Modern marketing is fast-paced and a lot of fun, but it’s not always easy to keep up with the latest trends and it can be even harder to find inspiration when it feels like you’re stuck trying the same things day in day out and hoping that something different will happen.
The good news is that you can often find inspiration by looking to other industries. For example, the burgeoning cryptocurrency marketplace is similar to the early years of the online gambling marketplace, so we can look at the past in an effort to predict the future. Likewise, B2B technology brands can learn from other B2B brands in other industries, such as by looking at industrial machinery manufacturers and examining how they reach their target audience.
The key is not to simply imitate other brands but rather to look at what works and what doesn’t and to learn what you can apply to your own business. The reverse holds true, too. If something doesn’t work for a brand in another industry, the chances are that it won’t work for you either, so you can take that knowledge and avoid repeating those mistakes without it costing you a penny.
What we can learn from B2C
It’s not just other industries we can learn from. As B2B marketers, we’re also often quick to overlook B2C marketers and the trends that they’re taking advantage of. Sure, we might stumble across the odd news story or the occasional case study here and there, but it’s unlikely that we’re actively going out of our way to read them. And that’s a shame.
I’m not saying that there aren’t big differences between B2B and B2C, of course. But that said, not all B2C marketing is as intangible as attempts at viral videos which are measured by reach and impressions instead of a solid return on investment. In fact, it’s particularly worth going out of your way to look at big ticket consumer goods such as cars and property. That’s because they rely on lead generation and lead nurturing just as much as B2B companies with complicated offerings.
In fact, these types of company can be a gold mine for B2B marketers because they tend to get the mixture of creativity and strategic thinking just right. Because of this, there’s often stuff you can take from their approach and then customise them for B2B. In particular, it’s worth looking at the creative they use to generate leads and how it ties in with their messaging, along with the user journeys that they deploy and the lead nurturing that they have in place. Consider signing up to a few mailing lists and looking at exactly how they try to sell to you. You might be surprised by what you learn!
Conclusion
Marketing is like most things in life in that it’s a constant learning curve. We get ideas all of the time from all sorts of disparate sources, and one way to encourage more of these ideas to happen is to broaden our minds by going outside of our usual comfort zone and learning about something a little different. Looking to other industries can help you to do that, but it’s also true that if you diversify too much then you might miss out on something that really matters. Try to find a balance.
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Dane
Dane Cobain is a published author, freelance writer, book blogger, poet and (occasional) musician from High Wycombe, UK. Before going freelance, he worked as a social media marker, now specialising in writing about publishing, technology and marketing.