How Millennials Are Shaping the Future of B2B Marketing

Welcome. This is the Public Relations Review Podcast, a program to discuss the many facets of public relations with seasoned professionals, educators, authors and others. Now here is your host, Peter Woolfolk.

Welcome to the Public Relations Review Podcast and to our listeners all across America and around the world. Now I'm very pleased to make this very special announcement that, as of September 2023, apple has ranked this podcast among the top 1% of podcasts worldwide. So I want to thank all of my guests for making this possible and to my audience, for your continued support. Now here's a question for you. Are you aware that millennials are reshaping business to business marketing as they move into leadership roles? Millennials influence has also extended from the product to the process of how these products are marketed and sold. My guest today will help us to understand what changes are taking place in B2B marketing and how we must adapt to keep pace. Frank Strong is a writer for the sword and the script. Here's the article. Six ways millennials are reshaping B2B marketing as they move into leadership roles certainly got my attention. As a result, frank joins me today from Atlanta, georgia. Let me welcome Frank Strong.

Hey, peter, thanks for having me.

Look, tell me what was it that led you to write this particular article.

I'm a voracious reader, so I read B2B you know 20, 30 articles about B2B, marketing, pr, social media every day, and I always like to keep an eye out for studies, and this one struck me as a good one, so I dove into it and wrote up some of the things I thought were interesting for me and, hopefully, for the people that I work with.

Well, let's talk about them. What to talk? At the beginning, I think you said six items. What is the first one that you found that stood out?

Just a quick background. So this is a survey by the Winterberry Group. They did it in partnership with the ANA, that's, the Association of National Advertisers. They're big on Madison Avenue. If you're in the advertising space you've certainly heard of them, and one of the things I think this group was looking to do is kind of quantify some of the generational shifts that we're seeing. So when you think about the boomers, those are people that grew up at the end of World War II, gen X in the 80s, the Lachke kids and the millennials were the next generation, and what makes them so different is they are the biggest generation since the baby boomers, and as the baby boomers retire, the millennials are moving into leadership positions and that's having a big impact. So one of the first ones, the first finding to hear, was that 58% of B2B marketers that were surveyed said customers are spending more time researching products and services online before making purchases. That's not especially new per se. We've known this probably for the last 10 years. I think Forrester Research wrote and published a book called, I think the Forrester Research. You know 12 or 14 or so that customers are. You know 80 to 85% of the way through their journey before they even talk to a salesperson. So we know this is happening. All we know is that this is accelerating with this next generation.

Mm-hmm.

Well, I can certainly say that that's one of the things that I do. I certainly look at reviews and so forth before I decide which product I'm going to buy.

Yeah, 100%, that's actually the six one too. Well, I'm there speaking generically here. Customers are looking, they're doing the research. They may be looking for studies, product sheets. You know comparisons If you have news coverage, right, yeah, those are the audience that works in PR. You know. Showcase that news. I'm continuously amazed at how many clients will spend a fortune getting coverage and then not showcase it when it's done. And in this fractured media environment, right, when I was a kid growing up you turned on the television. There were three channels ABC, nbc and CBS. Today they're right. So the media landscape is very fractured and what that means for earned media, the type of placements that PR can get, is that getting the placement, what you do with a placement is just as important as getting it in the first place.

Because, yeah, you certainly did mention that social media has become increasingly important as a source of information for consumers.

Yeah, that's right. That was the second one. The survey found 54% are looking at social media is increasingly important and I think this runs contrary to a narrative that has unfolded a blade that social media is dying or is changing or is going away or somehow it's not relevant anymore. Some of that, I think and this is just my personal opinion I don't have any view, but as a market watcher, if you will, I think some of this is. Yeah, it's such a negativity that has unfolded around Twitter following the Elon Musk acquisition. He's making a bunch of changes and the number of people. The volume of people saying that social media is over has grown. The fact is, the data says that's not true. So you still gotta keep your social media channels going, and it's gonna be increasingly important to you as money has moved into leadership positions.

That's certainly understandable. Now, what are some of the other things that you found that you will put this article together?

So they had a couple of points. Another one all of these were close to 50%. So the third point was 51% said personalization is becoming increasingly important to media consumption for B2B. We know this is true, right, and it's gotta move beyond having an email that can do dear name, dear first name, dear Peter, dear Frank or whoever your customer's first name is, personalization has to be a level of relevancy. We talk about thought leadership. Let's demonstrate some thought leadership. Let's do some things that show people really smart and what this research is saying. People want and need buyers of your products because they wanna know you understand their industry, their problem and how to solve that problem for people in their industry. So personalization has a level of relevance, if you will.

Let's go to number four.

Yeah, number four 50% of customers now expect and are more likely to engage with brands that produce high quality and engaging content. So again, no brainer. People want high quality content. What's the problem with that? The problem is high quality is a subjective term and quality can be in the eye of the holder. There's a little bit of concern about AI and whether or not it's going to replace writers. I don't see that happening at this point in time. Maybe in the near future this stuff's going to be fast, but right now, I think the things that are at threat are the low quality writers. If you have low quality content that you need written, ai can do that for you. If you're doing high quality stuff, complex stuff that's typically associated with B2B. Usually these things are complicated, enterprise software AI takes time to articulate the sales value, to showcase studies, demonstrate value, to build a case, to make a case for budget. Those require just a different level that I don't think AI is going to be able to replace. That makes sense. Number five, the fifth takeaway, was 46%. So customers are increasingly accessing content on mobile devices. We know millennials are. They're the digital natives. They are the first generation that grew up completely digital. The generation X. We're kind of a hybrid generation. We had one foot in the analog world and then computers and things got big as we were in high school and college. If you were smart in high school, you took a typing class and found out that was the most valuable class you ever took. Folks are looking at stuff on their mobile device and what does that mean for companies? We've known this for a while Desktop search in Google. Google says desktop search in Google surpassed, or mobile search surpassed, desktop search in 2015. That was eight years ago. So people are searching for content on mobile devices. It isn't new, but some of the things that need to catch up are the friction points. We put in place B2B. We love our created content. We want to trade valuable content, valuable information for somebody's contact information. If you're trying to do that on a mobile device super frustrating chances are people are just going to skip you over.

Going back to number four, one of the things that I did want to bring up, because you talked about quality, and quality is a subjective thing, so how are they going to be able to manage, or did the survey reveal how that's going to be addressed?

I guess I'd have two thoughts. One just as an experienced writer, you kind of know it when you see it. You can see good content, you can see bad content and I think for folks in the PR shop, part of your job is to counsel clients, counsel executives, if you're on the in-house side, of what is good and what isn't, and demonstrate why. That's a little bit of a wishy-washy answer, if you will. So a better answer, or another one that should work in conjunction with that, is to look at the analytics. You have to be able to see analytics. You have to see what is attracting readers to a site, to your site, what they're spending their time with, how much time they engage with that content and where they go afterwards. You've got to understand their journey on your site. They come to your page and read an article and lead. Do they come to your page and subscribe to your blog or article site? Do they come to your page Are they a journalist and start clicking around in the newsroom and sign up for your distribution list? Are they going over to a landing page and typing in their information and giving you that contact information because they want to download the white paper or they want to take a demo. So the answer to quality content is I think it comes with experience, and you have to augment that with analytics, because you're going to have to base, you're going to have to articulate it in something other than my 20 years of experience. Blah, blah, blah. People want to see data, and that's where the analytics comes to play.

Okay.

Talking about peer reviews, this is something that you said is reflective of your own personal experience. I think probably a lot of us have 44% said peer reviews and user generated content are playing a greater role in the purchasing decision making process. Look, a company is a commercial enterprise. It is going to act in its own interest. It is going to say things in its marketing and communications that are flattering of itself, and People want that unvarnished view. Right, that's supposed to be public relations. Biggest claim to fame is that something written by a third party publication is more valuable because you've curbed your way into it. You were written on the merits of the idea rather than the amount of cash you have in your pocket that can spend on advertising.

So let me know, if it's true, the only other thing I'd add there is with the user generated content.

It's been the wild west. It's still the wild wild west. Anybody can go into any of these review fights, trust, pile at Glassdoor, google Maps and write reviews of your small business owner. It can generate their own importance. What I will say is there is other research studies that show if you get a negative review, how your business responds to that negative review can have as much impact on the buyer's decision as the review itself. So how you respond to something has an impact on shaping people's perception.

So if you get a bad review.

Don't be upset about it, just address it. Take it. Address it agnostic, independently and objectively as you can. They'll get wrapped up and know that your response counts. People consider it and obviously there's been other research studies. That wasn't in this one here, but I've seen this numerous times. It's been replicated multiple times. If you have a site with all five star reviews, people just don't believe it. They don't think it's credible. Nobody has five stars right. Everybody gets two and threes every now and then maybe a one.

You can't make everybody.

That's just a fact of life.

Have you noticed any industries that are sort of lagging and getting involved in the B2B reviews at all?

Yeah, so to answer your question, I haven't seen anyone lagging. I think one of the biggest things is that when these review sites all started getting built up, they started to get what was also called intent data. They have a website listing reviews from thousands of different products. They can see what people are looking at and how much time they're spending with it and what are the features they're looking at. And then, oh, by the way are they going over and looking at a competitive product on their site at the same time so they can take that data and sell it? I remember one of the first examples was a CMO. That was like heck, you all pay for that. If someone comes to my webinar, fills out my form, and they're in my cycle, they're in my business cycle, they're in my database. I'm going to start trying to do some nurturing emails and get them interested in my product. Maybe they'll raise their hand and take a demo. But if I have a review site that can tell me when that prospect goes and looks at a customer data, a competitive site, rather I want that information right away. Trigger that send that to me right away. I'll get that to the salesperson and then I'm going to send the salesperson to follow up with 24 hours. So that's just an example of how sophisticated that can be and why I think those review sites have taken off, because it's not just the review, but they get data from those reviews and they're selling that back to the companies that are getting reviewed by customers. That's kind of a brief answer. Hopefully that gets to the point here to the question you're asking.

Okay, now the other thing, and I've heard it mentioned from time to time that there have been fake reviews detected. Have you run across how that's being addressed by the industries?

I think that's a classic crisis situation for PR. It should become second nature. If there's a problem, fix it. If there's a problem and it's taking a while to fix it, make sure you put out some notice about how you're addressing it. I think the review sites have gotten pretty good at policing reviews up. One of the things that you'll notice they'll all do and you can see this on commercial sites on Amazon is they will verify the purchase. When you see a review, you verify the purchase at first. I think it's not to say that it's not a problem, and some companies maybe get hit harder than others, but I think the industry's done a pretty good job of policing that up.

That's good to hear. I'm just wondering is there anything additional that maybe we haven't touched on in terms of how B2B or I should say millennial influencing is involved in the sale and production and movement of product?

Yeah, I think the only thing is no matter. This study was about B2B, but I think and I'm speaking primarily from technology experience B2B tech experience, but I don't think it matters what industry you're in. We're all aging together. The generations are all shifting together, so any industry that you're in is going to see more and more millennials in leadership positions. I know this is true, for example, in law. Legal is a huge industry in the United States. Depending on whose numbers you believe, anywhere between $100 and $300 billion trade hands around legal services in the US every year. The US, not the world, just the US. So it's an enormous industry and we know that law firms are increasingly starting to see money as break into the partner ranks. So that's coming. That's going to happen everywhere you are. It doesn't matter what industry you're in.

Well, I think that you know you certainly provided some good information here, and one of the reasons, obviously, that we're talking is because I saw it and I thought it was important that our listeners hear about this and, you know, make sure that they're on board with why these changes are taking place and how they might have to come to grips with them in the near future. So, let's say, do you have any sort of closing remarks that you think that we should hear?

No, I think that's just it. It doesn't matter what space you're in, everybody's going to see this change so keep your eyes open and your ears listening for the changes in your space.

Well, my guest today has been Frank Strong. He's a writer for the script and the script, and his article Six Ways Millennials on Reshaping Business to Business Marketing has certainly opened my eyes to a lot of things that I was not aware of. Frank, once again, thank you so much for joining us today.

Yeah, thanks for having me, peter. It's fun talking to you.

And to my listeners. I hope you've enjoyed the show. Obviously, if you have or would like to get a review from you and also share this with your colleagues, and again, please join us for the next edition of the Public Relations Review Podcast.