B2B Trends

3 B2B Contrarian Trends to Keep an Eye On

We spoke with Jeff Lancaster of the B2B Institute at LinkedIn, who shared some B2B contrarian trends he’s seeing among brands today. Some of these contrarian trends point to powerful ideas for the building materials industry and, when leveraged in the right ways, can be used to effectively drive success and recognizability for building materials brands. Let’s dig in to understand a little more about what that really means.

Taking a contrarian approach in your building materials marketing.

We often look to trends and best practices to see what others in the industry are doing and where best to focus our clients’ efforts. However, as Jeff mentioned, some brands are actually taking a contrarian approach, looking at the gaps that are present and turning those into opportunities to drive success. Instead of looking at what others in your industry are doing, start thinking about what they aren’t doing and how you can use that to your advantage. 

Here are three contrarian trends happening in the B2B space right now. 

> Central casting. 

Central casting is when you use a person, character or go-to figure as the centre of your marketing, advertising or communications. The idea here is to create a relatable character that people can remember and tie back to your brand. In the B2C world, there are a lot of central casting examples that we all know and can recognize (Tony the Tiger, Mr. Clean, the Pillsbury Doughboy). A big part of this is probably because it’s been found that when you have a recognizable figure, it actually doubles memory recall of that ad. However, when it comes to B2B, central casting has been quite rare, and even more so in the building materials space. Now, instead of turning to characters, today’s trend is seeing more and more B2B brands taking these central cast characters right from their internal teams. They are building up their internal experts as being faces of the brand, in turn amping up that brand recognition.

> Situational awareness. 

Situational awareness is really around the idea that brands can create connections with their audiences based on their trigger points or interactions along their buying journey. An important part of this is really understanding your audience, knowing what their pain points are, what their buying committee looks like and their overall buying experience. Situational awareness is figuring out when and where it matters most for your brand to be top of mind. For example, if we’re looking at builders, is it when they’re quoting? Is it when they are meeting with building owners or suppliers? Think about their thought process, seasonality and challenges, and use that information to be front and centre in their decision making. It’s an approach that, when used more, can drive greater affiliation when your brand wants it most.

> Product delusion. 

The product delusion, as Jeff calls it, is something we see a lot of in the building materials industry. It’s the idea around heavily communicating (or bragging) about our products and services to drive sales. From how building materials products perform to how they revolutionize the building process, building materials brands love talking about the difference their products are making in the industry. However, only focusing on those efforts is more of a short-term win, generating quick sales. It’s important to also think about those long-term opportunities for brand awareness, reputation and credibility. So, while you’re doing your product launches and product promotions, be sure to include brand awareness efforts in the mix. Which brings us to what Jeff calls the 95-5 rule. We often focus on those in the market, the 5% of buyers who are ready to buy now. But, the 95-5 rule advises you to change your thinking and advertise to future buyers, the 95% of those who are not in the market yet. This is because buyers will move themselves in market when they’re ready – so you want to be the brand they remember when that time comes.

Explore the white space for all of its opportunities.

For building materials brands that might want to try out these contrarian trends, the first step is to look at what your competitors are doing and – more importantly – what they’re not doing to see what white space exists, and where your brand can fill the gap and take a bigger role in consumers’ minds.