With or Without You

Welcome to The Beat by Rockstar CMO. I’m Ian Truscott, a CMO and trusted advisor, and in this newsletter, I’d like to share a mix of marketing street knowledge that I hope will help unlock the rockstar marketer in you.

Hello!

I’m going to dive straight into this week’s topic, as I was thinking that in B2B marketing, we tend to focus on how we can help our prospective customers based on the assumption that:

(a) They have recognised that they have a need

(b) Are aware that a solution like ours is available

And the big assumption:

(c) That they want to do something about (a) with the knowledge they have of (b).

Often, they have the (a) and the (b), but are perfectly happy not to get to (c), they are satisfied with doing nothing.

The friction of change wrapped up in (c) is too much.

Sometimes, the stumbling block is earlier, the need (or demand) is not that strong, maybe the change in the world that your solution addresses (or the category your product is in) is not recognized by the mainstream (yet), and getting to (a) requires some category education.

And then, of course, getting from (a) to (b) requires a level of brand awareness.

Yes, I said the dirty word “brand”.

And yet, we kick off our marketing conversation with the assumption that they are ready to proceed. They’ve gone from a to b and are prepared to embrace c.

Conveniently, for this newsletter, U2 wrote a song whose title, “With or Without You,” neatly encapsulates this challenge.

Sadly, the lyrics don’t quite work as they say “I can’t live with or without you”, when the above statements would suggest that yes, they can live without us.

We spend a lot of our time thinking about the “with you” bit, the benefits, features, and functions, but what about the “without you”?

What are they doing without you?

How are they solving the problem? Are they aware of it? Do they know there is a solution, and what is the friction in doing something about it?

How can we help with that?

Appreciate you reading this far, it would be splendid if you could have a click around on the links and if you happen to end up on our new Velocity B website, please let me know what you think, delighted thhat we’ve had some good feedback so far.

Cheers!

Ian Truscott | Managing Partner | Velocity B

This week’s street knowledge

What caught my eye on the topic and a bit more from me…

This week on the podcast…

Get your Marketing Mojo Working

A classic from U2 gave us the title this week.