What’s the Deal… with Silos?

I have always lived in cities. Not big ones, but smaller suburbs. Generally, especially in the Midwest, you usually encounter farms when you travel between towns by car. In Illinois, there were lots of farms. Most have barns and silos. I knew what the barns were for, but did not quite understand silos and why most farms had them. Didn't they harvest crops and send them to market?

Many farms have both crops and livestock. Often, the crops were harvested and stored to feed the livestock. So maybe they put new corn or soy on top and used what's on the bottom like a dispenser?

My curiosity got the better of me, so I decided to research it.

In farming, silos are primarily used for storing and fermenting silage, which is a type of livestock feed made from green, wet, plant material like corn or alfalfa. This process involves chopping the plants and storing them in a low-oxygen environment to encourage anaerobic fermentation, preserving the feed and enhancing its nutritional value for animals like cattle and dairy cows. By storing feed in silos, farmers can ensure a consistent supply of high-quality feed, which can lead to better animal health and productivity.

And all this time, I thought they were just lighthouses for farmers to spy on their cattle.

Silos in Business

In business, a “silo” refers to the separation or isolation of departments, teams, or individuals within an organization, often leading to reduced communication, collaboration, and efficiency. This phenomenon is metaphorically named after agricultural silos, which store materials separately.

I have written about silos in business before. Usually, it's about sales being one department in one building and marketing being the other. This kind of silo may add nutrition to each department, but it may not feed the entire business in the best way. It's missing the mixing of ideas that causes the type of fermentation that can energize sales.

That kind of fermentation is the blending of challenges and ideas that adds the oxygen that breathes new life and energy into a process. For example, marketing may be implementing a new AI Model to target specific audiences, yet the sales team is moving in a different direction, which could create friction that spoils the feed of new clients.

Synergistic siloing would have both sales and marketing working together for common goals and outcomes. This kind of siloing would be adding sales and marketing to a silo that focuses on one product, service, or industry. There is also siloing in communicating and advertising to one group instead of open air or wide swath marketing and sales.

Silo Marketing

I believe that if you can drill down on your avatar and get to a person, job description, or more detailed persona, you can create very detailed and targeted messages that ensure a consistent supply of high-quality conversations, which can lead to better engagement and sales enhancement.

This is especially true when it comes to buying ads. With most systems like Google, you generally target keywords. You may assume people are looking for a specific term, but you cannot communicate with a particular persona. With social media, you can drill down to people and their personal preferences (like pets, business, or hobbies), but you have no idea what their job could be or if they need what you are promoting.

This is where I found LinkedIn to be the perfect tool to reach people in specific industries with particular job titles and experience. This allows you to silo market to very targeted audiences.

That ensures consistent, high-quality messages, leading to better engagement and sales enhancement.

LinkedIn Custom Audiences

LinkedIn Ads requires you to have a LinkedIn Company Page (you cannot advertise to a profile). You also have to have content or posts to advertise with. You can post different siloed content to your company page and then use each for even more siloed ad campaigns.

When you create a custom audience on LinkedIn, you have several key options that allow you to drill down to an avatar or persona.

• Locations – US or other
• Industries – Defence, Transportation, Wholesale, etc.
• Job Seniority – CEO, Owner, Senior, Manager, etc.
• Company Size – 51-200, 201-500, 501-1000 employees, etc.
• More…

You can also choose to exclude certain parameters to help drill down even more. Keep in mind that you need to have audiences big enough to advertise to (1 million or more) but not so big that you are just spraying and praying with your advertising dollars.

Google can cost tens of dollars per click, but we have been able to get LinkedIn clicks for under $1 if the audience is siloed correctly and optimized.

The bottom line is, if you can pinpoint your audience on LinkedIn and are a business-to-business company, you have a tool that can help get your creative content seen by a much larger audience than the one you'll get through simply boosting posts. Boosting is random and not as siloed or targeted.

Closing Thought

I like to think of marketing as farming:

• Content is planting seeds on the internet.
• That content is harvested but posted to a business page.
• Then that content can be put in silos to feed a particular audience.
• That audience can be turned into profits by creating business relationships.

In farming, you sell your cattle as an asset. In business, you nurture and grow relationships that convert to sales. Both require growing something, feeding it to your asset, and caring enough to ensure it's tasty, safe, and nutritious!

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Comment below and share your thoughts, ideas, or questions about business-to-business sales and marketing today! Do you have a sales or marketing communications strategy that works for you? What tips or techniques can you share that work for you and your business?

To learn more about this and other topics on B2b Sales & Marketing, visit our podcast website at?The Bacon Podcast.