12 Damaging B2B Excuses (and how to avoid them)

?
WHAT’S
YOUR
EXCUSE12 damaging B2B marketing platitudes (and how to avoid them)

WE’RE LISTENING  
TO THE CONVERSATION
‘
‘
consideredcontent.com

Listening is good – doing is better.  
In the time you’re spending listening,
listening, listening, others are
experimenting, testing, making
mistakes and driving greater results.
!
The answer? Always look for low-cost
ways to rapidly prototype approaches
and test them in the field.

WE’RE LOADING THE TOP
OF THE FUNNEL
‘
‘

To a degree, B2B marketing is a numbers
game. Without sufficient top-of-funnel
volume, you’ll never see hard revenue
gains. But do you really have a top-of-
funnel issue?
!
The answer? Check that what you think
of as a demand generation problem isn’t
in fact a lead conversion problem (it’s a
lot easier and cheaper to fix).

OUR CUSTOMERS JUST  
DON’T CARE
‘
‘

True. They don’t care. Well not about
you or your products. They do, however,
care a lot about their own businesses.
They care about better serving their
customers, helping their staff and
beating the competition.
!
The answer? Focus on what your
customers really care about (not what
you wished they cared about).

WE’RE WAITING FOR
INBOUND TO KICK IN
‘
‘

Inbound marketing is brilliant, but it takes
time. According to HubSpot, businesses
with over 100 pages of content will see 2.5x
the results of those with under 50. But how
long will it take you to develop 100 pages of
quality content? Probably too long.
!
The answer? Start by focusing on outbound
content marketing and make your content
easy to find – you’ll get far higher results
and still receive inbound traffic.

TODAY IT’S ALL ABOUT
SOCIAL MEDIA
‘
‘

If only. It would be lovely to think we could
hit all our targets with some well-aimed
tweets and a few LinkedIn updates. They’ll
help of course – in B2B, social typically
contributes around 5% of a company’s web
traffic. But be careful to base your time
investment on real world results.
!
The answer? Try multiple tactics and
invest more in what works hardest for
your business.

SALES DROPPED  
THE BALL (AGAIN)
‘
‘

Sales exists to make more (and more
profitable) sales. Give them the right
leads and they’ll happily run with
them. The problem is often that leads
are either insufficiently qualified or
passed over too early to be a good use
of a salesperson’s time.
!
The answer? Nurture leads longer,
agree what ‘sales ready’ means and
give salespeople the tools to take the
story forward.

MARKETING DROPPED  
THE BALL (AGAIN)
‘
‘

The difference between sales and
marketing is that sales knows customers
and prospects personally, marketing
doesn’t. Sadly, all too often, salespeople
don’t take the time to really help
marketing understand what makes a good
lead (or else marketing doesn’t ask).
!
The answer? Talk. Seriously. Have
marketing people go on sales calls. Learn
what’s it’s like to try to close a sale.

OUR DATABASE  
ISN’T UP TO SCRATCH
‘
‘

You’re not alone. No one’s data is ever
perfect. Of course some is worse than
others and good data is core to success.
That’s why one of the objectives of virtually
every marketing campaign should be to
grow the database.
!
The answer? Clean your data regularly
and don’t be afraid to buy more if you need
it (but focus on quality over quantity).

CONVERTING B2B SALES
TAKES TIME
‘
‘

It’s not unusual for a B2B sale to take  
6 months or more. Of course some take
longer – zombie sales can go on and on.
So it makes sense to do what you can to
accelerate the process.
!
The answer? Work with sales to identify
common points of friction that slow sales
down. Then look at what content and/or
assets could help speed things up.

OUR @#&*$! MARKETING
AUTOMATION SYSTEM
‘
‘

Marketing automation is brilliant but it
can be a little oversold by vendors. There
is no big red button marked ‘leads’ to
press. And all too often new users try to
do too much, too early only to be
paralysed by complexity.
!
The answer? Start small. Do the basics
well and then experiment – look to explore
one new feature in each new campaign.
(Oh, and don’t panic.)

WE’RE NOT CREATING
ENOUGH CONTENT
‘
‘

With all the hype around content
marketing, companies can often think they
need to become publishers in their own
right, competing with major industry
publications and sites. They don’t.
!
The answer? While there’s a baseline you’ll
need to get over, it’s more important you
have the right core content for each stage of  
the sales cycle than simply volume content
for every conceivable search term.

OUR CONTENT ISN’T  
GOOD ENOUGH
‘
‘

Great content delivers great results. But
creating great B2B content is difficult.  
It demands you become pathologically
focused on what’s important to your
customers, where you can challenge their
thinking, and how you can help.
!
The answer? Interrogate any piece of
content you create to find out who will
benefit the most: you or your customers.
If it’s the former, try again.

RIDDING THE WORLD OF CRAPPY  
B2B CONTENT (ONE BRAND AT A TIME)
Considered Content is an outbound content marketing agency focused
on B2B and technology companies. We do three things really well:

Whether you need to drive leads or accelerate sales, we can help.
Check out consideredcontent.com to learn more or contact us at
hello@consideredcontent.com.

12 Damaging B2B Excuses (and how to avoid them)

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