to help you, but
they'll they may look at some in
the same space as them and go,
Well, that's what they're doing.
So let's do the same messaging,
the same channels as them,
because that must work, right?
It must work because they're
doing it. But they've never
really answered the question,
Well, why would someone choose
us over any of these competitors
if price was removed? So if the
only thing that differentiates
you is your product, your
positioning, your messaging,
forget price, forget everything
else. Why would they choose you?
And there's there's two kind of
camps here. If your product is
genuinely desirable, genuinely
distinct, the website's job is
just to create clarity around
that. But if your product is not
distinctive, it's a commodity,
you need to create advantage
elsewhere. And many companies
are in the second camp, but they
operate like they're in the
first, and that's why they
struggle to differentiate.
Christian Klepp: And where do
you think a lot of this risk
averseness then comes from? Is
it this whole like, well, we've
never done any of this marketing
before, so, you know, we're not
entirely sure what the outcome
will be. And let's, let's, let's
play it safe. Where do you think
this comes from?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, I think
you're on to something there.
One of the big problems with
marketing is it's measured on
typically short term activity,
right, rather than long term
advantage. You know, every
agency or every marketing
department creates a monthly
marketing report, and it's right
to do that, but it makes you
focus on just that short term
rather than longer term things.
And that can shoot any
initiative in the foot, and I
think leadership, and that could
be owner operators or marketing,
CMOs, directors, that kind of
thing. They fear getting it
wrong more than they value
getting it right. So safe
decisions feel easier to justify
than something that's quite out
of the box. So what you get,
instead of genuine movement of
the needle from this risk averse
mindset is you get these
incremental improvements. You
get cosmetic changes, maybe,
maybe a brand refresh from time
to time, which is important,
really important, but no
meaningful differentiation.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely,
absolutely and based on that,
like just moving on to the next
question, what are some of these
key pitfalls that you think
marketing teams should avoid,
and what should they be doing
instead?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, I think one
of the key things, and we see
this a lot, is mistaking
activity for progress, so doing
more more campaigns, more
channels, more content, more
output, without changing the
underlying offer. So there's
nothing wrong with doing all
those things we know,
particularly for organic search.
I saw a post earlier today where
you know cadence of content
updates and releasing of
information is as it always has
been, something that search
rewards, and I include both
organic and LLM (Large Language
Model) search in that, but if
you're just doing more of that
without changing the underlying
positioning, the underlying
offer of your product or
service, you're not actually
doing anything that's
meaningful. So I think that's a
pitfall over investing in the
website as a surface layer. So
that kind of comes into this.
Again, it's activity design
tweaks, debating over platform
instead of asking what actually
makes us different from a
competitor. So that leads into
the other pitfall, I think, is
skipping the thinking phase. And
what I mean by that is the deep
thinking, so having a very light
hypothesis and jumping straight
into a build or marketing
without actually validating
whether the idea is worth
pursuing. So most wasted spend
comes from building the wrong
thing or taking the wrong
strategy or positioning because
you've just not thought it
through properly and thought
about your clients and what your
customers and what they actually
want.
Christian Klepp: Yeah,
absolutely, absolutely. I wanted
to follow up on that last one,
skipping the the deep thinking
phase, right? Like, we see this
a lot, even with some of the
clients that we work with, where
they say, don't need a brand
strategy, don't need, don't need
the marketing strategy, just
just implement, right? Why do
you think there's a few, I won't
say many, but, like, yeah, you
there's a few B2B companies out
there that have that mindset.
Like, let's just skip the
planning stage. We don't need
the research. We know who our
clients are. Like, tell me if
you've never heard that one
before, right? So we don't, we
don't need that, right? Like,
yeah, yeah. What do you think
that is? What? Why do they just
want to skip the planning and go
straight to the implementation?
Pete Fairburn: I guess it can be
for a number of reasons. It's a
sense of progress. It feels like
we want to just get on with
this. So why would we hold
ourselves up by doing that? So
that fallacy of we know who our
customers are is often a point
on that, but I think it
underlines that reason of, well,
you know, there's time involved
in this. And another clear
thing, I think, is a lot of
people an ideal customer persona
or profile on ICP (Ideal
Customer Profile) is something
that the marketing world has
talked about decades. It's not a
new concept yet. I am so often
surprised at how few people know
how to go about even doing a
basic persona or profiling their
customers. So when I think a lot
of business owners or
stakeholders say we know our
customers, what they mean is,
we've got a relationship with
this, these accounts here, but
they can't put them into a
profile. So there's a degree of
this is slowing everything up.
We just want to get on with it.
But there's also a suspect, a
degree of fear about, well, I
don't really know what I'm doing
here, so rather than ask or get
someone to help me, I'm just
going to move on to the next
bit.
Christian Klepp: Yeah, yeah, I
think you're going somewhere
with that one. Do you find that
sometimes it's also perhaps the
reason why there's pushback
there is because perhaps there's
a fear of, like, not admitting
that. Look, I'll just come
clean. And we don't actually, we
don't actually have this
documented. We. Perhaps we know
that there has been some change,
or, like, some different market
dynamics in things that have
happened in the customer's world
that we're not entirely privy
to, but we're too ashamed to
admit that.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, absolutely.
I think we're all no human being
really likes to admit they don't
know something, even if you're
naturally quite humble person.
It takes, it takes something to
say, I don't know what that is,
or I don't know how to go about
that. And particularly if you're
a business owner or a
stakeholder, that can often be
seen as a sign of weakness, to
say, I don't know something. And
yet, actually, when you have the
courage to say that, you can,
you can uncover some real
things. And at the end of the
day, particularly if you're
employing marketing
professionals or an agency to
help you, the whole reason
you're doing that is because
you've kind of already admitted
you don't really know how to do
this. So you should let the
agency lead, because if you want
the results, they should be
leading that and helping you
derive that. And every time we
do it, you see, it's almost like
the the blindfold comes off and
this new realization of the
missed opportunity that's come
from not doing customer
research.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely,
absolutely. So we're gonna
slowly, like, unravel and
uncover what this what the
secret sauce of yours is right
to go from bland to brilliant,
but before we do that, I think
we have to make the listeners
understand that this is indeed a
process, right? This isn't
something where you download an
app and you click submit, and
then presto, you've got the
you've got the massive
differentiation that you're
looking for, right? So talk to
us, and you touched on it now a
little bit, but talk to us about
the importance of conducting
that customer research. So in
other words, how can this
research help marketers and B2B
companies identify those key
points of differentiation to
position themselves
strategically? And I know that
you guys have more sites do this
as well. Like you know, you do a
lot of these discovery workshops
with with your clients. You
know, before you even start
building a website or writing a
single line of code, so just,
yeah, just walk us through that
a little bit.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah. Well, it's
about understanding, really. So
ultimately, a product or service
that you have typically is going
to solve a pain point or pain
points for a client or a
customer, depending on what
you're doing, and if you
understand the pain points that
your product addresses. And
that's normally where business
owners and marketing teams are
brilliant, because they do know
their products, they do know
their service, and they go,
these are the amazing things it
does. As a company, we work out
in your direction, and we work
with them for a number of years.
Absolutely brilliant company who
brilliant company who did do
this process, and they describe
this product and the benefits
that come from it, and you can
work backwards from there and
work out, well, here are the
pain points that this is
solving, and by doing that,
first of all, it makes your
customer's life easier, because
you're able to speak their
language. So we've all had it
where we've landed on a website,
or we've received a piece of
marketing collateral where we've
gone. Yeah, I really resonate
with this. I want to know more,
because they've worked out
what's important to you. So once
you've got that, once you
understand who your customers
are, where they are, in terms
of, you know, channels, social,
that kind of thing, how they're
finding out about you.
Everything becomes faster,
everything becomes less risky,
everything becomes more
profitable, because you can then
tailor your initially, your
website infrastructure, your
information architecture, your
messaging, your positioning, to
those things. And if you do that
along with a brand strategy,
then you've got this beautiful
alignment of your brand
messaging, but also your digital
positioning as well. So you're
speaking the customer's
language, they go, yes, you're
describing me, and then they're
much more likely to take
whatever the next step is that
you want them to do, and that's
where the differentiation comes
in. If you've got a great
product that kind of almost
sells itself, then you just need
to communicate that clearly and
present it in a way that the
customer can see that. So for
example, we got a customer who
they sell stone and marble
furniture, very high end,
beautiful stuff. They know who
their clients are, and when a
client sees it, they go, Yeah,
I'll have that. They don't even
want to know how much it is,
because it's fine. But if your
product is interchangeable with
countless competitors, you're a
commodity. And really, you know,
how many times have we had a
discussion where it's like,
well, what makes you different
from your competitors? Your
competitors? Well, we're great
at service, or, you know, we're
the cheapest. Well, a race to
the bottom on prices. No one
wins there. So you have to find
a way to escape your category,
and you do that by looking
beyond the product or service in
of itself. You look at things
like all. Ordering, your
logistics, your usage, your
integration into your clients or
your customers workflow, to see,
okay, what? What's the
opportunity? So when you do
customer research, particularly
in the commodity, the
interchangeable space, you come
across pain points. And when you
identify those customers pain
points, you can put in in place
other other parts of the
platform, other innovations that
may not be your core offering
that but make it so easy to deal
with you, or make it so much
easier for the customer to
complete their tasks that you
make yourself much more
attractable. Attractable,
attractive to your attractive,
attractively, attractive,
attractive. Always my new word
of the day.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely,
absolutely, you did touch on
something there. And I think
that's challenge that a lot of
B2B companies are dealing with,
right? Like it's if they're in a
very heavily commoditized
vertical, then, then it really
becomes difficult for them to
differentiate themselves beyond
price, right? So I guess one way
of doing it is perhaps
differentiation in other forms.
So like perhaps the way that
they work with customers. Is
there anything? Is there
anything that they do in their
workflow that's differentiated?
Do they put out, like, thought
leadership pieces, right? Is
there something where they, they
do take a differentiated
perspective? And I just want to
draw a thin, a thin line in the
sand there, like, a
differentiator perspective
doesn't mean contrarian, right?
Because you've got those two
right? Like?
Pete Fairburn: I think, yeah,
you can be contrary. There's a
big or there has been a big push
recent years, particularly on
places like LinkedIn and that to
just be the contrarian. For the
sake of contrarian, a lot of
people have jumped on that
bandwagon, and again, it works
for some industries, but only if
you know your client or your
customer and know that that will
all float their boat. If not,
you can just alienate a lot of
people.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely and
I think one of my previous
guests said it, so I can't claim
to have coined the phrase, but
it's performance marketing. Get
it,
Pete Fairburn: yeah,
Christian Klepp: Getting up on
stage and being a performer.
Pete Fairburn: That's not where.
That's not a natural place for a
lot of people, a lot of a lot of
business owners, funnily enough,
are introverts. They don't want
to do that, and they that. And
it shouldn't be the case that
you build something on that,
that basis.
Christian Klepp: Well, not only
that, but I think it's also a
short term strategy, isn't it?
Because, like, how long, how
much energy, how much battery
power, right? If I'm going to
use that analogy? Do you have to
be a professional contrarian all
the time? I think it's draining,
isn't it to a certain degree.
Pete Fairburn: Unless you're a
particular personality type, but
I can't imagine anything worse.
Christian Klepp: Yeah,
absolutely, absolutely. You
unpack that a little bit, right?
But I want to unpack this, this
question a little bit more,
because, you know, you've got a
lot of experience in this, in
these different verticals across
the B2B spectrum. So how can,
how can B2B companies elevate
and effectively differentiate
their business? So you touched
on it a little bit, but like,
just walk us through it. What
are some of the key steps that
they need to take? Give us some
examples of what they can do
differently.
Pete Fairburn: Okay, so steps,
first of all, you've got to be
honest about your product. So
you've got to say, Are we truly
different, or are we actually
one of many? Because sometimes
you can, yeah, I've met
businesses where they think
they're doing something quite
unique. And you just like you.
We meet a lot of businesses in
our in our life, and it's like
this has been done before. So if
you if you're different, great,
be honest. But if not, recognize
that and then decide that's your
first step. But then from there,
decide where the advantage
comes. You know, if you've got a
great product that is truly
different, great. Is it your
brand? Have you got a huge
amount of brand goodwill and
value? Is it the experience that
you give people, or is it
systems and tools that elevate
the product that you do or the
service that you provide to
another level? So those are the
first two steps. I think, then
you've got to focus on customer
pain beyond the product. And
what I mean by that is, Where,
where are they getting friction
in their life? Where do they
lose time, money, control, what
would make life better for them?
And then if you can build
something that removes that
friction, not just something
that sounds good on paper, but
actually has practical value and
then only then communicate it,
market it clearly across your
website, your digital marketing,
in your sales conversations once
you've done that, because if
you've done that work up front,
it will resonate with with the
right people. So some examples
of that are you. For for the
company I mentioned earlier, the
stone and marble company, the
product does the selling. You
know, the website just needs to
present it clearly and and it
builds trust. And you know, when
you're then coming to select a
platform, you don't need
anything particularly special,
because the product's doing all
the work. But if you're in a
commodity space where the
products don't differentiate, we
need to then look at that
differently. So an example of
many that we've done for a
client is a commodity based
product. They were in a race to
the bottom like everyone else,
but what they did is they
stopped and did this customer
piece. They listened to the
challenges that clients were
having, and they they then built
systems around that, workflows
that made the customer and the
business's life easier, that
removed friction, that kind of
locked them in because of this,
what you would call a value add
layer of digital services. But
what that did is, not only did
it lock in existing customers,
but it attracted customers which
they, in their own words, had no
right to be going after, but the
workflows that they built were
powerful and made such a
difference that they were able
to win contracts much bigger
than they could have ever
dreamed, dreamed of otherwise.
Christian Klepp: Yeah, no,
that's that's a really great
example, and it almost, I would
say, it's focusing on what you
do differently, but also being
seen as the expert in the space.
And I think that's something
that you keep hearing in B2B,
right? If you are seen as the
expert in the space, on the
specific in the specific area,
on the specific pain point,
because a lot of it boils down
to trust as well, right?
There's, it's a lot, it's, it's
almost like a trust building
mechanism, right? Because if the
if the prospect doesn't trust
what you say and what you offer,
then there's no, no amount of
marketing is going to convert
them.
Pete Fairburn: Absolutely, just
on that is that you're, you're
demonstrating by building trust,
and that comes from you touched
on earlier Christian things like
thought leadership, pieces,
blogs, content, if you can talk
in a way that shows that you've
come across this problem before,
maybe not the identical problem,
but a scenario that you have a
framework for solving with your
product that is business that in
itself, builds builds trust. So
customers want to hear, yeah,
these guys, they get me because
they're already talking in this
space, and I need to talk, be
talking to them, or getting
their product, or whatever it
might be.
Christian Klepp: Well, all that,
and also building on the on the
trust, building mechanism
pieces, the social proof, right?
Like the testimonials, um, the
videos, right? The case studies,
proof that you've done this
before. This isn't your first um
rodeo, as they like to say here
in North America, right?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, we say that
in the UK as well. Yeah, yeah,
we do, yeah, but it's a,
definitely, a borrowed one, but
yeah, not my first radio and
you're absolutely right. Yeah,
and a lot of people say we don't
have the time to invest in,
like, video testimonials or
things like that. But the
reality is, you don't need
hundreds of them. You need three
or four, because no one's going
to sit and watch 100 video
testimonials if you've got three
or four really compelling
essentially, case studies or
people talking about the process
and the problems that you solve,
or how great your product is
that normally is enough to
convince someone.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely,
absolutely, just moving on to
the next question, and we kind
of touched upon this a little
bit in the beginning, but I
mean, you've definitely
encountered this in your career.
I've certainly like been in
these situations more times than
I care to count. So what am I
referring to? It's getting
internal buy in, because we know
sometimes, like on the topic of
being risk averse, right? And a
lot of that comes from senior
management. It comes from the
people within the organization
that have to make the decisions
and not to, not to blame them
for, for this kind of mindset.
Because, you know, at the end of
the day, they are responsible
for ensuring, I mean, this is
like running a business, one on
one, making sure the business is
profitable. And if you if
something comes across their
desk that they don't quite know
anything about, or don't quite
understand, the knee jerk
reaction is no, right? So over
to you. You've been in these
situations before. How do you
get internal buy in to, you
know, get out of this risk
averse mindset and to to get the
senior management on board with
whatever the marketing team is
proposing.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, and the
answer to that does depend on
who in the organization you're
speaking to, obviously, if
you're speaking to decision
makers, and often, as we know,
can be multiple people or
multiple stages now, but you've
got that job to do. And I guess
I'm coming at this really from
how we would do it, but it is
true in any business if, if
you're looking to innovate,
don't position it as innovation,
because innovation is one of
those words that's bandied
around a lot, and I see a lot of
people glaze over. You know, we
do, we do use that term
ourselves a lot, but I'm trying
to withdraw it from you some
more, because it can mean so
many things to different people.
And a lot of people see that as
spending a lot of money for no
return. So you've got to frame
it properly. You could say
things like, look, we want to
avoid being competing on price.
So how do we do that? How do we
create value that makes it
expensive or challenging to
switch so once someone's locked
into our system, not in some
kind of Stockholm Syndrome way,
but in a value based way that
actually changing that, that
just isn't really an option for
them. So stickiness is a really
good way to think about it. We
want to make it the price is not
even the secondary thing. It's
right down the list of
priorities because of the value
we deliver. And then propose
something small. So rather than
going, Hey, we want to
completely tear up our own our
entire offering, and start
again. Pilot something simple,
something achievable, prove that
it works, and then scale it from
there. And if you do that,
rather than selling an idea, and
particularly business owners,
hear a lot of ideas, a lot of
pitches, show the impact. So if
you do something small, prove it
works. You can even, in some
cases, do the fake it till we
make it approach which is where
you you you present the offering
is available, see if it
resonates with your target
audience, and if it does, then
start delivering it in some way,
even if you have to do it
manually for a while, while
you've you've established the
demand for it. But again, it all
goes back to, if you've done
your customer research, you
probably don't need to do that.
Christian Klepp: Absolutely,
absolutely. There's some really
good points that you brought up,
which I've jotted down. And
these are words that I myself,
Pete, I'm trying to avoid
saying, If I'm in, if I'm in a
room with a client, like, for
example, adding value. That's
such an overused term, and I
think thanks to LinkedIn, but
it's, it's something where I
feel that the adding value piece
is obvious. The reason why
they're coming to you is for
your expertise. So the adding
value bit is, is something
that's expected. So rather than
saying adding value, I try to
frame it or package it in the
way that it's like we
demonstrate, you demonstrate the
expertise towards the target
market, and you you instill that
confidence in them, that you do
have the solution to their pain
points and challenges, and that,
I know that that's a little bit
wordier, but that sounds a
little bit more, at least from
where I'm sitting, more
compelling than saying adding
value. The second thing which
you brought up, which I think is
really important for marketers
to keep in mind, and they
probably don't have to phrase it
this way, because it can come
across as condescending, but
there is a bit of education
involved, right? Because, let's
just assume I mean, at least in
my experience, and I'm sure it's
the same in yours, 9.5 times out
of 10 and B2B, the members of
the senior management that
you're dealing with, none of
them have a marketing
background. They're either going
to be the finance related
engineers, CIOs (Chief
Information Officers), CTO
(Chief Technology Officers),
CISOs (Chief Information
Security Officers), etc, right?
With with little to no
experience in the marketing
field whatsoever. So there has
to be some education there, but
it has to come across as like,
I'm not, I'm not doing marketing
one on one with you. But it's
saying, like, Listen, this is
the reason why we're proposing
this, that this is the reason
why, this is why it's in your
interest to pay attention to
this. And it's about something
that you mentioned earlier. It's
understanding your audience,
right? So for the marketers
themselves, it's almost like
internal customer service. Who
sits in the Csuite on the board
in the senior management. Do you
know who they are? Do you know
what their roles are, their
responsibilities are, and you
tweak those presentations based
on what you know they are going
to look for or what they care
about, right? I think more often
than not, a lot of marketers
tend to fall into this trap
where they start dropping all
these like acronyms, and they
don't do themselves any favors
with that, right? And throw
throw in all this like marketing
jargon that will just go past
these people's heads, right? So
it's a question of packaging it
for the right audience, right? I
always, always go back to that,
like you got to package it the
right way.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, there's a
really good technique. Can't
remember. I learned it probably
a decade ago. It may, yeah, I
can't remember who, so many
people I've been inspired by. My
time, but sometimes to do that
without the target person
feeling like they are being
patronized with marketing 101,
to frame rhetorical questions.
So if we were able to do this,
and we could do this, and then
increase our margin on this
commodity product by this much,
what would that do for our
bottom line, and the chances are
the brain is answering that
question, even if they don't say
it out loud. So again, it's
about showing impact or
potential impact, rather than an
idea which you're just showing
you thought it through and that
you're thinking commercially.
And I think that's what sets
really good marketing teams,
apart from others, I think we've
we've touched on this before, is
when they've got that commercial
awareness that actually the job
of marketing is to help
contribute to the bottom line,
rather than just vanity metrics,
then you start making statements
and framing things in a way that
business owners and Those who
are responsible for the stock of
a business go, okay, they get
it, as opposed to impressions,
clicks without actually any
impact assessment.
Christian Klepp: That's it.
That's it. And I'm glad you
brought that up, because that's
such a nice segue to the next
question about metrics. And I
always call this one the Love it
or hate it question for
marketers, because some
marketers are very data driven,
so they're happy to talk about
it at length, and others try to,
like, walk around it, right?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah,
Christian Klepp: but in terms
of, like, helping B2B companies
differentiate themselves in the
market and go from this bland to
brilliant, what are some of
these metrics? And I know we can
go down a deep rabbit hole with
this one, but like maybe some
top three to five metrics that
you would say they should pay
attention to.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, I don't
think there's any rocket science
here. I think it's ones that
have a direct impact on
commerciality. Before I list
these, there is the caveat that
there are times where things
like brand marketing and other
non attributable things are
important, but that again, comes
down to knowing who your
audience is. I mean, for
example, someone like Airbnb do
a lot of brand marketing, but
they can because they know who
their audience is and they know
where they sit. So it's not to
say other other channels aren't
important, but when it comes to
metrics, it's things like
nothing surprising here,
customer acquisition cost versus
their lifetime value. How much
does it cost you to get that
client, and how much are they
returning? And within that as
well, is this surprises me a
lot. Make sure you're factoring
into that the not just the the
the raw revenue, but the margins
or the markup, the cost of
actually getting that truly so
it's not just the ad spend or
the creation of the content. How
much are you paying your agency?
No, how much you paying your
marketing team? Factor that in,
and you can be have be honest.
Because if you're honest and you
can make adjustments,
conversion, quality is a good
one, not just volume. So looking
at, well, okay, we had this many
people, I don't know, fill in
the inquiry form or download the
ebook, whatever your metrics are
that you know, lead to something
typically, but okay, of those,
how many actually were a
quotable opportunity? How many
of those actually completed a
deal? How many of those do you
retain, or do you have repeat
business from? What's the
average size of your deal?
What's your sales cycle? Link
those the metrics that matter, I
think, as a rule of thumb, if it
doesn't connect to revenue or
retention along the line, don't,
don't necessarily just eliminate
it, but question it and say, Is
this a metric that is actually
telling me anything that A gives
me comfort or B tells me there's
a problem that I need to improve
on otherwise, it's probably
meaningless,
Christian Klepp: absolutely,
absolutely. So we're talking
about metrics that are linked
to, like revenue, to sales, to
potential conversions, right?
Revenue, obviously being the
being the end objective. But
like, as we know, in B2B, and
you just mentioned it, the sales
cycles can be, can be much
longer. So you know, how many,
how many leads are coming into
the pipeline, right?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah.
Christian Klepp: How many
conversations are we having? How
many of those conversations are
converting, right?
Pete Fairburn: Yeah,
Christian Klepp: Versus the ones
that aren't or are dropping off,
right?
Pete Fairburn: But also, I mean,
yeah, absolutely, all of those
things. Again, it's, it's
having, it's always good for
any, anyone in this space, be it
business owner, marketing,
Christian Klepp: yeah,
Pete Fairburn: stakeholder, to
make sure they understand the
business metrics that they're
working with. So revenue is one
thing, but margin and
profitability are absolutely
key, because we've seen it
before. Again, I'm sure you have
where you have business. Is that
are busy fools. They're taking.
They're converting loads of low
value deals, one offs, but
they've never aligned on where
the high revenue work is. We
once had a client who were busy
dealing with inquiries every
day, and they were converting
them, but they weren't. They
weren't moving the needle. They
were barely profitable, and yet,
there were massive opportunities
they were missing because a
couple of key stakeholders
weren't talking about how to
offer to this really high margin
longer sales cycle, but really
high margin stuff. But once you
start understanding where your
profitability lies and where
your costs are, and perhaps
products or services that if you
just leaned on a little bit,
could dramatically increase your
profit line, then you start
getting interesting results.
Christian Klepp: Yeah, yeah.
Well, thanks for pointing that
out. That's absolutely
paramount, right margin of
profitability. Okay, for this
next question, I would have
asked you to get up in Hyde Park
in the Speaker's Corner, right?
But in the interest of time,
just what is the status quo in
your area of expertise that you
passionately disagree with, and
why?
Pete Fairburn: The belief that
better marketing can fix a weak
or undifferentiated offer so you
can optimize endlessly, but if
you're interchangeable, you're
just competing harder for the
same result. So I really feel
for a lot of marketing teams,
because they're often asked to
outperform competitors without
being given anything
structurally within the business
that's meaningfully different to
say. So they're literally
they've got no point of
difference. So it doesn't matter
how crack your marketing team is
how good they are. If you are
interchangeable, and there's
nothing different about you,
you're on a hiding to nothing.
Christian Klepp: Exactly,
exactly. You can throw whatever
analogy you want at that, right,
like lipstick on a pig, build a
facade, right? All of that,
right? But that's that's
absolutely true. That's
absolutely true. Pete, once
again. I mean, this is a great
conversation. Loved having you
on for a second time. Maybe
there'll be a third. Who knows,
right? But thanks again for
coming on. Please. Quick
introduction to yourself and how
people out there can get in
touch with you.
Pete Fairburn: Yeah, so I'm Pete
Fairburn. I'm the co founder and
one of the directors at
morphsites. We build websites,
platforms and integrated
systems, along with supporting
digital marketing, a big part of
what we do, though, is focus on
the thinking first. So
everything that we've talked
about today is baked in. We've
got a proprietary process and
set frameworks that help us
deliver really meaningful
changes. So if you want a
conversation, that's how we do
things. We don't pitch, we talk.
Can help you.
Christian Klepp: Fantastic,
fantastic. So once again, Pete,
thanks so much for your time.
Take care, stay safe and talk to
you soon.
Pete Fairburn: Thanks,
Christian, thanks for having me.
Christian Klepp: All right. Bye,
for now.