B2B Growthletter #1: How to target the right audience at the right time with the right message?

We curate and comment on the most interesting content for everyone responsible for B2B marketing and growth.

If you don’t have time to do the research yourself, it is the best place for you.

What will you find in today’s growthletter? Here is a table of content:

1.“B2C may be our past, B2B is our future”

2. A game plan to launch a profitable podcast or content series in B2B space

3. How to target the right audience at the right time with the right message?

4. How to book meetings with LinkedIn voice notes?

5. Is it harder to establish a thought leadership after a pandemic?

6. Tool to check

7. Interesting discussion to follow

8. Final words

But first of all… why B2B? Let’s start with the first story:

1.“B2C may be our past, B2B is our future”

B2B marketers might feel neglected during the big marketing conferences or even while reading marketing books.

Don’t you feel that way?

Most of the examples of great marketing ideas or campaigns are… from B2C.

We heard so many times about USP of Dominos or saw analysis of Pepsi commercials during the Super Bowl breaks.

But… as Peter Weinberg & Jon Lombardo realize in their article, “by some estimates, B2B is half of the global economy: 50% of the UK FTSE 350 firms are purely B2B, as are nearly 40% of all businesses in Great Britain. In the United States, an astonishing 72% of businesses are primarily B2B, and B2B sales add up to over $9tn a year.”

Impressive, isn’t it?

But that’s not all. Weinberg & Lombardo also predict that the next 100 years will be the B2B century.

Why??

Authors put it this way: “We no longer waste 58 hours washing our clothes. But we do waste countless hours scheduling meetings, aggregating data, orchestrating workflows and so on. These are the problems that modern B2B brands will solve.”

And there is one more thing. While B2B products and services are developing fast, their marketing is still way behind. That’s why being a B2B marketer is a good choice for the next years. And growthletter can help you with this. :)

Read the article here.

Let’s check now…

2. A game plan to launch a profitable podcast or content series in B2B space

What do most companies think of when they decide to launch a podcast or a content series?

They try to copy B2C shows they know from their personal life (like Joe Rogan’s).

I saw IT companies who tried to launch a show with interesting guests.

And they failed.

Why?

They never thought about their dream100 – best customers they could possibly get. Nor about a quality connection with them, that should be made.

So… how to use content creation to expand your network??

Here is a game plan by Peep Laja :

1. ~100-200 companies who should be your customers.

2. Invite relevant folks from those companies to co-create original content and shows with you; feature them in your events and content.

3. Make a calendar of events for a whole year - exactly planning out what you'd do with each person on the list.

4. Start inviting the folks. Carve out time for relationship building.

More in Peep’s post.

In B2B we also often wonder…

3. How to target the right audience at the right time with the right message?

In prospecting, timing is everything. I bet you already know that.

But… how can you know that your prospect is ready to buy your product or service?

Well, you can rely on Sales Triggers.?

What are they?

Sales.Rocks author, Ivana, puts it this way: “In the B2B industry, Sales Triggers (or buying signals) are trigger events or changes in the business environment that present an opportunity for collaboration between two businesses for mutual benefit. A sales trigger can be a new C-level executive appointed in your prospecting company or a new tool adoption by the same company.”

In this article you’ll find a long list of best working Sales Triggers, along with the suggestions on how to set them up and use correctly. Among some basic ones (like tips on how to set up your Google Alerts & other tools), I found the these triggers the most interesting:

• no. 25 – Increase/Decrease in the Marketing Budget?
• and no. 17 – Shift in Sales Channel (Inbound vs Outbound)

You’ll find the whole list here.

And now I have something for those, who would like to use one of the not common known LinkedIn feature:

4. How to book meetings with LinkedIn voice notes?

LinkedIn voice notes is a powerful tool that most reps ignore.?

If you want to make your message different from everyone else in email and LinkedIn inbox, that’s the way to go.

But… it’s more difficult than you might think.

According to Thibaut Souyris , from saleslab.io people often fail, because they: don’t know what to say, sound super stressed, speak without a clear intention or… don’t finish with a question or clear CTA.

How to use it properly? Here is an example from Thibaut:

Trigger: John, noticed you were also planning to attend Mary’s event on hybrid team setups.

Question: What are you doing to avoid boring participants to death with worn out webinar slides?

Teaser: Would it be a bad idea to share a 3 part framework to run engaging webinars with hybrid crowds?

CTA: Let me know and I’ll send it over.

Here you’ll find the full article.

Now let’s check:

5. Is it harder to establish a thought leadership after the pandemic?

Probably you will agree with me that being a thought leader in your industry is something beneficial for business.

It makes it much easier to win a contract when members of the buying committee know and respect your expertise.

That’s why it’s fascinating to dive deeper into LinkedIn and Edelman report about B2B thought leadership after the pandemic.

A few interesting takeaways:

A thought leadership remains critical to customer engagement, but breaking through the noise is harder than ever.

“Most B2B purchase interactions have moved to remote or digital, including identifying new suppliers, evaluating new suppliers, ordering, and reordering. 70-80% of B2B decision-makers prefer it that way.“

Earning trust and credibility with decision-makers requires a strong thought leadership – especially if you are not an established market leader.

High-performing thought leadership strikes a balance between being authoritative and provocative, yet human in tone and even fun.

Here you can find a full report.

Also, we have for you…

6. Tool to check

This week we recommend you to check Heap | by Contentsquare to find what you can improve on your website.?

The full version is kind of expensive, but even a free plan can give you a good insight to improve effectiveness of your materials.

7. Interesting discussion to follow

Don’t you think that you should be different from our competitors in B2B space? Jason Vana expressed this view in his post, but… not everyone agreed with him. Check why.?

8. Final words

Thank you for being with us for this very first time! Hope you found this growthletter useful & interesting.

As we’re just starting, we’ll be happy to get any feedback from you!

Do you need something else? Looking for some specific information? Noticed anything interesting recently that we’ve overlooked??

Literally, anything you’d like to share with us is more than welcome. :)

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