B2b Archives - BlitzMetrics

Humanizing B2B: Connecting with real people in a machine-driven world – Interview with Kelsey Carroll of HPE.

One of our main goals at BlitzMetrics is bringing out the human element in an otherwise machine and data-driven industry– to give it that human touch.

Kelsey Carroll leads branded social content for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. Prior to her current role, she ran PR for an independent film studio in Austin, TX and then got her start in marketing with the integrated agency, W2O Group. When she’s not reviewing ad copy and creative, she can be found eating Mexican food and seeking out the perfect karaoke song.

She recently answered some of our questions and shared some advice on the importance of the human element while applying it to B2B campaigns:

Why is being human important (especially in B2B tech)?

The robots haven’t taken over (yet). While it’s true that many commoditized, repeatable tasks have been automated, B2B tech sales has remained a largely relational person-to-person business. People like doing business with people that they like and trust… it’s that simple.

But how can a big brand come off as likable, relatable? Being human is important, especially in B2B tech, because we believe there is a person behind every transaction and we attempt to connect with those people through shared experience. For example, one of Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s key partners is Dreamworks Animation. Instead of saying, HPE FlexFabric increases rendering efficiency, we might lean into the story that families love Kung Fu Panda and HPE technology makes that possible.

Since people are getting better at spotting and avoiding ads, how can you make sure your ads attract the right users’ attention?

Let’s say you’ve done everything right in the social advertising world, according to Dennis Yu. The plumbing is set, your targeting is on point. You’ve optimized the process so your content has landed in front of the right people at the right time. You’ve “hacked” the mysterious algorithms (!) But, there’s still a person on the other end receiving your message. That person can skip, scroll past or even block your ad if it’s not useful, entertaining or valuable. Ads that attract and attain the right users’ attention are usually the ones that embody at least one of those key attributes.

How can content marketers make an emotional connection and get an audience to care about their brand?

As content marketers, we need to be honest with ourselves. Even though I am not necessarily the target customer for B2B tech sales, I’m always asking myself, and challenging my team to ask themselves, “Would I share this? Would this make me smile? How useful it this?” It has to pass the human litmus test, or else it will get scrolled past, skipped over. There is such a competition for people’s attention these days and any the most captivating, through-provoking, visual content will be worthy of anyone’s time, let alone your target customers’.

Social media provides a unique opportunity to make a connection, then track behaviors and responses to form a relationship, over time. From awareness to interest, to consideration, and ultimately, conversion, the narrative should remain consistent. It’s like someone who goes from being a stranger to acquaintance, and then a friend who becomes your best friend. The person doesn’t change, you just get to know them better, while they build credibility and gain your trust.

What’s the best channel to reach a B2B audience?

It depends on what your goal is, of course. If you’re going for more of an awareness play, I say, go where the eyeballs are. Facebook and Instagram’s ad tools allow for some pretty sophisticated targeting, plus they reach almost 2 billion of the world’s population.

Since one-to-one social selling is more about finding that exact right person within a company that makes the buying decisions, LinkedIn is most likely the best channel to search and locate for that person. With tools like Sales Navigator you can track and qualify leads all within the LinkedIn environment, which seems pretty efficient.

What advice would you give to a brand that doesn’t have a big budget for creating content or promoting it on social?

I think a common feeling towards social media marketing for small businesses is that they tried it and “it didn’t work.” Marketing on social media isn’t any easier than any other method, but it’s far more efficient.There are a variety of different levers that can be pulled, like width and depth of your targeting, and small tweaks in graphic or messaging. The more disciplined marketers will A/B/C/D/E test these different variables in order to optimize.

Sometimes smaller brands can create their own attention by being the early bird as social channels roll out new features. As we saw with Facebook Live, the News Feed has been favoring live content and brands who leveraged saw a bump in engagement and reach.

All in all, focus your efforts on one or two pieces of hero content that tell your story in a visual way. Once you nail down who your specific target audiences (the more specific the better), try promoting it for just a dollar a day. It’s a small enough budget that you can learn as you go. Once you’re more comfortable and you’re seeing a response, you can add fuel to the fire as you optimize.

What are your predictions for 2017 marketing trends?

Share of attention is shifting to dynamic & easily-digestible, mobile content

There’s a palpable tension building as mobile migrates toward mostly-video (i.e. Snapchat, Instagram) slamming into the fact that no one has the patience to watch videos that aren’t extremely captivating. The problem– or opportunity, if you’re savvy– is that by nature, every brand cannot create “extremely captivating” content. The cream will always rise to the top. Consistency is key for strong brand awareness. If a brand has a strong narrative in place, it’s easy to translate it from LinkedIn to Twitter, and maybe even Snapchat. Every marketing campaign should have a strong, concise message that is easily replicated across different platforms.

Remember these takeaways:

Show that there’s people behind the brand. Focus on relatable messages rather and shared experiences.
There’s people on the other end receiving your message- so make sure your message captures their attention and meets their needs.
The best channels for reaching B2B depend on your goals, but LinkedIn wins due to refinement and access to decision makers.
For small budget efforts, focus on content that tells your story and target a highly refined version of your intended audience with a $1.00/day budget. This provides a test bed to play around and optimize your message to see what works.

Are you thinking in terms of business-to-business, or human-to-human?

3 simple questions to supercharge your agency’s revenue pipeline in 2014

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

1) What is your agency truly about?

What do you stand for?

What’s your vision? What is it that motivates you?

You must narrow to an area of expertise, which paradoxically is how you increase your business.

If you do everything, then start with the thing you have the most experience in. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Get more clients in that same vertical performing that same type of service. You’ll use this experience to be THE leader in that area.

Set up Google Alerts on that search topic to make sure you’re well-connected with the leaders and what they’re saying. Comment on their blogs, be helpful, retweet them– don’t sell your stuff.

2) Do you have the content to credibly support this?

List out your credible third party coverage– conferences, blogs, news, and anything else besides what you say about yourself. Are you openly sharing your expertise to irrefutably establish yourself as the authority in your chosen area?

If you’re a local agency servicing a particular city, it’s harder– since being the top social media agency in Minneapolis is not that different from the content produced for someone trying to be the top social agency in Portland, Oregon.

It must be topical. Maybe it’s producing more interviews and articles on social lead gen for B2B. Sending out a clear signal will bring us more of what we want, if we define it.

3) Do you have the process/people in place to handle the inbound leads?

Fortunately, the world of project management has been long-solved for us. That’s where marketing automation comes into play– to collect emails, nurture this list with regular content, and drive people to packages.

They will come to you– believe me. You don’t need to cold call anymore.

Basecamp, Infusionsoft, and other tools complement accountability frameworks like RACI.

Figure out the steps in the “factory” process to sell packages according to your vision. Then you have a repeatable process to drive your inbound marketing efforts– no need to sell again– and to execute on packages.

We’ve done over 2,000 Facebook ad campaigns. Imagine how much faster and effective you are after you’ve done something 100 times versus doing a random dog’s breakfast set of tasks against whatever random client comes in the door?

How much time do you spend chasing new clients and freetards, as opposed to talking to folks who want to work with you– coming to you because they see you as the expert?

Isn’t it nicer when they come to you, allowing you to choose who you want to work with and on what terms?

10 bad ass MoFu’s

By Dennis Yu 1 Comment

Most branding and reach is targeting the top of the funnel– TOFU.

And the PPC experts focus on the conversions at the bottom of the funnel.

But connecting brand power to conversion requires a strong Middle of Funnel– MOFU. B2B is the hardest area to drive meaningful engagement on Facebook– often a mix of silly cat photos and heavy whitepaper content.

Let’s talk to some bad ass MoFu’s to see how they drive engagement, leads, and opportunities in B2B.

First up, we have Preston Smith, Organic Marketing Manager at Infusionsoft, a small biz marketing automation company. How do you define the Middle of the Funnel and how does Facebook play into this?

“MOFU is that dark place your most valuable prospects go to die. But really, without going into too many details on the varying layers that are the middle of the funnel, MOFU is basically anyone that has taken a hard or soft opt-in that isn’t being worked by sales.

“Facebook plays into MoFu is many way but let me tell you about 2 ways we use it. First, a facebook like is a “soft opt-in”. When someone “likes” your facebook page they are giving you permission to show them content, just like they would in filling out an email opt-in. And just like email, people want to be given relevant content. The content you present should move people through the funnel.”

“The second way we use facebook in the MOFU, is by creating custom audiences in power editor based on segments of our MOFU email list. We can then advertise exclusively to those customer audiences in a way that moves them through the middle of the funnel to the sales team. The key is to build your customer audiences in a way that allows you to present relevant content to the relevant customer audience.”

Let’s drop in on David George, who was in charge of Customer Success at Heyo, a social apps company with 41,000 fans and hundreds that attend each of their live webinars. What’s your secret to bringing folks from awareness to web demo?

“One of the most important things for us was maintaining active email lists.

While email seems a little passé, it still reigns as one of the most effective mediums for businesses to communicate with potential customers.

We made sure to have a list that was always full of fresh leads. These leads came in through many different channels, so it was also important to track where the most “active” people came from, or those who were most likely to sign up for our software via the demo. We obtained these leads through people signing up for our Free Trial, but dropping off before completion; signing up to receive free e-books and case studies; live conferences/speaking engagements; and more.

If we ever sent messages to an older, less active list, it was important to first, A/B test the copy, but also include a follow-up email with a different subject line to the segment who didn’t open the first message.

If you have an older list, it’s important to note that as time goes on, less and less people will be interested.

Don’t take this personally – it is due to many things – change of occupation, change in finances, business went in a different direction, etc. In order to maintain an “active” email list and not be another spam troll, periodically send an email to your list encouraging them to unsubscribe if they don’t like the content. This way, your open rates and click-through rates will be much more accurate (and higher – which is always fun to see!).

Next, just send a friendly reminder about 30-60 minutes before the event to get the last stragglers that didn’t have their coffee that morning and forgot about the whole thing. Something that proved very effective for reminder emails was being super short, and super direct with the subject line. “We’re live, should we wait for you?” always gets some interesting responses 😉 “

Maria Pergolino runs Marketing at Aptus. How does she handle leads?

“You can’t accelerate leads through the funnel with early stage content like general best practices and top tips type blog posts. Instead, you need to map out your buyer personas by buying stage, and then pair it with the appropriate content. For example, buyers who are mid-funnel may be looking for analyst reports, buyers guides, and case studies. Less people will consume this content, but it will be those getting ready to purchase. “

Jason Miller rocks the title of Sr. Content Marketing Manager at LinkedIn. His strategy involves Custom audience targeting with mid-funnel content.

“Upload a list of names into Powereditor based on where they are in the buying cycle. Then drop in some MOFU content offerings then track, refine rinse and repeat. It’s all about the targeting in the phase :)”

Carra Manahan is the marketing programs specialist at Marketo, who believes MOFU is a very important part of the buying cycle.

“When you have leads that aren’t quite ready to buy, you want to make sure you’re giving them content that will help push them through the funnel and unfortunately TOFU content does not show buying intent. For instance, if someone looks at an infographic it doesn’t necessarily mean they want to purchase your product. We generally like to give them our middle stage content which we define as “tools that can help buyers find you when they’re looking for solutions”. Such content is comprised of buying guides, ROI calculators, analyst reports and other similar assets.”

Joe Chernov is the VP of Marketing at Kinvey, who feels that everyone defines MoFu differently. He defines it as ‘the lowest funnel stage over which marketing has complete control’

“People tend to think in terms of black and white. Top and bottom of the funnel thinking is reinforced by this tendency. Top is “fluffy, awareness-generating stuff” whereas bottom is “about the product”. The casualty of this thinking is the middle of the funnel, where a balance needs to be struck – it has to be just broad enough to not turn-off those who aren’t in a purchase cycle, but just specific enough to advance someone along their “buyer’s journey.” Nuance is difficult for people, myself included.”

Jeff Tomlin holds the title VP of Marketing at Vendasta, who’s still growing the strategy for MOFU

“When it comes to our MOFU work, I wish we were further along in our sophistication but we have been pretty successful in the past couple of months. Our mid funnel content is mostly case studies and sales training videos. This content has been getting a lot of attention because a lot of companies we are targeting are struggling with sales force transformation and transitioning from traditional to digital revenue streams. This content has been generating a lot of direct conversions for us. “

Jeffrey Eisenberg is an authority of Internet marketing strategy. His thoughts are that content that is produced without the intent of moving prospective customers through the buying process is simply wasted effort.

“Sales processes fail in MoFu when you fail to provide the relevant content that fuels persuasive momentum. Do you know what content provides enough fuel to make the sale?

If you’ve planned your content by identifying the questions your personas have at all stages of their buying process, then you’re half way there. The middle of the funnel is where you need to anticipate all the content that will support your buyer gaining the consensus – not just to make a purchase – but to change their company’s organism. Companies are like organisms in that they avoid change. They aren’t looking to simply replace what they are doing with a solution, your champion is trying to disrupt the corporate organism as little as possible.

In the MoFU, give up on the idea of a single decision maker, support everyone involved. Yes, the VP of Marketing has different questions at different companies, but at some companies you also need to provide your champion a way to answer the CFO’s questions, maybe the CEO’s, and likely his/her direct reports. When you have the right content, prepared for the right media, for the right buying modality – for all the people who will truly be involved in buying your product or service – then you’re truly headed in the right direction.”

Lisa Buyer supercharges internet marketing strategy with The Buyer Group. Author of the book “Social PR Secrets”, she believes that the power of public relations can be extremely influential in the middle of the funnel.

“It can make it or break it for business. MOFU is part of the relationship building process in marketing. As a brand you are either building trust, maintaining trust, growing trust or in some cases earning it back. Coming from a public relations angle, the stronger relationship you can build in the beginning the better.

If you are introduced to a brand via a friend or third party trusted source, the trust factor is higher. Brands delivering selfless content designed to educate, entertain or help the prospects make smarter decisions and become an educational type source will in the end create an army of brand advocates.

Examples include projects like The Social Media ProBook headed by Joe Chernov back in the day with Eloqua and JESS3. The Social Media ProBook is a 42-page free e-book collaboratively written by a cross-section of social marketers from brands and agencies, analysts, and social support professionals across both business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries.

This is an example of bringing together a group, creating a community, that lives outside a brand and uniting them into one collaborative and branded voice in an objective way. Using tools such as free ebooks and webinars in the MOFU creates a bonding effect and accelerates the process in building trusted relationships and fan engagement.

The Social Media ProBook won the “Killer Content” Award during the B2B Content2Conversion Conference by the DemandGen Report recognizing it for exceptional content marketing. Creating exceptional content, whether it is a feature story in a top tier publication that can be repurposed and lives forever as a trust logo on a company home page and links to the full story on a company’s online newsroom to a piece of published content such as The Social Media ProBook that went viral. “

Our MoFU strategy here at BlitzMetrics is simple: Ask the smartest people in the industry for their feedback and to publish articles featuring them– hence, this one! 🙂

Readers, What’s YOUR strategy for the middle of the funnel?

LinkedIn Newsfeed Ads vs Facebook Newsfeed Ads– we compared results!

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

On August 7th, LinkedIn released Sponsored Updates, allowing us to hit the newsfeed.

THE MAIN POINT

You’ll end up paying $6-10 a click, even if you have a killer CTR, since the average CPMs are north of $200. But if you have a high-end B2B target, it could be worth it. Facebook still has more volume by job title and company workplace target.

2013-09-13 19_19_10-LinkedIn Ads_ LinkedIn Ads Dashboard

IN MORE DEPTH

There are 3 million LinkedIn business pages (hat tip to Jason Miller of LinkedIn for sharing stats). Compare that with the 50 million Facebook pages, of which only a portion are business pages.

With Facebook, you can target down to the zip code, while LinkedIn lets you go down only to the city level.

Facebook has sponsored stories (targeting based on who you’re connected to and sharing friend activity). LinkedIn had this two years ago, but pulled it quickly.

The CTRs on Facebook and LinkedIn are similar– perhaps slightly higher on LinkedIn. But if you isolate Facebook mobile newsfeed, then Facebook wins. You can’t choose mobile placements on LinkedIn yet.

Neither network offers frequency capping or dayparting, but Facebook does offer negation targeting and custom audiences.

Facebook has the ads API and insights API, with the insights API easy to use and get access to. Facebook has conversion tracking and bidding to conversion. LinkedIn ads API and analytics API are closed.

LinkedIn show summary stats by seniority and company size– Facebook doesn’t have this.

Here are the number of folks you can target on Facebook by job title. Clearly a lot more blue collar types– a larger audience than Facebook by a factor of five.

And as you’d expect, if you’re hitting executive positions or HR, LinkedIn is the way to go.

These are relative ratios- Waitresses on Facebook outnumber LinkedIn waitresses 4 to 1. But on LinkedIn, there are 1,255 VPs of Human Resources for every one of them on Facebook.

Would you list your experience as a bartender on LinkedIn?

Don’t ask Chuck Norris to fill out a web form, since he’ll never submit

By Dennis Yu Leave a Comment

And likewise, here’s a doozy from the folks at Marketing Profs today.

17 required fields!

Why have a razor with three blades when you can have five, PLUS an aloe strip?

The key to social lead gen in B2B is many lightweight touches over time– to nurture folks, instead of trying to go from first date to getting married in the same evening.

You have to think from the standpoint of the client, not from yours. Asking me for my phone number tells me an aggressive sales rep might call me or that my information is going to be resold.

I must want that guide pretty badly if I’m willing to fill out all that information.

To learn how to do social lead gen effectively, check out what Jason Miller and Preston Smith have to say.