Would you buy from your business?

When I start working with a new client, the first thing I need to get a handle on is their business. Not at all marketing-campaign connected yet – a deep dive and getting under the hood of business first: their industry, customers, competitors, sales cycle, what drives growth and what gets in the way.

Over time I’ve started to notice a clear pattern emerging.

A lot of my clients say they don’t know or get marketing – but they’re generally experts in their customers and their market. They have a rich understanding of the main questions, concerns and selling points that come up during the sales process, they know their key competitors, they know what triggers someone to start looking for a solution, where deals tend to stall, and what eventually gets a sale over the line or makes it fizzle out.

They also know what happens after the sale: what makes customers happy and retained.

The knowledge to translate this into a strong marketing strategy and campaign messaging is already there. The gap is often translating what the business knows about its customers into what a prospective customer can actually see.

Look at your business through your buyer’s eyes

This is where I like to use a very simple thought experiment with my clients: would you buy from your own business?

This works because it strips out a lot of what can quickly feel like marketing speak, into a simple business-first question. And that becomes easy for anyone to understand and have a qualified opinion on.

It forces my clients to remove their internal lens and look at their business as if they were an outsider.

Internally, you know your team has delivered hundreds of successful projects, or has a track record of long and successful customer retention. You know your implementation process runs smoothly. You know the customer who emailed the team last week to say how happy they were. You know exactly what your team does differently from the competition.

A prospective customer doesn’t.

They only know what they can see, hear and discover for themselves.

There’s a scale of due diligence depending on the person searching (which is also important to keep in mind) – but think of what you do when you’re considering a product or service for your own business. Depending on the purchase, you are likely to do some or all of the following:

• Search the company by name.
• Visit its website.
• Try to learn more about how exactly their product/service works – either via their website, videos, LLM searches or another method.
• See where they’re located.
• Look at their business reviews.
• Compare it to other alternatives/competitors in the space that you are across.
• Look for proof of experience in your industry or with businesses like yours.
• Search for case studies, testimonials or evidence of results.
• Look at LinkedIn to see company size, presence and the people behind the business.
• Read articles or other content to gauge its expertise.

Your prospective customers are doing the same thing to you.

Do you like what they’re finding?

Your sales conversations are a goldmine for your marketing

One of the best places to start isn’t with a new marketing framework. It’s with the conversations your business is already having, and likely the things you already know.

Speak to the people closest to your customers and prospects and get clear on:

• What triggers the search? What happens inside a customer’s business that makes solving this problem a priority?
• What questions repeatedly come up? What does almost every serious prospect eventually want to know?
• What creates hesitation? Where do deals tend to stall, and what makes buyers nervous about moving forward?
• What gets the sale over the line? What information, evidence or reassurance tends to turn uncertainty into a yes?
• What keeps customers happy once they’ve bought? What do existing customers value most about working with you?

Then take those answers and compare them with what you’re actually putting into market.

This is often where the disconnect becomes obvious.

Say one of the most common questions your sales team hears is, “What work have you done in my industry?”

Your team knows industry experience is an important part of the buying decision. You have that experience. You might even have brilliant examples of the work.

But if your website doesn’t contain a single relevant case study, a prospective customer doing their own research has no way of knowing that.

And the prospects asking your sales team that question are only the ones who have already made themselves known to you. What about all the potential customers doing that same research before they’re anywhere near your pipeline?

If they can’t find the answer from you, they are going to need to find it somewhere else.

Turn what you know into reasons to buy

This is where I think B2B marketing can become unnecessarily complicated.

We talk about funnels, content pillars, lead generation, nurture sequences, thought leadership and channel strategies. They’re all useful, but underneath them sits a much simpler question:

What does our customer need to know, see or believe to feel confident buying from us – and have we given it to them?

Once you know the answer, the marketing opportunities become much clearer.

For example:

• If buyers are worried about changing suppliers: show how you’ve successfully managed transitions before, explain the implementation process and make the next steps clear.
• If they need evidence you’ve worked in their industry: build case studies around relevant customers and make that experience easy to find.
• If results are the deciding factor: quantify them rather than relying on broad claims about the quality of your work.
• If your people are a major reason customers choose and stay with you: make those people visible and give them opportunities to demonstrate their expertise.
• If the same questions come up in every sales meeting: answer them through your website and content before the prospect ever needs to ask.

The objective isn’t simply to put more content into market. It’s to make the knowledge already sitting inside your business useful to someone deciding whether to buy from you, and being intentional with it.

Increasingly, information needs to be available to prospects before you know who the buyer is. Research journeys are becoming more fragmented. Being useful and easy to understand wherever someone encounters you matters.

It goes beyond marketing

There is also a limit to what marketing alone can solve.

You could have a brilliant website, strong case studies and genuinely useful content, only for a prospective customer to enquire and wait four days for a response. Or receive a vague proposal. Or encounter commercial terms that suddenly make the purchase feel much riskier than it did five minutes ago.

Every interaction with your business can either increase or decrease someone’s confidence in choosing you.

I see my role as an outsourced head of marketing to not only address the marketing piece, but interrogate and understand the full journey here. A good marketer goes beyond just communicating what a business does. Marketing should help surface what buyers need, identify where the business isn’t delivering or communicating it, and work across sales, leadership, customer experience and delivery to close those gaps.

Some of the answers will be marketing changes. Others won’t be.

A simple buyer-eye audit

If you want to put this into practice, start with two lists.

First, write down what you know about your customers:

• What triggers them to start looking?
• What questions do they repeatedly ask?
• What are they worried about?
• What tends to prevent them from moving forward?
• What do they need to believe before they’ll say yes?
• What ultimately gets the sale over the line?
• Once they’re a customer, what do they value most about working with you?

Then, for every answer, ask where a prospective customer can see evidence of it.

It might be addressed through your website, content, search presence, social channels, case studies, people, sales process, proposal or onboarding experience.

Wherever something is highly important to the customer but largely invisible to the prospective buyer, you’ve found a gap worth addressing.

So, would you buy from yourself?

Try to forget what you know from sitting inside your own business and experience it as a prospective customer would.

Search for yourself. Visit your website. Look at your people. Read your content. Look for evidence. Work out what happens if you want to enquire.

Then ask yourself:

If I were putting my own money – and potentially my reputation – behind this decision, have I seen enough to feel confident saying yes?

If the answer is no, go back to what your customers have already told you.

You probably know more about how to fix the gap than you think.

If your business needs help with B2B marketing, get in touch. We help businesses who have outgrown ad-hoc tactics build a mature marketing function.