The C-Suite. The pot of gold of B2B marketing: C-suite executives open doors, make decisions and sign off on invoices. They hold the keys to the business purse strings and wield huge influence over the direction the business goes and the decisions it makes.
So it’s no wonder that everybody wants their business.
However, the C-suite is so bombarded by messaging that they’re possibly not listening anymore.
C-suiters are also protected by gatekeepers - assistants, schedulers to filter away needy, clamouring visitors, unnecessary meetings, meandering emails and sales publications. They’re scheduled down to the nanosecond. Consider them uber-productive human bots.
So how do you as a marketer get their attention?
Provide the C-suite with what they need: relevant, engaging, educative, smart, intelligent and yes, humorous, content. The C-suite is very responsive to content they perceive as coming from experts in their industries, especially content that’s based on exclusive data and analysis and which will position them as innovative, wise and trusted leaders within their organisations.
First Things First: Tell Them Something They Don’t Know
At the highest ranks of a corporation, the need for smart information is acute. Chief executives can easily exist in a bubble or silo only surrounded by yay-sayers. Executives want “fresh ideas from outside their companies” (Selling to the C-Suite by Nicholas A.C. Read and Dr. Stephen J. Bistritz). A Quartz survey of more than 1,300 global c-suite executives found that they are very responsive to content from sources they consider experts in their industries, especially exclusive data and analysis.
Improve Your Mobile User Experience
The same Quartz Survey found that 79% of executives expect a seamless mobile experience, and 91% are unlikely to return to a website if there’s a bad ad experience that delays a site’s loading time. So if your business has the C-suite as a target audience you might want to re-consider pop up ads and chat bots.
Appeal to Their Direct Reports
A CMO I reported to regularly forwarded on content he felt was useful for our knowledge development to me and the rest of the content and social team.
Execs spend at least 4 hours a week consuming content, according to Longitude. They are actually very willing to read brand content. The challenge is that less than half consider the last piece of brand content they read to have been interesting. Depth and sophistication is critical, and if it’s interesting enough they will subscribe and share with their direct reports.
So think about what would be useful not only to the C-suite executive but also what the C-suite executive will consider as valuable for their direct reports.
Get Them at Their Personal
Sponsor podcasts. I can’t say this enough. Podcast sponsorship is huge in consumer marketing but B2B is still lagging. When B2B marketing teams discuss podcasts, it’s usually a question like “Should we create our own podcast?”. The answer might be yes, but without a clearly thought out strategy, the resources to be consistent, and an interesting topic calendar, B2B podcasting is an expensive endeavour which can reap very low returns.
Still it’s worth the effort exploring this channel. Research conducted by podcast company Acast indicated that nearly a quarter of UK adults have listened to a podcast in the past month, and most importantly, of that number 76% said that they have followed up on an ad or sponsored message from the show.
Podcast listeners are a sought after group, much like your C-suite - they are highly educated with a high household income. Start with a strong, but doable budget. Bear in mind that when choosing what types of shows to partner with, beyond budget and availability, the obvious choice may not be the best choice. Shows that are seemingly unrelated to a product work really well with decision makers - remember every business decision maker is just a person who likes running, comedy, cooking, work life balance, tech - you name it.
Appeal to Both Hearts and Minds
Claudia Bate, head of technology at FleishmanHillard Fishburn, says the C-suite is beginning to pay closer attention to how branding can help businesses stand out in a crowded market where the buying process if long and complex.
“Modern B2B marketing needs to appeal to both hearts and minds,” she says. “The decision-makers that matter do not leave their emotions and personalities at the door when they go to work. Creative storytelling, quality content and a distinctive brand identity are hugely important tools for breaking through the noise to drive real business value.”
Create Genuinely Thought Provoking Thought Leadership
Creating strong thought leadership pieces, often in partnership with analysts, provides great content for businesses to market themselves to the C-suite. These can be seeded and shared online to reach the target audience and position themselves as the experts in the field and the provider for the c-level executive to talk about a solution.
Finally, what you have to remember, is that this is an audience like no other. The C-suite are sometimes high powered, highly intelligent people who want you to appeal to their self-belief by sending them intelligent and thoughtful content which is in sync with their needs and goals. Your content needs to:
Provide new insight
Be relevant to their problem
Be backed by credible research.