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B2B MARKETING: 5 PRINCIPLES TO FOLLOW IN 2025
5 B2B marketing principles you need to be following in 2025...
Niall Ratcliffe
December 01, 2024
In partnership with
Morning!
It’s another wet and cold English weekend. The sky is grey, the rain is drizzling, and I’ve got a green tea next to me in an attempt to stop me from freezing to death.
But what a week it’s been! We closed off a record month with the agency, we’re hiring 3 new people, and we hosted our largest masterclass ever with 400+ people there.
And today, I’m going to share some of the biggest marketing lessons I’ve learned this month - particularly from a B2B perspective.
Let’s get into it!
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
In 2012, a young lad at Edinburgh University walked to his bathroom and sat down on the toilet, only to find out… there was no toilet paper.
So like any “normal” 19-year-old lad at University, rather than going to the shop and buying more, he decided to post it on Twitter.
The post took off and so the young uni student decided to keep posting more and document the classic problems students deal with at university.
Things like:
Realising how expensive cheese is.
Forgetting to buy washing up liquid.
Needing to buy dishwasher tablets.
As well as all of the coming-of-age problems students have at university. Over the next few months, he’d post more and more. The more he posted, the more followers the page was gaining.
It hit 10k, then 20, then 30 and after just a few months, it crossed 50,000 followers.
A few weeks later, that uni student got a message from a man named Steven, Steven Bartlett. Steven had an idea that they could use the Twitter page to push products to students.
That right there was the birth of SocialChain.
An agency that would go on to be Europe’s fastest-growing social media agency, be listed at a £300M valuation and become the driving social media force behind brands like BooHoo, Uber, Amazon Prime, and more.
That uni student? His name was Dominic McGregor.
Over the last 4 months, Dom has been advising us at noticed. and taking the agency to the next level. After just a few meetings, I quickly realised that what Dom doesn’t know about marketing isn’t worth knowing.
So, last week we hosted a live masterclass with Dom where he shared the inside scoop on how to create a great B2B marketing strategy in 2025.
400+ companies signed up and the session was filled with absolute gems.
But most of all, Dom clearly outlined the 5 key principles your B2B marketing needs to have going into 2025.
Here they are:
Principle 1: Everything Trickles Down From Attention
In early 2015, SocialChain was all over the UK newspapers with every man and their dog in England talking about this company from Manchester that was “running the internet”.
1 year ago, Dom & Steve were both just university dropouts who were giving a business a go. The next minute they were talking on stages up and down the country and getting enquiries from brands like Warner Bros and Amazon.
On the masterclass, I asked Dom how they drove so much interest in the company and attracted so many major brands early on.
His answer: It all trickles down from attention.
Dom explained that early on they were trying to break into the sports industry when they got offered a small speaking gig at a conference called SoccerEx.
This was their chance, but Dom knew that the only way they could make a splash at the conference would be if they could show the impact of attention.
So, the night before they created a transfer rumour that Arsenal had just signed “Rex Secco” (an anagram of Soccer Ex) a 16-year-old French wonderkid for £34 million.
A graphic they created for the campaign
Overnight the rumour blew up on social media and was covered in a bunch of major news outlets - it even got on Sky Sports.
When Dom told the story, I asked him, “But does this apply to other B2B businesses?”
“People forget this was B2B marketing. Your goal when marketing needs to be to get the attention of the people you’re targeting,” he said, “Our aim was to get the attention of people in the sports industry, and that’s exactly what they did.”
He even admitted that they ended up signing William Hill off the back of this campaign.
B2B companies love to think in terms of money in and money out. This is a great reminder that money in → attention out is also very valuable.
Principle 2: Build A Community, Then Build A Business
The word “community” gets thrown around a lot, but no one understands building communities for businesses like Dom does.
He said, “Communities are built from a shared interest. People follow people and brands that share an interest with them.”
And THAT is where most B2B companies go wrong.
Their idea of posting content online consists of:
Sharing company updates.
Talking about their products.
Explaining the service they offer.
Guess who has a shared interest in that? No one.
This is why brands like SEMrush are killing it right now by simply marketing like a B2C company.
SEMrush’s TikTok
Their target audience: Marketing directors, Marketing leaders
Their shared interest: Marketing jokes
SEMrush’s TikTok strategy: Revolves around inside jokes from people who work in marketing.
Marketers consume their content and later on they’ll buy from them.
The key is to deeply understand who your ICP is on a personal level, learn your shared interests, and then talk about them in places where they hang out.
Principle 3: Learn The Invisible PR Effect
Dom explained that a lot of businesses quit on social media because they aren’t getting millions of views like the people they see online. But what they overlook is the “Invisible PR” effect.
Steven talking on it too
This is an idea that every company has an invisible reputation that is dictated by how other people talk about you and your company. It’s a reputation that you don’t see, but you can control.
Most businesses will sit down with their marketing team and see only 500 impressions on content and think:
This isn’t working.
We’re wasting our money.
This doesn’t have an impact.
They forget how impactful those 500 impressions could be.
1 of them could be someone in Steven Bartlett’s team, who shows your company to Steve, who talks about it on his podcast and ends up making the brand famous.
Or it could be a billionaire investor’s daughter, who knew their dad was looking to invest in a business like that.
You only see the 500 impressions, what you don’t see is the impact and conversations those 500 impressions are starting.
You don’t see them, but you can dictate them. All views matter.
Principle 4: Brand Is The Multiplier (The Halo Effect)
For the first 3 years of my marketing career, I always underestimated the impact of a company brand. Quite ironic to say I worked in personal branding.
But it wasn’t that I didn’t believe that powerful branding can have an impact, I suppose I just misunderstood the impact it has on all businesses - even those that aren’t wildly famous.
In the masterclass, Dom explained that brand is often the invisible multiplier.
While a lot of businesses love to focus on advertising because it gives them a simple input, output equation - e.g. £3 spent = £5 in sales. Too many companies forget that if you’re able to stack brand on top of that it multiplies everything.
This is called “The Halo Effect”
In terms of valuation, a company with a great brand is much more valuable than one without.
In terms of pricing, a company with a great brand is able to charge more for the same products.
In terms of advertising, a company with a great brand often has higher-converting ads too.
The issue is, in the initial stages of building that brand it can feel like you’re setting money on fire for no reason. Dom reminded me just how vital it is to understand the long-term impacts a brand has on companies of all sizes.
Principle 5: Think Like A B2C Company
Last week, I posted a graphic on LinkedIn that received some controversial comments.
I was trying to showcase the clear lack of progression in B2B marketing over the last decade.
Because while B2C marketing has become tech-heavy and leverages a lot of very new approaches… most B2B businesses are still struggling away with the same old tactics.
I never understood why B2B was so far behind, but on the masterclass, Dom explained that there is a psychological line in many marketer’s heads that separates B2B from B2C.
In B2C, they think they’re targeting people. In B2B, they think they’re targeting businesses.
The irony is, both sides of the coin are just targeting people - and that’s where the disconnect lies.
That’s why the B2B brands that think like B2C brands are dominating the industry. Brands like:
1/ Hubspot - Who have spent 100s of millions building a podcast network and investing in massive media brands like ‘The Hustle’.
2/ SEMrush - Who have been getting millions of views on TikTok through comedy-style content.
3/ Ahrefs - Who have racked up 560,000+ YouTube subscribers with their video content.
If you’re a B2B company, you’re still marketing to people. Those people just happen to make buying decisions in a company you want to work with.
It’s person-to-person, even in B2B.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
1/ Everything Trickles Down From Attention
2/ Build A Community, Then Build A Business
3/ Learn The Invisible PR Effect
4/ Brand Is The Multiplier
5/ Think Like A B2C Company
If you made it to the masterclass, I hope you learned something. If you didn’t hopefully these 5 key lessons taught you something.
The thing I love most about working in marketing is how much I learn every single week - and it’s safe to say I learned a lot this week.
Enjoy this breakdown? Why not share it with a friend?
Don’t forget to rate it below too! 🙂
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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