Value symmetry: Why buyer outcomes lead to business goals

In our last blog, we covered how the effectiveness crisis in B2B marketing stems from businesses failing their buyers.

B2B marketing has fallen into the same trap as Big Tech — the tools, tactics, and metrics our industry runs on are almost exclusively designed to serve marketer goals over real customer needs.

I know the last thing we need is another buzzword for the marketing jargon scrapheap. But buyers aren’t simply indifferent to marketing — they’re actively avoiding it. And we’ve found it helpful to have a shorthand to explain why. So here goes nothing.

“Value Symmetry” is the main thing missing from most marketing today — and a reminder of the lopsided quid pro quo driving the effectiveness crisis.

When you don’t actively consider value symmetry in your planning and budgeting, the main animating force quickly defaults to “How do we maximize conversions, MQLs and pipeline,” rather than “How do we attract our audience?”

So while the notion that effective marketing should help customers certainly isn’t new, “value symmetry” can be a simple concept to refocus the organization around the core obstacle to effectiveness.

Because here’s the thing: rebalancing the value exchange doesn’t mean generating less value for the business. Quite the opposite: sweetening the deal for your prospects can improve marketing performance.

So: let’s get right down to it. WTF is “value symmetry” and why should you GAF?

What does “value” actually mean?

To rebalance the value exchange, you have to get clear on what your audience “wants” from marketing. And that’s tricky for two reasons.

First, you’re starting at a disadvantage—the only thing most people “want” from marketing is to be left alone.

Second, “value” is a term lobbed around more than a tennis ball at the US Open. We talk about creating it, delivering and exchanging it as though it were a standardized unit of currency.

But it’s nuanced and contextual. True value is about identifying a specific problem your audience cares about and helping them solve it without the rug-pull of a sudden content gate or sales engagement.

That’s especially the case when it comes to the B2B buying process, where buyers and vendors are almost always misaligned on what value actually means…

Some things buyers typically value

Impact — or “information that helps me win”

Buyers want specific, straightforward and fresh information on how to develop a competitive edge. The fact that your thing does it is, frankly, neither here nor there.

We yap about Gong Labs all the time, but the reason it’s such an effective marketing platform is because it helps Sales folks become better sales folks, backed by data from the product, for free.

The best way your marketing can deliver value is to help your audience create value at whatever it is they get paid to do.

Confidence — or “signals that this company knows my world”

KMPG’s Consumer Advisory services division was in this position a few years ago. They were struggling to convince C-level leaders of huge consumer brands that KPMG deeply understood their world. So they swapped traditional thought-leadership with this campaign that packaged up KPMG’s services as consumer products.

Maybe your buyers have the opposite problem — they’re beset on all sides by advertising that claims to understand their world, but it all feels kind of…meh.

Value isn’t about depth here, it’s about clarity and confidence — to show (instead of tell) your market that you have a fresh and valuable perspective on their world. This Drum article puts it best: “You don’t need to tell the CEO of Sainsbury’s that consumer insight is important”.

Transparency — or “a galvanizing vision of what it’s like to be a customer”

People get fired for making the wrong buying decision in B2B. It’s a huge leap of faith. So it’s powerful to show your audience what their life will look like after they sign with you.

Sometimes that’s about case studies or customer success programs. But it can be as simple as a really fucking great demo — and the most potent example I’ve seen recently was the Relume home page.

And my GOD is it the best home page and product demo I’ve ever seen, all rolled into one, glorious, ungated experience. We used the demo to build a real sitemap for an upcoming project, and went from “tire-kicker” to “door-kicker” in about seventy seconds. That’s how powerful transparency can be.

ROI — or “evidence to help me prove value to the business”

Buyers don’t just want a competitive price; they need to be able to understand and prove ROI to the buying committee.

Tangible metrics specific to your buyer’s goals are a great start. But competitive intelligence—that contextualizes these metrics against industry averages—are better.

That’s why we’re such big believers in graders — a hybrid between an ROI calculator and an industry survey. Graders score users’ current capabilities, compare them to real competitive benchmark data, and deliver specific content recommendations to help improve those scores. (You can see one we made for Tebra here.)

There’s way more value than a typical ROI calculator because you contextualize the results against real market conditions — so they can make a more informed decision about how urgent the buying decision really is.

Does it cause some folks to prioritize other things? Quite possibly. But that’s what marketing to future buyers looks like. And when the timing is better, brands that were actually helpful in the past stand a way better chance of making the day one list.

What happens when marketing optimizes for business value over customer value?

Picture this. I am standing in front of you, gesturing wildly.

This happens. The thing that is happening right now, happens. Buyers learn that engaging with marketing makes life harder and more annoying. Even active, in-market buyers turn away — seeking out guidance from peers and communities over anything that smells like marketing.

It’s shitty (and ironic) for businesses. Because the very things they chase—pipeline, revenue, advocacy—all become harder to achieve.

And, believe it or not, it’s shitty for customers. Not because their peers and communities aren’t valuable (they super duper are), but because the buying journey gets worse in a bunch of disempowering ways:

• Trust declines. Buyers assume every message is self-serving, making it harder to provide help.
• Decision fatigue increases. Complexity and uncertainty make buyers hesitant to commit and more likely to do nothing.
• Risk aversion rises. Customers fear being manipulated into bad decisions.
• Long-term relationships suffer. Buyers convert once but don’t stick around.

The path to rebalancing

So, how can we shift the marketing equation back towards a more balanced, customer-value-first mindset? Here are three things to start with:

1. Broaden your success metrics: Try to measure value-delivered over vanity engagement numbers.
2. Give more away with fewer expectations: Consistently create stuff that makes your buyers feel excited, energized and validated, without locking it behind a gate.
3. Advocate for longer time horizons: There are no quick fixes for the predicament we’re in, and no amount of revenue urgency is going to convince buyers we’re suddenly on their side. This is about building long-term value for future buyers, and the brands that do the work will ultimately win.