B2B Archives - Page 5 of 20 - Creative Agency Secrets

Solving B2B marketing challenges

6 November, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Sales /by Rebecca Caroe

I got this question from a client

Marketing Association Training Courses

Our challenge is the digital marketer who may not be well-versed in the requirements and realities of B2B. Often they have come from a B2C/retail environment, and might get stuck on things like 3rd party seller integrations that we don’t offer, rather than the deep integration and B2B functionality we specialise in. These personas are generally NOT committed to passing on our story, because they’re telling themselves a different one.

Common situation – where you know more than the (junior) client marketer, but you need them to be willing to implement your solution.

How to solve for ignorance

Easy fixes.

Find a partner who LOVES those 3rd party seller integrations and agree to collaborate with them. So you can confidently say that “yes we integrate with everything” and bypass these objections. [BTW Zapier does pretty much everything with an open API.]

One thing you can also do is offer deep hands-on training when you implement so you will be up-skilling the digital marketer who doesn’t have a B2B marketing background… leaving them skilled in both using and implementing good tactical campaigns. If this can be aligned with a public certification as well (See the CIM courses or NZ Marketing Association Diploma) then there’s a side-benefit for the individual getting a recognised qualification along the way.

Tracking Dark Social for B2B sharing

30 September, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Data, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Dark social is a term used to explain web traffic whose source attribution is unclear – the true origin you can’t find or don’t know. Typically this traffic shows up as “Direct” in analytics because it comes from a copy/paste URL which you do not know where the user acquired it, nor do you know what was said about the link – the visitor just appears on the site.

Dark Social icons Image Credit: Kendesk Digital

There are two distinct parts – the analytics direct traffic – and also the more commonly used direct messaging for social sharing. This can be tracked by brands if the messaging app is part of the social site e.g. Facebook and Facebook Messenger. The source can be tracked even if you do not know the message or its context (because it was a private message).

Sharing apps are often encouraged by site owners – this site still has a share button and I’m sure yours does too.

If your reader chooses SMS, email or WhatsApp share then you have no way of tracking it.

Frustratingly, I have also fallen foul of this – when with a prospective client, I show them a web page on my phone, hit the share button and invite them to put their own email or phone number and to send themselves. I thought I would be able to later save their phone or email to my contacts. Wrong. It’s gone.

Jay Baer checked his own site and found his B2B website got a lot of dark social shares.

We also looked at the lead figures for a recent webinar. Five percent were attributed to direct by Google Analytics, even though the sign-up page was not accessible anywhere on the website. That means it’s not possible that these people landed on the page directly, and our analysis wasn’t entirely accurate.

Improve your ability to view dark social shares

ShareThis is a much-used social sharing plugin and they have adjusted their code so that they can track dark social shares. The tool is free to install and offers all the popular sites as pre-created.

You can also create custom share buttons which can be designed into your site colourways, have unique, trackable attributes which you define. This allows a “share count” to be generated and logged for your site.

Creating your own custom short URLs (bit.ly or similar) and using UTM markers can help you to track these shares, so that your “direct” traffic is further reduced, tracked and defined.

Resources about Dark Social

How Brands can get Dark Social Right
ShareThis dark social sharing white paper from 2017
Create custom ShareThis buttons
Install the ShareThis plugin
What is dark social?
Google Analytics campaign URL builder tool

Make your B2B proposal stand out

29 July, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Pitching, Sales /by Rebecca Caroe

One of the joys of being a freelance consultant is that sometimes I get to act on behalf of my client and hire specialists to work on their B2B marketing campaigns.

I recently advertised a job and was stunned by one of the proposal submissions. As a new business specialist I know how hard it is to make your proposal stand out from others. This one hit all the gold stars for me.

Integrate proposals and CRM

I was sent an unique URL to view the proposal. This makes everything trackable – it was on a sub-domain of the B2B marketing agency’s website and so I know they will be able to track:

How many times I opened it
Which sections I browsed (they are distinctly separate)
How long I spent reading each part
Which sections I expanded to read further

All in all it was a pleasure to read and to be “sold” to. I felt engaged in the process and I know my actions on that page enabled the agency to get better insight into me as a prospect.

Screenshots from the marketing proposal web page.

Welcome screen for proposal, personalised
Background about the company
Details of the work team – set expectations
Detail of project processes
Calendar embed to start the conversation
Reasons to work together
The small print

And a final note, there’s a Squarespace service Qwilr which offers this on a 14 day trial.

seth godin, purple circle, marketing easter egg

Marketing using easter eggs

6 June, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, B2C, Digital media, Marketing ideas, Sales, Strategy /by Rebecca Caroe

Little surprises that reward your customers are a really nice way of helping them to feel special.

Today I got a marketing easter egg from Seth Godin.

The benefits of careful reading

The message was short, barely formatted and it’s one I have waited a year to receive. Hidden in the fourth line was a surprise.

Don’t forget to look for the purple circle on the website to get the best price.
Seth Godin, The Marketing Seminar

…. and so I took a look.

It looked like a pretty piece of graphic art. But one of the circles had an embedded link. NICE….

Seth Godin, purple Circle, marketing easter egg, link hidden, — Hidden Marketing Easter Egg Link

How do you reward your loyal customers?

Sometimes I get frustrated when we make an offer and few people take it up. I think “That’s an AWESOME deal – why isn’t everyone paying attention and buying?” But I realise that I’m looking at it the wrong way around; I should be delighted that only the most savvy, the most loyal and most deserving customers are the ones who take up the offer.

I think of these as my “ultra-loyal” customers. They care enough to read. They don’t skip my messages and so I can give them a reward that others don’t take up.

Can you use an Easter Egg Marketing Strategy for your best customers?

Get insights into Seth’s thinking with his latest book This is Marketing – the course above is based on it.

Linkedin, company page, social media tips

10 LinkedIn Company Page Ideas & Suggestions

29 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Marketing, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Create a Showcase page – with updates just for these sub-sets which allows for segmentation of viewers.
Add Company page link to email signatures – update monthly with the pinned post.
The BEST imagery on the Company page – include your logo watermarked into the image. 1,536px x 768px.
Re-write the company overview text to reflect a niche positioning
Check hashtags to follow. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/follow/?filterType=channel&focused=true
Refresh your pinned post 2x per month. And re-share it to other channels.
Share your top 5 articles from the blog one every 2 weeks…. Yes repetition is worth it. And in 6 months change to new articles.
Get more comments by asking questions. “Are you watching the Cricket World Cup? What’s the best activation you’ve seen?”; Formula 1 Fails at Monaco – did you spot the bad branding in the Casino Tunnel?; What do you do to promote athletes in their off season?
Use URL Builder tool to track web links from your company page updates https://ga-dev-tools.appspot.com/campaign-url-builder/
Set up Content Suggestions so you can do the 4-1-1 model of sharing 4 pieces of content from others to every couple of your own.

What are your top tips?

LinkedIN new feature, company page linkedIN

2 new LinkedIn Tools – Saved search and Article title edits

23 May, 2019/1 Comment/in B2B, Marketing, SEO, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

Today I came across two new features in LinkedIn which will definitely help marketers and pro-active networkers. And one negative feature.

Throttle Control is ON

LinkedIn is clearly pushing for greater revenues – many of my favourite work-rounds for search and connecting are now getting blocked. Have you noticed this?

I got blocked from searching for 2nd / 3rd degree connections on 10th May. That was because I had apparently already used up my allocation for the month! It renews next month. So pretty irritating….. Having said that, there are some neat work arounds and some new apps which I’m trialing in beta which may help with some aspects of this.

In the meantime, pay up or go away. The choice is yours.

Saved Search Alerts

I was doing some searches and spotted what I think may be a beta release feature in the right sidebar…. I was searching in “People” for a search string. And so I made a search alert to save that search. In fact I made a couple.

The saved search name i18n_rail was default applied by LinkedIn. Probably code for something….. suggestions?

It appears to be similar to Google Alerts but with less functionality. The options are only for weekly alerts and to be received by email which suggests this isn’t yet a fully featured roll-out. But a nice touch, especially if we are all going to have to pay to use LinkedIn Search in future.

Company page article title edits

While uploading an article to our company page I noticed another new feature – you can edit the title so that the URL link title is not the default option.

You have to be in the admin view to use this feature. And isn’t it nice that 140 characters is offered as the link text? Importantly this is only link text, not the URL or destination title. I think this will be great for improved keyword searching and SEO – plus those of us who like to write long headlines will have a field day!

Now go and try these – tell me if you can find them in your profile.

Business positioning – do this

22 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Branding, Case Studies, Copywriting, SEO /by Rebecca Caroe

Can a prospect tell “at a glance” whether you are the right business for their needs? Web visits last ever-shorter durations and so your positioning [the message about what you do and for whom] is critical.

I was asked by a client to provide examples of marketing agencies who have good positioning on their websites.

Do you agree with my picks?

Good brand positioning copywriting

https://www.disruptiveunicorns.com/ We specialise in inbound marketing and lead generation on the HubSpot platform. Using design thinking, we help businesses scale in a sustainable growth manner.

One way to find out if you don’t want to work with them, is to re-write their offer in the negative. So if I don’t want inbound and lead generation – don’t go here. If I’m not using Hubspot I probably won’t get well-served either.

https://www.digitalmarketer.com/ Tools and Trainings for Digital Marketers

If I’m not a digital marketer needing tools or training – go away.

Below that they have 3 audiences identified – Teams, Marketers and Agencies so they offer further refinement of tools and training offers.

Digital Marketer agency audiences

https://spur.co.nz/ Creating live experiences that build brand love. We are a full service live-marketing agency. Our areas of expertise include sponsorship, experiential marketing, corporate events and promotional staffing.
We connect brands to people to create brand love.

So if I don’t want a live experience – go elsewhere. Using the bold words allows speed reading to focus in on key services and skills. The “Brand Love” message is lovely and slightly fluffy – who doesn’t want this for their brand?

And just for the contrast here’s one which is too broad in its positioning and non-specific in its offer https://www.interactivesponsor.com/

Which niche suits your brand?

Finding your audience and positioning your business to align is not something to do once and leave. The business world changes frequently and so fine-tuning your language, offering and audience is a useful exercise.

Remember – excluding prospects who don’t fit your ideal customer persona is important too.

Who’s your LinkedIn Follower?

6 May, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Lead Generation, Sales, Social Media /by Rebecca Caroe

LinkedIn hides some of its best features – deliberately.

So here is my quick tip of the week to help you grow your connection base.

Do you know about your followers and following feed?

Thought not.

Log into your LinkedIn. Then paste this into your browser and take a look at this URL.

It lists everyone who is following you. The image below shows Philip Goffin – he’s following me. But I’m neither connected to him, nor following him.

Woo Hoo – lots of followers, Famous fellow.

Now for the inverse, Following. These are the people you are following.

What’s the use of following on LinkedIn?

Well, many times you want to see the News Feed updates from people, but you don’t actually know them and so connecting isn’t appropriate.

Or you just think you will see their updates for a while before approaching for a connection request.

Or you are hoping to quietly bring yourself to their attention without being too pushy – so follow them in the hope they notice you and send a connection request.

Go forth…. try it for yourself.

P.S. You can no longer export contact information from LinkedIn and so I’m advising clients to build contact lists outside of the platform for every new contact they make.

B2B Podcasting rises

6 April, 2019/0 Comments/in B2B, Podcast /by Rebecca Caroe

The rise of podcasting as a medium to reach and influence audiences, grow brand awareness and promote your business continues.

I’m delighted to announce that Terry Baucher, a self-confessed “Tax Nerd” has launched his podcast – The Week In Tax with the help of Creative Agency Secrets.

Terry has long been a broadcaster called on by news media to be an expert commentator on tax matters – working with radio and TV stations in New Zealand. This heavily influenced our recommendation that he move on from a written weekly summary of tax news which had been drawn from his twitter feed, to an audio podcast.

Podcast set-up

We chose both an audio and a video medium for this podcast. [Note, this is not suitable for everyone] and SoundCloud is the distribution medium for the RSS.

The client blog hosts embedded audio files (easy for people to listen to who aren’t comfortable using RSS or Podcast apps) and remains the central source of all content. We also chose to add in a transcript for those who prefer reading to listening.

Could you be podcasting?

The medium is growing fast and many people now prefer to customise their listening and viewing to fit times of day they choose. Growing your brand reach through podcasting can be very effective.

Just ask Terry Baucher!