Marketing lessons from the homeless guy in the bathroom

There is a story in my family that has become a kind of parable.

My sister’s husband was struggling with some interpersonal professional issue. Nobody remembers what the issue actually was, but it doesn’t matter. He’d come home each evening, worrying over it. And each evening, my sister would listen, empathize, and then repeat the same recommendation to him. He’d go back to work, do nothing, return home with the same problem, and she’d offer the same recommendation.

So life goes on. Then, one date night, out on the town, he ducks into a public restroom. He’s in there a long time. She waits.

Suddenly, he bursts out, starstruck expression on his face, beaming with power and optimism. “I can’t get over what just happened!” he says. “I met this genius man in the bathroom and he told me how to solve my problem!”

In the restroom, he’d come across a homeless man, given him some money, and gotten to chatting. Somehow, they came around to this persistent, befuddling topic. The guy says “Well, you just gotta…” and gave him the EXACT recommendation my sister had been patiently offering for months.

But in that moment, hearing it from that guy, it was pure inspiration. Fresh. Out of the blue. Never heard it before.

They aren’t married anymore.

It doesn’t matter how valuable our insights are if someone can’t hear them.

So now we call this phenomenon “the homeless guy in the bathroom”. It’s the blindness we get to insight when it’s right in front of us, but we can’t hear it.

We face this problem in marketing a lot. We have exactly the information someone is looking for. But if we haven’t said it when and how they are ready to hear it, it doesn’t exist.

Marketing communication is just communication between people. Even in B2B. If we prioritize building trust and emotional connection early in the engagement process—not just shooting out information—we invest in getting our audiences to a place where they can, and want to, hear our core messages.

Top of the funnel content that builds trust and emotional affinity brings in higher-value B2B leads that stick around.

Stacking up a robust and healthy pipeline is both harder and more important than it was 6 months ago. Budgets are tight, business is softer, and marketing investments that feed the top of the funnel are under the microscope. None of us can afford to push out messages that don’t land.

If you anchor your early engagement campaigns in content that is mostly about your company and solutions, it will get you mediocre returns, no matter how good it is. People will not hear it.

Top-of-the funnel B2B content needs to connect emotionally and build trust through contribution, community, and meeting prospects on their terms. Connecting in this way creates a genuine stickiness with your highest value prospects.

Emotion dominates buying decisions—and more so for B2B buyers.*

Decision making naturally pings and pongs between logical and emotional, but business purchases are more emotional, higher stakes, and riskier than personal purchases.

Those bedazzled Ed Hardy jeans you bought for your 52nd birthday may have dented your social credibility, but a bad $300M hardware choice will stick to you in a much bigger way. And data shows that business buyers are 8x more likely to pay a premium for the solution they choose.

On the upside, B2B purchasers are more likely to buy when there is personal value to them or to their career. Who doesn’t love airline miles from work travel? Or the sick new “work” phone? What about the resume boost that comes from managing a successful global rollout?

Effective content must speak to the emotional and personal needs of a business buyer.

Too much focus on solution information too early assumes a level of trust that isn’t established, creating a point of disconnection, and pushing people out of the funnel.

Anchoring in information about us too early in the conversation tells our audiences we’re more engaged with our own solution than the larger context around the problems they are trying to solve—and suggests we may be disconnected from our customers.

In the early awareness stages, having a voice in the industry and community, participating in thinking and conversation, providing fresh perspectives, and sharing energy and enthusiasm are strong starting points. Content channels are like parties. Successful guests are gracious, generous, curious, and connective. Your loud cousin Bob who talks about his new investment “opportunity” isn’t going to make that list.

Effective content knows how to read the room.

To continue through your funnel, people need to have an affinity for you, and affinity is closely tied to identity.

We are naturally tribal creatures—with strong individual identities. Perhaps ironically, most of our unique identity is a tapestry of groups and affiliations. I am a mom, or a dog owner, or a former athlete. A Harvard alum, recovered alcoholic, sassy survivor, whatever.

We know how powerfully this concept translates into brand choice. But it’s easy to forget the B2B buyer has even more emotion and identity tied up in a purchasing decision than a consumer does.

Our thought process: The customer has this problem (insert speeds and feeds here), and we have this brilliant solution that addresses it (insert speeds and feeds here). Now we just tell them!

And it’s true—later in the process we’ll tell them and their eyes will light up and they’ll get it.

But you have to make them like you first. You need to give them the chance to decide they want to be a part of your thing.

Effective content makes people want to be a part of your community.

Use top of the funnel content to prime your audiences to want more, so that when you deliver your solution message, it lands and sells.

Ask us how. We’d love to help. ask@mixconsultinggroup.com

*https://www.linkedin.com/business/marketing/blog/content-marketing/emotion-in-b2b-buying#:~:text=B2B%20purchasers%20are%20almost%2050,a%20premium%20for%20that%20product.