#239: B2B Go To Market Strategy: Why Your Lead Gen Is Broken (and how to use the 5 BEs Framework)

Speaker A: G'. Day. It's George from the B2B playbook. If you're a B2B marketer and you're stuck spinning up some random campaigns based on whatever the business asks you to do this week, or you're chasing low quality leads and you're watching sales take credit for the business that you helped create, but instead you're just stuck, uh, justifying your activities to leadership, well, we have made something for you. The B2B incubator is our, ah, demand generation program for small in house B2B marketing teams. It's built around our 5B's framework and it gives you the strategy, the templates and the system to finally take back control of your marketing and actually align with sales. And we show you how to use AI too, but the right way, not to do more of everything worse, but to know exactly what to focus on and to do that better. It's a top rated demand generation course. We've had over 315 graduates, including marketers like Alison from Rivet who went through it and with their team are now driving 70% more pipeline for the business. And so if you've got some training budget sitting there that's unused, this is exactly what it's for. Applications for the next Cohort Close on 10 July, but of course we have our self service program available if that timing doesn't work for you. So the next time that you take that first sip of coffee in the morning, head to the B2B incubator.com join us and take back control of your B2B marketing. All right, let's get on with the show. Welcome to the B2B playbook where we help B2B teams punch above their way.

Speaker B: We're your hosts, Kevin and George. Each week we break down how modern B2B companies build demand, win deals and grow revenue using our 5Bs framework.

Speaker A: So if you work in marketing, sales or customer success and you want to make a bigger impact in your business, hit subscribe so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker B: And remember, revenue growth starts with people, not platforms. 25% of the market is always out of market.

Speaker A: The fundamentals which we get into in our framework, they're the things that make the huge impact for your business, for your team.

Speaker B: The chaos that these small marketing teams face is extreme.

Speaker A: Move from it, just being chaotic and

Speaker B: reactive to scalable time to regain some of that control with a proven framework.

Speaker A: Welcome to the 15 minute GTM M fix, a miniseries between our, uh, good friends at DealFront and the B2B Playbook on going to market in B2B businesses. We're your host. I'm George Kudunaros from the B2B Playbook. We've got Kevin Chen here as well. Kevin, say hello.

Speaker B: Hello viewers and listeners.

Speaker A: And we found that a lot of pain points our listeners deal with, uh, are also pain points for dealfront's customers. So we were inspired to partner up and put together a quick resource to help in this episode. We're starting the series off by examining why go to market programs are often broken or not working and what to do about it. The this episode forms part of this series of short episodes to give you a practical, scalable B2B go to market framework using our very own 5Bs framework.

Speaker B: All right, listeners and viewers, let's kick off by talking about why lead gen is broken today. The traditional lead gen focuses on a lot of vanity metrics and short term MQLs that don't convert. It emphasizes quantity over, uh, quality, importantly. And it passes on a lot of unqualified contacts to the sales team, which creates a lot of tension and poor results all around, both for the marketing team and for the sales team. So lead gen really lacks that long term scalability and neglects most of the buying journey. At worst, it can burn your market as well. I mean, just think about it. Who likes getting a sales call for a service that you don't need after downloading just a helpful piece of content that you've come across?

Speaker A: And that's what we see here in my whiteboard, Kevin, or our whiteboard. You've got this classic play that marketers are always asked to run and it's in response to the demand from the business. Hey, we need leads because sales aren't prospecting anymore when we should be. But that's for another episode. And what that looks like, Kev, is you have the marketer, uh, they get together an e book. It's not normally the best piece of content in the world. It's not always subject matter expert driven, but it's something to put together. It's gated. You need people's information to access it. We blast it out to our audience using ads, using email, using anything we can. The audience who fills out their details. They become a lead that gets passed on to sales. Sales reach out and try and contact these people. And very often there's very little result there because the person didn't want to be contacted. They have no real recollection of even reading the resource. And they certainly didn't want to talk to You. And this is the playbook, Kevin, that I think keeps burning trust, particularly when these ebooks are of poor quality. So when we talk about lead gen, lead gen, just to serve as sales, that isn't really building trust to the buyer. That's what we're attacking here.

Speaker B: And so what's the answer here? Well, the answer is the shift from capturing to shaping future demand. Most of your market, as you would know if you listen to, uh, our podcast, isn't ready to buy. Something like 95% of the market is always out of market. So capturing demand really only focuses on that 3 to 5%. What you need to do is really shift your attention towards shaping future demand by building trust and awareness with that 95%, the future buyers, so they come to you when they come into market and when they're ready to buy. It's important to guide your future customers through the five stages of awareness through your content in order to achieve this.

Speaker A: That's exactly right, Kev. And those future buyers, when we talk about shaping future demand with her, I guess a lot are, uh, probably talking about that in terms of brand marketing more traditionally. That's probably more thought of brand marketing, which is building those relationships of trust and making sure you're remembered by those who are out of market. They might not be fully aware of the problem that they have right now, or they might just be with another vendor or a competitor of yours. So they're actually not looking to buy right now. Now, holistic marketing looks at these people as well as those that are in market, which is more demand marketing or sales activation marketing. So a healthy balance requires both. And we think that our 5B's framework is probably a more simple way, Kevin, of uh, identifying what to do for the 95% who are out of market and the 5% who are in market. And so we have helpful frameworks to work through that.

Speaker B: This is particularly important listeners if you're in a small team or if you're working as part of a small team, particularly when you look after that marketing function. The chaos that these small marketing teams face is extreme because there's limited resources. You're already constantly firefighting and you're often siloed even with the tools that you use, which all make strategic execution really difficult to be focused on that 95% of the market. So it becomes a very reactive process where all your marketing is reactive. None of it is proactive or looking at the long term of demand generation. And this mini series specifically is designed to help those small marketing teams start to Regain some of that control with a proven framework so that you're not stuck with your pants down when you really need to scale.

Speaker A: That's right. It makes sure that you have all those great fundamentals in place. And Kevin, when people go through our B2B incubator program, they often realize that it's the fundamentals that they're missing. The tactics they keep hearing in LinkedIn and on HubSpot's blog or whatever it is. The fundamentals which we get into in our framework, they're the things that make the huge impact for your business, for your team. And so that's what we're really focused on. And on that note, Kev, why don't you start to take us through our 5Bs framework?

Speaker B: Our 5Bs framework that George has healthily brought up starts with Be Ready. It's all about understanding your customers at a really deep level so you can start to use that knowledge to inform the rest of your marketing activity. Then you move on to be helpful. The second stage of our, uh, 5B's framework, where you earn trust with your dream customers by building that helpful content that we've been talking about. We go specifically into things like the five stages of awareness and how you go about building that content so that it's truly helpful and actually builds that trust that you're looking to do there. In bcene, we then look at how to amplify your message to your dream customers. You've built the content, you know it's going to be helpful. You've based it on your knowledge that you've gathered in the Be Ready stage. But now it's about getting it seen by the right people at the right time. How do you use the different channels and the different resources that are available to you to get that content seen and to start to build that trust at scale. In Be Better, we then talk about how to optimize what's working using data and the different tools available to optimize your whole process that you've built up until that stage for your B2B marketing in general. And finally, in Be the Best, we look at how you future proof your strategy, how you bring the tools that the guys at the bigger end of town are using into your own place and the smaller, more chaotic teams. And how you then build a flywheel with these five stages with this framework so that you can continue to get value from it and continue to improve your marketing function.

Speaker A: And flywheel it is, Kevin. That's why it's represented as a flywheel on my whiteboard Every great framework's a flywheel, isn't it Kevin? It has to be a butterfly wheel. And you're absolutely right. Each be ready, be helpful, be seen, be better, be the best. Each of those five, they are a critical step in building that effective go to market strategy. And what we're going to work through in this mini series is covering off on each of those so you can have an understanding of what each of those key pieces are, uh, in the framework. So we'll be covering that in the mini series. Make sure you stay tuned for it if what else can our listeners and viewers expect from this miniseries from us?

Speaker B: Well, each episode will be roughly 15 minutes long. They'll be nice and bite sized and very practical like the rest of the framework we try out. And make this mini series as practical as possible so you can get the crux of the ideas and dive in deeper where you need and everything will be actionable and applicable to your own business. It's not just about theories and the fundamental frameworks that are in place. We built this framework so that it's infinitely practical so that you can actually get results from it. We also talk about things like tactics. So despite mostly focusing on strategies and frameworks, we also talk about tactics that are relevant, how to look at future tactics that come up so you can understand where those new tactics sit within your own framework and how you can improve on your framework in light of those new tactics. These will be really helpful, particularly for those small B2B teams who are trying to scale and trying to go to market and compete effectively and efficiently in their markets and industries. Finally, the whole series has the specific focus of how to create, capture, uh, and convert demand using modern marketing. Our specific focus again for this particular mini M series is to show you how to shape demand, how to then capture that demand effectively and ultimately convert demand into pipeline for your business using modern marketing. So key takeaways for this episode. Lead gen is no longer enough if it ever worked at all. Generating demand or shaping demand and having a holistic approach about going to market is the Future. And the 5B's framework is a clear step by step roadmap to fix broken B2B marketing systems.

Speaker A: Very good. Thank you Kevin. Okay listeners and viewers, thank you for tuning in. Uh, in upcoming episodes Kevin and I are going to unpack ah, each stage of our framework with practical tools and tips so you can actually execute them for your own business. Make sure you subscribe and follow along to transform your B2B marketing. Move from it just being chaotic and reactive to scalable. To find out more and get more in depth helpful content, check out the b2b playbook.com or deal front.

Speaker B: Thank you listeners and viewers. Catch you all Next time.

Speaker A: Before you go, head to the B2B playbook.com and subscribe to our newsletter for more resources and insights on all things B2B marketing, sales, and customer success.

Speaker B: And make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss any future episodes. And remember, revenue growth starts with people, not platforms. Sam.