There’s a chronic disconnect between the motivations of B2B marketers and their prospects. Until marketers fix it, they will contending with their prospects instead of influencing them.

Does your marketing organization suffer from this disconnect? To find out, take a look at your marketing plan for the upcoming quarter. If it is like many, it is driven by internal events like these: 

• A new product is launching: two webinars, datasheets, and a website update.
• It's the spring trade show season: presentations, ads, giveaways, and events.
• The latest client case study will go out: email, press release, trade pub article.

Here's the disconnect: this is your agenda, not your prospect's. Prospects don’t care about these drivers--they have their own. What's the biggest one? Avoiding vendors.

Companies don't buy things; people do. While many marketing plans are driven by corporate concerns, buying behavior is driven by human emotion. Effective marketers communicate to address those emotions. 

Can you put yourself in the shoes of “Sally scared” and “Hal the hero”? Does your content strategy help you speak to their emotions? When it does, your marketing plan will naturally fit their agenda.