Shiny New Object Podcast: Becoming More Human In B2B Marketing

21 Oct, 2022

Kristina Lagerstedt, Marketing Director for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Scandinavia, believes that if marketers focus on the person at the end of the message, their marketing can be elevated and personalised, in the latest episode of MAD//Fest's partner podcast, Shiny New Object.

Before anything, marketers need to remember that they are addressing a human being – essentially engaging in “business to human” marketing, Kristina Lagerstedt’s Shiny New Object. Kristina advises all marketing professionals to focus on understanding the end consumers, and especially how they speak and what matters to them. In all industries and settings, this helps create actual relationships.

Kristina Lagerstedt is the Marketing Director for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Scandinavia. She loves using data and logical thinking in equal measure to creativity and the arts, so she found marketing to be “the magic land” for her career. By focusing on the person at the end of the message, she believes marketing can be elevated and personalised.

Focus on humans

When putting together a marketing campaign, regardless of whether you are targeting B2B or B2C customers, you should remember that there is a person who receives the output. This means they need to be understood and to understand you easily. Marketers should find out how their target audience speaks, what is important to them and how they like to be reached.

Buying is emotional

Switching focus to more human marketing is more effective because – in all scenarios – a buying decision is primarily emotional. People will decide on products or brands based on how these made them feel and on how well they’re treated by the sales or service staff.

This is why personalisation is also important, since a generic marketing message doesn’t show consumers that you care about them. In B2B, the language of advertising needs to target a decision maker and not a generic company to be effective.

Simple is better

When it comes to good, effective copy, Kristina believes that being simple and “to the point” is always better. She thinks marketers need to stay away from complex words, overly long sentences and too much jargon (especially as the latter can be generic and feel completely hollow to the person you’re pitching to).

Brands who do this really well include Oatly, who don’t speak so much about their own product and don’t waste marketing copy on details that consumers won’t pay attention to. Instead, their advertising speaks clearly and to the point, to the human.

 The host of the Shiny New Object podcast is Tom Ollerton, founder of Automated Creative.