In the world of B2B marketing, too often companies try to sell something based on why they think the buyer should purchase the product.
"You need to understand how to talk to them in a way that’s meaningful to them,” Jeannine Rossignol, Vice President, Marketing Services, Xerox told attendees during her April 10 session, “The B2B Marketing Selfie Strategy,” at the Forrester Forum for Marketing Leaders in San Francisco. 
“As B2B marketers, we weren’t doing that,” Rossignol said. “We wanted to talk about ourselves and why you should buy from us, completely ignoring the person behind all those business decisions at those companies. We have to be customer-centric marketers. We have to humble enough to know it’s not about us.”
Rossignol said selfies are a fun, fascinating example of what people (in business and in life) care about most–themselves. Like other great B2B marketing strategies, Xerox’s Get Optimistic initiative feeds that self-interest with highly relevant, customer-centric content.
“B2B can be just as fun as consumer marketing,” she said. “It’s an exciting place to be from a marketing perspective. B2B is becoming more and more like B2C. You have to listen, not just to respond, but listen to understand.”
Rossignol listed some key points that helped change the face of Xerox marketing:
B2B marketers are more and more like B2C: We’re not speaking to companies, we’re speaking to individuals
Challenges: Marketing materials weren’t being used, too much time spent by sales creating materials, purchase decisions were being made before sales showed up on site
Understand and tap into the rise of the cycle of advocacy (i.e., buyers go from Belief to Action to Confidence to Advocacy at Scale)
Optimize content: Make your content Searchable, Snackable, Shareable (e.g., Xerox developed 10-12 vignettes from one video)
Know who you’re talking to: With your content marketing and help provide what they need [As marketers we need to focus on answering our consumers questions.]
Powerful industry marketing: (e.g., Xerox developed campaign and account-based marketing strategies focused on specific industries and individuals)
Develop “owned” media: Xerox partnered with Forbes to create Chief Optimist magazine (digital and print versions) [Great example of Xerox pushing innovation, and going where other companies aren’t.]
Partnered with Curata to help curate content
Partnered with Forbes for content in addition to its own content
Conducted interviews to develop its own content
Tapped into user-generated content, including comments and discussions from its community
Provided each sales person with a copy of the magazine
Don’t be afraid to take risks!
Rossignol said the right marketing materials need to connect with the right people. She said about 60% of qualified leads don’t make any decisions because they’re not getting the information they need to make the decision.
“Our prospects aren’t engaging the sales person until they’re halfway through the buying cycle,” she explained.
Nearly 90% indicated that thought leadership is critical to their buying experiences, Rossignol said.
“Thought leadership isn’t about selling, it’s about engaging,” Rossignol said. “Content is king, so we looked at the cycle of advocacy. In that B2B realm now, it’s not about targeting the company, it’s about targeting a person and you have to understand their wants, their needs, their experiences, and their beliefs because it’s their beliefs that are going to drive their decisions to actually make that purchase, and they will tell their network about their experiences.”
A prospective buyer might need a whitepaper on a particular subject, or a webinar, she said.
“We’re going to tell them a completely different story than we would have in the past,” Rossignol said. “We need to show examples of how we’ve done it for others. We created 10-12 vignettes from one video. We make it so information is searchable and shareable inside that cycle of advocacy.”
At one point, Rossingnol said it was almost impossible how to tell the difference between Xerox and its competitors.
A vital word for Xerox’s marketing transformation is optimism.
“It seems so simple, but it’s completely changed how we’ve engaged our customers,” Rossignol said. “We’re not talking to them about their problems and how we can help them solve their problems. We are talking about opportunities we can uncover with them. We’ve gotten such an amazing reaction from our customers. It feels really good to feel optimistic.”
Rossignol said the company also wanted a way to physically get in front of its customers and provide them with the content they need.
“A magazine and web version felt very daunting,” she explained. “But we partnered with Forbes (60% of content comes from them and 40% from Xerox). We personalized it for the web version. We wanted to curate that content from multiple sources, keeping it constantly fresh. It (the magazine, “Chief Optimist,”) provides more credibility with the people we’re targeting. For us, it’s been liberating. We want to drive the message about optimism in the workplace and make connections to customers, generate more appointments, increase the sales pipeline, and ultimately close deals.”