Here’s What Your B2B Clients Actually Want

Here’s What Your B2B Clients Actually Want

It’s pretty obviously, really

June 07

Here we are then, the tenth email. Email number ten. Nùmero diez. Double digits. Quite the milestone, no?

Over the weekend, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse came out, a film which has something like over hundred different spider-men in it, all from different universes, each one a variant of the other. I watched it and I have to say, it was incredible: the animation, the writing, the soundtrack, everything just worked (even if I did desperately need to pee throughout the entire second half and when I eventually did at the end, it was a very long and drawn-out two to three minute event. It was incredible, it might have even been a more relieving experience than the film itself… ANYWAY).

It got me thinking, though: what kind of multiversal variants of SaaS Marketer Weekly are there? Of me? Of Tom?!

Actually, let’s examine all the possibilities of Tom, shall we? I’m sure he won’t mind. In this universe, he’s the Founder and CEO of Fame and SaaS Marketer Weekly, but in another one, I’m very much willing to bet that he’s a man with a very successful company that sells men’s leggings, all thanks to a coherent, positive and not at all clumsy Dragon’s Den pitch. Or, alternatively, he could literally be Spider-Man, but like, the B2B version. I don’t know what that would consist of, maybe he would swing around London and only save B2B industry professionals, or he’s swing into meetings, smashing the window and pitching cool podcast ideas?

Who knows? The world is full of possibilities.

B2B Marketers: Here’s What Your Clients Actually Want From You

😕 The Inevitability of Disappointingly Vague Feedback

Imagine you’re part of a B2B marketing agency (if you’re reading this then you probably are, so it wouldn’t be that hard for you to imagine it really… not that we’re assuming your profession or anything, it’s just, well, this is a rather niche, specific website…) and you’ve just created a really bloody great video edit for one of your clients’ ad campaigns. You’re so proud of it, in fact, that you show it to your boss, and even they’re like, ‘you’ve smashed this one, mate’.

So, with all your pumped-up adrenaline, you open up your emails, attach it and send it over to them. The minute you hit that ‘send’ button, however, you enter a sort of professional purgatory, and that confidence surging through your body? It’s now transformed itself into heavily breathing anxiety, swirling around your chest, dreading the response.

When they do reply finally at the end of the day (it’s alway at the end of the day), they weren’t quite as positive as you were hoping. They’re perfectly nice about it, but there are a few things they want you to change. This is fine, it’s disappointing for sure, but it’s expected nonetheless; the client’s needs must always take priority.

There’s just one problem though: their critiques are a little vague. ‘This part just doesn’t feel right’, they say. ‘I feel like this section needs more umph. The brand needs to be a bit more front and centre.’

Instinctually, you roll your eyes and say to yourself, ‘The fuck does that even mean?’

🤔 The DBA’s ‘What Clients Think’ Report

If you’re in the B2B marketing world, you probably read that scenario and thought to yourself ‘yup, been there’.

The Design Business Association (DBA) recently published its ninth annual ‘What Clients Think’ report. Based on 650 interviews, here are some of the highlights of what clients think and want from their marketers:

63% of clients would rather be presented with
1 creative route option than 3
75% of clients admit to finding design
effectiveness difficult to quantify
61% of clients think their agency could
understand more about their business
Only 12% of clients described their creative agency
as the ‘best’ partner/supplier they work with

To be honest, when The Drum wrote about these in their article, they said they were surprising figures, but… I don’t know if that’s the right adjective. Your clients have hired you for a very specific reason: the services that you are fluent and proficient in. Is it really that much of a surprise to learn that your client might not know how to explain or quantify what’s wrong with your work?

🤯 Be Grateful for the Opportunity!

Read on the web >>

Copy of the Week:

This is from ClickFunnels, whose aim is to help entrepreneurs convert their traffic.

I love copy like this, the kind that uses simple but effective similes or metaphors or analogies to get their point across. So many businesses now dumb things down to their prospective audiences, which is quite an insulting thing to do really.

Tease and stimulate the reader’s imagination! They’re not dumb and we, as a species, thrive on freedom of thought. We crave it, so lean into it more!

Meme of the Week:

As always folks, thank you so much for reading, and let us know if you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover!

Have a wonderful rest of your week, and if you’re not doing anything this weekend, go and watch the new Spider-Man. Seriously. It’s incredible.

Keep Growing,
SaaS Marketer

P.S.

Our sponsor for this week is SaaStock, and they’re offering you 20% off on tickets for their next event!

I still reckon it’s ballsy of them to advertise on here. One day they’ll see I’ve made some absurd and ridiculous comparisons between, I don’t know, Al Pacino in The Godfather and the evolution of B2B SaaS Companies in the last three years (Oh my GOD! TOM, THAT’S SUCH A GOOD IDEA. MAKE A NOTE OF IT, TOM. I’M DOING IT NEXT WEEK and they’ll pull the plug.

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