B2B Marketing Blog

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

 

B2B Marketing News Simply Put - June 2022 (1)

Welcome to the June 2022 edition of B2B Marketing Industry News Simply Put!

If you are a B2B marketing professional, trying to keep up with content marketing, SEO, and social media, and also short on time, then you’re in good company.

Join me as I go through some of the most important recent insights and topics!

New Study Looks at the Most Effective LinkedIn Post Types in 2022

A recent study done by SocialInsider and CloudCampaign portrays some of the best-performing formats on LinkedIn.

The study reaffirms there increased chances of reach using:

  • Native content – such as PDFs uploaded directly to the platform (vs links that take people out of the platform).
  • Video content – uploading videos generate the highest engagement per impression rate for small to mid-sized accounts.

Not groundbreaking but a good refreshment. You can read the full research here.

Google May 2022 Core Update Is Now Complete

Google’s most recent core algorithm update began rolling out on May 25 and has officially completed on June 9.

These events are almost never easy to decipher. Some folks talked about the update targeting websites with AI-generated content. However, this was not confirmed by Google or any of its official liaisons.

As a general rule, in order to increase organic presence focus on overall content quality and its added value. That trumps all algorithms and technicalities.

LinkedIn Adds New Event Engagement Options, Simplified ‘Repost’ Process

LinkedIn’s attempt to increase user interaction comes as no surprise given its record levels of user activity.

With more than 24,000 events being added to the app each week, LinkedIn is now preparing to roll out new comment engagement features for LinkedIn Events. These new options aim to increase the likelihood of users participating in discussions while also promoting your event.

Additionally, LinkedIn is making it simpler to share changes on LinkedIn by adding a new, streamlined “Repost” option to the “Share” menu.

Reposting on LinkedIn will soon be available with the first release already in progress.

TrustRadius’ new B2B report – The age of the self-serve buyer is here

The yearly study report from TrustRadius, The B2B Buying Disconnect, examines trends in business technology purchases from a YoY standpoint.

TrustRadius was able to identify 5 major trends in technology acquisition. Data from 2185 surveyees shows that Gen Z and Millennials are leading the way, but these significant trends apply to all demographics.

Pore over some of the key takeaways from the analysis:

  1. Virtually 100% of the buyers wish to self-serve part or all of their buying decisions – up from 13% in 2021. Tech buyers are mostly in transparent pricings, demos or free trials, and customer reviews.
  2. 40% of the surveyees said that “having to contact sales for a demo or free trial” makes a vendor less purchasable.
  3. Buyers named cold-calling as the number one reason to avoid buying software solutions.
  4. 41 percent of those in the Gen Z and Millennial demographic said that their first step in buying was checking review sites.

Read more about TrustRadius’ report here!

#B2BMX: NLA Recap: As ABM Strategies Advance, Alignment & Personalization Enter The Spotlight

#B2BMX: NLA offered hundreds of skill-level-specific workshops (beginning, intermediate, expert, and advanced) to let marketers of various ABM experience levels feel empowered.

Here is a recap of the key insights that participants received:

  1. 72 percent of B2B enterprises with seven or more sales channels grew faster than their competitors. This goes to enforce the need for holistic marketing, from offline to online, social media, podcasts – you name it.
  2. 80% of respondents said that performance guarantees are essential. These could be conversions, increase in organic traffic, free trials, demo requests, etc.
  3. Companies able to provide personalized outreach and one-to-one customization were 1.75 times more likely to have increased their market share.

For more insights from B2BMX: NLA check out the event now on-demand!

Twitter to Expand Into Long-Form Content

Twitter recently confirmed that they are preparing to roll out a new feature called Twitter Notes. This will allow users to publish article-length media-rich content.

This is huge news for B2Bs as they can now leverage the platform more efficiently. We’re all familiar with marketers creating numbered Twitter threads to connect a series of tweets together or sharing screenshots of long-form content with their audience.

Twitter is expected to launch Twitter Notes in the next few weeks unless Twitter’s internal turbulences prevent this.

Here’s the official confirmation announced by Twitter on June 22.

Wrapping up

These were some of the biggest news updates of the B2B marketing industry in June 2022. Feel free to send us your questions or give a shoutout to folks we’ve missed!

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

B2B Marketing News Simply Put - May 2022

Welcome to the May 2022 edition of B2B Marketing industry News Simply Put!

We are launching this new series of TLDRs keeping the mind the sheer amount of online content published. Each day. Non-stop!

If you are a  B2B  marketing professional, trying to keep up with content marketing, SEO, and social media, and also short on time, then you’re in good company.

Join me as I go through some of the most important recent insights and topics!

Google May 2022 Broad Core Update Is Live

Google announced on May 25 the release of a new core upgrade, dubbed the “May 2022 core update.” It will take roughly one to two weeks to completely implement.

There are several indications that this May 2022 core upgrade is off to a solid start. As usual, a number of tracking programs (such as SEMrush) detected significant fluctuation in the Google search results.

Check your Google Analytics and Google SearchConsole to see if there are big fluctuations on your core pages. It’s a good practice to also review what’s happening within your niche or industry, try reverse-engineering some of your findings. Apart from these, there’s only so much you can do.

If you were impacted by this update, check out the Google core update advice story. They share a general overview of best practices you can implement before and after a core update. Nothing new under the sun.

What Type of InMail Gets Best Results

The purpose of a LinkedIn research of InMail, the website’s premium messaging tool, is to determine which sorts of messages are most effective.

Between May 2021 and April 2022, the research studied tens of millions of InMails sent by business recruiters throughout the world.

The InMails most likely to generate a response within 30 days were shorter, tailored messages delivered on Mondays to “Recommended Matches” or “Open to Work” individuals.

How to Use LinkedIn to Highlight Your Brand Culture

LinkedIn has previously released a guide to effective employer branding strategies, and now it is sharing a new overview of how one company, NerdWallet, has utilized its platform to help magnify its brand values and connect with more compatible applicants.

Although there aren’t a ton of particular data insights presented here, this basic overview may be helpful in getting you thinking about how you might utilize LinkedIn and other social platforms whole reinforce your brand’s ethos and highlight your culture.

Here is the full NerdWallet case study report from LinkedIn.

B2B Buyers Consuming More Marketing Content Before Making Purchases

DemandGen has just released a report titled “2022 Content Preferences Survey Report.” According to the findings in this report, the majority of B2B buyers (42%) consume between three and five pieces of content marketing before connecting with a salesperson.

With 19% of respondents indicated they eat between five and seven pieces of material, while 11 percent said they consume more than seven pieces.

In general, the majority of B2B buyers (67%) report that they have participated in webinars over the course of the previous year, whereas just 56% admit that they have read ebooks.

It is estimated that almost 55% of buyers have admitted to reading research or survey reports, and the majority of buyers (43%) feel that this type of material format has proven to be the most beneficial when it comes to researching B2B transactions.

Wrapping up

These were some of the biggest news updates of the B2B marketing industry in May 2022. Feel free to drop a message and give a shoutout to folks we’ve missed!

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

What CMOs of B2Bs in growth stages should focus on in 2022

 

If I were a CMO of a B2B company in its growth stage (after Series A), this is what I’d focus on in 2022:

1. Demand gen & brand marketing in the dark funnel

How do you generate demand and build your brand? The simple answer is creating and distributing different types of content on organic and paid social.

But if you want to go deeper, your content strategy needs to be aligned with where your potential customers hang out online and how they learn about and buy products, so conduct customer research.

You’ll know it’s working when you generate inbound opportunities (mostly through direct traffic) that translate into marketing-sourced SQOs and revenue. And make sure you optimize for these metrics.

Simply put, adopt a buyer-centric mindset.

2. Community-led growth

Create or engage with communities where your prospects and customers easily collaborate, support one another, and network.

As such, you have to act as their peer, and depending on the community, you want to involve the right person (SME) from your company (and not a marketing person by default).

Tapping into communities can help you generate demand at a low CAC.

For example, Slack facilitates third-party communities, like Partnership Leaders and Demand Curve, which all bring in new users.

3. Word of mouth marketing

Word of mouth is the best marketing you can have because this is exactly how we buy.

B2B buyers make buying decisions by listening to colleagues/friends they trust, and learning on communities, slack channels, social platforms, groups, and more.

Word of mouth can be driven by points 1 & 2 listed above, but also by influencer marketing, events, and customer evangelism programs.

4. Testing new & future growth channels

Your marketing should be proactive, not reactive. So, in parallel with the marketing efforts I suggest here, you should always be testing new avenues for growth to stay ahead of the curve, even if those involve a low budget.

For example, TikTok is beginning to gain traction with B2B buyers, so I’d lay the groundwork to figure out how to create content that resonates there. By planning ahead, you’ll know what to do when the time comes, giving you a big competitive advantage.

That’s it. What would you add?

#b2bmarketing #seriesa #2022planing

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

5 pillars to building a strong brand in 2022

 

1. Defining a brand personality.

Brand personality is what connects you emotionally with your prospects and customers.
Brands without personalities are just plain boring.
So, define the voice, tone, and style to speak to your customers at a deeper level.

2. Getting consistent customer insights.

Be part of the social networks, groups, and communities where your customers hang out online, and host recurring online events/podcasts/live Q&As.

Engaging with them this way will provide you with a ton of value, as you’ll learn from their questions, feedback, comments, and what they share.

And so, this stream of customer insights will help you gain a deeper understanding of what resonates with them and can give you an edge over your competitors.

3. Creating exclusive content and distributing it in the dark social.

Create content people can’t consume elsewhere (like data-backed reports) and distribute where they spend time online to position yourself as an expert in your niche.

Distributing your content in social awareness channels requires you to create content that people actually want to consume. Simply put, create customer-centric content.
And if it’s good enough, it’ll be shared in communities, Slack channels, through word of mouth, and more.

4. Taking a stand.

In 2022, brands can no longer stand on the sidelines and turn a blind eye. You have to take a stand about social/moral issues, and when done right, you can influence how people think. But you have to be authentic and do this responsibly, without coming across as performative or opportunistic.

5. Putting a face behind your brand.

Getting your CEO/founder/exec active on social can position them as experts/thought leaders. By putting their faces behind your brand, you’ll make it more approachable and authentic, and their content will be associated with it.

^^ Building a strong brand for sustainable growth is not an option.

What else would you add?

This post was originally published on my Linkedin profile – follow me there for more insights

#brand #brandmarketing #b2bmarketing #cmoinsights

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

 

How b2b marketers can find journalists and bloggers in their niche

Your business may have the best product or service in the world however, if nobody knows about it, nobody will use it. Strategy that companies normally take when approaching this problem is called pr outreach. As part of it, they find journalists and bloggers that are willing to write about services like theirs, reach out to them to let them know about theit service and hope that certain percentage of these people are going to either mention them or link back to their content. Normally, this only works if the content you’re promoting is not salesy, but adds value instead. However, producing quality content is outside of the scope of this article so we’ll start from the assumption you already have content that people would link to based on merit. In this column, we’re going to look into how to actually find these people and reach out to them.

The anatomy of successful reachout.

Having stellar content is not enough on its own to run a successful email outreach campaign. As I like to say it, I’ve seen som many things succeed that should never succeed, and so many thing fail that should never fail. But if it’s not just the content, then what is it? It all boils down to being in the right place, having the right thing, being surrounded by right people, and saying the right thing. At the right time. Simple, right?

While a combination of all these things may sound intimidating at first, don’t be afraid. You already have the hardest things to get out of all these – great content! Now we just need to relevant opportunities to promote that content. And that’s exactly what subsequent sections of this article going to cover.

The outreach opportunity

Whatever it is your content is about, chances are that lots of bloggers and journalists are already writing about similar things. If not from the solution perspective, then from a problem perspective which is just as good. If not even better because if your content solves a specific problem, then your content would be a perfect fit for an article where people speak about that particular problem. You just need to know what to look for. However, things are not always black and white. For example, if you’re offering legal services, it may make sense to promote your content on blogs writing about legal services. However, if you’re in the coupon & deals industry, you don’t want to promote your content on blogs offering coupons as these will be your competitors who are running them. In such case, you want to look for content that is helpful to your target customer, which in this case are consumers. Think about “consumer information” and “how to save money with your monthly shopping” kind of content. Whatever it is, your content is helping someone. You just need to find where that someone goes, what are their target interests and outreach to people running such outlets. Now, what would that be for your particular case? Stop for a second and think about it.

Finding responsible editors

When you find a webpage on the internet that looks like a perfect fit for your proucts, services or content, you still need to try to get your product featured there. How successful you are in that, largely depends on whether you are communicating to the content owner of that page. Someone who has decision making powers and can actually edit that page and put your thing there. If you communicate to the person who has no editing powers, it doesn’t matter if they think your content is best in the world. Because they will still not be able to feature your offerings there.

Now, how do you find that person varies greatly. Sometimes, it’s a clear cut. Editor publishes their name directly on the article and you have it right there. Sometimes, they post a username handle not looking like a real name. However, googling for that handle may reveal their name on some other websites. And sometimes, it can be a lot more complex that that. The key here is, no matter how hard it is to find the content owner of the outreach opportunity, you have to do so if you want to have even remote chances of a successful outreach campaign.

Contact information

When you have the name, you still need to contact that person somehow. Most common way of outreaching, and most cost-efficient at the same time, is emailing. But how do you find a persons email? It can be easy and it can be hard, just like finding the person name. Sometimes it’s on the page, sometimes somewhere deep on the same website, sometimes on some other website, and sometimes it can even be a contact form being the only thing you can find. Whatever way, it’s crucial to have direct person’s email before you send anything. You have a person targeted, and you want to reach out directly to them.

Outreach email

When you come to this point, it means you have the outreach opportunity, responsible person and their email found already. But how do you frame your email to maximize your outreach success? What do you need to put in it to catch their attention to look at your product. While there is no magic wand here, there are some best practices you can follow.

First thing, make sure you send your emails 1 by 1. Nobody likes mass email campaigns and if you email looks like another generic one, nobody will pay any attention. You want to make your email very personal. Make sure it’s obvious to the person reading it you’ve spent some time researching them, have read some of their online work and know who they are and what they do. The best way to do that is to make a genuine comment on something they wrote and to make sure you address them directly by name. This way, they know they’re dealing with someone who actually dedicated some time to this email.

Another important thing is to never ask anything in return on your first communication with a person. Acknowledge their work, introduce yourself, and subtly make them aware of your product. And how it would benefit them. Them and their readers. If your product is really relevant, solves a real pain point for them, and it is something they really need or would provide value to their readers, they will check it out themselves. Without you asking.

And don’t forget to follow up. If you get no response, it’s OK to remind them of your email. However, same rules apply. Don’t be too pushy and don’t make your reminder look like a sales pitch. Be subtle, ask politely did they get a chance to read your email and see what they think.

Summary

As we’ve seen in this article, there are a lot of ingredients going into the successful outreach recipe. And no single best way to do it. Outreach also takes a lot of time. Searching for pages, scoring them for relevance, finding editors, their contact information, doing your emails and much more. One of the most draining and time consuming part is building the actual outreach list of opportunities, responsible owners and their contact information. It takes a lot of effort, searching and browsing to do that manually. If you want to save time on that, and avoid using multiple tools and doing lots of things manually, you may look into managed services that do this. One such service is Postbag (https://postbag.co/) for example. It builds the outreach list with opportunities and finds responsible people and their email addresses from all across the web. This way, you can spend all of your time thinking about content, email approach strategies and the big picture of your outreach campaign. Or, if you have abundance of time, you can still do everything manually by searching through the internet yourself. Whatever way you choose, we wish you best of luck with your outreach efforts!

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

What’s SimilarTech?

SimilarTech is a leading Israeli startup with branches in Silicon Valley, Brazil and Japan. Their SaaS product is a SIP (Sales Insights Platform) that tracks technology adoption and usage analytics in real-time.

SimilarTech’s technology and analysis tool provides business insights through website crawling. Their technology allows users to spot trends, research the market, generate leads and prospects by providing information like technologies used on a particular website, revealing a specific technology’s use throughout various websites, or tracking and listing an entire category of web technologies.

The challenge

SimilarTech is the ultimate tool for sales VPs and Sales ops who are selling tech products as using SimilarTech they can:

  • Fill their pipeline with relevant prospects by finding out what tech they’re currently using
  • View correlating technologies that are typically used in their vertical. This can help them unlock and explore greenfield opportunities that they might not have considered in their initial market research
  • Find the leading industries in their vertical to tap into new markets
  • And more

We wanted to get as many relevant sales VPs an Sales ops to experience SimilarTech and see the potential for themselves. But how?

The plan

We conducted a thorough research to map out the core challenges that sales managers are dealing with on a daily basis (we mapped out a few sales audiences, in this project we focused on startups as the type of company).

Based on what we’ve learned, we created the “No BS guidebook to winning startup sales” – a comprehensive guide to establishing a winning sales strategy. The guidebook focused on helping startups learn how to drive tangible, long-lasting growth, avoid startup-thirsty killers (such as burning through budget) and building relationship and trust with prospects.

 

We set the guidebook up as gated content whereby in order to download it, sales managers had to provide us with their name, email and industry.

The last field was the golden ticket.

Based on the industry they’ve provided, alongside with the guidebook, we let sales managers know that we’ve taken the liberty to sign them up as free SimilarTech users. All they had to do was confirm and pass through a few clicks to finalize the sign up process. We made sure the benefit of what they’d be receiving would be crystal clear.

We then started sending them emails with personalized SimilarTech reports aimed at helping them with their daily challenges. This was the ultimate way of introducing them to SimilarTech at a stage where they’re most interested in solving their challenges.

Getting the word out there

We now had to make sure sales managers are aware of the guidebook. We used paid advertising, inbound marketing methods and social methods to spread the word.

Chen, SimilarTech’s CEO, published a LinkedIn post telling sales managers all about the guidebook and inviting them to download it.

In no time hundreds of sales managers were exposed to the guidebook and invited to download it.

The results

During one month:

82.66% 196 104 67% 104
Increase in website sessions Sales managers asked to download the ebook New accounts opened Email open rates Marketing Qualified leads transferred over to sales

 

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

DISTRIBUTING B2B CONTENT AND ENGAGING ON SOCIAL MEDIA header

As a B2B digital marketing agency, the content we produce is made for different position holders in businesses to read and gain value from. B2B content, if you will. This helps position our clients and gain relevant traction with a goal of turning strangers into leads and further on customers. The challenge of writing fresh, informative and educational content for such narrow audiences like business owners or managers, is rivaled only by the challenge of promoting that content via social media.

Creating viral content that spreads across the internet like wildfire, bringing in new leads in droves – oh boy, how intoxicating that sounds! But in reality, most of your content will (probably) never go viral. Especially if you’re creating B2B content.

As such, you’ll need to keep pushing it strategically and persistently ever so slightly, if you want your content to be seen to solve people’s problems and educate them while it’s at it. If you’re investing a lot of time in content and nobody sees it – what’s the point? (Of course there are other ways to generate traffic such as SEO and PPC but the former takes time and the latter isn’t always realistic due to budget restrictions).

This used to be almost an automatic process for us – the main platform we used to distribute in was LinkedIn, their API was wide open, we used to publish content on our client’s blogs and then with a click of a button, publish it in hundreds of LI groups. This used to generate about 30% of our clients’ traffic and it was also the higher quality better converting traffic. But those days are long over, LI shut down their API and going full blast on automated distribution is no longer possible. When this happened we found ourselves a bit helpless, we weren’t sure how to compensate for the large gap that we were facing in traffic. We knew we had to recalculate our social distribution route and do it wisely. In retrospect I’m glad that happened, I think this forced us to be more surgical in our social efforts and step up the quality of our output. Sometimes automation can be an agency’s worst enemy – we wouldn’t have realized the untapped potential we’re missing out on, because what we were doing was working for us.

(I’ve been told I might be uncovering too much internal info about our tactics but I believe in transparency and I’m happy to share this info. If you’re reading this and have any feedback about the process below – do reach out to me and let’s discuss.)

Be there to solve your audience’s problems, become their trusted advisor

When done right, social media is a leverage for creating genuine, meaningful relationships with your target audience. Really being there, reading their problems and offering relevant solutions through the content you’re providing. Building your brand on trust and cooperation.

What I’m about to show you further below is how we organize our social media distribution efforts. Which social media channels we picked, how we find (and keep finding) relevant discussions and individuals within those social media channels, how we distribute large quantities of content, how we stay certain the content we are sharing is relevant and addresses the reader’s pain points, and how we keep track of it all. It’s quite the task, mind you, but it’s not rocket science.

How to pick the right social media channels

Choosing the right social media involves a mix of analysis and common sense. Our first step is to take a look at the buyer persona we’re aiming for and to break down and see what these people are up to when they’re online. As a wild generalization corporate B2B readers (founders, CXOs, etc.) spend a lot of their time on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit and Quora. The common-sense part lies in the fact that these are some of the biggest, most popular and most active social media sites on the internet.

Here is an example of a buyer persona who is a large publisher:

 

Buyer Persona Profile

With a little digging, we managed to find quite a few groups on Facebook and LinkedIn. These were relatively big (from 1K to 20K and beyond) groups with a lively, vivid community that was sharing experiences, asking questions, solving roadblocks and cracking jokes on a daily basis. Looking for subreddits of similar topics also turned out fruitful. Quora was brimming with questions that our content could answer. It’s important to conduct such research each time you tackle a new buyer persona. Moreover, this research should be agile and ongoing – the idea is to hone the process and make sure you’re always present “where the party is happening”.

Pro tip: we also look into the top influencers the persona might be following in order to potentially tap into relevant conversations they’re leading online:

top-influencers

Choosing what to monitor (hint: focus is key)

Tracking all of the different conversations, posts and topics across the world wide web, even a handful of subreddits or LinkedIn groups is a Sisyphean task. What we needed was a way to automate looking for fresh and relevant conversations. So, we bought us a little magic – BuzzSumo (this is not an affiliate post, we’re not biased and there are probably other solutions out there, Google alerts for one. However we work on large scales and BuzzSumo is our tool of choice for the time being). The tool allows us to track either the entire internet (which I wouldn’t recommend for obvious reasons), or specific websites. So we did – we started tracking social media channels of our choice. We track for a number of different keywords that we researched and identified as relevant for the conversations that we were looking for.

There are a few types of keywords we track:

    • Keywords that we have written blog posts about (these are based on the content research we conduct when strategizing marketing funnels per our client’s buyer personas). This is an ongoing process, we make sure to update keywords for tracking after publishing new posts.
    • “Money keywords” – these are bottom of the funnel, high intent keywords of people looking for specific solutions such as our clients offer.
    • Brand searches – mentions of the brand.
    • Competitor alternative – basically we list all client competitors and monitor conversations where people are asking about “competitor alternatives”. This is mostly relevant for technology solutions. For example we’ve identified MailChimp as a competitor of one of our clients and thus we monitor conversations where people are asking about “MailChimp alternatives”. We’d then jump in and join the conversation and set it in our favor.

BuzzSumo

(screenshot from BuzzSumo)

Once you set up keywords to monitor, you start receiving steady streams of conversations happening on the platforms you’re monitoring. This typically ends up being Quora questions, Reddit posts and other publicly available social media conversations that were relevant to the content we were producing. Or rather, that we thought our content was relevant *for*.

Hitting our first roadblock

For the first few days of launching this strategy, everything was fine and dandy. BuzzSumo would send us an email digest with the relevant conversations, we’d read through, identify which piece of our content answers their troubles, prepare a short copy and post it (never just paste a link, always stop to consider what the most appealing and helpful answer is that you can provide). Sooner than later, though – troubles came knocking. We started getting warnings from all around that we’re being investigated for spam! Unless we wanted to do ourselves a huge bear’s favor (like, a really big bear, we’re talking grizzly meets Hulk kind of bear, here), we needed to make sure we’re not flooding people, we weren’t repeating ourselves and that we were 100% relevant.

We realized that we needed to start tracking our progress and evaluating it – immediately. So we turned to Google sheets, and employed a bit more magic here. We created this large, program-like document, where we’d add literally everything:

  • Which piece of our content we’re linking to
  • Who’s the buyer persona we’re addressing
  • Where we’re posting (which group)
  • What we’re posting (the actual post copy)
  • What feedback we got from the buyer persona
  • Who posted the answer
  • When it was posted

That way we could track everything and always make sure we’re not flooding a specific LinkedIn group or a subreddit. This way we’d also double check that the content we’re sharing is always (and I can’t stress this enough) super relevant to the thread or question in front of us. And perhaps most importantly, that way we’d see which pieces of our content were most interesting / sought after. We even split the task into two parts: offense and defense.

Offense is when we were the ones initiating the discussion. If we’d post a new thread on reddit, or a new question in a LinkedIn group, we’d log it into the offense tab, to keep track of it more easily. Defense is where we were tapping into already existing discussions, like reddit threads started by someone else, or Quora questions that hadn’t yet been answered properly.

Recaping the rewards

To recap, here’s what we did:

  1. Identified our target audience / buyer personas
  2. Identified social media channels where these people hang out
  3. Chose what keywords to monitor
  4. Found groups, subreddits and threads with questions to which our content had answers
  5. Prepared a highly detailed spreadsheet where we keep track what was posted, where, by whom, and to whom

This strategy helps us solve people’s problems, kickstart meaningful relationships and nurture strangers into customers. We position ourselves and our clients almost exactly where we want (we’re never fully satisfied) – as thought leaders, opinion-makers, but also a helping hand and the friendly, laid-back type. And that is something that money can’t buy.

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

The 10 essential resources every startup founder needs to follow for 2018 header

While blogs will still be a huge way to give and receive value for B2B entrepreneurs in 2018, there’s no doubt that some of the best content for startups is coming in as other resources such as podcasts, videos, and in some cases, even Chrome extensions.

That being said, we’ve compiled this comprehensive blogs and beyond entrepreneurship guide for any startup founder. From marketing and recruitment to some more out-of-the-box (though vital) categories like well-being and vlogging, we’ve put together some of the top content producers in the industry who have a special soft spot for startup founders like you.

Now sit back and relax, because we just found your new favorite blogs, vlogs, Chrome extensions, and podcasts you won’t be able to get enough of.

1. Marketing – Zest.is Chrome extension

On one of my first days at Bold, I was chatting with our Account Manager Barak who HAD to show me this new Chrome extension he had gotten called Zest.is. Opening it up on his computer, I was stunned by the digital kaleidoscope of articles. “What is this?!” Zest.is, as Barak described it, is the marketing content newsfeed to end all marketing content newsfeeds. Co-founders Yam Regev and Idan Yalovich came together to created the ultimate Chrome extension that allows readers to scroll through manually, cherry-picked content on the marketing subtopics of their choice. So if you’re looking for grade-A marketing content but don’t have time to sift through multiple blogs full of positioning statements and get straight to the value, I highly recommend you adding it to your extensions.

2. Scaling up – Master of Scale podcast with Reid Hoffman

For those of you thinking about moving out of your local coworking space, tackling new markets, and adding new features to your product or service, welcome to the scale-up phase with your host, Reid Hoffman. Full of quirky sound effects and dedicated to a 50-50 gender balance for his guests, the LinkedIn co-founder has a way of interviewing some top names in the business about how they came to scale up. Get inspired as Hoffman takes you on a journey and occasionally gives you some tough love on ways to rediscover what makes your vision unique, and build your company into something epic.

3. Recruitment/ Company culture – The Employer Branding Podcast with Jörgen Sundberg

An unapologetic lover of all things HubSpot (just read my gushing review of their 2018 product announcements), I’m not surprised that I clicked when I saw an interview with HubSpot’s Inbound Recruiting Manager, Hannah Fleishman, come up on my LinkedIn newsfeed during a recent commute to work. Unfamiliar with Jörgen Sundberg’s 160+ podcast episodes, I soon became an avid listener to The Employee Branding Podcast. As a startup founder, it can be obvious to focus on product or marketing but seldom do startup CEOs really take the time to learn what it takes to attract top talent and build a unique and compelling culture that will lead to authentic employee retention. Scratching your head thinking, “Oh gosh, that’s so me”? Jörgen’s got your back asking the tough questions to his all-star guests from companies like GE, Microsoft, and Salesforce.

helping you navigate your startup to marketing stardom

4. VC – Both Sides of the Table with Mark Suster on Medium

Entrepreneur turned VC, Mark Suster, just gets it. Sure he talks a lot about his ADD and quotes himself in graphics he puts on his site (see below), but this guy has seen it all and has an acute pulse on the startup and VC scene. Looking to understand what’s on the minds of VCs? You’ll have a lot to learn from his years of startup wisdom.

Courtesy of Both Sides of the Table

[Courtesy of Both Sides of the Table]

5. Well-being – Mindful at Work blog

It’s not just yoga and protein powder smoothies. As we move into 2018, we are more than ever overloaded with various stimuli at the office and multitasking various work and personal responsibilities. As a startup founder, you wear more hats than that guy from Caps for Sale. You’re juggling the motherload and if you’re not careful, there’s a huge chance of burnout that will hurt your team, product, and — oh right — your well-being. Mindful at Work offers you some serious insight on how to stay mindful while running your new business from mindful meetings, to mindful walking, to mindful leadership. Well-being may not seem like a pressing blog topic to move your startup along, but trust me when I say this stuff will transform the way you work, interact with you colleagues, and put your best foot forward.

6. Sales – Salesfolk blog

Salesfolk is more than just a sales blog. Sure, they have posts on best practices you’d expect like cold emailing, calling, positioning, and filling your funnel, but they don’t just stop there. Take a look at their Hall of Shame, where they call out household names like Adobe and KISSmetrics for bad sales campaigns, in addition to general things NOT to do in sales. But wait there’s more (see what I did there?)! Check out “Salesfolk Academy” for mastery courses, certifications, and premium membership.

7. Design – 99designs

There’s a lot of design blogs out there but few have the entrepreneurship spirit of 99designs. Known for their endless list examples of some of the best, worst, and weirdest company designs, you can easy get lost on their amazing, beautiful, and witty content. 99designs also has a whole section devoted to helping startup founders learn about the relationship between design, psychology, and marketing. With some irresistible content to go along with equally engaging graphics (see below), you just found your new happy place.

Courtesy of 99designs

[Courtesy of 99designs]

8. Videos, vlogging, motion graphics, all that good stuff – Wistia

Using video in your marketing can increase conversion rates by up to 65%. That’s right, folks. The future is here and it’s full of videos (because we all have had that experience of having our sound on while scrolling through Facebook in public and suddenly some cat video starts blaring and everyone stares, amiright?). If you’re trying to figure out how videos work for B2B and if they’re right for your business and where to start, you can breathe now. Wistia, the ultimate thought leader in B2B video marketing, is here to teach you a thing or two about modern day video making in the business world.

9. News and Innovation – This Week In Startups with Jason Calacanis on YouTube

Want to know what’s happening in innovation and startup news? Then you gotta follow Jason Calacanis on his YouTube channel This Week in Startups. I’ve never been a news person but this guy’s got some sass, and it’s got my attention. Informative and entertaining, Jason could be a real asset to you if you’re looking to stay on top of news coming out of Silicon Valley.

10. Productivity and other things – Taking Note blog by EverNote on Medium

EverNote for many is a household name when it comes to organization and productivity. Through their blog on Medium entitled Taking Note, their team explores themes such as creativity, productivity, collaboration, and of course, writing. No matter if you’re looking to brainstorm or to finally sit down and get to work, Taking Notes’ got it all. More of a podcast type of guy or gal? That’s cool. Check their podcast here to get listening.

Conclusion

There’s so much content out there but it can sometimes be hard to find the right content that speaks to you as an entrepreneur at your stage of development and in the area you’re looking for insight. I hope this list helps lead you to your new favorite blog, vlog, podcast, or Chrome extension that gives you your weekly dose of inspiration and the comforting knowledge that every successful enterprise began as a small team with the will to change the game and learn from all those around them.

 

 

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Startup On A Tight Budget: 3 Marketing Hacks For Quick Wins header

Contemporary startup ecosystem may seem like a “schizophrenic” jungle – overflowing with creative juices in one part, only to be bordered by cash-starved deserts of reality in the neighboring one. The reason for this are varied, chief among them being tight budgets that run out of steam before a business idea manages to grow some roots. That’s why startups try to come up with growth hacks that will allow them to achieve as much sustainable growth as possible before the cash fizzles out. One of the key areas in which this can be achieved is marketing, which offers clever marketers enough flexibility to put to use at least two important skills: creativity and the ability to survive on cash-strapped budgets. Read on to learn more about three marketing hacks that can skyrocket your growth without breaking the bank.

Narrative Video Marketing Tells YOUR Story

As insiders would have it, growth hacking art boils down to growing as much as possible without robbing yourself blind in the process. Marketers learned this before all the others, as their job is frequently put on the backburner when allocating pieces of a startup’s budgetary cake. That’s why they have to look forward to new technologies in absence of financial executive’s friendly ear, and one of them is surely video marketing focused on attractive and storytelling-powered narratives.

helping you navigate your startup to marketing stardom

This notion is based on the idea that storytelling is currently one of the smartest ways to kickstart a memorable marketing campaign and this effort is greatly helped by the fact that the costs of video production have dropped significantly. Whatever your product is, its visibility and credibility will be hugely boosted by making a memorable video about it. This is based on what the marketers count on as a feature of human visual-focused psychology, which processes these images 60.000 times faster compared to textual content. At the same time, having an attractive video will secure you a willing ally in form of social media whose users, in general, are more likely to share a video or screenshot-based content with their peers compared to other media formats.

One of the textbook examples of effective pairing of visuals with storytelling is the marketing campaign created by the Dollar Shave Club, whose inventive video on a rather prosaic everyday item such as shaving razor rocks 25 million YouTube views at the moment, helping the company disseminate its brand message to every corner of the world at little or no initial costs. Bear in mind that storytelling can also take other forms, such as creating videos that are strictly instructive like tutorials. Marketing guru Neil Patel swears by Whiteboard Friday videos created by Moz’s Rand Fishkin. These videos combine visually attractive presentations with informative content, with both of them effectively harnessed for marketing purposes.

Timing Virality from the Outset

Speaking of the sharing potential of video-based marketing content, having a healthy level of awareness when it comes to ensuring the early virality of your products can be an important hack-friendly skill to be acquired from the start. Whatever you want to sell or promote, the viral germs need to be grown no later than the embryonic stage of your startup. This is a key consideration, at the time when numerous startups’ are based on the idea that ensuring the contagious virality of your product is something you need to do only once it gets past the development stage. You can avoid this and jumpstart your business by enshrining virality as the core ingredient of your product from the very outset, instead of treating it as a posterior marketing consideration playing a second fiddle to everything else. In practice, this boils down to utilizing the power of language to the fullest, and coming up with content that is educational, practical and accompanied by clearly presented calls to action. Remember that you actually want the readers to keep clicking on your titles, followed by reading and sharing engaging content. Using power words that are bound to evoke strong emotional response is a tried & tested option for attracting and keeping your customers’ attention and ensuring the virality of your content.

Going for virality early in the process doesn’t mean you should wait before employing a bit of brand evangelism. Having a relevant personality spreading the word about your products means building reputation and networking infrastructure from the start which, mind you, doesn’t necessarily have to mean an influencer should be a consumer in the general sense of the word. Do not be put away by claims that word of mouth marketing is an obsolete equivalent of positive gossiping. Your evangelists do not have to be recruited among major influencers or media persons. Nielsen research indicates that 83% of consumers still prefer recommendations from their friends and family compared to the rest of advertising channels.

However, the hand of virality can (and should) be slightly forced. There are ways for you to influence how viral a piece of content can be, by making sharing simple. Brian Solis (digital analyst) twisted the old KISS philosophy in that regard – Keep It Simple and Shareable. That means making sure all the sharing options (Share on Facebook, send via email, etc.) are simple, and within hand’s reach, on all devices. Particularly on mobile devices (tablets and smartphones).

Thus, if you are unable to hire an influencer from the outset, your financial officers will surely appreciate your offering to take this burden upon yourself, or striving to turn your product consumers into early bird brand evangelists. In any case, the lesson is similar to the one you’d use with video marketing – making an emotional appeal to your audience from the start will allow your product to grow some teeth early and nest itself easily within any budgetary projection.

B2B technology marketing, for example, has long felt the need to leave behind the exhaustive retelling of tech features from user manuals and move on to narrative-based advertising. Guy Kawasaki is an Apple brand evangelist dedicated to “creating and maintaining the Macintosh cult”. He does so by preparing engaging technological demos and refraining himself from using generic tech buzzwords in favor of coming up with concise and audience-friendly narratives about the company and its products. That way, instead of fancy wording which can be perceived as a game of smoke and mirrors, businesses can create and nurture long-lasting relationships based on trust.

B2B technology marketing

Image Credit: Pixabay

Play to Your Ideal Early Customer First

Yet, storytelling, early virality and brand evangelism can hardly function without a vital ingredient that rules them all: the audience whose shoulders your startup needs to climb on in order to reach for the sky. Knowing that these shoulders should belong only to a highly targeted and select crowd, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of the target audience. That way, a start-up will be able to speak only to them.

Don’t fall into temptation of trying a spray and pray technique for your marketing efforts. As your product is hardly a hot cake at this marketing stage, it will be neither loved nor desired by just everyone.

Targeting your customers plays an essential role here, as you want your product to achieve relevancy by appealing only to the right eyes and ears, similar to avoiding to offer a steak to a committed vegan, no matter how juicy it is. You are better off turning your marketing efforts into a laser weapon, instead of making it a blunt club worn by a rapacious berserker. You will achieve this by creating a crystal clear image of an ideal customer for your startup’s product and focusing your campaign efforts around this persona.

Think of this as a stepping stone to the time in which you’ll have both a larger budget and an audience to work with. This is done in numerous ways, starting from social media profiling to using analytical tools. Whatever you opt for, you’ll want to know how your ideal customer breathes, not just how old he/she is, where they come from and what gender they subscribe to.

Take, for example, what you can do with a simple fix such as streamlining your homepage message, a CTA or a landing page, in the manner which will reflect what you know about your audience. Knowing who you address with it means that you can come up with an appealing message that will introduce your visitors to what you believe in, your startup’s mission and its whole reason for existence.

Wrap-up

Tight budgets place noticeable constraints on startups’ marketing campaigns. At the same time, these should not restrain your imagination and creativity in devising quality growth hacks in these penny-pinching times. Pairing video with quality storytelling, putting viral hooks on your products from the outset, and identifying an ideal early customer are great ways to secure quick initial marketing victories that will help you secure financial sustainability and growth potential for your cash-strapped startup.

 

 

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John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Businesses Still Unsure About GDPR Compliance header header

Despite the fact that the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is due to come into effect on May 25, 2018, there is still uncertainty about how businesses handle and protect sensitive data.

GDPR criteria maintains that any company, which holds or processes any kind of personal information relating to European citizens through goods or services, must abide by the new data privacy and storage laws. This includes both physical or digital files.

However, the latest report on UK companies shows 47% of their workers don’t know if their company is taking action to comply with the new legislation. Another study shows that less than a third of global organizations state they are compliant or close to being compliant.

study by Veritas yielded the same result with even more dire numbers. Those businesses that already conform to the legislation’s requirement admitted to unlikely being in compliance with specific provisions, with only a measly 2% appearing to be in actual compliance.

The subsequent findings point to a gross misunderstanding over regulation readiness. Under the GDPR rules, EU residents will have to give consent for their personal data to be used, as well as be provided full access to their data. In addition, they have the right to request the removal of their data, such as usernames and emails businesses use for their newsletter databases.

 

Still, research shows that a large number of organizations have common issues regarding the inner workings of GDPR. Even those that are already in compliance don’t have the means to meet the lower level requirements such as finding and erasing personal data, searching and analyzing said data, and its actual storage location. All these shortcomings would make a company non-compliant under the GDPR.

The new legislation presents a major change in how European businesses approach their data practices. Many see GDPR as a major disruptor regarding the management of the customer information, particularly because it involves companies from every sector that deal with customer data in one way or another.

The trouble with implementing GDPR lies in the costs and resources needed to see the process through. That’s hardly a surprise considering the regulations are more than 200-pages long and present a complete overhaul of the previous Data Protection Directive that’s been in place since 1995.

GDPR will reach further than the existing data protection laws, adding fundamental changes such as accountability, the need for consent, new individual-based rights regarding the use of personal information, along with hefty non-compliance fines.

 

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