How To Do B2B Marketing That DOMINATES in 2024

foreign ninja digital marketing podcast extra sorry if um you're watching this or listening to someone catch up from LinkedIn we just had a bit of an error and for some reason it wouldn't let us stream on LinkedIn today so huge apologies for that one we're very very sad but hopefully you'll be able to capture us elsewhere so today I'm joined by the wonderful Tim and the wonderful Annabelle and we are going to be talking about how to do B2B marketing that dominates in 2024 which um if you're you've just got here and you're like I'm not B2B please stick around because this kind of knowledge is helpful for any kind of business and it sort of gives you helps you think outside the box which I think is really important how are you Tim today I'm very good thank you I'm very good very well never sure quite how to answer that very well thanks Justin what about yourself Annabelle I'm very good I have I have a little friend with me do you have a creature would you like to show us tiny dog that is the tiniest dog is very cute she's just having a little nap on my lap at the moment so she's very quiet she's been I didn't even know there was a dog there for the longest time because she was so so quiet now everybody can she build links that's a good question you can tap the keyboard yep there you go that's all you need that is what is better at that though Wally can walk over the keyboard I'm teaching him how to type so he's my hamster by the way everyone perfect perfect now we've introduced everybody in the room which is very very important we're going to hop on to the first topic which is finding your audience in the B2B space because I feel like it can be really really challenging for B2B businesses who are trying to pin down Their audience and they know the type of business they want to Target but it's quite difficult to understand who within the company you're talking to because you're not talking to an office building and you're not talking to everyone there's one person in that company more likely than not who's going to start that search for the thing that they need for the company and this might not be your most Pro person with I think Tim you shared an example a while ago about um it was like CT scanners I think they were sold by Samsung and the terminology on the website was surgeon level and it was like actually the person who's going to be looking for this product probably isn't a surgeon Tim what are your thoughts on this yeah I one of the things that we always every time we did a show we when we got back from the show we would go I would just call up a handful of the leads and just talk to them and find out what their their needs were because you know just from our perspective as a marketing agency you think oh you know these people want to crush rankings they want to do this they want to do that and actually when you're talking to them and you realize actually no they want to prove to their boss that they're not worth this they want to you know get some great success stories under their belt so they can take that forward and put that on LinkedIn for their future career and you start to realize actually the game that we thought we were playing the messages that we thought were going to resonate actually that might not be the case at all I think understanding not just the role of the person but their particular motivations and goals and Desires in The Wider organization is is so important yeah absolutely we'll get onto content in a minute but Annabelle Howard you kind of get inside that audience's head and figure out do you write to one specific person within a company when you write for B2B how do you sort of approach that so what I do a little technique I find is really useful for me that Tim mentioned LinkedIn is I go to the company page on LinkedIn and I look at the people that are actually on LinkedIn that they've put on LinkedIn as part of the company page and then I have a look at who's posting the most because identify that whoever's putting the most posts on LinkedIn is the best person to contact and I look at the posts as well the type of posts they're putting on to try and get a feel of what the company is aiming to do so whether they're aiming to sell services or products are they aiming to build their brand and kind of create a specific kind of persona um you know you get a really good feel for what people are doing if the company is not on LinkedIn and I'm not able to approach it that way then I tend to actually go to the website find some of the people that are involved with the higher rep people so your CEOs CEOs but also some of the people that maybe are involved in marketing if there's ever they've still got any marketing people and then I type their names into Google search and see what comes up you can get a lot of information that way you can get a really good feel for the person you know whether they like to be in the spotlight whether they're very private all these types of things and then that gives you the way a good way to approach them because you know if you're if you're approaching somebody that isn't maybe an extrovert that isn't particularly talkative or or might not respond straight away you know okay send an email send another email a few days later it's worth following up you know things like that so I just try and I try and get a feel for things by by kind of doing those types of searches that little bit of research first you know sometimes you can find them on YouTube if you can watch someone on YouTube it's the best thing ever because you really can get a feel for what they're like um so that's another place to have a look just see if there's any videos on YouTube that they've put up so yeah a bit of a mixture of things that I tend to do nice yeah it helps you get like a really good picture of the business that you're writing for but also you can kind of do it in reverse and look at their clients and you know they might have told you about and then um and undo it that way so that's that's really really cool we are going to talk more in detail now about content marketing and digital PR when it comes to B2B because I think sometimes B2B businesses will fall into a trap of using a lot of jargon as we mentioned sort of doing case studies just for the sake of it because they feel like it's something that they need to do and I can imagine as well and I've seen this in practice a lot that a lot of them think they can't do digital PR campaigns because they feel like they can only be in Industry Publications or that's the only place Their audience is and I would say that's that's really not true Tim in your experience with like B2B businesses what would you say is the greatest content marketing asset that a B2B business could use to get more customers that's a good question I know it's a big question it does vary I suppose very quickly I think the best asset that a company could use would be us really to do their content marketing I mean like you know seriously why would you try and do it yourself when you can get someone to do it so much better for you and concentrate on the elements of your business that that you're good at you know so that would be my personal opinion um you're going to pass it back to Tim now I think that there's a couple of things so one you mentioned case studies Jess and and I think for B2B case studies are a real uh land mine because on the one hand your sales team needs case studies and they might need specific examples from specific products or services but your marketing might need a different type of case study the marketing case studies might be more about the transformation or the story that a particular client has gone on and in the B2B space it's very rare to get a really what I consider a good case study for marketing a useful case study something that you know takes the visitor on a journey from what you really want in a case study is for your audience to recognize themselves and the subjects of the case study right so the before is that's where I'm at think of the fitness transformation that's why I'm at got a bit too much weight around the middle that's where I want to get to shredded you know that's the journey that we want the audience to see and we want the audience to project themselves into that Casey and say this is the journey I'm going to go on if I if I sign up with this business but that's not how my speed b2b's address their case studies what they really want to do is get their technical detail about exactly what happened and when and all this stuff and the audience just doesn't care most of the time the other really powerful asset is you know digital PR I mean some of the coverage that Annabelle has got for clients is just extraordinary if you're in a high Authority publication written by a third party and your business is mentioned as having a transformational effect on someone um or a business or you know your product or service there's a there's like a case study built into a very reputable publication I think that's incredible because that essentially does your selling for you it's much more compelling when it comes from someone outside of your business so I think those to uh sort of um those two types of item can be really powerful as part of a Content marketing campaign definitely for sure Annabelle if somebody's watching who's part of a B2B business and they want to try and come up with an interesting digital PR campaign how could they go about kind of finding what works I suppose they can't really jump on like the Taylor Swift NFL kind of hype that maybe other businesses can right now um but maybe they can maybe maybe I'm wrong about that so what would kind of be what would be your approach for a B2B business so my Approach is journalists always want something with a human interest and no matter what you sell trying to think of something a bit boring um let's say I don't know let's see card readers high speed SD card readers Annabelle there's a challenge if I do what one of those was then I would be able to talk about it but as I'm very not technical I have no idea what a card reader is and I've never used one in my life um what about a headset like your headset looks very much like a cool setup there we go there we go perfect thank you I know what a headset is that's ideal so see so um you want to sell headsets how do you find a person or how do you find like a human interest story maybe you could run a competition to give away a headset and you could ask people to um give you reasons why they're why they deserve to get this free headset and then out of that you know the very small cost of kind of giving away a headset you you plan to find some type of human interest element in there and obviously you put something in that you know we would need to use you need to give us permission to use your answer you know you know this will might be published in the media then that way you've got something straight away that you can pitch to journalists so you can say um this is our company we just run this competition we thought it might be interested in this particular reason why somebody wanted a free headset you know we've got the cost of living crisis you could tie it into that somebody want a free headset because they need to get a job their headset's broken you know there's so many ways to like make something out of your particular product that journalists will love but what you need to do is you need to give them what they need because most journalists working on multiple stories they've got lots of deadlines they if you can give them something they can use they're more likely to use it it's that it's really that simple so if you for example pitch to a journalist let's say use pitch into a journalist and you said hi I sell headsets um I'd really like to be uh how I'd really like to help you with a story about businesses struggling in you know to regain customers after covid or something like that or why we did so well over covid or you know something like that yes it's good it's got the human interest but then they've still got to get back to you have you got someone that they can quote what what how what angle could they use you know there's a lot of work there for them to do even though you've given them quite a good pitch if you contact them and say hi we've just done this competition here's something you can use in your article here's all the information you need about our company boom great they've got it they can send that off to whoever they need to send it off to their editor you know could I do a story on this yes you can they've got everything they need type it up done published in a few days you know and that's what you want and that's how I got our client into the independent I did exactly that um I knew that it was unlikely they'd do a feature on them if they didn't have that human interest side of things so they were very helpful to be fair they found one of their clients who's willing to speak to me I spoke to him I got some quotes that a new journalists would love I sent them off to a few different Publications someone from the Independent came back and said we love this we'd really like to use it boom done you know and I got them into the independent no charge you know proper what I think it's called organic media when you do it like that um you know that term shouldn't I but there we go I'm going to stop talking now because I am a little bit talkative so you know you're all good everyone else I've got to say Annabelle the for those who are listening you think oh yeah you know that was just the feature no this was like this is the the opioid crisis piece that's correct yeah yeah so so this was an entire story about a trending topic and the the client's case study was effectively The Story So this wasn't like just a little quote from the client this was basically kind of mainstream news publication publish your entire case study as a story yes and and it was extraordinary to see how like you're saying giving them all of that stuff up front I mean you've got a speech it in ridiculous places where we've got coverage from a a an article you wrote about Madonna's tour being Council like your creativity for finding angles for journalists is just extraordinary and I think goes to show like exposure ninja fundamentally we're a boring B2B company I don't agree no of course I don't think we're boring I'm not boring that we have to get a feature on an article about Madonna's tour being canceled it's just outrageous so it's all about how you approach these things isn't it yeah yes for sure and and always don't think you're boring because if you think you're boring you'll come across as boring if you think you're interesting you'll come across as interesting there'll be somebody who is interested for there's always someone who's interested indeed um on the topic of kind of content marketing and digital PR this is kind of in the same bracket but separates a little bit away and that's thought leadership um I know this is such a buzzword this is such like a little cheeky LinkedIn buzzword the people say oh be a thought leader but what we mean is not just going and writing broetry on LinkedIn as they call it have you not heard that before no education you've heard it before Tim no yes there you go it's it's about actually being a fantastic resource so the one that always comes to mind for me is HubSpot like if I want a good source to link back to Something in an article that I'm writing about marketing and I need a source to back me up I'm pretty much always going to go to HubSpot first or if I'm looking in the search results and the top one the top result is somebody that I don't know and the second one's HubSpot even though HubSpot was second I'm more likely to pick that and I think that's kind of what what you want to do as well you want to be you know the person that people come to and I know Tim you've said you know b2bs have like industry Insider experience even though it's more of a smaller Niche you can't kind of write your vague LinkedIn posts about it it's it there's actually power in that I don't know if you could talk a little bit more about about that side of things yeah I think there's a there's a misconception to that I think one of the reasons that B2B companies are maybe hesitant about doing much on social or using YouTube for example is they think well there's not much audience for what we do but actually doesn't have to be that much audience what you do though you know we've we've worked with clients where there might be 30 customers for the product in the entire world right and they say what's the point of video marketing well the point of video marketing you can get 15 views on each video right that's that's half of your total adjustable market and you might think well that's a complete waste of time but actually the the relationship and the engagement that you can get from something like that when people are seeing you talk and they're getting to know you and and your business and what you're about is incredibly powerful so I think you know thought thought leadership can be a really useful tool it can just be poetry people talking like virtually signaling garbage on LinkedIn but I think if rather than most people approach thought leadership or LinkedIn as like what can I post to make myself look good I think if you approach it instead of like who's my Target customer what the problems that they're struggling with day-to-day that my organization has knowledge to help them with it's not just about your knowledge it's about what can we draw out of the brains of our organization and how can we share something people actually find useful and if you commit to posting that consistently on whatever platform suits you is what we're doing now right we're taking the brains of our organization hopefully sharing stuff which is going to be useful to people you can build an incredible connection with an audience I was talking to and B2B owner last week who was talking about views and they were like oh yeah you know I post these videos and you know my wife's like why are you posting these stupid videos you've got 90 views and I'm like dude you travel halfway across the country to talk to a room full of 90 people the fact that you're getting 90 views on this is extraordinary because the content is so tailored and Laser focused to that audience so I think yeah thought leadership can be incredibly powerful yes it feels brutal at the start like it's one thing getting 90 views and I've been getting three views but if you keep at it and you find a way of sharing this stuff with your target audience and it's useful enough it's not just designed to make you look good um then taking that approach to content social digital PR can be really beneficial over the long term absolutely yeah it's um it's definitely a great place to be on I know Annabelle like you quite often secure sort of comments for clients based on the fact that they have knowledge and then they're the expert in an article about a topic um I don't know if you could tell us a little bit about that yes of course so um one of our clients um a group of audiologists I saw um about the Daily Mail kind of had a section all about kind of hearing health and what was going on and there's been been a few things about how there's more people um struggling with early loss of hearing due to kind of exposure to loud sound you know things like that and so um when you look at articles that are kind of on topics around what your business does you can have a look at what journalists has written that article put the journalist's name into Google and you're more than likely be able to find that a lot of them have their own website so you can find an email if not you can always contact the newspaper and just put who it's addressed to another little trick is if you find any email for that newspaper and then just put their name in front at a lot of the time it will actually get to them because a lot of people like if you think about it what our emails are exposure ninja and about Laura exposure ninja so a lot of the time if you just do that it's worth a try but and then I was lucky the actual journalist on that article found his email find him on LinkedIn followed him on LinkedIn liked a few of his posts left a few comments four days later sent him an email knew who I was because I've been commenting on his articles which he liked because that helps him out said you know we've got this fantastic audiologist you know told him all about him all his qualifications if you have a need an expert for any articles let us know it was about two weeks later they came back to me or he came back to Missouri and he said we're doing this article trying to remember it's a bit of an odd one actually it was to do with glasses that have like hearing aids on I remember this yeah he said we're doing this article it'd be really great to get you know professional opinion on this product so contacted our client he kind of gave me the information wrote a nice quote checked I was quite approved it sent it over to the journalist he loved it he used it being done in the article yes simple as that but it sometimes so friendly it pays to be friendly I think Annabelle you're very you're very tenacious but you're also very friendly person and you leave genuine comments and you know connect with people in genuine ways and they like that um I think I think that gets appreciated by a lot of people that that is a really good point Jess genuine and tenacious and they're not you don't often get both of those in the same person but that's a really useful skill set for what we're talking about like building a network amongst the people who have a platform in your space I guess absolutely yeah I think that one another little thing that we haven't mentioned I just very quickly add in is you were talking about doing the posts team as well um on LinkedIn and how you you know posting information that they'll find useful and so on obviously that's fantastic and yes we all know that works really well but what also works and can get attraction from journalists who they might contact you to put you in stories it's just now and again do a nice personal post about you know what's going on in the company why it's important why you set the company up you know um maybe even your struggles like a terrible weight this week did a YouTube video I only got nine views you know a bit disappointing whatever you know be personal be show that you're genuine people want to connect with a person not a company so if you give them that then you're more likely to kind of attract those those types of people that you want because you want the end of the day you know you could have I don't know you could have like a thousand likes on a view but it doesn't mean it's going to sell a product yeah we've seen in the past um this kind of segues nicely into our social media section but um I saw an influencer who had millions of followers and she needed to get a fulfillment of 35 t-shirts to sell her t-shirts and she didn't hit the Fulfillment from a million subscribers or a million followers on Instagram I think it was and as you can imagine that was very embarrassing that and it was just a bad like product or a bad Market fit or I can't really remember entirely what it was but it just shows like you know yeah it's it doesn't always translate and if you have the power to get that to translate because you're connected with people in a proper way um that that is a lot more important and yeah just on the conversation of social media I think in the B2B space you fall into this trap of thinking LinkedIn let's go write some poetry let's go make some LinkedIn posts because that's where business people are but actually everybody who works for companies has different Hobbies different interests and different social media platforms that they use so an example that I'd like to use a lot is I used to work for an Agricultural distributor which is very B2B and very dry and I used to spend a lot of time on the farm and Forum specifically because that is where the farmers were like they were always on there all day and so I would just go on and see like what kind of things are they talking about like what's bothering them what kind of brands are they not happy with what kind of brands are they really enjoying at the moment and just kind of see like what the Hot Topics were and how could we kind of incorporate what we were talking about into that um and so your social media presence like Farmers even though they're business owners they're not on LinkedIn you know so even though it's B2B LinkedIn is just not the place to be neither was Instagram Neva was Twitter it was like Facebook and the farming forum and so yeah you really have to think about you'll probably come across hundreds of B2B strategy videos or blogs saying you need to be on LinkedIn use business but you really need to look at your business and your industry and see whether that is accurate or whether there's more Niche places like the farming Forum like I said people on there all the time and they were the target audience and it was very Niche it was in the UK so it was like there's there's things out there for every kind of business you just have to sort of know where to look I don't know if either of you have anything to add to social media before we move on swiftly to SEO I think what you're saying Jess is is becoming a bit of a theme it's you you're choosing your platform customer first rather than platform first only you're not saying I want to post on LinkedIn because we're B2B you're saying well okay my customer what I know about them how do I actually get in front of them and what messages that are going to resonate with them someone's asked a great question um this is about web design how do I manage to transform my offer web designer web development from nice to have to very important and I think this the the answer to this is the sort of the key to thought leadership in general because the thing that you might be selling web design and web development doesn't really mean anything to your Target customer what is your Target customer want if they're the marketing manager in a company they probably want more Revenue they want more leads so how do you make your thing most important thing on their to-do list today will you talk about you know how to generate more leads to your website and you show them some before and afters and you explain how you know if you implement these principles in their website then you know you generate more leads and and by talking about the thing that actually means the most to them rather than the thing that means the most to you you pique their interest and and then you position your thing as the solution to their problem which you know I know we know from experience web design and web development can be incredibly profitable for a business so that's the thing that you talk about you don't talk about about the fact that your widget does XYZ you talk about like what are their career goals what if you know what what do they really want what what's their pain Point what keeps them up at night and how do you link it back to uh to what you're selling absolutely yeah fantastic answer thank you Tim um just really quickly we have one last tip go for it journalists love Twitter I know we all hate Twitter or X or whatever it is I don't know um I'm still calling it Twitter like the majority of normal people but um journalists do love Twitter um and so I would say if you do want PR coverage get yourself on Twitter that's just my little tip go where your customers right your customer is a journalist in that situation yeah absolutely and I do quite frequently I think people have like these viral tweet moments don't know then you'll see journalists in the comments being like hey can I use your yeah can I use some pictures can I use this any other so if your business is involved in something that someone newsworthy um or just that you have you have knowledge um you know jump in on that reply in the comments or post like that saying you know this massive tree got cut down maybe you work in a business related to trees that was also yeah maybe a tree surgeon or something like that and you comment on that post with your insights you know saying whether it's recoverable then a journalist might come across that so there's so many different ways that you can you know or you can see those journalists asking in those comments oh can we use these pictures then you can email them and it's just you know goes on and on and on exactly and also just put hashtag journo requests on everything um well not on everything she'll annoy them and they'll probably mute you but on anything that you think is newsworthy yeah um request because then it will go into that channel and that's where the journalists do check look for things as I said I'm taking back to do it on everything do not do not do it okay because what happens then is they get really annoyed and they're just mute you and then they won't see anything at all yeah just if you've got something newsworthy or this you've seen like you said something in the news you're a tree Surge and you've seen the article about the tree being cut down maybe you could make a nice little comment about you know how old the tree was and why you know I don't know anything something make it interesting try and make it interesting that's how I got us into the Madonna thing I thought there's something different from what everyone else was saying try and think of a different way of saying something pop a little quote that a journalist can use make it nice and easy so they can take it and just pop in an article Journal requests and yeah you've got a good chance of it getting picked up absolutely 100 um I left SEO till last because I feel like it encapsulates everything that we've talked about in terms of what you want to Target is all about what your audience is actually searching for the terminology they're using and the actual questions they have or the problems that they're trying to solve like they probably don't even know that they have a problem or that loads of people have this problem and there's actually a solution to that problem so for instance you know if they're looking for like project management software they might not even know if they're in kind of an old school business they might not even though that's a possibility so they might be looking up you know Excel template for managing a project or printable template for managing a project God forbid um you know and then you can kind of create that content off of that you know and answer that question and answer these things offer that get them in I know this is a bit more than SEO get them in that lead funnel um while kind of warming them up to the fact that your thing is the better thing but it's likely they will be making searches that you haven't thought of um I don't know if you have any insights on that Tim or Annabelle um yeah I mean I did just this morning I've been researching something incredibly boring which is how to sort of hedge against foreign currency uh risk so surprises if you build people in dollars which we do and then the exchange rate changes over time you can end up better off or worse off and you know this is a this is an industry where there are service providers there are software companies and there are Consultants all of whom you could help me I don't know which route I need to go down so the questions I'm asking on Google are really top of funnel you know how do you do this thing what is this is like definition terms no one in this space has written like a knowledge base on here's how to help companies with this type of thing and if they had they would be crushing the search results because this is this is prime B2B SEO right push the search results sorry could you just say that I don't know what is it that I need to write to these amazing search results something to do with all of these terms I'll give you a list at the end this is you know if you're selling something where the customer is uneducated they may have never bought this thing before you've got a like don't overestimate the stupidity of the Search terms that they're going to be making right at some point I'm probably asking you know what is foreign currency exchange risk and you might think well our customers you know super bright but everyone has to ask that question and the person who asked that question is about to go through a journey of hell and if you can help them if you can like grab them at that point and say here's what it is here's how you mitigate it and guess what our software does it for you you might be able to take someone from like top of the funnel really really super ambient informational search through to conversion in the course of one page and I think that's the opportunity for B2B so it's looking at the questions people are asking throughout the funnel and not being put off if you see low search volume because your total adjustable Market might be quite small that's okay if you know that your customers of are searching for those things because you've spoken to your customers and you've verified that then go for it anyway yeah yeah and to sort of answer a question that we've had on our our live recording of This podcast in terms of finding out what people are searching for if you can't speak to them there's other things to do like look at competitors and the types of questions that competitors are answering on their content and then answer it better look on social media and look on Light reviews and um comments and see if people are leaving complaints on competitors or even leaving great reviews and saying you know this was amazing they did a really great job of explaining to me why this was this and this and then you can do an article on why this is this is this you can also look at things like um also asked or answer the public and type in a couple of Search terms and find out what people are curious about and the kind of things that they they want to learn about um and also I mean if sales have already been made speak to your sales team or even if you're the salesperson think about the questions that people ask and the terminology that they actually used um and it will often be quite different to to what you think sort of going back to the um the CT scanner question you know there was all sorts of jargon on that page whereas I was like the actual story here is this is portable and maybe they're going to want to move it around and people are going to be typing in portable CT scanner they're not going to be typing in I don't even know the words and they left my brain immediately because they were so complicated um and that's the thing like people aren't going to be searching for all these tiny little specific individual words they're going to be they've got a problem their CT scanners and awkward place and they can't move it about yours is portable they want one that moves about end off um and that's what they'll be be searching for do either of you have any final thoughts on B2B marketing before we wrap up this podcast I like Reddit I check Reddit for questions Reddit is really really good there is a subreddit for the most Niche things you have ever seen thank you for that one Annabelle I totally forgot about Reddit yes fantastic place to find out what issues people are having for sure Tim any last words that sounded a bit morbid sorry no I've led a happy life and I'm ready to go well there we go anywhere no thank you so much everybody for tuning in if you've only just tuned in and tuned in later you can catch this on catch up on YouTube um or you can go to your favorite podcast platform of choice and type in exposure ninja podcast and we will come up this episode will be up in a couple of days um also if you haven't already request a marketing review at exposureninja.com review if you um if you are accepted I suppose I forgot the word that Tim normally uses then you'll get a 15 minute marketing review from one of our marketing consultants helping you with your website and my tag and on that note we shall see you next week I believe goodbye see you later bye everybody

Channel: Exposure Ninja

Views: 2,175

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Id: K0QrqVaD7RM

Length: 36min 9sec (2169 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 03 2023