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“Upload Photo Here” B2B Gets Personal

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Creating B2B marketing content that brings in leads and builds your brand is a real challenge! Bound by (real or imagined) expectations to appear “business-like,” B2B content creators are known to merely deliver the info that decision-makers need—the what, why, when, by whom and how a product or service is used, topped off with a serviceable call-to-action. The particulars will be in there but the end result is usually content that’s dry and impersonal. It doesn’t reach out and touch, it checks off the boxes.

If developing B2B marketing content is your responsibility, keep in mind that the decision-makers you aspire to influence are actually human. They laugh, they get bored, get frustrated, curious and (sometimes) inspired. They are busy, if not overwhelmed, and it takes something special to get their attention and win their trust. Your target audience responds best to content that is fresh, unexpected and shows that you understand what’s important to them.

Maybe you’re ahead of me and already have a guerilla marketing campaign in the works, as was discussed in last week’s post? But once the guerilla sizzle has grabbed audience attention, back it up and bring the steak. Your next move is to convert the buzz into confidence and trust that leads to loyal relationships. You achieve that by knowing your clients and using that knowledge to develop content and other means of communication that demonstrates you have their priorities and needs on your front burner. Below are factors to keep in mind and actions you may decide to take as you re-examine your B2B marketing strategy and prepare your organization for the start of a new year.

Personalized customer profiles

To figure out how to sell your products and/or services, you must know the goals and priorities of your prospects and have an idea of what might worry them, too. Accurate and updated client information is among your most valuable resources; data can be collected in quick-and-easy, nonthreatening ways, on your website or social media platforms. In exchange for a prospect’s name, contact info, business name and category, you may offer free 15 minute video consultations, free copies of your case study, or a free link to the webinar on which you made a guest appearance info. Inbound marketing tactics, spotlighted by a tempting call-to-action, not only moves prospects through the sales funnel, it also functions as a portal for client info.

Beyond basic contact info, a review of previous client or prospect interactions with your company will reveal more detailed info, including the purchasing history of current and lapsed clients, their buying preferences, concerns and the amount they spend. Get to know your target audience by understanding their unique preferences and help yourself to retain clients, make more sales and reduce churn rate. Clients and prospects are what a mailing list is all about; it’s members represent potential sales revenue for your company. Consider the following questions as you build customer profiles.

  • Who is a window shopper and who is researching with a goal of buying? Have you designed a “try before you buy” option available to undecideds, or is it effective to initiate a face2face or video meeting to show undecideds how your solution will solve problems and achieve objectives that matter to them?
  • Who are they buying for? Is the prospect an end-user and stakeholder, who influences the purchasing decision, or is the decision-maker, who may not directly use the product or service, doing the shopping?
  • After they complete a purchase, what kind of follow-up support, including info on the optimal use of the product or implementation of a service, would the new client appreciate?

Purpose-driven content

Companies are re-evaluating how they deliver their marketing messages and many now feel that creating purpose-driven marketing content is integral to being seen as relevant to potential buyers. The more you know about the goals and buying behaviors of your prospects, the more successful you’ll become in selling to them. You want information that guides you to describe, price, deliver and provide after-sale support for your product or service in words and actions that are quickly understood and strike the right chords with the target audience and in so doing, earn their trust and confidence. Consider the three phases of the buyer’s journey:

  • Discovery phase: What do prospects see when they conduct a Google search of your entity? What links appear in the results and what story is told about your products/ services and brand?
  • Consideration phase: How is your company represented when a prospect or client engages with your social media and other content? What platform links, articles, images and websites appear?
  • Conversion phase: How does your brand show up when a client transacts business on your website? What action do you want your client to take beyond making a one-time purchase?

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © The Richard Avedon Foundation. Supermodel China Machado (born Noelie da Souza,1929-2016), photographed by Richard Avedon in New York, NY for the November 6, 1958 cover of Time Magazine’s 100 Women of the Year issue.

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Eyes On the Competition

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As was noted in three or four recent posts, business data and other forms of business information, which may consist of the observations and predictions of researchers, journalists and other experts, have always been an essential resource for business owners and leaders. As we move through the 21st century, data-driven decision-making, enabled by powerful software programs and artificial intelligence, has become the hallmark of responsible business management.

Chief among the market research that every successful business owner or leader must do is assess the competitive landscape in his/her marketplace. Questions you’ll want to find answers to include:

  • Who sells products and services similar to your own?
  • Who are their customers?
  • What is the estimated size of their market?
  • Who dominates, how and why?
  • How do the marketplace leaders attract and retain customers?
  • What is their price range?
  • How successful are they?
  • Can you launch your venture alongside these competitors and achieve sustainable success?

Mapping your competitive landscape also includes identifying direct competitors, meaning companies whose services and products closely resemble your own and indirect competitors, that is, those whose products and services present an alternative choice within a similar price range that can be sold as a potentially satisfactory solution. Understanding the difference between direct and indirect competitors can be simplified by comparing the process to shopping for a Valentine’s Day gift.

The chocolate shops are all direct competitors, with price as a potential differentiator, because chocolates are more or less interchangeable. The same can be said for florists. But chocolate shops and florists are as well one another’s indirect competitors within a similar price range because for $50.00, you can buy either a nice bouquet or a nice box of chocolates.

Start your investigation with a key word search using terms commonly chosen to describe your company’s products and/ or services to see who appears and how they rank. Whoever makes it into the top 10 are the most successful of your competitors. You can also check out member lists at the business and professional groups you’ve joined (yet another reason why business associations are a good investment). Visit the websites of the top 4 or 5 competitors in your search, along with their social media pages and Yelp reviews.

Make note of speaking engagements made by the principals—-host organization and topic, along with company participation in local charity events and business awards and nominations received. If successful competitors have done any of those things, don’t be ashamed to follow with a me, too.

Popular products and services

Knowing what sort of products and services are best-sellers for your top competitors is tremendously useful intel and will enable you to make smarter decisions about building your solutions and making your prospect’s hot buttons blink.

So try to figure out what competitors sell the most, what sells the least for them and what’s somewhere in the middle. Keep the best sellers in mind as you design your services, perhaps adding a differentiating something extra to create more value in a way that’s affordable for you, or that you can sell at a premium.

Finally, watch for what gets revised and what gets dropped. Notice how products and services are described and positioned and, if possible, priced. Learn from competitors’ mistakes.

Leadgen strategies

Absolutely, spend time analyzing the website landing pages and social media accounts of your major competitors. You want to know how they keep their pipelines filled and how they persuade prospects to remain on the buyer’s journey. What informational goodies and special offers have they sprinkled into their TOFU, MOFU and BOFU ( top, middle and bottom of the funnel)?

You may find the inevitable free-for-the-price-of-your-email-address e-book or highlights of a keynote speech delivered at a popular conference. You’re looking for inspired, desirable content choices that you hadn’t thought of, so you can offer something similar as a way to engage prospects and stimulate lead creation.

Blog and newsletter content

Pay attention to topics that are most often covered and those that are infrequently discussed. Notice also if certain topics are spotlighted during particular months. Observe which types of posts are often shared on social media and note which platforms are most often used (and which ones used the least). Your objective is to help yourself plan a content marketing strategy that features topics of interest to prospective readers and simultaneously support the premise that you are a reliable source of good information and a capable professional.

If you’re feeling more curious, use a traffic analysis tool to search for the blog-related URLs in the Top Pages list. Analyze their unique page views and visits, conversions, traffic sources ⁠— make note of all the data that’s presented. Publishing a respected blog or newsletter could become an integral building block of your success. .

Selling points

What objectives emerge as the core purpose, the main problem-solving motivation, that your competitors speak to when communicating to prospects—on their website and social media platforms, in case studies, and testimonials and in their newsletters and blog posts? What do they aim to help their customers achieve when making the case to do business with them? What descriptive language is used? Also, what benefits do they emphasize to persuade prospects to reach out to them?

Moreover, what competencies do your competitors trumpet as a valuable resource that their clients prize and prospects desire? Is it a specialized academic degree, skills certifications, prior work experience and/ or prestigious client list?

Call-to-Action

What you want to know is how competitors sell their CTA. “Buy now” and “click here” are phrases you can think up on your own. The purpose of this research is to see examples of (presumably effective) CTA pitches, both the give-away info and what is said to create an appetite for it. The information offered should be something that prospects are likely to find useful, or somehow interesting and for some items they’ll be willing to surrender their email address to obtain it.

A free 30-minute phone conversation with you or a team member that will allow serious prospects to get insight and answers about how your products and services might help them achieve a goal or solve a problem should make a tempting offer. Click the link to learn more about effective CTAs (gotcha!):

https://freelancetheconsultantsdiary.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/a-call-to-action/

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Krystle (L, Linda Evans) and Alexis (Joan Collins) were eternal rivals and fierce competitors on the prime time soap opera Dynasty (ABC-TV 1981-1989)

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Ask Better Questions

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“Be a good listener,” Dale Carnegie advised in his 1936 classic How to Win Friends and Influence People. “Ask questions the other person will enjoy answering.”  Effectively asking questions is a big part of a leader’s job. Good decision-making is based on information we obtain by asking the right questions. Making a sale, including handling objections, is also supported by effective questioning.

Many of us hesitate to ask questions, unfortunately. Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to be perceived as intrusive. Other times,  we worry that our questions may be viewed as silly and make us appear incompetent.  On the other hand, one might assume that more information is not necessary.  In every instance, an opportunity to obtain valuable information is lost.

Alison Woods Brooks, an Assistant Professor at the Harvard Business School who teaches Negotiation and is affiliated with the Behavioral Insights Group and Leslie K. John, Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, understand that effective questioning is a skill that can be honed to make our conversations more productive.

The two offer guidance on the best type of questions to ask, tone of voice to use, the sequence of questions and how to frame the questions.  The best approach for a given situation depends on the goals of those in conversation.  Is the discussion  cooperative (e.g., relationship-building or accomplishing a task together) or  competitive (the parties seek to uncover sensitive information from each other or serve their own interests), or some combination of both? Brooks and her research team employed human coding and machine learning to identify four types of questions:

  • Introductory questions (“How are you?”)
  • Mirror questions (“I’m fine. How are you?”)
  • Full-switch questions (change the topic entirely)
  •  Follow-up questions (solicit more information)

Follow-up

Although each question type flows naturally in conversation, follow-up questions have special power. Follow-up questions signal to your conversation partner that you are listening, that you care and that you want to know more. People interacting with a conversation partner who asks lots of follow-up questions tend to feel respected and heard. According to Leslie K. John, “Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding.” Plus, follow-up questions don’t require much thought or preparation and usually come naturally to the questioner.

Yet be advised that no one likes to feel interrogated. Furthermore, closed-end questions tend to yield one-word answers. Open-ended questions counteract that effect and for that reason, they can be particularly useful in uncovering information or learning something new. In fact, they are wellsprings of innovation—which is often the result of finding the hidden, unexpected answer that no one has thought of before.

Sequencing

If the goal is to build relationships, opening with less sensitive questions and escalating slowly seems to be most effective.  In a set of studies (the results of which went viral following a write-up in the “Modern Love” column in the New York Times), psychologist Arthur Aron recruited strangers to come to the lab, paired them up and gave them a list of questions.  Participants were told to work their way through the list, starting with relatively shallow inquiries and progressing to more self-revelatory ones, such as “What is your biggest regret?”

Pairs in the control group were asked simply to interact with each other. The pairs who followed the prescribed structure liked each other more than the control pairs. This effect is so strong that it has been formalized in a task called “the relationship closeness induction,” a tool used by researchers to build a sense of connection among the participants.

Tone

People are more forthcoming when you ask questions in a casual way, rather than in a terse, official tone. In general, an overly formal tone is likely to inhibit people’s willingness to share information.

Group dynamics

Conversational dynamics can change profoundly depending on whether you’re chatting one-on-one with someone or talking in a group. Not only is the willingness to answer questions impacted by the presence of others, but members of a group tend to follow one anothers lead. In a meeting or group setting, it takes only a few closed-off people for questions to lose their probing power.  Conversely, if even one person starts to open up on a topic, the rest of the group is likely to follow suit.

Art of the response

Conversation is a dance, a mutual push-and-pull. Just as the way we ask questions can facilitate trust and the sharing of information so, too, can the way we answer them. Answering questions requires making a choice about where to fall on a continuum between privacy and transparency.  How should I answer this question? Assuming that I answer, how forthcoming can I afford to be? What should one do when asked a question that, if answered truthfully, might reveal a less-than-flattering information, or put one in a disadvantaged strategic position?

Each end of the spectrum—fully opaque and fully transparent—has benefits and pitfalls.  In negotiations, withholding sensitive information (e.g., that your alternatives are weak) can help you secure better outcomes. At the same time, transparency is an essential part of building meaningful connections. Even in a negotiation context, transparency can lead to value-creating deals; by sharing information, participants can identify elements that are relatively unimportant to one party but important to the other—the foundation of a win-win outcome.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: The Dating Game, 1965- 1973 (ABC-TV)

 

 

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Storytelling Made Simple

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“What would be useful for my audience to learn and how can I package this lesson or bit of information in a compelling story format?“—Travis Bernard, content marketing guru at TechCrunch, the leading technology industry blog based in San Francisco, CA

Whaddaya say we learn how to put together a good story for your marketing content? Some people are natural storytellers and others aren’t, but it’s always useful to develop and hone the art of storytelling when one is a public speaker and that includes Freelancers, business owners and sales professionals who must speak with prospective clients to generate sales or billable hours.  Your story need not be long and elaborate.  In fact, a concise narrative will be more memorable and impactful.

Your content marketing story will describe a client experience journey.  The story will feature three main characters—the hero, the villain and the mentor.  The story will have a beginning, middle and end.  A call-to-action, when you encourage your content reader to act on the information that you’ve shared, will be the story’s epilogue.

The hero of the story will have a problem to solve or avoid, a challenge to overcome, and that is the goal.  The hero will be waylaid or deceived by the villain, that is, an obstacle that is preventing him/her from achieving the goal.  The hero must seek knowledge and guidance from a mentor during the journey and that is your role, storyteller friend.

Act I is when the hero acknowledges that there is a problem to solve.  There is a goal to achieve and an effective solution will be necessary.

Act II will describe the magnitude of the problem and the failures of various less than stellar solutions that the hero has tried and discarded (homegrown remedies or competitive products).

Act III is where you come in, the mentor who helps the hero make sense of the possible solutions and explains how your product or service can resolve the matter.  The hero agrees to adopt your product or service and the problem is resolved.  The hero looks like a genius to his/her superiors and colleagues.

The Epilogue features the call-to-action, when you show the content reader how to obtain an effective solution for his/her goal, a solution that will overcome the challenge and make the content reader look like a hero to the higher-ups.

Be advised that the hero of the content story is never the product or service.  The hero of the story is the protagonist, s/he who takes action and moves the journey forward to its triumphant conclusion.  The client is always the hero of the story.  You, the storyteller and possessor of expertise, serve as a mentor, to ensure that the hero will prevail and achieve the goal.  Your product or service supports the hero by overcoming the challenge and enabling achievement of the goal.

The purpose of your content/ story is to persuade the reader to act upon the information that you’ve delivered.  Integral to persuading the reader is to build trust in you as a mentor/ expert and confidence in the solutions that you recommend and provide. You may be able to persuade content readers to give your post a Like, or share it with others.  The ultimate validation is when content readers are so confident in your proposed solution that they click through to your website shopping cart or contact you to ask questions about how you might handle a project.

Finally, you’ll need a specific story to tell (and eventually, you’ll have two or three more). Without naming names, your content/ story will the based on a client who has successfully used your product or service.  If you will tell your company’s brand story to promote awareness, your content story will illustrate why company founders were motivated to form the venture and include mention of the mission, values and guiding principles.

Client experience journey content stories, or your company’s brand story, can be included in your blog, social media posts, white papers, videos and so on. You’re sure to find that they help prospects envision their own circumstances and how your products or services can be useful.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Photograph: Portrait of Clementina Maude (circa 1862) taken by her mother, Lady Clementina Hawarden (Viscountess Hawarden of England, 1822-1865)

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The Data Driven Payoff

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Because the February-March session sold out,  I have been invited to reprise my three-part workshop  “Become Your Own Boss: Effective Business Plan Writing”  at Boston Center for Adult Education 122 Arlington Street Boston MA on three Mondays,  May 9, 16 & 23 from 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM.  For more information or to register please visit http://bit.ly/becomeyourown59  or call 617.267.4430.

As Freelance consultants,  we know that information is nearly as valuable to us as our skill set.  Information leads us to make smart decisions about all aspects of business: what services to offer,  identifying target client groups,  determining a profitable business model,  understanding how to market our services,  gaining a competitive edge.  That good information is integral to all that we do comes as no surprise,  but until now there was no scientific evidence to support that belief.

New research done by Erik Brynjolfsson,  economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Business,  Heekyung Kim,  graduate student in economics at MIT Sloan School and Lorin Hitt,  economist at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business proves that good information really does put money in your pocket.

The three studied 179 large businesses and found that when decisions enacted were based on reliable data,  companies achieved a 5+ % higher productivity level than businesses that relied more on “experience and intuition” for decision making.  The higher productivity could not be attributed to other factors,  such as the use of more sophisticated technology.

In the study,  data driven decision making was not primarily based on merely collecting data,  but was closely linked to how the data was utilized.  In the April 24, 2011 New York Times,  Mr. Brynolfsson stated that business decisions based on data and analysis “have huge implications for competitiveness and growth”.

Thomas Davenport,  professor of information technology and management at Babson College in Massachusetts supported the conclusions reached regarding data driven business decisions in a book written with Jeanne Harris and Robert Morison, “Analytics at Work: Smarter Results” (2010),  concluding that companies that rely heavily on data analysis are likely to outperform those that do not.

The big question is,  which data do we choose to collect and analyze and how do we best apply it?  Curating data is big business.  “The biggest change facing corporations is the explosion of data”,  said David Grossman,  technology analyst at Stifel Nicolaus in the April 24 NY Times.  “The best business is in helping customers analyze and manage all that data”.

How does a Freelancer decide what to do with data available to us?  I propose that data presented here would guide readers with excellent proficiency in mathematics and possessed of an advanced degree in the subject to become data analysts!  All others might take a look at our P & L statements and examine gross revenue and fixed and variable expenses and analyze how much it costs to generate income and what can be trimmed to make the bottom line better.

Speaking of revenue,  do some research on the services that your target clients are contracting for these days.  Are you retaining clients and signing new ones, too?  How does your 2Q 2011 active client roster compare to 2Q 2010?  Do you need to tweak your business model to maintain your competitive edge,  or might it be wiser to seek a strategic partnership?

To help figure things out,  do a free online search of Google’s Key Word Tool or Wonder Wheel and type in a descriptive phrase of your core service.  How many prospects in your locale are searching for what you sell?  Next,  type in a phrase that describes the service you think might interest clients and see how many local searches it gets.  There you have it,  data driven analysis to guide your business decisions.

Use Google Analytics to track hits to your website and report which pages receive the most attention.  You can correlate that data to the number of follow-up requests you receive and  the conversion of that follow-up to new business.  Make further use of that data to evaluate the efficacy of your website and learn how you can enhance this important marketing tool.  Will adding multimedia to your website be useful?  Or will adding pages to give more information do the trick?  Or maybe you should just simplify the text and clarify and strengthen your message?  Listen to the data and find your answers.

Thanks for reading,

Kim