The value of journey work for brands in B2B marketing

The go-to is still, 'here is our product and here is a brief to deliver a campaign that will live for six weeks or so in different media. This is in the hopes that we create awareness that causes people to engage with our brand'. 

This is a scatter-gun approach that relies on chance as much as anything else, in the hope that the message somehow finds a way through to the right person and they act on it.

The way forward is a switch to 'journey work', which seeks to forge real connections with the c-suite decision-makers by creating a programme of communication that responds to their needs and solves their problems, over a sustained period of time.

It's about starting from the outside-in and adding value to these people's lives so that they build a relationship with the brand — rather than simply wallpapering big messaging.

Journey work is a lot like those 'choose your own adventure' books many of us read as children. You'd land on a page, get an idea of what was going on and then be offered the opportunity to choose a character's next step by turning to a page, which took the story in a different direction.

On a marketing journey, how a decision-maker engages with a piece of content determines where they go next. They are directed down different, personalised and relevant paths, which help them through the marketing funnel in a way that delivers value to them along the way.

At the same time, brands are learning more about these decision-makers and building a database of sales-ready leads that are far more likely to deliver a return on marketing investment.

Most short-sighted marketing sees potential customers get stuck at the awareness phase because there's no real call to engage with the brand beyond a URL, which they may or may not visit.

Instead, journey work invites customers and potential customers to come along on a path, talking to them about their changing needs over time and giving them the opportunity to engage with different types of content that adds value.

This content can take many forms — articles, podcasts, infographics and the like — which are accompanied by tools that allow them to do their jobs and run their companies better. Engaging with them over time can help create a positive perception of a B2B brand, preparing them better for conversion by sales teams.

By way of example, Demographica is currently working with a client who has always had a very traditional brief-based approach to marketing. The client has done plenty of brand awareness work but found that traction has been quite low.

Demographica has worked with several areas of the business to illustrate to them how journey work could solve this problem and deliver more of the kind of results that the client would like to see.

At this stage, there's no mention of a product or a sales push — the agency is solving the client's problems and creating an association with the brand, which it can nurture over time.

The challenge is that this requires a change in mindset among most marketers and it also requires plenty of change management and internal comms to shift the way the company talks about, and even designs, it's offering.

Moving away from six-week bursts to a sustained 12-18 month programme, that takes potential clients along on a journey, feels alien. But once there is a demonstration of the potential to build relationships, track leads and target actual potential customers more specifically, it's hard to discount the approach.

This is not to say that once you're on an 18-month path that there's no room for change; the feedback and tracking that journey work delivers is invaluable in helping fine-tune the plan to ensure that engagement is always relevant.

The whole concept of journey work is that brands are creating an experience for decision-makers in the businesses that they are trying to target. This will, over time, cause them to come back to the brand as a source of advice and assistance, rather than having the brand go out and attempt to convince them to buy a product or service.

This also requires a different kind of budgeting. Instead of saying that you have R1-milllion to spend on one of five brand campaigns for the year, commit the R5-million to running a programme over a sustained period and you'll see much better results.

For this kind of marketing to work really requires the whole business to commit and hold the line over a period. There's less wastage, less 'spray and pray' and more immediate tie-back to lead generation that will ultimately deliver real business results for both the service or product provider, and the customers they service. And that's how you build relationships that sustain businesses.

For more information, visit www.demographica.co.za. You can also follow Demographics on Facebook, Twitter or on Instagram.