Repositioning the Maytag brand to redefine the commercial laundry category.
B2B agencies are not often recipients of awards outside the confines of the B2B world. Recently though Nelson Schmidt Inc., an independent specialist agency based in Milwaukee, was shortisted at international creative competitions, Communication Arts Design Annual and the PHNX Awards for packaging design, trademarks and ad photography, among others. We spoke to President & CEO Dan Nelson Jr on how a midsize agency in the midwest is re-energizing how brands think about B2B.
Congrats on your recent award wins! You have been recognized not only by the industry in the US but also internationally. This is a wonderful achievement for any agency, but particularly for a medium-sized independent agency based in the US Midwest. To what can you attribute this recognition in such a highly competitive awards scene?
We Deliver Customers.®
That is not only our trademarked tagline at Nelson Schmidt Inc. It is our driving principle.
Our entire focus is on producing measurable business results for our customers. The extraordinary outcomes we help them create, coupled with the exceptional outputs we produce, are what I believe has helped NS gain such incredible global recognition from our chosen home in Wisconsin.
Our award-winning campaigns result from close collaborations between our team and our clients’ teams that set out to solve their business challenges, not just exceed their marketing objectives. Many on the NS team have spent considerable time during their careers in client-side marketing roles, and we intentionally hire to that experience. So we often know how our customers really think and feel, the tremendous pressures they’re under, and what they truly need from their investments in their marketing and agency relationships. That type of collaboration yields the deep insights about customer perceptions and behaviors we seek to influence, identifies the optimal competitive opportunities to exploit, and uncovers the unexpected creative approaches to use to make connections with the people our clients need to convince.
If marketers – and award juries – can look past the fact that we aren’t a Madison or Michigan Avenue shop, they quickly realize that our 50+ years of experience, and most importantly our clients’ outcomes, speak for themselves. That is why Nelson Schmidt has succeeded in serving large brands with full-service engagements which deliver world-class marketing, as evidenced by the awards we’ve received.
Introducing the Church Mutual Insurance brand to the non-profit human services market segment.
B2B advertising is not usually credited with great creative strategy or output. How are you changing that perspective?
For whatever reason many B2B marketers have forgotten that B2B buyers are no different than consumer buyers of any product or service. B2B marketers have focused heavily on product features and specs, which are usually not at all differentiating, and don’t form any type of emotional connections beyond meeting a need. In many cases they have ignored the strategy of tapping into both the emotional and rational states of their target audiences at the different stages of their purchase journeys. Recognizing those perspectives, and delivering truly creative, compelling communications at the appropriate times is how we’ve always tried to change B2B marketing.
For example, LinkedIn’s B2B Institute recently published data that suggests in almost any market, at any given point in time, 95% of potential customers are not actively in the market. Another way to say that is only 5% of a market are actively in the process of purchasing. They called it the 95/5 Rule. Yet so many marketers always communicate as if all customers are ready to buy now, spending almost all of their budgets at the bottom of the proverbial funnel. They don’t invest in or communicate to those non-active prospects in ways that help them understand the brand and its values, making those future potential customers aware of who they are long before they’re actively purchasing.
What opportunities are there for CMOs investing in modern B2B marketing, to connect with buyers?
A huge opportunity is committing to investing in brand awareness and perception, and developing relationships with future potential buyers, in addition to delivering best-in-class conversion marketing at touchpoints deeper in the purchase journey.
A July, 2021 study published by WSJ Intelligence and B2B International demonstrated the importance of brand familiarity. They found that nearly 80% of B2B purchases were from brands with which the buyer was extremely familiar, whereas 20% of the purchases were from brands which the buyer was anything less than extremely familiar. That’s almost 4X the likelihood of a brand being purchased based on how familiar the buyer was BEFORE they made the purchase.
In addition, making a “Promise to the Customer” in advertising is an almost essential ingredient for generating an accretive return on marketing investment. LinkedIn’s B2B Marketing Institute and WARC just released a study at Cannes last month demonstrating that campaigns which included a memorable, valuable, and deliverable promise to the customer were almost 50% more likely to drive brand health improvements, and 60% more likely to deliver increased market share compared to campaigns that did not include a promise.
Positioning the Panduit brand as a solution to protecting infrastructure, a mission critical priority across market segments.
Nelson Schmidt has considerable expertise navigating brand comms through complex consumer buying decisions. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘Considered Purchase Marketing’ strategies?
Let’s start by defining what “considered purchases” are, in contrast to impulse buys which constitute much of CPG and FMCG marketing. Considered purchases have a high degree of financial and/or emotional risk or reward, often an extended purchase journey, and in many cases multiple stakeholders are involved in the decision. They include most B2B purchases, since making decisions on behalf of a business often includes both financial and emotional risk and reward to the buyer, including one’s compensation and career path inside that business. But there are several B2C purchases that are highly considered, including education, financial services, recreation, appliances, and transportation, to name just a few.
So our premise is that B2B vs. B2C marketing is the wrong starting point for determining the optimal marketing approach. Rather, we start by asking whether a marketer’s product or service is a highly considered purchase or an impulse buy. The buyer’s decision-making will be vastly different, regardless of it being B2B or B2C.
We’ve spent over a decade pioneering and evolving our Considered Purchase Marketing (CPM) methodology to influence the decision-making processes that are involved in highly considered purchases. This research-based approach taps deeper into human biology and behavior to build long-term brand health while also addressing immediate-term sales.
For example, using the 95/5 Rule mentioned earlier, the transition from out-of- to in-market is often triggered by what the B2B Institute refers to as Category Entry Points. CEPs reflect a near-term need or long-term motivation for moving forward with making a purchase.
Our CPM methodology helps clients identify and prioritize the CEP’s for their markets that represent where their brands have the highest probability to compete and win. We then leverage their unique customer promises and product/service advantages specific to the reasons the customer entered the market in our brand preference, prospect nurturing, and sales conversion marketing.
About Nelson Schmidt Inc.
We believe your marketing budget should lead to measurable outcomes. Nelson Schmidt is a full-service marketing communications agency that builds brands with the purpose of boosting business. We specialize in creatively solving complex challenges in considered purchase categories. Using data-driven, brand and full-funnel marketing strategies to reach people at every point in their purchase journeys, we convert prospects into customers. Our reason for being is also our brand promise: We Deliver Customers.®