Who (the hell) are you?
Why should I care?
Why should I believe you?

Those are the three key questions going through the mind of a prospect, assuming they even register your communication at all. Multiply that by a factor of all the simultaneous communications that a prospect is subjected, relevant and irrelevant to their current interest and that’s alot for any message to cut through. Our prospect probably isn’t even conscious that he or she is questioning these things: they’re just ignoring a pop-up or a banner, deleting an email, possibly rebuffing the intrusion of an unsolicited phone call, but the key to success required meaningful answers to those three questions, even if they’re asked at a subliminal level.

So, what moves a successful communication beyond that three question defence? It’s not straightforward, that’s for sure but is a result of your mix of brand (what your company means to that prospect), messages and the media you choose to use. It’s often down to, not what you say about your business, but what your customers say. And you need to address a lifecycle of messages too – the same thing won’t be appropriate to all prospects at the same point in time, but will be more relevant when they’re at the same point in their buying lifecycle. Consider whether they’re just considering buying into your market or whether they know what they want, they just have to decide who to buy it from.

Complicated stuff and not something to answer on the back of a postcard but it can help you appreciate some of the subtleties that effective B2B marketing requires.