Compared to retail and consumer-brand counterparts, B2B marketing messaging stinks. Even though B2B sales require more time, information and people to make a purchase decision, it doesn’t mean the messaging has to be solely product-focused, soulless and passionless.

In an exclusive Q&A with David Meerman Scott, he shared his thoughts on what hinders B2B companies to create real connections with potential customers. He also provided insights into why B2B messaging today still lacks passion, while also sharing a sneak peek into his keynote session at the B2B Marketing Exchange in February.

The main focus of your session at the event is around creating real connections with buyers and the people you’re selling to. What are some of the main reasons why B2B marketers struggle to make real connections with their target audiences?

David Meerman Scott: B2B marketers don’t come at what they’re doing by thinking that people are passionate about the products or services that they use, the products and the companies that they do business with and the people at their companies that they work with. I think one of the main and actually pretty surprising keys to success in the B2B world is when you have people who work within a B2B organization — whether they’re in the sales department or whether they’re marketers or senior executives — they are passionate about things in their life. It doesn’t have to be related to business at all, but when they’re passionate about things in their life, they bring that passion to their work and they can better comprehend how people might react to the products and services that they’re building in marketing.

I believe that [my] passions helped me to understand how other people can become passionate about the companies, the products, the brands and the people that they work with. Most B2B marketing — as I see it — is soulless. It’s by the books; it’s boring; it uses just generic language. So, that would be my first observation — the whole idea of bringing passion to it.

To build off on the topic of “generic, soulless” type of messaging, it seems as though that fills in to the boring speeds and feeds-type of marketing that the category has become known for. Are you seeing progress in advancing B2B beyond that?

Meerman Scott: No, I think it still stinks. I think that most marketers are still focused on simply providing product information about their flexible, scalable solutions for improving business processes using cutting edge technology. The whole gobbledygook language that companies are using is still unbelievably prevalent out there. I see it every single day and one of the reasons for that is because those marketers, they don’t care about what their company is doing. They march down to the product manager’s office and they say, “Hey, what does our stuff do?” and the product manager tells them what it does. They go back to their office and write up some document they don’t even understand that they think is helpful — when it’s really not.

The second major thing that B2B marketers do that I think is in that category of being soulless and without passion is they use named stock photos to represent the images of either their employees or their customers. If you’re pulling a photograph that’s supposed to represent either your employees or your customers out of a catalog, that’s the absolute definition of soulless marketing. Way more than half of B2B marketers are doing that and I would say, “Don’t do it.”

If you need an image, either create some kind of graphic that is original to your company or your business or hire a photographer and shoot some original photos. If you absolutely are on a hugely tight budget or deadline, maybe you can use a stock photo, but not of people. Use a stock photo of something, but as soon as you use an image of people, it’s by definition false because it’s just a photo of random people that are models that you yanked out of a catalog somewhere. Everybody can see through the fact that those are not your customers, nor your employees, if that’s what you’re trying to depict.

One of the main points of your session is around this idea of the neuroscience of fandom. Can you share a high-level overview of what exactly neuroscience is and how it possibly impacts marketing and sale strategies?

Meerman Scott: One of the aspects of neuroscience that I find to be very fascinating is the idea of proximity and the proximity between people, and what that says about our ancient brains. The ancient brain is tuned to things like survival and when we encounter another human being, our ancient brain immediately is assessing, “Is this person a threat? Is this person a friend? Is this person somebody I can mate with?” We can’t help it; it’s part of our DNA. It’s deeply ingrained in our unconscious brain. The fact is, when you physically meet people, you’re going through those calculations. And the closer you get to another person, the more passionate those human connections are. So, if somebody is a threat and you get closer to them, that threat becomes real and your fight or flight mechanism kicks in. But from the perspective of marketing, it’s thinking of the fact that if somebody is considered a friend, then the closer physically you can get to that person the more powerful that friend emotion becomes.

That means that, as a marketer, as a company that wants to build a relationship with customers, the more opportunities that you can put yourself into close proximity with the people that you want to do business with the better. And that proximity means coming up with a way that you can literally, physically be in the same room with people. Preferably, as well, can you put people in the same room with other customers? For that reason, I’ve done quite a lot of research on the idea that customer communities — both physical communities where people meet in person, as well as online communities where customers meet to exchange ideas — are incredibly powerful because they bring together like-minded customers and allow them to interact in a way that builds a strong emotional connection.

From a practical perspective, what that means is, “Can your company establish a user conference, customer conference or some other physical event that you can bring people together? Can your company establish an online community that brings people together? Can your company think of other ways that you can bring, not only customers into proximity with people within your organization, but also maybe even more importantly, can you bring customers into close proximity with other customers?” That emotional connection and emotional bond is incredibly powerful in building a fanbase of people who will be supportive of you going forward for a long time to come, and it makes things like making renewals easier, initial sales easier, upgrades easier and so on.