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Brave New World of B2B Marketing: What Customers Expect Now

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The processes of marketing and sales in the B2B sector continues adjusting to local and global economic factors, as it responds to revolutionary technological advancements that are changing so much about how business is done. What might successful marketing campaigns and sales strategies look like as we approach 2027? What will define effective tactics? “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride” is the correct answer for the time being. Most of all, whatever lead generation marketing strategies and tactics that have done a respectable job bringing in customers will need a review and a reset as you come face2face with the growing adoption of artificial intelligence-powered business tools. Also rocking the boat is the availability of online information that’s fueling the Do It Yourself B2B buyer journey that’s seducing more of your prospects. Funnels and channels are receding into history.

Search moves from keywords to trustworthy references

Let’s begin with what’s on track to become the most impactful development in both business and personal sectors—the arrival, and acceptance, of artificial AI-powered everything. You’ve surely noticed that keyword searches may not only produce a list of website links? More often than not, you also see an AI-overview that gives addresses your query in AI-generated complete sentences. AI-driven traffic is growing 165 times faster than organic search. An important outcome of this change is that your website will now play a lesser role in your marketing strategy—or maybe none at all. Recall that just a year ago, it was a given that the foundation of your digital presence (and marketing) was the website. So it’s not about getting your site into the Top 10 search results anymore. Now, it’s Google AI-verified citations that make your organization look credible. Maybe you should consider it another spin on EEAT (experience, expertise, authoritative, trustworthy)?

Today, search means earning a referral as a trusted source; if AI can’t recommend you, there’s little chance you’ll be able to interact with a prospect yourself and attempt to make a pitch. If you do nothing else this year, devise a strategy to upgrade your marketing searchability so you can optimize your online presence for AI search engines and demonstrate that your organization is trustworthy and deserving of recommendation. Freelancers who hesitate to hire a marketing company (maybe until you get beyond tax time?) can perform some DIY work to make your entity become AI-search favorable.

  • Establish visibility on digital sources these systems already trust. Online public relations mentions have considerable influence on AI visibility, so get a PR campaign going and get your entity (and yourself) mentioned in industry publications. Additionally, establish a presence on experts’ forums and industry publications.
  • Prospects tend to use longer, more conversational queries when conducting AI-powered searches, say the SEO experts at BrightEdge, who found that queries of eight or more words trigger AI Overviews far more frequently. You can align your company with this customer behavior when you brainstorm a list of the most frequently asked questions you receive; make sure that you include complex or specific queries. Next, drop those FAQs and your responses into the appropriate tabs on your website and social media, written as concise, problem-solving sentences that are placed in the appropriate tabs in your website and social media platforms. Your objective is to create opportunities for your digital content (i.e., marketing messages)to be referenced in AI searches.
  • Remember that prospective buyers expect to find relevant information about your services and products on your social media platforms. Prospects expect that questions can be asked and answered and that expectation makes social media ideal sites for AI-friendly conversational queries that portray your company as trustworthy. Prospective buyers will also appreciate demos, comparisons, pricing and outcomes. Brand stories may become less important as prospective buyers turn to AI search for content that shows how your solution will solve problems. Freelancers would be wise to post content that answers typical buyer journey FAQs because if your social content looks like ads, it might be ignored.

Funnels are responsive, static buyer journeys are done

The marketing/sales funnel as we’ve known it is on a slippery slope to obsolescence in 2026. If your approach to leadgen hasn’t changed in two years or so, it’s probably out-of-date because it is almost certainly unresponsive to nuanced customer needs. One-size-fits-all leadgen can’t keep up with the In Real Time B2B buyer journey behavior and expectations. Hyper-responsive AI-driven leadgen marketing/sales funnels are able to adjust timing, marketing (or sales) channels and messaging that responds to the behavior of prospective buyers IRT. That responsiveness is valuable to you because a dropped lead is lost revenue. According to research by Mc Kinsey, adaptive AI-powered marketing/sales funnels reduce prospect drop-off and make a sale more likely.

The typical marketing/sales funnel is being outclassed as buyers increasingly turn to AI agents for product or service summaries and reviews, performance comparisons and rankingsof competing products or services and, ultimately, purchase recommendations. Adobe Analytics reports that traffic to retailer websites from generative AI sources increased by 1,200% in February 2025 vs. July 2024.

What Freelancers must do now is to stop thinking of buying “stages”—Top of Funnel, Middle of Funnel, Bottom of Funnel— and start recognizing and responding to buying signals. Redesign your marketing/sales funnel to respond to behavior that does not follow the (increasingly irrelevant) TOFU, MOFU, BOFU stages. AI-powered “zero-click” journeys can distill the discovery-to-decision process—and simultaneously effectively eliminate opportunities for brands to influence prospects, differentiate from competitors—or even appear in the list of possibilities during the buyer journey. A survey of more than 1,100 US consumers by Bain & Company found that 80% of them rely on these “zero-click” results for at least 40% of their searches. 

AI ready to become the buyer journey influencer

The involvement of AI agents such as Gemini Deep Research and Microsoft Copilot that “streamline” the B2B buyer journey present a real challenge to Freelancers and others who have marketing and sales responsibility. Freelancers who are reluctant to adapt their leadgen tactics to include an AI-friendly protocol might have already begun to lose those who might have been customers. What’s scary is that it’s unlikely you’ll know what’s happening to your leads. Remember, the obligatory visit to your website is often omitted when the buyer journey is guided by the brisk efficiency of an AI agent. There will be no browsing through our services and about us tabs; no marketing content downloads that deliver (hopefully) convincing info for prospects to read and assess. When contact with the core touch point that is your website is bypassed, marketers will be unable to reach out and send a personalized marketing email that could start a dialogue, build trust and result in a sale. Since the “fingerprint” obtained from contact with your website will not be available, you won’t know which interested prospects might have become customers.

In the Brave New World that’s brought to us by AI capabilities, if the digital presence of your brand is scarce on platforms other than your website, your company and its services or products may be rendered effectively invisible to AI-powered search. As AI assistants guide prospective buyers through a frictionless process that moves from questions to product or service comparisons to recommendations, relatively quickly and seamlessly. There will be no need to study an e-book or envision how a case study might apply to a prospect’s needs and goals, no need to listen to a webinar or podcast. Products and services that are AI-friendly will be made available for consideration; marketing content that the AI agent finds on a trusted platform will be shared with prospects and will form the basis of the buying recommendation. It is clear that how you promote and sell your products and services will be upended.

Yet all may not be lost, thanks to basic human behaviors. Researchers at Bain and Company anticipates B2B prospective customers will respond to the growing presence of AI with, you guessed it, acceptance or avoidance. Still, wise Freelance professionals will be in a stronger position by implementing even a low-cost, no-cost strategy designed to make their brand more visible to AI search and AI agents. So, ramp up your social media content to become more service or product oriented and create content that provides info that substantively assists the buyer journey. Sell prospects the way they want to be sold and express your content in an AI-friendly format, as per your analysis of FAQs. Recognizing PR opportunities whose purpose is to obtain for your brand heightened visibility and favorable mentions in respected publications and give yourself another way to position your brand as trustworthy and deserving of an AI agent recommendation. Bain and Company predictions are as follows:

1). Prospective customers will go directly to the brand website, because that’s what they’ve always done. In fact, who are slow to adopt generative AI may dominate B2B marketing and sales processes enabling traditional sales channels to retain the lion’s share of traffic. That said, the growing use of AI agents and the ubiquity of AI-powered search is likely to chip away at traditional methods.

2.) Customers whose buyer journey is AI-supported will span the spectrum from casual shopping assistance to completion of a major purchase guided by an AI agent. These behaviors might slow down the inevitability of AI influence on the buyer journey.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Dragoscondrea | Dreamstime.com

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To Court Your Competitors’ Customers

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Motivating prospective customers to do business with you is the leading function of independent Freelance professionals and business owners. You may not look at it this way, but recognize that your pool of potential customers also includes those who are currently doing business with one of your competitors. Think about it—how many B2B customers are buying within your category of services or products for the first time? Unless your solution is new to the market and not available from others, your customers have been someone else’s customers and every once in a while some of them might decide to look around to see what’s new or a better fit for their needs.

While it’s true that getting your unique selling proposition in front of prospective customers is essential to converting them into paying customers, there are messaging refinements you can make to strengthen your appeal to prospects who are currently active in a competitor’s camp. Some in that cohort might be dissatisfied with the experience they’ve had when using a certain service or product, or maybe the vendor relationship was underwhelming. Others might simply feel a little restless and inclined to look around and find out who else is out there (you!). Here are tactics that will be useful for your outreach to competitors’ customers.

Analyze the competitive landscape

You need to learn who your competitors’ customers are from a demographic standpoint and obtain insight into what motivated them to choose a competitor. Among the information you’ll appreciate understanding are factors that cause competitors’ customers to become one-off users and factors that lead them to become loyal customers—what are the triggers for each cohort? Study the websites and social media platforms of your primary competitors as a way to learn what might matters to competitors’ customers.

Conducting a competitor analysis will help you understand the Unique Sales Proposition (USP) and perceived advantages of products and services offered by your rivals and get a handle on what it could mean to their customers. What persuades their prospects to choose those offerings instead of yours’ and what can you do to make your offerings more appealing to them? How and where your competitors market their services or products, their pricing strategy, payment options, market visibility and brand popularity are certain to be integral to attracting and keeping those customers. By analyzing the strengths and potential weaknesses of competitors and comparing them to the strengths and weaknesses of your organization, you may be able to identify gaps in the market and find ways to promote what it is that rivals’ customers might be persuaded to perceive as a better on your side of the fence.

Identify gaps in the market

Does your competitive analysis reveal incompletely addressed customer needs or preferences? Those factors might crack open a window that lets you pull in a few of your rivals’ customers. Incisive competitive research may lead you to discover that a cohort of competitors’ customers would appreciate a more comprehensive customer service package—maybe after-sale training, for example? Or perhaps, in this era of rising prices, a couple of payment options that you’ve never bothered to promote, could turn the tide in your favor and carry in a few of your competitors’ customers.

Because you will not be able to research the pain points and priorities of your competitors’ customers because it’s almost certain that you cannot access their contact info. Unless someone visits your social media or website and chooses to reveal an email address—you cannot send a survey and hope for a response. So, you’ll have to get creative to learn about the unaddressed needs of your competitors’ customers.

Visit your competitors’ social media accounts and do some social listening by checking out comment sections. There you may learn of pain points or perceived inconveniences that you can address in your marketing messages. You will also be wise to read industry articles and visit the social media platforms of those organizations to read market research published by major market research firms that report on your industry sector.

Get visible

Today’s buyer journey is not like it was even a year or two ago; prospects may not contact vendors until they are well into the buyer journey. Prospects now explore potential vendors for the solutions they need and on their own compare offerings, get an idea of costs and only then will they reach out to two or three candidates to get details and create a shortlist.

Your strategy is to be proactive. Find out where competitors’ customers discover new products or services—do they watch product or service reviews on YouTube? Do they follow industry experts or influencers on Instagram or TikTok? Customers trust brands that meet them where they already are and provide value before the sale even happens. Once you’ve learned who their guiding stars are, establish a presence for your entity in those spaces.

You want to get into organic search results with helpful content that answers questions that are important to prospects and that can include getting out in front of hesitation by addressing common objections. Showcase the outcomes your service or products can produce and how to achieve them. Blog posts, short videos, webinars, or educational product Q & A guides may be effective. The more consistently you show up with the right message, the more likely you will be able to win over your competitor’s customers—as well as finding a few new customers for yourself.

Promote your USPs

Once you understand what differentiates your brand from its competitors, as well as the evolving shopping habits of your target market, you can begin to promote the desirable and unique qualities that make your brand stand out. These might include your prices, delivery time, product availability, convenience, quality, or customer service.

These traits, which are part of the USP, should be consistently promoted across your entire business, including your website, marketing and PR, packaging and customer experience from buyer journey to post-sale. By upholding these values throughout your organization’s customer experience, you can ensure that potential buyers will know why they should switch to your brand.

Nurture brand loyalty

Acquiring new customers is much more expensive than retaining an existing one, as research has shown. Once a customer has made his/her first purchase, it’s essential to encourage repeat visits if you want to see a strong return on your investment. Building these connections will instill consumer trust and brand loyalty, ensuring that you’ve won a customer for life.

Email marketing is a time-tested way to nurture customer loyalty and it is easy to personalize—a feeling that customers value. Brand loyalty starts with how you onboard people. When you acquire a new customer, put yourself in that individual’s seat and envision a customer journey that will resonate. For example, customer’s are inclined to appreciate a discount code but in the immediate aftermath of post-sale, they’ll likely appreciate more a welcome from you that explains who you are, what the customer can expect regarding the initial stages of working together, a request to meet and discuss the product or service purchased, invoicing and payment options. In other words, you can show your value by providing relevant information that also teaches them why they should open your emails. Set the tone early, and they’ll stay engaged longer and that is one of the pathways to loyalty.

Final thoughts

Customers leave brands—your competitors or you—that stop serving their needs. They leave because someone else made it easier to understand, easier to trust, or easier to buy. That can be you.

You may need to set up a marketing complicated funnel. You may not need a sizeable marketing budget. You do need to research and learn the pain points, hot buttons, priorities and emerging next big thing—way of doing business, customer service needs, buyer journey, payment options, or whatever else. You also need to pay attention to customers and prospects consistently, to help yourself make smart improvements and prove your value where it matters most. When you do that, you don’t have to out-shout your competition. You just have to be their obvious choice.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Courtesy of Brimfield Antique Flea Markets. Featuring 5,000 dealers, Brimfield Antique Flea Markets is believed to be the most popular and largest such event in the U.S.

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How Does Influencer Marketing Work for B2B Freelancers?

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Influencer marketing has been white hot for a minute and it’s getting even hotter. A strategy born of user generated content and nurtured by early bloggers soon produced content creators who came to be considered authorities within their niche fields of expertise, developing loyal audiences for their blog content and generating follower communities along the way. Those early pioneers earned reputations and gained recognition for product reviews that showed trustworthy insights and built credibility. The DIY grassroots aura and absence of corporate advertising gave it all the blessing of authenticity. The independent and impartial assessments provided by the bloggers encouraged engagement and audience trust. But this is America so gradually, bloggers with the biggest followings in the scene featured sponsored content on their sites (often disclosed through affiliate links) and next, collaborations with retail outlets and product brands.

The phenomenon was accelerated by the introduction of social media platforms and exploded with the arrival of visually-focused platforms. Images, and especially videos, provided an ideal environment for newly minted marketing influencers to showcase themselves and the brands they represent with exciting visual content. The visually focused platforms caused an inflection point that gave rise to influencer marketing stars who found a lot of work in the B2C sector, in particular fashion, beauty and travel. Bloggers and others who had a flair for creating appealing content plus the ability to connect with and encourage relationships with their audience began to grow significant followings and exert influence over the behavior (aspirations) of prospective and current customers.

The rise of B2B Influencers 

While originally a strategy used by your flashy B2C cousins, competition for billable hours in the B2B sector seems to have stimulated the adoption of influencer marketing in the B2B sector. However, be advised that B2B influencer marketing is not about showcasing services or products. Rather, B2B influencer marketing is about helping you build trust and connect with prospective clients who, if all falls into place, will be more inclined to become your loyal clients. The goal of B2B influencer marketing strategies is to align your organization with recognized and respected industry thought leaders—the influencers— whose industry knowledge, reputation and loyal followers can be leveraged in your target market sectors.

B2B influencers are well-known and respected experts and thought leaders in their field. They’ve acquired impressive knowledge, experience and authority that confers recognized credibility that’s enabled them to build a sizeable, loyal and often activist following. Based on that authority and credibility, effective influencers are able to build trust and enthusiasm for a brand within their community of followers by making endorsements that can stimulate purchases made by decision-makers within the community. Furthermore, a brand endorsement can also result in a significant number of positive reviews posted on social media that creates a word-of-mouth campaign that can spread to the general public and can stimulate still more purchases of the brand’s services or products.

On a national level, you might think of sales training expert Brian Tracy, marketing wizard Neil Patel, professional development guru and author Stephen Covey and leadership and personal development maven Brene Brown as powerful B2B influencers. The best influencers assist brands by providing targeted exposure, building industry credibility, facilitating strategic partnerships and product or service endorsements that, ideally, will substantively enhance brand recognition, reputation and sales. Potential B2B influencer marketing goals for your organization could include:

  • Increased credibility and trust for your brand within your target market
  • Heightened audience engagement with your marketing content
  • Enhanced perceived value of your brand
  • Increased stature and influence of your thought leadership
  • Accelerated rate and quality of leads generated and an enhanced sales conversion rate

Is influencer marketing for you?

Let’s examine how influencer marketing could be useful to B2B Freelance consultants. As usual, your first act will be to assess your client base and refresh your understanding of your target market(s). You must know whom you’d like to influence, what you’d like to achieve and why that achievement will matter. Verifying your target market will enable you to recognize which influencers, marketing tactics and channels can be expected to resonate with your clients and prospects. So that you can begin to recognize the expertise, authority, connections and social media presence your most effective influencer should have, it’s imperative that you clarify the problems and projects that clients and prospects ask you to resolve. As you go through this process, you’ll also get an idea of whether (or not) influencer marketing might be a fit for you.

Identify and investigate influencers in your industry

Take your evaluation process to the next level by investigating the types of content your clients and prospects usually engage with and the platforms that supply it. What types of content do they find relevant, whom do they follow and on which platforms can that content be found? Also, what are the most common questions they’re looking to answer and the problems they want to resolve?

Next, develop a list of influencers you’d like to contact. Your job here is to speak and get to know who you might like to work with. Does this candidate have not only the industry experience and authority that you’d like but does s/he have the connections and clout in your niche to move the needle for you? Essentially, you’ll search for influencers who can help you reach and impact your ideal audience. It’s no help if an influencer has a large community of followers but does not have a prominent presence in your industry and niche. Before you decide who you’d like to follow and follow-up with, verify precisely how your potential influencer can produce what you want, which is probably some combination of upgrading and/or increasing your leadgen, enhancing company brand, encouraging brand loyalty, upgrading and expanding the earned media you receive and, ultimately, impacting purchase decisions that increase your client roster. Keep all that in mind as you look for good potential influencers. Here are common methods you can use to find influencers you can meet and interview.

  • Social media. Many influencers have large followings on social media platforms and it makes sense to start your search there. You’ll want to choose influencers who have a strong presence on the preferred platforms of decision-makers for your service or product. Engage with the content of influencers who seem to have promise for you. You can follow those who look promising and then reach out and initiate contact. This strategy gives you direct access to potential influencers and enables you to build relationships.
    • If Facebook is your preferred platform, use their search function to find influencers. You can also check out industry specific Facebook groups or pages to find B2B potential influencers.
    • Instagram is your gateway to connecting with Millennial generation decision-makers and discovering the influencers they trust. Search the platform for producers of excellent and consistent content and then visit the site profiles of those content producers you find compelling.
    • LinkedIn is the usual suspect for all things B2B, including finding B2B influencers. You can search your industry to find influencers directly. Definitely join and investigate relevant LI groups and watch for influencers within their membership ranks.
  • Networking at industry conferences and events. Attending in-person meetings and conferences provides a unique opportunity to network with professionals and identify potential B2B influencers within your niche. The strategy is effective for discovering and getting to know B2B influencers with whom you can potentially build a mutually beneficial relationship.
    • Attend relevant conferences in your industry.
    • Actively participate in networking sessions.
    • Identify B2B professionals with significant industry influence
    • Establish connections and express interest in collaboration

  • Discover B2B influencers through industry publications, influential blogs and speaking engagements. This strategy lets you evaluate is the credibility of influencers by learning who is featured in respected industry publications, which indicates expertise, authenticity and most likely, influential relationships.
    • Regularly follow industry publications and relevant blogs, with an emphasis on organizations such as chambers of commerce or other well-respected professional societies and business associations. Identify content contributors and speakers who have the industry expertise and reputations that you seek.
    • Familiarize yourself with the content of industry experts that you find promising
    • Reach out to suggest the possibility of collaboration opportunities.

Evaluate B2B influencer industry authority and credibility;

Confirm the authority and credibility of potential B2B influencers within your industry by examining their past collaborations (if possible), content quality, consistency and presence in prestige publications. Your job is to investigate which B2B influencers’ audiences and authority align with your target market and can be useful for you. Refer to your research to develop a candidate shortlist.

Reach out to your follow-up list gauge and request an opportunity to discuss the possibility of an influencer marketing relationship. Enhance your appeal to your intended influencer with a personalized and compelling outreach message that demonstrates your awareness of his/her industry authority, as evidenced by the quality and consistency of his/her published content, speaking engagements and /or professional awards. Express your admiration for their insights and expertise.

If your invitation to talk is accepted, during the conversation inquire about the brands and types of campaigns your would-be influencer has previously collaborated on. If the initial discussion leads to further and more specific talks, request a link to his/her portfolio to verify the success of past collaborations and get a feel for how a collaboration with you might work.

Negotiate terms and collaboration agreements

Clearly define and commit to writing in a signed contract your expectations of the influencer marketing campaigns, the roles and responsibilities of the influencer you’ll partner with and the compensation agreement (monetary amount and due dates) with your selected B2B influencer. Execute this agreement by producing a transparently communicated legal document—a contract.

Keep in mind that a contract is only as good as your ability to enforce it. Help yourself by keeping your wish list and the timeline for its achievement realistic. While discussions and negotiations with your preferred influencer in advance of finalizing the contract, do your best to confirm which items of your wish list outcomes seem possible for your organization as well as the amount of time and other resources that will likely be needed to get you there.

Monitor and measure campaign influencer performance

Monitor the performance of your B2B influencer campaign by tracking the relevant associated key metrics, such as client and prospect engagement, click-through rates and shares, follower growth and expansion, leadgen growth and expansion, brand reach and impressions and sales revenue. In sum, you’ll want to evaluate the campaign ROI outcome and understand the costs associated with your influencer marketing campaign versus the sales revenue that can be attributed to the campaign.

It’s imperative that you obtain an objective and comprehensive assessment of your influencer marketing activities. As with all of your business strategies, obtaining a big-picture performance evaluation is a must-do. Once you learn which strategies and campaigns are effective, and therefore worthy of your investments of money and time, and what failed to live up to your expectations, and might either benefit from an adjustment or maybe should be dropped will, as always, show you the path forward.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © gstockstudio for Freepik

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Storytelling Is the New Advertising

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Not long ago, advertisements you saw in newspapers and magazines were made to capture attention with style and flare. Whether those advertisements were from back in the day, or 21st century pop-ups that invade the screen on your device as you scroll through websites, ad copy displayed flawless visuals and meticulously phrased text, both carefully crafted to dazzle and persuade a broad swath of the ad’s target market viewers. But that was then and this is now.

In the here and now, tightly scripted advertisements appear to be losing their hold on audiences. The viewing public, some of whom are within your target market, are apparently tiring of what can easily be interpreted as ad agency engineered, focus-group tested and totally corporate. Your future clients, and maybe you, too, value what feels genuine, relatable, believable—authentic. Your future clients are hungering for comfort food served in a favorite neighborhood place, not a four- course banquet served in a grand, Michelin starred restaurant.

What future clients are increasing drawn to is storytelling—personal testimony that comes across as unscripted and communicates a set of values and guiding principles that inform how you conduct your business and and even personal life. The influence and impact of storytelling continues to expand and it seems to already have become the future of adverting in B2B and B2C markets.

Advertising experts call the emerging storytelling phenomenon the trust economy and it is winning loyalty (and wallets) with its apparently unrehearsed, believable, real first-person accounts that are overtaking the glossy ads of days past. For example, brands that feature storytelling by the company founder—maybe showing a clip that illustrates what’s happening behind the scenes or revealing that a percentage of company profit is devoted to a certain philanthropy and also explaining how the recipients benefit— are winning customers, growing their follower and customer communities and surpassing the usual results of traditional advertising. In today’s marketplace, authenticity—which is a defining ingredient of trust— has become real currency. Authentic storytelling is how you can earn it.

Maybe the rise of storytelling is a reaction to all those banner ads and pop-ups that clutter screens and have come to annoy digital audiences? Ad-blocker usage is high, especially among Generation Z (born 1997-2012) and Generation Alpha (born 2010-2025) cohorts, whose members show skepticism toward traditional advertisements. According to marketing researchers and thought leaders, authenticity is now a leading B2B purchasing driver, with prospective buyers more likely to buy from brands they perceive as transparent and real. This generational demand for “truth” means over-engineered marketing campaigns and content may no longer resonate with your target audience. But the apparently candid testimonials that typify storytelling are perceived as believable, authentic and trustworthy.

Powerful stories

On every continent and throughout human history, people with a gift for telling a story have held power in their community. We like hearing a good story that is told well. Stories told by company founders and even employees have a persuasive resonance in today’s marketplace. For example, entrepreneurs who share factors that motivated them to launch their business entity and tell the company origin story—and perhaps bravely admitting their struggles, pivots, or failures — create intimacy and relatability with their audience that neither impossibly glamorous models or bland-looking actors who were once the faces of hundreds of companies, smiling and spouting the official brand messages—cannot match.

Furthermore, traditional ads—TV, radio, print, or digital— are more expensive than ever and their returns are diminishing. By contrast, trust and authenticity-driven advertising (marketing) campaigns often require smaller budgets and deliver outsized impact in viewer engagement and word-of-mouth.

Storytelling, which is an outbound marketing strategy and therefore defined as a push promotional marketing tactic, is fundamentally different from the typical message broadcasting that defines outbound marketing, from television, radio, or print ads to sponsoring the holiday tree lighting in your neighborhood.

Expert storytelling invites the audience into a journey. Stories are a shared experience, personal and intimate and capable of making what is a transactional relationship—selling and buying— into communities of shared values and beliefs and whose participants can develop loyalty. Harvard Business Review notes that brands that present authentic narratives in their advertising and other content marketing activities see measurable improvements in consumer trust and loyalty. As well, Nielsen’s Trust in Advertising Report highlights that recommendations from “people like me” remain the most trusted source of brand information and vastly outperforms paid ads.

Build trust into marketing strategies

The core of storytelling is about developing a narrative that is believable and therefore resonates on an emotional level with audience members. The goal is to create a connection with your audience that inspires trust in and loyalty to your brand. A marketing strategy whose message prioritizes truth and has authenticity as its core delivers story narratives that your current and future clients will believe in. Your brand story, when effectively told, can connect with your current and future clients on a deeper level, providing feelings of belonging and loyalty. This emotional connection is crucial in building a lasting relationship between the brand and its consumers. When developing your storytelling strategy and choosing key elements to incorporate in the narrative, you might include:

  • showcasing not only the company founders, but also employees as storytellers
  • Sharing behind-the-scenes happenings with humility, honesty and maybe a touch of humor as well
  • Participating in social media as well as selected in-person community events or platforms to create opportunities that invite two-way communication with your clients, prospects and other followers
  • To evaluate the impact and outcomes of your storytelling marketing campaigns, measure not just impressions but also viewer sentiment, advocacy and engagement metrics

Develop your brand story

Storytellers may sound unscripted and in the strictest sense of the word, that may be true. However, effective storytellers, whether they are entertainers or entrepreneurs, know their talking points. They know the theme and purpose of the narrative. They know how to present the story to the audience and make it capture attention and flow. In other words, creating an effective brand story requires careful consideration. Here are key elements to keep in mind:

  • Know your audience: Understanding your target audience is always essential in public speaking. Make a list of what you feel represent your values, guiding principles, priorities and purpose and consider how they impact the company. You may also want to include challenges and pain points and a reach-for-the-stars goal or two. Tailor your story narrative to resonate with your audience.
  • Clear message and purpose: You don’t want to rant, you don’t want to humble brag. You must have a purpose, an objective, that can lead you to devise a compelling story. Your story should have a clear and concise message. Avoid overcomplicating the narrative; focus on the core message you want to convey, keeping it simple. You should have a Call to Action—what do you want your audience to do—maybe make a purchase, so that they can feel philanthropic by knowing that a portion of each sale will be used to fund a worthy cause, e.g., a healthcare or educational organization?
  • Authenticity: Authenticity is crucial to storytelling. Your clients can easily detect inauthentic narratives, which can damage a brand’s reputation. Ensure that your story aligns with your brand values, company vision and mission.
  • Emotional appeal: Incorporate elements that evoke emotions. Whether it’s joy, sadness, inspiration or nostalgia, an emotional connection can significantly enhance the impact of your story.
  • Organize the narrative: Your story must have a beginning, middle and end. It must have an intro that intrigues viewers and a conclusion that inspires them. A Call-to-Action will tell them how to direct the emotions your story has built up; it creates a common purpose among audience members and is a bonding and community-building experience.
  • Visual and verbal aspects: Combine visual and verbal elements to create a cohesive and immersive experience. Use imagery, videos and written content to bring your story to life.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Alejandra Brun/ Agence France-Presse for Getty Images. Charles Robinson, member of the Choctaw tribe (AL, LA, MS, OK), dances during his storytelling presentation in Lima, Peru, August 2003

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Level Up Your Thought Leader Cred

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Being a thought leader is a vital ingredient in a Freelancer’s recipe for a B2B content marketing strategy that moves the needle. In fact, establishing yourself as a credible thought leader is foundational to building a thriving Freelance client list. Freelancers must recognize that business acumen, lived experience and data you share with content followers, some of whom are prospects and clients, is a valuable strategic asset. What you know and how you express your knowledge is the core of your Unique Selling Proposition and the engine that drives your ability to deliver solutions that produce results and convert prospects into paying clients.

Many independently employed professionals label themselves an “expert in the field and thought leader,” but few do so with a carefully considered sense of purpose that leads to an actionable outcome—like persuading a hesitant prospect to become a client. In today’s hyper-competitive marketplace that’s populated with cautious prospects who’ve lengthened B2B sales cycles and pushed your next paid invoice farther into the future, it is imperative to distinguish yourself from those whose “thought leadership” amounts to checking the box and calling it done.

Tickling a handful of marketing metrics doesn’t prove that you’re a credible thought leader, either; click bait posts and articles are only eye wash and audiences recognize it. True connaisseurs of thought leader content track business impact (vs. 63% overall) and 51% track brand authority (vs. 38% overall) to assess how audiences really feel about their content. They measure the relevance of their thought leadership with insightful metrics:

  • Audience engagement — views, downloads, shares (80%)
  • Business impact — lead generation, pipeline influence (63%)
  • Audience feedback — client/prospect feedback, sentiment analysis (40%)
  • Brand authority — speaking/media opportunities, publication citations (38%)

Furthermore, connaisseurs publish their thought leadership on marketing channels that provide an audience of B2B prospects who are serious about obtaining useful information. If you are not currently publishing on these channels, as well as getting out in front of a live audience every once in a while, add these items to your thought leadership promotional activities.

  • LinkedIn (76%)
  • Email newsletters (54%)
  • Speaking events, webinars (52%)

Those who “get” the power of thought leadership know that the information they present may be used by audience members who are either familiar with or contending with a particular challenge. The insights and info you present as a thought leader is used to support responsible decision-making, whether in the moment or in the near future. Therefore, the goal of savvy Freelancers is to produce credible, possibly innovative and reliably useful thought leadership content that followers and other readers or viewers will notice and remember. Below are thought leadership ingredients you can use to develop your recipe for success.

1. Solve a problem readers will recognize

Effective thought leadership is born of a vexing problem that is urgent—an emerging risk, a stubborn and mysterious challenge or failing, or even a misunderstood opportunity. The most perceptive and confident thought leaders will dare to step outside the usual narrative or practice and provide a perspective the audience hasn’t heard before and use it as a launchpad for potentially effective solutions. Does your thought leadership content inspire your audience make smarter, braver, decisions, or help them to avoid a potentially costly error, or problem they may not have considered?

Thought-leadership content that presents insights and information that helps decision-makers perform not as mere functionaries but as leaders who know how to keep the mission-driven goals of their organization in the forefront builds trust and separates you from competitors. To achieve that, thought-leaders must be aware of what audience members need to know now—before a competitor tells them first.

2. Present thought leadership content with an out-of-the-box idea

Defining the problem is where thought leadership starts and proposing an innovative way to perceive and address it is what gets thought leader content noticed. A true thought leader is provocative, one who reveals an “aha” moment that makes a new way of looking at things both credible and memorable. Create thought leadership content that challenges conventional wisdom or reframes a common problem in an unexpected way—and show your audience that you understand the problem and how it can be solved.

To stimulate your creative spirit, you may want to employ an Artificial Intelligence tool to rev up your brainstorming. You’ll have to experiment to find the right prompts that help you discover intriguing, but credible, possibilities for topics that answer questions for readers and reveal what they consider to be an emerging concern. AI can also help you frame your approach to the topic and provide suggestions as to which narrative threads might be included in your content. Also, use storytelling to shape your content, as it is usually the most relatable way to communicate with your audience—and they’re more likely to retain the info you deliver.

A concise overview of a case study or references to insights gleaned from user generated content that’s appeared on your company’s social media accounts are excellent sources of lived experiences that are provided by your very own followers. You can also discover topics to explore as well. Let AI help you start the brainstorming process by showing you topics that your audience are likely to find relevant and then build your case with real time source material that might reflect both your own experiences and that of your clients.

3. The best thought leadership content is in the trenches

When scouting for source material, keep in mind that residents of the C-Suite may not give you boots-on-the-ground perspectives or stories that reveal out-of-the-box perspectives or possible solutions that bring “street cred” to your thought leader content. Clients and colleagues who have a customer-facing role are better positioned to provide you with the most interesting topics, experiences and insights that bring authenticity to your narratives. You want reports from those who notice shifting customer behavior, for example, and other grass-roots experiences that bring a rawness and depth to your thought leader content and makes it relevant to a wide audience.

4. Thought leader content is considered useful

Good thought-leader content earns attention by delivering relevant information. That doesn’t mean checklists or how-tos—but it does mean clarity and ideas that make a subject that is complex feel as if it can be navigated and understood. When your followers and other readers finish your article and let the information you provided and hit the save and/or the forward button, that will verify your status as a thought leader. Useful content helps readers do things like:

  • See a risk they hadn’t considered
  • Argue for a decision internally
  • Convince the audience to take action
  • Shift the mental model audience members were using

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: ©nobelprize.org (L-R) Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, Simon Johnson of MIT and James Robinson of University of Chicago in Chicago, IL

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Milestones Are Your Reason for A Reset

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Certain dates on the yearly calendar are noteworthy—birthdays, holidays and anniversaries, a new year or a new season, as well. The dates have meaning; they mark special occasions and hold a certain power. You might call them milestone dates. Some milestones merely mark the passage of time, but others suggest growth and development, an inflection point and the possibility of making a positive change. Those milestones beckon you to consider new options, new experiences, or a new perspective.

A particular milestone date or occasion may motivate you to do better and give yourself an upgrade. You might feel it’s time to press the reset button on some aspect of your life. You’re primed to open the door to new options and opportunities. You recognize that you’ve reached a psychological milestone and life is telling you to reassess and redesign, reinvent, or recharge some part of your life or some part of your business enterprise or career. Think New Year’s Resolutions.

This spark of inspiration is called the “fresh start effect.” It’s a psychological phenomenon that explains why milestones—the arrival of a new year, a birthday, or the first day of a new season—make you inclined to self-reflection. You feel the urge to take on beneficial new habits and drop an old habit that’s outlived its usefulness. You’re ready to attach jumper cables to your personal or professional life, start the ignition and make things come alive.

Because the fresh start effect is universal, your clients are likewise inclined to experience a restless feeling that creates a longing for something new and different. For that reason, milestones are an excellent time to make use of the prevailing zeitgeist and shake up a client-facing sector of your business. The strategy is powerful because you’ll align your company and its solutions with your customers’ existing expectations, rituals and rhythms.

Your mission is to position your brand to align with customs or expectations that your clients and prospects will likely experience when they think of your target milestone occasion. How might your service or product be perceived as part of their fresh start? Your goal is to not only meet their needs and wants, but also portray your brand as a timely, trusted partner during noteworthy moments in their lives. Milestone dates are the right time to stir the pot and offer up—what? An activity or information that aligns with your company and its services or products and simultaneously resonates with your clients and prospects to show them why they trust, relate to and value your brand.

Your potential milestone occasions could be the beginning of a new school year, the arrival of spring or fall, the anniversary of your business launch or getting your first paying client, or even Black Friday (U.S. readers know that’s the fourth Friday in November). This post was inspired by the arrival of the fourth quarter on October 1. 4Q is powerful because it closes on December 31, the end of the calendar year, and business owners and leaders are anxious to have a strong finish to the year.

Commemorate your milestones

The fresh start effect is a golden opportunity you don’t want to miss. Your clients and prospects can be positively influenced by milestone dates, even if the occasion is linked to your business and not a national holiday or change of seasons. It’s not a stretch to persuade your audience to take on a mindset that opens them up to change and new beginnings that happen to align with your company, products or services. In other words, don’t shy away from celebrating the anniversary of your company’s launch as your Founder’s Day and build a promotional campaign to celebrate it—and bring in revenue as you do!

Make your marketing message about a restart and transformation

Marketing messages that include a theme of renewal and transformation often resonate with audiences during fresh start milestone periods because your audience is already in a self-assessment and growth-oriented mindset. For example, presenting a new angle to your brand story to refresh client enthusiasm and promote engagement is among the milestone-themed campaigns you might choose to develop. To tap into this power, invite a client to give a testimonial—audio, video, or written—that describes how your product or service sparked meaningful change in the client’s business operations, whether it’s a small but powerful effect or a game-changer.  

You can get the ball rolling on client testimonials by creating a survey that asks questions such as, “How has our product or service made a difference in how you do business? Can you share a specific example?” These questions will focus testimonial responses on the tangible benefits and transformational power of your products rather than generic praise like, “Your product or service is awesome!” Often, you’ll even uncover surprising ways your product made a difference.

Alternatively, you (and your team, if that applies) can present a backstage story by creating a video of you on your way to give a presentation at a local business association, or to do volunteer work. Your clients may enjoy getting to witness an uncensored, up-close and person look that nevertheless illustrates your business acumen and, if philanthropy is the focus, your values and the importance of corporate social responsibility and giving back to your community.

Good stories are always about transformation. You want to position your service or product as a catalyst for your clients’ positive evolution and so that you can connect with them on a deeper, emotional level so that you will take on the role of guide in their journey. By presenting useful, or fun and always compelling information about your brand you’ll capture the attention and imagination of your audience and strengthen their bond with you.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: A “Sweet 16” birthday party at The Crystal Ballroom in Daytona Beach, FL

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Mix Master: Balance Branding, Marketing and PR

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When operating a business, whether that means a boutique, one person Freelance entity or an enterprise company that employs thousands of workers in dozens of locations, encouraging sales of products and services is most often the purpose of information that company leaders share with the public. Sharing specific types of information about the company and its services and products with those that research indicates have significant potential to become customers plays a vital role in building and maintaining a thriving business. The ability of said company’s services and products to capture the attention and inspire the loyalty and trust of prospective customers is reflected in name recognition, feelings of credibility and loyalty among target customers and customer evangelism for the company and its services and products.

The information created to be seen by prospective customers is without question a company’s most important communication initiative and it’s known as the marketing strategy—a comprehensive road map that defines how the company will reach out and appeal to prospective customers and convince them to become paying customers. The public facing components of the marketing strategy are advertising, branding and publicity/public relations, along with campaign-specific marketing activities. Ideally, all the aspects of marketing information will function in tandem and create competitive advantages against the company’s marketplace competitors. To most efficiently and effectively implement a big-picture marketing strategy, it is advantageous to follow a certain “order of operations,” a road map that enables each component to support the others. You may be surprised to learn that the road to a high-functioning marketing campaign begins with public relations and publicity.

The goal of marketing—whether the big-picture marketing strategy that includes branding, advertising and PR/publicity, as well as the campaign-specific activities of marketing initiatives that typically include email marketing, networking, social media and content marketing—is to introduce and create an appetite for your service or product. Many marketers (and that would include me) have been tempted to begin implementation of the big-picture marketing strategy with branding. We tend to assume that presenting an identity, a brand persona, for the company and its services and products will most immediately resonate with prospective customers. We’ve been taught that prospects will more readily understand and value the service or product by getting familiar with the brand, which would make that function the first step in cultivating loyal customers who, we hope, will give good word-of-mouth by making referrals and becoming advocates.

However, in the 2020s era to begin a major marketing campaign with branding is very cart-before-the-horse. Today, PR/publicity exacts considerable influence on the perception of product or service credibility. Maybe it’s the inevitable result of Instagram and TikTok? In the here and now, start-up founders and marketers for existing businesses must acknowledge the power of PR in their arsenal of promotional communication resources. Strategic and consistent PR/publicity is now recognized as the way to encourage visibility and instill credibility that distinguishes your company and its services and products in the marketplace. Marketing, and its advertising component, will drive awareness but the PR spotlight can make your services and products seem trendy and trustworthy and create an aura that drives sales.

PR is visibility and credibility

Publicity is born of look-at-me attention and buzz. PR means press releases, blogs, podcasts, special events and influencer shout-outs that echo through the digital metaverse and put your company’s name on the lips of target customers. PR expands marketplace awareness that sparks name recognition but it is not a direct method of generating leads or driving sales. Instead, PR works in the background, cultivating and elevating your brand’s reputation.

So make yourself visible on behalf of your business; you might start by exploring how to become a podcast or webinar guest or participate in a panel as a speaker or moderator. You could also research local events that resonate with your values, and the values of your target customers, and engineer another opportunity to receive visibility as you simultaneously verify your belief in corporate social responsibility.

Incidentally, be aware that CSR is sometimes a decisive factor in B2B and B2C purchasing decisions —today’s consumers increasingly prioritize ethics. B2B services company BusinessDasher explains that 84% of customers evaluate a companies’ ethics and values when considering a purchase, and 63% say they would prefer companies with whom they do business to adopt ethical business and social practices.

As noted, promotional communications are under the marketing umbrella and there is a degree of overlap between all marketing functions, but Public Relations/publicity and marketing have their differences. PR/publicity is focused on establishing and expanding the company name and reputation of its services and products by being seen in the right places. PR can encourage positive word of mouth so that prospective customers will realize that your entity is open for business.

After you’ve developed and implemented successful PR/publicity initiatives over several months or even a year, consult your marketing data to check on metrics that indicate when it could be advantageous to launch a boots-on-the-ground marketing activities that include implementing a sales/marketing funnel, publishing a newsletter or blog, setting up email campaigns, or stepping up social media presence, all to continue and further solidify customer engagement. Step Two in your marketing strategy is about shifting gears and bringing in high-quality leads you can convert into sales.

Marketing attracts customers

Marketing refers to everything that brings information and images that represent your company and its products and services directly to potential customers, to capture attention, educate them about your services and products, inspire trust and loyalty and promote sales—it’s Step Two in your promotional campaign. Great marketing doesn’t so much sell your product or service—rather, it creates a desire for your product or service. Effective marketing generates actions that are measurable, whether that’s clicks, email sign-ups, subscribing to your blog or newsletter and eventually, sales. If publicity is about awareness, marketing is about attraction. Now is the time to leverage the visibility that was generated by PR/publicity and use it to reach out to prospects and cultivate relationships, now that you’ve achieved name recognition and familiarity that are the seeds of trust.

As you know, a key component of marketing is content marketing, which is information that educates prospects about your product or service; particularly in B2B, content marketing has become the new advertising. In fact, the Content Marketing Institute found that 80% of corporate decision-makers prefer to review information about products or services that’s presented as objective research, rather than advertisements, which are considered to be biased. One study has put the number of prospects and customers who believe advertisers have integrity at 4%.

Customer trust in traditional advertising has tanked, especially for Millenials and GenZ.  Wharton Magazine reports that 84% of Millennials not only dislike traditional ads, but also distrust them. For companies that would like to expand their market reach, these statistics send a clear signal. Investing only in advertising and marketing campaigns is unlikely to move the needle. To develop a good reputation for your brand, it’s recommended to start with PR/publicity and then move into marketing activities that include content marketing, networking, podcast or webinar appearances and publishing a blog or newsletter.

Brand is identity

The impact of brand identity is revealed in the sum total of how customers experience and perceive your business and its services and products, from product packaging to tag line, price structure to social media presence. A brand encompasses all the touch points that shape how customers feel about interacting with the brand. The interpretation of those touch points belongs only to the customer because engaging with a brand involves emotion—what people feel when they see your company name, logo, service, or product. It’s your company’s identity and reputation and it expresses and represents what it means to customers.

Your brand will be nurtured by ongoing PR/publicity, from CSR inspired events to your active involvement in professional associations or business organizations. along with content marketing activities, from case studies to email marketing. Associating your company with respected business organizations and community events can only elevate its visibility and brand reputation—characteristics known to encourage brand loyalty and sales.

Identify what motivates customers to buy

To understand the motives behind your customers’ purchases, tap into information that’s provided by the inward-facing aspect of marketing—market research. After all, the best decisions are data-driven. Yelp’s Trend Tracker can give a big boost to the ROI of your marketing activities with analytic insights that are available to you free of charge—join the mailing list and you’ll receive data that is relevant and updated monthly and enables those who pay attention to access boots-on-the-ground marketing info that can steer the effective promotion your products and services. Supported by Trend Tracker data, you’ll be positioned to detect and quickly respond to customer preferences, adjust marketing strategies and/or tactics to better align with shifting customer priorities and maybe even tweak your service or product line to reflect a significant shift in customer tastes.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: David created by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564, Republic of Florence) and unveiled in 1504, the statue has been housed at Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence, Italy since 1873.

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Create Content That Delivers

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You will agree that the internet is the leading source of information and entertainment for everyone on Earth who has connectivity. The global data and business intelligence platform Statista reports that in 2025 5.56 billion, approximately 65% of the world’s population, has internet access. To nearly every business entity on the planet, that means about 5.34 billion potential customers—many of whom are too young to launch a buyer’s journey, but some of whom might influence purchases their parents make—are available to receive online marketing information.

While the vast majority of the world’s internet users will become the customers of only a select few brands, the wide acceptance of digital communications gives marketers everywhere the green light to create and post a vast amount of marketing information and the digital space is now awash in content of every type—audio, video, images and text. Audience appetite for content, whether information or entertainment, shows no signs of abating. The number of digital content websites and platforms continues to proliferate and invite contributors to produce still more content, all of which beckons viewers, listeners and readers to show some love and click here, please!

Content saturation of the internet is an inevitable phenomenon. According to the nationally known content marketing expert Neil Patel, nearly 40 % of enterprise companies plan to increase their content marketing budgets this year. Freelance solopreneurs and smaller business entities will likewise continue, or perhaps increase, their content marketing activity as well, but the dominance of content presented by the multinationals can easily cause the comparatively modest content produced by small entities to be overwhelmed as if by a riptide. Freelancers are understandably frustrated with this occurrence. How can you become more visible when your content must swim with the whales—and sharks?

It’s a vexing problem for sure but there is a commonsense strategy, one that plays to your strengths and demonstrates resourcefulness and creativity. The best response to content saturation is to activate your problem-solving ability and devise a strategy that guides you to create content that not only resonates with your audience, but also positions you to gain and maintain the attention and loyalty of your target audience. Whether your information is intended for social media posts, or focuses on developing and promoting content featured in your webinars, weekly blogs, or monthly newsletters, be reassured that content perceived as valuable will be acknowledged and followed by your target audience. It’s just about guaranteed that content featuring information that is specific, practical and actionable will result in a loyal and thriving audience who will regard you as a trusted expert. So, your mission as a content producer is to learn what is meaningful to your readers, listeners and/or viewers and let their priorities guide your content development and distribution strategies.

Educate yourself by reading articles that discuss from local and national perspectives developing trends, pending legislation, competition, opportunities and other updates in your field. Producers of relevant content must also be consumers of relevant content! If producing content figures prominently in your marketing strategies (and I know that it does), you may find one or more of the following five suggestions able to enhance the value of your marketing content and also position your content to bring in a healthy ROI—which might include establishing you as a thought leader.

Relevant, realistic and relatable information

Content that your audience considers to be relevant and practical is more likely to be valued, implemented and shared. Gaining a reputation as a reliable and respected source of content by your audience will incline them to become your followers or subscribers. Content that your viewers, listeners, or readers consider potentially actionable and known to be trustworthy can also encourage loyalty to you, your content and your organization and may persuade some to become your customers. To create content that’s considered useful and trustworthy, and resonates with your audience, you must stay ahead of emerging trends in your industry and be aware of and responsive to the evolving preferences, priorities and concerns of your customers.

Actions are easy to implement and afford

Your audience should be able to envision the usefulness of the actions or strategies your content recommends, even if only a minority of them is prepared to implement your ideas now or in the near future. Individual circumstances will dictate what audience members decide to do, but any advice put forth in your content must inspire confidence.

Furthermore, your content should not recommend actions or strategies that involve implementation costs that many would consider expensive. I’ll go so far as to say that the average B2B content viewer is looking for ideas that can, with a minimum of time and fuss, be used to grow their customer list, streamline business operations and either save or make money—practical advice that can be implemented at no cost or low cost. While business expenses are inescapable, content creators win more fans by recommending actions that demonstrate recognizable value and are accessible and affordable to the majority of the audience.

Your content is your own creation

Rather than doing a copy/paste of another’s work, content creators should value their lived experience—victories won and battles lost, resilience found, the worries of sleepless nights and sudden inspirations—and share those stories with your audience in ways that will be interesting and useful to them. Producing content is usually time-consuming, but that is the price of authenticity and it is worth it. To give yourself a starting point for your creative process, search for trending topics in your field, or comment on an aspect of the most frequent internet search questions related to your marketplace sector that were made over the past week.

Links to expert 3rd party support

In this post I’ve referenced marketing expert Neil Patel and the global business information platform Statista. Demonstrating to your readers/listeners/viewers that key points of your content are supported by recognized nationally or globally respected thought leaders gives them reasons to trust and value the recommendations and insights offered in your content.

Avoid confirmation bias

Content that is valued and popular is shaped not by the creator’s preferences, but by the readers/viewers/listeners in the audience. A common tactic used to help creators avoid confirmation bias is to simply ask audience members what they want to see and hear now, so that you can ensure the relevance of your content. Every few months, you might create a short survey that encourages content viewers to express what matters to them. In a four or five question survey, you can also slip in one or two audience demographic questions—Are you self-employed or an employee? What is your main area of expertise?—and begin to build an audience persona, which will enable you to heighten your responsiveness to your audience.

  • Social media polls Your preferred platforms provide a convenient means to create and send a survey that will help you learn more about your audience. Social media platforms make it easy for you to engage and more effectively communicate with audience members by providing fully customizable forms that help you expand your reach and even grow your base of followers. Polls are equipped with analytical tools that will give you information on your audience’s age group, location, profession and more.
  • Online and email surveys. The most important part of conducting online surveys is knowing what you want to learn from each question, and to keep questions short and easy to answer. You can also create email campaigns to survey your existing client base and gain valuable insight about them. For a very basic customer survey, ClickInsights sets up a one-question, one-click email survey; create a more extensive survey at Survey Monkey.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © A Tokyo soba noodle delivery in 1956. Bettmann Archive/ Getty Images

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Email Marketing is Evergreen

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Still known for the impressive return on investment (ROI) it delivers to users, evidenced by its ability to deliver personalized content that’s tailored to customer preferences as well as the ability to drive conversions, including customer purchases, more effectively than just about any other marketing channel, including social media. The evergreen marketing tool that is email marketing is the gift that keeps on giving. The strategy is a multi-purpose marketing tool that business owners and marketing managers are known to rely on when the goal is to develop and nurture customer relationships and initiate engagement that promotes brand loyalty, repeat business and customer referrals.

Email marketing is expressed in more formats than may immediately come to mind—it can be more than the basic email letter that clutters an inbox and is often deleted. Email marketing also refers to blogs and newsletters that recipients opt-in to receive, plus a range of other communications intended to deliver all manner of business information, such as service or product updates or special offers and personalized greetings, from holidays to customer birthdays. Not only that, marketing emails are also a convenient and effective way to invite customer feedback that gives business owners and marketers insights into what they’d like to see more of, or less of, in your products, services and operational practices. So—how does your company use emailing to carry out your marketing strategies?

Email is a familiar and well-accepted method of communication—in fact, your customers compose and send emails themselves. To maximize the effect of email marketing campaigns, marketers are recommended to create emails that amplify the message and persuade recipients to open, read and in some instances, save your emails—but never delete without reading. Because most people receive many emails every day, the first order of business is to make your emails stand out in a crowded inbox.

To grab customer attention and entice recipients to open and read your email, attach a subject line that recipients will find irresistible. You can also decide to shock or amuse recipients by crafting a provocative or unexpected subject line that promises to deliver surprising information. Subject lines that contain a relevant statistic, whether predictable or shocking, also make particularly alluring email subject lines.

Ideally, the email subject line functions as a “hook” that causes the recipient to linger for a few brief seconds and wonder—Is reading this email worth my time? Smart marketers have discovered that they can further enhance the perceived value of their emails by including a follow-up line of preview text that can further arouse curiosity or confirm that the topic is a priority for the recipient. Below are four components that build an outline for your emails and organizes the presentation of your content in a way that helps recipients quickly understand the purpose and relevance of your information:

  1.  The subject line is crafted to grab recipient attention. The right subject line substantially improves the success of email open rates. Research shows that recipients open emails featuring a subject line perceived as relevant. Almost half of all email opens rely on that first impression.
  2. Hold your recipient’s attention with a preview text teaser that contains approximately 10 words. Subject lines matter when you want your email recipients to notice, value and read your message. The The second line preview text will appear immediately beneath the main subject line in the email inbox. Do not ignore the importance of the preview text; it is an extra hook, especially for users checking email on mobile devices (and about 50% will do exactly that).
  3. The message content should maintain the recipient’s enthusiasm. Compose your information to communicate relevance and trust as it guides the recipient through your content’s message. Be sure to compose message content to convey your marketing strategy by aligning the themes presented in your blogs, newsletters, informational and relationship building emails.
  4. CTAs are crafted to persuade email recipients to take action on an offer by responding to your call to action. The CTA literally shows readers of your content what they should do next. In return, the reader will receive a benefit, which might be a free 30-minute consultation with you or one of your team members to clarify how your products or services can provide solutions they need, or maybe an opt-in to subscribe to your blog or newsletter, or maybe to receive a free e-book. Whatever the purpose of your CTA, make the benefit that recipients will receive one that is likely to be considered worthwhile. BTW, you will grow your mailing list when there is a response to your CTA because responding entails providing contact info, at minimum, recipient name and email.

Now—in addition to the marketing emails that you currently send, what other kinds of emails might you send to communicate marketing messages that can make your marketing campaigns more effective? Below are email strategies that might enhance your marketing goals.

A/B testing

How can you learn which subject line works best with your customers? Or do certain subsets of your target audience respond differently depending on how your subject line or other aspects of your message are phrased? You can find out who’s who by sending out two variations of an email to different segments of your audience to see which performs better. By testing elements such as subject lines, email layouts and call-to-action buttons, you can continually refine your approach to improve response and results.
Test two different subject lines to see which one yields a higher open rate and/or compare the response generated by two different email layouts in terms of click-through rates.

Automated campaigns

Marketing automation ensures that your marketing emails are actually sent at your preferred time. For certain messages, notably blogs and emails, you want recipients to look forward to hearing you at a certain time (like Tuesdays at 11:00 AM Eastern!). Further, a marketing automation system will ensure, for example, that welcome emails are sent in a timely fashion to new or returning customers. You also want to guarantee that emails sent as part of customer onboarding, special occasion or holiday greetings are likewise sent within your preferred timeframe—and you don’t necessarily want to rely on your memory to manually perform these functions yourself. Instead, setting up automated marketing campaigns to ensure that you maintain a consistent communication with subscribers, nurture leadgen and customer relationships without manual effort as you reinforce the dependability and professionalism of your brand.

Drip campaigns

Drip campaigns involve sending a series of emails automatically, based on pre-determined timelines of your choosing or they are triggered by certain user actions. Have you ever searched a certain business or category and then received an email a few minutes later from the very business you searched, or from a local business within that search category? If so, you’ve experienced a drip marketing campaign. Drip marketing campaigns are excellent for encouraging leads because they respond to your immediate need or inquiry with the siren song of instant gratification.

Interactive emails

Incorporating interactive elements such as polls, surveys, or clickable content can increase user engagement. Interactive emails are more likely to captivate subscribers, encouraging them to interact with your content and brand—for a minute or two. for example, you might a three or four question survey to learn of or confirm what your customers find most appealing about your organization, or learn what they’d like to see more, or less, of to gauge customer satisfaction and preferences.

Integrating with social media

Enhance your email marketing by integrating it with your social media strategy. Encourage your email subscribers to follow you on one or more of your social media platforms, and vice versa, to create a cohesive brand experience. This strategy can expand your reach and strengthen your online presence.
Foe example, you might include in social media posts a line or two of an upcoming blog or newsletter post, as a teaser.

Re-engagement campaigns

Aimed at lapsed subscribers, that is, previously active subsrcibers who are now inactive, these campaigns are designed to recapture their interest and where possible, to also learn the cause of the disengagement. This could involve sending special offers, updates about new services and/ or products, or simply asking for feedback on why they are no longer active customers. Their responses can offer valuable insights for future improvements. Devising a concise survey email that asks open-ended questions that give lapsed customers or subscribers the opportunity to give feedback that expresses what for them what was lacking or unsatisfactory, whether content to which they subscribed, as in a newsletter or blog, or an aspect of doing business with your organization.

User-Generated Content: reviews and testimonials

Showcasing content created by your customers, for example, reviews or testimonials, can significantly enhance the credibility of your brand. When you include UGC in certain of your promotional marketing emails, that can not only engage readers, but also provide social proof that encourages them to try your products or services and as well, enhance your brand’s authenticity.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Winged Mercury special delivery stamp issued in 1954.