The most important function in B2B marketing...

Do you know what the number one enemy of great B2B marketing is?

It’s not ad retargeting. It’s not a vanilla content strategy. And it’s definitely not the booth design at trade shows.

Great marketing has one enemy. And it’s your messaging committee.

Welcome to the next episode of Dying 4 Influence. The weekly newsletter for misunderstood B2B product marketers.

Know how the best PMMs operate in B2B. Get a dose of knowledge to stand tall in a sea of unseasoned marketing.

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🎨 Marketing is science — but storytelling is an art.

You know the folks who think they get storytelling? Yeah, we laugh at them too.

It’s not like they teach this kind of thing in Creative Writing 101. But for some reason, everyone thinks they're Christopher Nolan when there’s a story to tell.

It’s like when you hear the big studios coming in, making script changes, and scheduling reshoots (cough-cough, Warner Brothers).

Whether it’s the CEO, one of the VPs, or your best-selling AE. People in your org don’t like being told, ‘This is our positioning, this is our story.’

We consider this a prime example of psychological reactance. Crafting the product story threatens their freedom to tell it their own way.

Your teams may know they need new positioning, but they don’t want you to do it.

Now you know why everyone in the organization rips your stories to pieces. It becomes the birthplace for ‘messaging by committee.’

And instead of making art, you’re making a mess.

Product Marketing is the key to Marketing because we know how to tell a story. But we also need to understand psychological reactance.

Instead of messaging by committee, here’s a few tips:

1. frame positioning as collaborative improvements rather than top-down directives

2. involve stakeholders early in the process

3. establish a ‘disagree-and-commit’ policy

Now you can take ownership and give everyone the warm-and-fuzzies.

🎙Featured Episode:
_{The most important role in B2B marketing w/ Dave Gerhardt}

No one goes to school for B2B marketing — let alone B2B product marketing. But what does ‘DG the OG’ have to say about the state of things?

Dave Gerhardt, or DG, is currently leading Exit Five. This is the largest B2B marketing community in all of humanity, so we are honored to have him on the pod. Most of his 3500+ members are actually marketers, but we joined too.

He is a New Englander who has done it all. Marketing manager, podcast host, two-time CMO, and event planner for this year’s Drive event. Dave is the perfect guest to ask the question: are product marketers actually marketers?

In this 46 minutes convo, we chat about:

• Why “messaging by committee” is bullshit

• How to get quick wins without frameworks or systems

• One way “frameworks” might hurt your product storytelling

• Why you should follow the CRO, instead of the CEO

• How you can simplify B2B marketing

• Why you can’t just start a podcast in B2B without positioning

• What Dave said is the “most important role in B2B marketing”

✨ Add this to your resumé

We can’t say we had this on our 2024 bingo card.

This underground community of misfits is starting to appear on people’s LinkedIn accounts.

…hopefully their new CEO doesn’t see our memes 😅

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