Consumer behavior is right in the center of the revenue lifecycle strategy for both consumer-led and B2B organizations.
Greg has quoted this recent Financial Times report on the withdrawal of social media.
Why should executive leaders care about this? ⏬️
1. MULTITOUCH RESEARCH
Forming strategic opinions is based on primary and secondary research, including quantitative and qualitative data.
How your marketing budget is getting allotted is a byproduct of statistical data, NPS reports, customer interviews, community events, ABM competitive tracking.
Time spent online is a factor here.
2. CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS
Through the lenses of critical thinking, one could speculate on the validity of a single data source.
Overlap the influx of pandemic stay-at-home and lack of entertainment spiking in 2022, before opening up both offices and offline activities (concerts, bars and restaurants, meetup groups and events).
Now, add the AI slop resulting in tens of millions of fake and automated accounts, posting content, comments, and DMs. And media networks doubling down on virality to squeeze impression count (the wrong choice here).
3. BUSINESS IMPACT
What do revenue budgets look like?
First, social media calendars and online republished content were already been ignored since the Performance Marketing era of 2017-2022.
Including key opinion leaders misread as influencers.
The contradiction here is: branding is the moat that works in busienss today.
Revenue leaders and executive teams need to maintain the brand amplification across all available channels where their ICP hangs out: organic search, remarketing, sponsorships toward podcasts/newsletters/events – and organic social still remains.
Among the 15 to 40 touchpoints a B2B consumer ticks before a purchasing decision, how many are social?
How many were social-first, or last-touch?
How is the buying cycle mangled if spend is fully allotted to any one channel – tradeshows, paid, events, dinners?
➡️ This is one of the many executive conversations that isn’t happening often enough – not at MBRs, not during quarterly planning, and sometimes even ignored in annual strategic meetings.
