Welcome to Marketing Chronicles. A newsletter where marketers come for expert industry commentary at the intersection of strategy and creativity — every Wednesday sent before daybreak. If you like what you see, join us for free.

In this edition:

• Column: How B2B Buyers Make Decisions Emotionally

• Inspiration: Nike’s Caitlin Clark OOH

Column: How B2B Buyers Make Decisions Emotionally

Human beings are intriguing creatures.

For all that talk about our superpower being able to think rationally, you might be surprised to hear that 90 to 95% of our decisions and behaviors are constantly being shaped non-consciously by the emotional brain system.

So, this begs the question: as B2B businesses how might we make a buyer choose us instead of our competitors?

Knowing that we’re actually not all that rational, then appealing to the brain won’t do us much good for most of our communications.

Yes — there is a time in which rational communications must to come into play. But that’s the pimple on the giant’s nose.

In my last column I unpacked the 95-5 Rule (at any given time, only 5% of buyers are “in-market” to purchase, whereas the vast majority is “out-of-market”). This means that we must find a way to engage with buyers at earlier stages in their journey so that we can make it to their shortlist of 3-5 companies when they eventually do enter the market to buy.

And since humans spend most of their existence being led by their guts, instead of their brains, our job as marketers then becomes to build “brand-relevant memories” in the minds of buyers before they begin thinking rationally about their purchasing intents.

Enter the world of Category Entry Points (CEPs).

What are CEPs

In one of the “sacred texts” of marketing effectiveness titled Category Entry Points In A B2B World: Linking Buying Situations To Brand Sales, Professor Jenni Romaniuk from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science describes CEPs as:

“The cues that category buyers use to access their memories when faced with a buying situation and can include any internal cues (e.g., motives, emotions) and external cues (e.g., location, time of day) that affect any buying situation.”

Whether you’re a B2C marketer selling potato chips or a B2B marketer promoting a corporate finance business, your primary role is to build refreshing memory links to the brand you’re managing.

These links come to the fore when buyers enter the market to buy, so the stronger the links you build the higher the chances that you’ll be considered in the active buyer stage.

Forget all that talk about “differentiators”.

Most companies lean too heavily into this myth that differentiation is an effective marketing strategy. Les Binet, Peter Field and the folks at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute have already debunked this idea:

“Contrary to popular belief, successful brands tend to appeal to all category buyers, rather than ‘owning’ a distinct market segment. Indeed, the data shows that markets are remarkably unsegmented, with most brands having very similar user profiles.” (Effectiveness In Context, 2018)

This doesn’t mean that brand distinction isn’t important (that’s a whole different conversation), but rather instead of bending over backwards to find something unique about your company, you should look at key category entry points to drive associations between your brand and those memory networks.

Finding Your CEPs

Identifying which category entry points your brand should go after is not super simple, but there are ways to begin thinking about it without needing to commission primary research for it.

The 7 Ws is a framework used to do just that:

• When do people think about your category (i.e.: how does your business’ category vary by season)

• Where do your customers typically engage with your category (i.e.: where do your prospects work from)

• While refers to the influence of activities that occur before, after or during your category buying/usage (i.e.: after you’ve finished using X product, what did you do)

• What other products do your prospects use with your category (i.e.: how does your offering interact with other products)

• Why refers to the psychological influences that drive buyers to take an action (i.e.: why does your business buy this category)

• hoW do prospects feel when they engage with your category (i.e.: how did you feel before you used X category)

• Whom is engaging with the category (i.e.: who is affected by your category)

So, start by listing all the key features of your business, write out how they benefit your clients/customers, then begin thinking about the above.

Find 10-15 different answers between the 7Ws, then evaluate your level of credibility and competitiveness to “claim” 5-7 of them. But make sure the ones you pick can actually drive some value for your organization (i.e.: has enough legs to drive revenue).

This list of 5-7 CEPs then become the territories in which your marketing and advertising must operate in.

The more your comms hammer that relationship between those key entry points and your brand (through your advertising, website, collateral, thought leadership pieces, etc.), the higher the chances your brand will come to mind when people think of those situations.

CEPs In Action

Let’s pretend you’re a corporate finance firm trying to get clients to sign engagements with you to structure debt/equity deals.

In this case, there could be several CEPs, such as:

• When a company is looking to expand operations into the US and needs financing to support growth.

• Companies seeking to refinance to take advantage of lower interest rates or better terms.

• Organizations looking to optimize their capital structure, balancing debt and equity to maximize valuation and reduce cost of capital.

• When a company is considering an acquisition or merger and needs to structure the deal's financing.

• Companies needing investment to develop or launch new products or services.

• Family-owned or closely-held companies preparing for ownership transfer or succession that may involve buying out existing partners or shareholders.

• And so on.

For the purposes of this example, I’ll pick one CEP in this fictional situation that speaks true to what this finance firm does, isn’t already tightly related to a competitor, and that has a lot of revenue runway for my business:

When a company is looking to expand operations into the US and needs financing to support growth.

In this case, I’d make sure the following took place:

1. I’d sponsor an international banking conference in my market, and secure a keynote speech;

2. Run a heartfelt campaign showing the story of a small business who grew in Alberta and eventually opened a shop in Texas;

3. Make debt/equity financing for US expansion as a service easy to find in my website;

4. Write a few pieces of thought leadership, upload it to my website, and share several content bites in my owned channels (i.e.: LinkedIn);

5. Optimize my Google Search keywords so my firm appears at the top of the query;

6. Reach out to podcast hosts in the financial space to be a guest at their show; and so on.

As you can see, you must focus on ONE CEP per piece of communication.

Humans cannot handle too many ideas at once, so the more you try to squeeze into it, the less effective your marketing investment will be.

Marketing Is An Investment

It’s important to remember that whether you invest $1M or $100K into driving association between your brand and a CEP, results won’t materialize overnight.

Mental pathways take time to develop, but when done consistently and over time can set your business up for long-term profitability, lower price sensitivity, and market share gains.

And while your business development team is working hard to capture demand in the short-term, as a marketer your role is in driving long-term profitability.

As professor John Dawes articulated so well when referring to the competitive advantage “brand-relevant memories” offer a brand in his paper on The 95-5 Rule, writing:

“Advertising mainly works by building and refreshing memory links to the brand. These memory links activate when buyers do come into the market. So, if your advertising is better at building brand-relevant memories, your brand becomes more competitive.”

📢 Community Shout Out

Interested in more B2B Marketing content or have unanswered questions? All you have to do is the following:

• Share this week’s newsletter on LinkedIn.

• Write something nice about it and add a question.

• Tag me on LinkedIn so I can see it.

I’ll answer it in the post comments and pick someone to give a shout out in my next column!

Inspiration: Nike’s Caitlin Clark OOH

What do you do when one of your athletes breaks the record for most points scored by a Division I basketball player, men's or women's?

Nike never misses:

More of PPA:

• 🤝 Connect with Pedro on LinkedIn and/or X

• 💌 In case you missed it:

  • Fixing B2B Marketing

  • There’s No Such Thing as “Freedom of The Press”

  • How To Build Lasting Brands While Winning In The Short-Term

PPA

Pedro Porto Alegre is a seasoned marketing professional with in-depth experience building brand and communications strategies for top-tier B2C and B2B organizations across Canada. His repertoire extends from crafting and executing integrated multi-media brand marketing campaigns to the commercialization of performance-driven innovations for multimillion-dollar and nascent brands alike.