I agree with all that. Dark funnel has always existed. Buyer journeys start way before they even engage with a brand. (Brands still think they understand the journey, the sales cycles don’t start when they engage with sales)
When they engage, they already have a first deal consideration list at an enterprise.
What you are describing requires big budgets for penetration and reach. When they become a ‘verb’ it is either they put a lot or cash behind it, or it is a new category where again you need big budgets.
Small brands are small not because they have less loyal customers; they are small because they don’t have reach, penetration and recall at the point of purchase. They need to spend 3X more than enterprise.
So rather than chasing and signalling the hell out od the buyer , a good visible earned media strategy and I am not talking about PR, along with always on will serve well. CAB also helps a lot!
The issue is with moat marketers, brand is not something they wrack their head around to measure with causality. Econometrics, Incrementality, attribution are all correlational.
You need counterfactuals to show your CFO it helps the bottom line along with financial literacy. Otherwise you are a cost center!
Good question, and when thinking about B2B brands which became a verb, it is honestly a short list.
Zoom is the cleanest live example, it did in five years what Xerox took decades to do. Slack is close behind, "just Slack me" has genuinely replaced "message me" in a lot of workplaces. In some ways slack is probably the best example because many would struggle to define what slack even is
Beyond those two I struggle to name a third B2B brand that's actually made it to verb status rather than just strong noun recall. Which tells you how rare that third rung really is, and why it's worth aiming at rather than settling for category noun and calling it a day.
Have I missed any good examples of ab2B brands who became a verb?
I agree with all that. Dark funnel has always existed. Buyer journeys start way before they even engage with a brand. (Brands still think they understand the journey, the sales cycles don’t start when they engage with sales)
When they engage, they already have a first deal consideration list at an enterprise.
What you are describing requires big budgets for penetration and reach. When they become a ‘verb’ it is either they put a lot or cash behind it, or it is a new category where again you need big budgets.
Small brands are small not because they have less loyal customers; they are small because they don’t have reach, penetration and recall at the point of purchase. They need to spend 3X more than enterprise.
So rather than chasing and signalling the hell out od the buyer , a good visible earned media strategy and I am not talking about PR, along with always on will serve well. CAB also helps a lot!
The issue is with moat marketers, brand is not something they wrack their head around to measure with causality. Econometrics, Incrementality, attribution are all correlational.
You need counterfactuals to show your CFO it helps the bottom line along with financial literacy. Otherwise you are a cost center!
Good question, and when thinking about B2B brands which became a verb, it is honestly a short list.
Zoom is the cleanest live example, it did in five years what Xerox took decades to do. Slack is close behind, "just Slack me" has genuinely replaced "message me" in a lot of workplaces. In some ways slack is probably the best example because many would struggle to define what slack even is
Beyond those two I struggle to name a third B2B brand that's actually made it to verb status rather than just strong noun recall. Which tells you how rare that third rung really is, and why it's worth aiming at rather than settling for category noun and calling it a day.
Have I missed any good examples of ab2B brands who became a verb?