Smoke and Mirrors in B2B Marketing

One of my guilty pleasures is watching real estate shows like Million Dollar Listing and Selling Sunset.

One thing that becomes obvious when you’re watching these shows as an interested outsider is how little impact the individual agents and agencies really have.

No agent can sell a shitty, overpriced property. No one has magic powers to make buyers pay far above market value.

The one magic trick all agents use when a property isn’t selling is to convince the seller to lower the price. That’s it.

That’s the one tool that is truly having an impact.

When a previous agent failed to sell a property, the new agent will simply list it at a lower price and tell the world about the price reduction.

It’s never the new marketing push or staging that makes a difference. It’s always the price reduction.

It becomes a running joke when you watch these shows.

When it comes to marketing and staging pretty much everyone is doing the exact same things.

You list the property on the MLS, you stage the property, you hire a professional photographer to take some nice photos, you do an open house, you do some social media marketing, you call fellow agents, you do some email marketing.

If you get the fundamentals right here, the odds are high that everyone currently looking for the kind of property you’re selling will see it.

That’s really the extent of what you can do.

A certain number of people is looking to buy at the price point your property is listed at at any given time.

Your job is to make them aware of the property and make sure you don’t scare them away with a bad presentation.

Everyone interested will then reach out, have a look, and make an offer if they like it.

This isn’t rocket science.

Million dollar homes are not impulse purchases.

Buying decisions mostly boil down to price per square foot and location. Additional factors are the condition of the property, architectural style, and the features like the size of the garden, the pool, etc.

Real estate agents have zero control over these factors.

And yet, real estate agents are paid A LOT. A single sale can net them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

That’s the weirdest part of it all.

They obviously do an amazing job at convincing sellers that they do possess some kind of secret sauce.

Everyone is always acting like the agent and agency are the most important part of the equation.

It’s all about their network, their social media presence, their marketing skills, their negotiation skills, their ability to close deals.

But after watching a few seasons of these shows, it becomes obvious that it’s all smoke and mirrors.

The one thing top agents truly excel at is securing listings.

That’s their secret.

They are amazing at convincing sellers that they should allow them to list their property.

It’s why agencies like The Oppenheim Group, Douglas Elliman, and The Agency are willing to have TV crews follow them around.

It’s all about branding and positioning.

But once they secure the listing, the work they do is pretty much the same as what any other agent would do.

They do all the basics reasonably well.

Sometimes they go above and beyond and host a particularly fancy open house or do some marketing stunt.

But they don’t do this because it helps to sell the property. The real goal is to signal to other sellers that they are the best agents to list with.

Now here’s the interesting part.

The exact same thing is going on in B2B marketing.

Everyone is acting like they have some kind of secret sauce.

Growth hackers are paid handsomly by startups. Marketing agencies charge thousands of dollars to deploy their secret sauce.

But everyone who has been in the game long enough knows there are few things that truly move the needle.

Just like in real estate, the product and offer are the most important factors.

Marketers have zero control over these factors.

No marketer can generate sales for a shitty B2B product wrapped in a bad offer.

What matters in B2B marketing is making sure everyone who potentially could be in the market for your product is aware of it and not scared away by a bad presentation.

That’s it.

But the crux of the issue is that just like in real estate this is a commoditized service. Thousands of agencies and consultants can do this for you at roughly the same level of quality.

So B2B marketing becomes a game of branding and positioning.

The best agencies and marketers do have one secret sauce: they are amazing at selling themselves.

The work they do for clients is pretty much the same as what everyone else would do.

All fancy stuff is just smokes and mirrors that helps them secure more clients but does little in getting the clients results.

I know this because I’ve been there and done that.

When Ryan and I started our B2B marketing agency we were convinced there was some kind of secret sauce.

We were convinced we could use “intent signals” to figure out for each company who was in the market for their product and then tailor our marketing to them.

People always got excited when we told them about this on sales calls.

Now I know that this doesn’t work.

It sounds cool, it’s fun to talk about, it helps to secure clients.

But it doesn’t move the needle when it comes to getting results for clients.

It’s nowadays incredibly cheap to reach almost anyone on the planet.

So if you run a broad campaign targeting everyone who potentially could be in the market for your product, you will also reach everyone you would have targeted with your “intent signals”.

On top of that, “intent signals” are mostly noise anyway. It’s virtually impossible to determine from the outside what a company is looking for. (First-party and second-party intent data seems to have a positive effect but you have to wonder how much of it is attribution hacking.)

Moreover, there is only so much you can do to influence B2B buying decisions.

Again, these are not impulse purchases.

You can make people aware of a specific product, but you can’t make them buy it no matter how clever your creatives are.

Being annoying across multiple channels will never magically make companies buy your product.

Companies are much better off if they focus on nailing the fundamentals by making sure their offer is top of mind for everyone who could be in the market for it in a way that doesn’t leave a bad taste in their mouth.

Resources spent on fancy campaigns are almost always wasted.

I feel very confident in saying this after running 1000+ campaigns for hundreds of B2B companies.

But this puts me in a difficult position.

Selling was a lot easier back when we believed we had some kind of secret sauce.

We now focus on honesty, transparency, and fair pricing in sales conversations.

Unfortunately, this isn’t nearly as sexy.

People desperately want to believe in secret sauces.

“Yes, maybe things did not work out with the previous three agencies but maybe these guys have the secret sauce.”

It more convenient to keep hunting for that magic bullet than admitting that maybe your offer is just not that compelling.

Even when I explain all of this most people still think “Yeah Jakob, maybe you don’t have any secret sauce. But these guys over there made a pretty compelling case that they do.”

I’m sure this is what lots of people are thinking when reading this.

Sigh.

Unfortunately, once marketers realize that it’s all smoke and mirrors most lean into it instead of trying to be honest and transparent about it.

They continue to invent phrases like demand generation or account based marketing that do not mean anything.

Everyone complicates to profit.

People lie all the time about the results they’re able to achieve, their success rate, and the impact they have on their clients’ businesses.

It’s how you get ahead in the game.

Almost never you get a truthful look behind the curtain.

It sucks.

All I can do is to keep talking about it.

If you’re running a company, please don’t get bamboozled by the smoke and mirrors.

Focus on the fundamentals.

Keep it simple.

And when things aren’t working out, don’t get distracted by marketing nonsense.

Focus on the offer and the product.

That’s where the magic happens.