I launched B2BBorington™ (Ltd) seven years ago when we were a start-up working out of my garage. Now I employ nearly 100 people and have a dedicated creative marketing team.
Before we get started, full disclosure: Until recently, I never really rated marketing. They always seemed to just waltz into the boardroom like they’re Tom Cruise on the Graham Norton show then start telling me what’s wrong with my marketing strategy. “It all starts with education”, they say. “You’ve got to educate the customer”. Next thing you know they’re telling me the best way to educate the customer is to dumb everything down, “keep it stupid and simple” they say, “find a set of words my granny would understand”.
Well here’s a newsflash Marketing Mega-minds: My granny can’t work the Sky+ box. She didn’t understand what I was doing when I first invented the BoringtonB2B tech tool kit 1.0 in the family garage seven years ago and she’s none the wiser now. When people ask her, she still says I’m keeping myself busy doing “something with computers!”
So educating granny is a non-starter. It’s all the other customers I’m more worried about. They don’t really seem to get what our innovative tech does either! I’ve given them all the presentations, all the specs, explained all the patent-pending trademark tech we’ve developed, but does the penny drop? No! Zip! Lightbulb moment there is not!
My marketing team says a properly considered messaging playbook is badly needed so I’ve offered to take the lead on developing that. The goal is to make sure the new messaging we create clearly communicates the unique features and benefits we’ve developed for our tech suite over the years. Since the majority of the unique features and benefits we’ve created were created by me, my role is obviously pivotal.