Introduction
Business-to-business (B2B) marketing doesn’t take a lot of effort to screw up, and the opportunities for error are endless.
In this e-book, we’ll walk you through the most creative, tried-and-true methods for ruining your SEO, designing an awful website, failing to reach your target prospects, and more.
With decades of experience in B2B marketing, the Innovaxis team has seen it all — and even made a few of these mistakes ourselves along the way.
We hope this e-book serves as the ultimate guide for failing at your B2B marketing strategy.
Sincerely,The Innovaxis Team
Suck at strategy
They say 80% of businesses fail, so it’s actually pretty easy to suck at B2B marketing strategy.
Still, a broken clock is right twice a day and you could get lucky, so here are some tips for covering all the bases in your next strategic marketing debacle.
Don’t listen to your customers
The quickest way to fail is to ignore the people who might actually buy from you.
You know what’s best for your channel partners and customers, so why bother with getting their input?
Skip the marketing plan
When you don’t know where you’re going, any path will get you there. The adventure! The excitement! The dead ends! Who doesn’t love a roller coaster? Planning gets in the way of all that.
While it’s true that many businesses fail, it’s important to think of yourself as unique. You’re one in a million! And so are your odds!
Forget the 4 Ps
Don’t bother with the so-called 4 Ps of Marketing – that’s the sort of academic hooey that can also lead to planning, strategy and success.
Pull the plug as soon as possible
When things start getting rocky, don’t hesitate – just pull the plug! Reflection, research and course correction will only lead to answers, and answers make it a lot harder to fail. And then who are you going to blame?
If you must make a plan:
- Price WAY above (or below) perceived market value
- Have a go-to-market strategy that competes directly with your channel partners, and ideally makes it unclear where and how to buy from you
- Focus only on the visual side of branding while telling a story that’s all about you and how cool you are; don’t worry about the problems of your channel or customers
- Spend more money than you have on social media; don’t waste your time on keyword research, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, multimedia campaigns, or PR!
Website (un)development
If you have no money, but all the time in the world, it’s a great idea to develop your own website. It’s like building a house on your own… what could go wrong?
The internet is full of helpful tips on how to completely screw up your website, so if you want to put your DIY skills to the test, here are some suggestions.
Don’t learn any code
Despite what some “experts” may claim, you don’t need to be a coding wizard to create a website. Throw out that “HTML for Dummies” book and instead watch a few seasons of Mr. Robot.
Pro tip: All the best website developers wear hoodies.
Quality control nothing
What does responsive design mean? Don’t worry about it. It’s not relevant. Your site doesn’t need to be compatible with all devices and web browsers – just the one you use.
Hire a graphic designer to build your website
Website development isn’t rocket science. Coding and designing are almost like the same skill, so don’t worry about hiring a developer, UX/UI specialist, or anyone overqualified. Here’s a list of people you should hire instead:
- Your cousin who sometimes makes websites
- Someone local with no industry experience
- Artists with no knowledge of coding
- Anyone wearing a hoodie
The more pages, the better
Create as many web pages as possible. Then, design a complicated multi-tiered, drop-down menu for your site navigation. Don’t worry about wireframing prior to designing. Strategic content is a myth, so fill your pages with rambling, self-centered narratives. And always remember: the website design comes before the content.
Any platform will do
Wicks, ShapeSpace, Wobbly, WordPannini, GoDaddio… whatever. There are so many options for building a site, it can be difficult to choose.
Don’t risk analysis paralysis! Pick one!
Cringey content
You don’t have to be super creative to fail at B2B content marketing. There are plenty of ordinary ways to create B2B blog content that is limp, unreadable, ineffective or that actively repels your prospects.
Get started with our Complete List of Ways to Achieve Absolutely No Results with Your B2B Blogging.
- 1 Write about yourself. A lot. There is nothing that B2B prospects and customers like to read more than smug and prolific posturing. We’re the best! Go Us!
- 2 Copy what your competitors are doing. Out of ideas for your next blog? That’s why the internet was invented. Your inspiration is just sitting there at www.DittoThat!.com
Blogs that bomb
- 3 Skip the keyword research. Who knows better what your prospects should be searching for than you do? Why not just reverse engineer the process and beat Google at their own $4 trillion game?
- 4 Hire inexperienced writers. Writings are not hard.
- 5 Stick to the Rules. They must be true because there are a zillion so-called content experts out there preaching How It Must Be Done. Trust them.
- 6 Don’t spend a lot of time interviewing or gathering facts. Taking the time to really understand your subject matter is a giant vacuum cleaner of time-consumption which = money-using.
- 7 Storytelling is for suckers: Nothing will bore your audience faster than content that follows the arc of effective storytelling that has been captivating humans since the time of Aristotle.
- 8 Seven. You can’t go wrong with numbers that “everyone” agrees have magic properties. Well, not literally everybody. There is some consensus around 25 and a few outliers pushing 17. The point is, nothing drives great storytelling like forcing it into a shape dictated by internet data wonks with a bar graph. “Headline Preferences by Gender” is one of our all-time favorites.
- 17 Don’t Sweat the Metadata. In the event that you create content that is accidentally engaging, a poorly-crafted meta description will ensure that it disappears into the internet black hole.
Screw up your SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the most thoroughly understood subjects in digital marketing – just ask 20 different SEO experts and you’ll have 21 perspectives to choose from.
If that seems confusing, you could try to learn it on your own. Keeping up with Google is fun! Here are a few figures.
Google ranking algorithm updates per year
That’s no big deal to keep up with… right?
Of all internet traffic is through Google
So, it’s no sweat if you screw up your SEO and fail to rank. You’ve got another 20% who might find you…
The number of SEO experts you should consult
Bonus points if you can get them all on the same Zoom meeting to discuss strategy.
Optimization opt-out
We’ve optimized websites since the days of Lycos and AltaVista. Some of us even remember surfing the internet on blue UNIX screens – good times.
Over the years, we’ve seen some, uh… unique SEO methods. From black hat tactics to ineffective and complicated technical endeavors, we’ve witnessed SEO “strategy” so awful it could double as a magic trick: watch as your website completely disappears from search results!
Skip the digital tools
Buy an SEO manual. Any edition. Read it carefully. Or don’t.
Purchase 100 websites and link them all together. Stuff as many keywords as possible into the URLs. It’s not like Google is going to do anything about it. And that white background? Throw some white-text keywords on there as well.
Don’t be an elitist
Google PageRank is a silly, elitist concept designed to let higher quality content rise to the top. Well, who made Google the judge of what counts as “high quality content”?
Ignore this. Listen to your marketing intern.
Listen to your intern.
Artificial (un)intelligence
So you’ve heard that artificial intelligence is the future of marketing? Excellent — here’s how to make sure it ruins yours.
AI is the hottest thing since the fax machine, and with all the buzz, it’s tempting to dive right in without understanding how it works. The good news? That’s the perfect recipe for failure.
Automate the wrong things
Use AI to write all your blogs, emails, and web copy — preferably without editing. Your prospects will love your new tone: robotic, repetitive, and vaguely unsettling. Bonus points if your AI content directly contradicts your brand story.
Assume Google never changes
Generative Search? GEO? ChatGPT results in search pages? Nah. The algorithms you optimized for in 2015 are still totally fine. Keywords like “solutions provider” and “synergy partner” are #forever.
Forget about ethics
Deepfakes, fake reviews, fake case studies — fake it till you make it. Just don’t forget to act shocked when it backfires.
Skip structured data
Schema markup and knowledge graphs are overrated. If AI assistants can’t understand your content, they’ll just make something up. Problem solved.
Wait for it to blow over
Every marketing trend fades eventually. Just hold out another decade or two. With any luck, AI search will vanish right after you finally start using it.
AI won’t fix a broken plan
AI automates bad strategy, faster. If you really want to #succeed, Innovaxis can help you leverage AI responsibly to boost content creation, analytics, and marketing automation without turning your brand into a bot farm.
Google ad(versary)
A whopping 90% of internet search traffic takes place through the magic of Google, a company so ambitious that it named itself for a mathematical concept that means a number so big we don’t have time to explain it to you.
But that’s no reason not to trust them to help you play the world’s most popular pay-per-click competition, The Game of Google Ads.
Keyword research
Trust your gut in determining what search terms prospects are using to find your business and don’t worry about keyword matching. If your prospects don’t know exactly what they’re looking for, they’re never going to appreciate all the effort you put into coming up with the right terms.
Audience
Targeting your audience narrows the pool of prospects by demographic, location, or other distinct characteristics. Why limit your reach just to people who are likely to want what you are selling? Send your ad out into the world!
Ad creation
Use a salesy tagline to make your pitch stand out: WORLD’S Best Guacamole! Creating a landing page is a lot of work, so why bother? Use extensions to link to the SAME page multiple times. Use both affiliate and display network ads for added results to run up your costs.
Keyword bidding
Google’s auto bidding feature will save you the trouble of figuring out how much to spend.
Google: “Perhaps we can show you something in a ‘similar cost’?”
Hot tip: Keep as many ‘default’ options as possible. Who knows Google Ads better than Google?
Launch that ad
Don’t worry about A/B or split testing, just apply every suggestion Google has and hit publish. Remember: Google’s got your bank account back.
Keep it simple and don’t stress over CTRs, conversions and other metrics that are just a way of gauging if your ad is doing anything for your business.
Spam campaigns
Dude:
Ever wondered why some email campaigns get results and others go so completely ignored that you find yourself googling the outage map? With the right techniques, you can craft B2B email pitches so repellent they won’t even be opened by mistake. Here’s how:
Subject lines should be wordy, urgent and heavy on punctuation!!? Grab their attention with a flashy clickbait title: You won’t believe what happens at the end of this email!
Emojis will show the millennials you “get it.” In case you don’t, here are a few to get started:
- 🍆 = A flash sale
- 🍊 = Customer service
- 🔥 = Appreciation
Oh, and don’t waste your money on marketing automation. You can do this – ABSOLUTELY FREE – from your Gmail account. You won’t be blacklisted.
Hit the internet for a list of email addresses. The bigger, the better. “Targeting” is a buzzword that marketers use to confuse companies into being too careful.
When someone signs up on your website to start receiving emails, begin pelting them with offers immediately. Pew! Pew! Pew! But don’t optimize for mobile – only 30-60% of your audience reads email on their phones.
In conclusion, flow charts never fail to make you look smarter.
Peace.
The Innovaxis Team
Not-so-social media
“Everyone” knows that social media is the key to #success. Millions of people are using social media every second of every day to communicate their “brands” to millions of other #people.
Does that mean you should be doing the same thing for your B2B messaging even if your prospects are too busy to help you celebrate #Talk Like Yoda Day? Means that, it does. Yes, hmmm.
Are the results there to justify the time and effort, assuming you’re not selling makeup, lifestyle advice or a personal brand built around your six-pack abs? If by “results” you mean qualified B2B leads, the answer is probably no…
Go casual
Post Casual Relatable Content (CRC). Do you like fruit? Here’s a video of me eating fruit.
Get trendy
Intern-led social media campaigns show your clients that while you may not know what’s going on in their businesses, you are still relevant AF.
Share political opinions
The name of the game is “engagement” and nothing sparks a spirited conversation like politics.
Stay lit
Go where all the cool kids are: Keeping up with the latest platform is an investment of time you’ll never get back, but isn’t that the whole point of TikTok? Get your CEO out there and let’s dance.
Hash it out: For maximum impact, include #as #many #hashtags #as #possible. In fact, use a generator to push your posts into weirdly out-of-place conversations by mining the most popular (and most competitive) tags.
“It helps to already be famous or to become famous to become a social media influencer…”
— Digital Marketing Expert
Product mismanagement
A dream is a really fragile thing and market research is a death sentence when it comes to really stupid dreams…
What’s the fuss?
Product managers – sometimes referred to as product marketers – are responsible for incorporating the voice of the customer into the development process to produce something – sometimes referred to as a product – that somebody will want to buy, possibly.
What is the big deal exactly? 15-year-olds can do it. We live in a world where it is possible to whip up six-figure profits selling slime out of your parents’ kitchen.
Avoid the dream killers
Four Ps, schmees. Keep the questioners at arm’s length. They tend to ask a lot of questions. They get hung up on things like “target markets” and “making sense.”
This is your dream, not a PowerPoint presentation. These people wouldn’t know a dream if it bit them in their spreadsheets.
Make up your strategy on the fly
Recipes are for cakes, not non-cake products like yours. Which is going to be totally awesome… Unless you sell cake.
Don’t let the P-pushers get you down. There are plenty of other letters. Industry best practices will lead to spending months in research and development, quality control, and testing, followed by more testing. Where’s the inspiration in that?
Slow and steady may win the race – but it’s still slow. Better to rush forward with the faith that the best product always wins sometimes.
From #WTF to #ROI
With so many ways to fail, which should you choose? As the old saying goes, if at first you don’t fail, try, try again… but if you’d rather #succeed at B2B marketing, the Innovaxis team can help.
NOTE: Our methods are cost-effective, so if you’re worried that you’re not spending enough, stick to the advice above.
But if you’re looking for so-called #results, Innovaxis can show you how to foster something we like to call so-called “actual lead generation.”
Dive in with a consultation, a thorough audit of your current marketing strategies and processes, or a comprehensive Brand Story Workshop to identify what’s working and what’s, you know, a #fail.
Consult
With decades of experience in B2B marketing, our team can provide guidance and consultation on your strategy and execution.
But it doesn’t stop there. If you need more than recommendations, we offer a full suite of agency services.
Audit
Unhappy with the leads you’re generating? Our holistic audit evaluates your strategy, website, content, SEO/SEM, metadata, product management, pricing, and more.
You will receive a 10-20 page report.
Engage
Super-charge your messaging with an engaging strategy that centers on your prospects, not you.
Our interactive Brand Story Workshop reimagines your marketing strategy, helping you to break free from the rut and earn qualified leads.
Ready to see real results?
Many of our clients see 300+% ROI in just 2-3 years. Contact us today.
Learn more about what we do
About Innovaxis
Founded in January 2007, Innovaxis works with business owners and marketing executives who want to escape shiny object syndrome and get more from their B2B marketing.
Our team has decades of experience in taking marketing from #WTF to #ROI. We work closely with clients to develop and implement solutions that attract and retain – rather than repel – qualified prospects. Our services range from B2B marketing consulting and Brand Story Workshops to full-service marketing agency services including content marketing, SEO, website development, marketing automation, AI optimization and more. We are a HubSpot gold partner.
3047 N. Lincoln Ave. Suite 400, Chicago, IL 60657 | 773.654.2421
