{"id":105764,"date":"2021-07-23T19:03:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-24T00:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/podcast-rewind-5-insights-from-bjorns-brilliant-b2b-blueprint\/"},"modified":"2025-01-03T04:43:35","modified_gmt":"2025-01-03T09:43:35","slug":"podcast-rewind-5-insights-from-bjorns-brilliant-b2b-blueprint","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-gb\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/podcast-rewind-5-insights-from-bjorns-brilliant-b2b-blueprint\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast rewind: 5 insights from Bj\u00f6rn\u2019s brilliant B2B blueprint"},"content":{"rendered":"

Marketers have long joked that B2B really stands for “boring to boring”. But does that gag still ring true in 2021? Haven’t business-to-business frameworks evolved since the dawn of the digital age? Is B2B really<\/em> less interesting than its consumer equivalent? Well, there’s nobody better to quiz on the topic than Bj\u00f6rn Radde.<\/p>\n

Bj\u00f6rn is Head of Digital Marketing at T-Systems International<\/a>, Deutsche Telekom’s B2B division and sister brand to T-Mobile. With 28,000 employees and countless customers across Europe, Asia, and North America, T-Systems is a true B2B heavyweight\u2014putting Bj\u00f6rn in the perfect position to dispel myths, reveal truths, and share his unique perspective on B2C’s less glamorous cousin.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    B2B is the most difficult form of marketing<\/h2>\n

    Having proven his worth in both consumer- and business-facing marketing roles, Bj\u00f6rn believes B2B is the more challenging arena due to the fact that it generally has much longer decision cycles, more complex nurturing streams, and many more people to engage for a single sale.<\/p>\n

    Take the typical B2C example of booking a hotel room or buying running shoes. The transaction itself is simple, and opportunities to cross-sell follow naturally (“Buying trainers? You might be interested in this running vest!”). In contrast, a multi-million dollar tech investment can’t be so easily parlayed into follow-up transactions (“You bought cloud computing from us, so why not IOT as well?”).<\/p>\n

    Selling to technologists, of course, comes with its own set of challenges (naming no names… Dan). They’re subjected to countless cold emails, creating an environment of noise, irrelevance, and hard-nosed solicitation. Timing, too, is crucial: ideally, an organisation would be coming towards the end of an existing contract, feeling the need for a specific service or product. Mix in the personal preferences and triggers of the actual human beings making the decisions and you have a heady brew of opportunity, risk, and happenstance. In other words, B2B ain’t easy.<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    What is B2B’s single biggest challenge?<\/h2>\n

    Yes, B2B has traditionally been considered a relatively dry discipline that usually lags behind B2C in various ways. Even so, the people involved are, well, people. Although B2B transactions are often on a far grander scale than B2C, they nevertheless have to target and engage individuals\u2014not broad corporate entities\u2014to gain traction.<\/p>\n

    Bj\u00f6rn cites ServiceNow’s Christmas adverts as a great example of B2C-style marketing (Santa can’t meet Christmas demand until the elves discover ServiceNow’s workflow solutions), as well as a recent Amazon Web Services (AWS) campaign that showed the extent to which AWS services power everyday conveniences that inspire wonder in a child.<\/p>\n