How can B2B brands stand out in a sea of sameness?  

Markets are hyper-competitive, products are unique for a millisecond (if at all), and B2B buyers are oh so tired of the”noise” of the same old marketing approach of whitepapers, webinars and one pagers. Coupled with the fact many brands are too afraid to try something new it doesn’t make for the most exciting or creative of worlds…

So, it’s time to take a different approach. To do fresh, different, exciting things. Things that will actually grab your target audience’s interest and make your brand stand out in a meaningful way. It’s time to rip up the B2B marketing blueprint and take things in new directions.

Which is exactly what specialist B2B tech marketing agency Sharper B2B Marketing have been doing.

Launched in the midst of the first lock-down Sharper B2B are on a mission to make B2B marketing as a whole more creative, valued and commercially successful by delivering the fresh ideas and firepower that B2B tech marketers desperately need.

Sharper’s approach is a true breath of fresh air and it all comes down to a focus on one thing – people. Russ Powell, Founder/MD of Sharper explains:

“There has always seemed to be this weird thought process with B2B marketing that people turn off their emotions and operate on pure logic when they’re at work. But it’s just not the case. Sure, people may behave slightly different when they’re at work but they’re still human. They want to be entertained, intrigued, surprised and maybe even a little caught off guard. That’s what we focus on: understanding how our clients want to make their target audience feel and then building creative, inventive, different campaigns to make that happen. Just because someone’s in a senior role in a business doesn’t mean they suddenly become a non-feeling drone. There’s a quote I love from Roald Dahl that reflects this perfectly: “A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men.”

But what Sharper do is far from nonsense.

They blend creative thinking, a robust strategic approach, and behavioural science to build attention grabbing, interactive (and some would say addictive) campaigns that engage people emotionally and then drive them to respond.

All the campaigns are underpinned by business messaging though. It’s not just pretty pictures and nice words for the sake of it, and there is always a clear mechanism for conversion, data capture, and lead generation with any Sharper campaign.

These ‘Wonderfully creative campaigns’, as Sharper call them truly help their clients stand out and become meaningfully different to, and better connected with, their target audience. (And it’s delivering some serious ROI in the process. Sharper’s average ROI is 1:62 across every single campaign they’ve ever run).

Their latest campaign for CDW and Dell Technologies – an interactive (and scarily addictive) motor-racing style game uses this approach and is proving once again that doing something different works to engage a senior decision maker audience,.

Sharper Founder & MD Russ Powell explains: 

“It’s probably fair to say that the first thing you think of when someone says ‘Enterpise Storage Solutions’ isn’t sports cars. But there are actually a surprising number of themes where there is crossover – performance, power, and speed to name a few. And we know that motorsport is a big draw for the target audience.

So the idea to re-imagine Dell’s top of the range PowerStore all-flash storage devices as high-performance race cars and enable people to take them for their own ‘test drive’ in a fully gamified experience was an opportunity too good to miss. As we’ve found with previous campaigns, by injecting a healthy dose of competition this had driven (excuse the pun) great engagement and results.

We’re super proud of this campaign and it has been a pleasure to partner with CDW and Dell Technologies.”