BRINGING SEXY BACK to B2B MARKETING

If you can get through this next sentence without falling asleep, congratulations. B2B marketing has traditionally consisted of facts, figures, testimonials and whitepapers. Still with us? Good. As boring as that all seems, we can assure you, it doesn’t have to be this way. And if you’re a B2B business out there, we just want you to know – it’s not you, it’s us – the agencies that owe it to you to help bring your brand out of its cocoon, releasing its true colours and allowing it to soar high above the mediocrity. After all, there’s no such thing as a boring product, just boring packaging.

Hit ‘em right in the ‘feels’
With a huge amount of advertising noise coming from every direction, particularly the digital space, it’s important that B2B businesses really put themselves out there. Marketing efforts need to be tailored for the common human, not robots. Tuning in to those things called feelings will encourage people to really engage with your brand and talk about it. Remember the customer comes first so ask yourself:

– What are they interested in?
– What’s the best way to reach them and when?
– How are you going to solve their problem?
– How are you going to make them look like a god to their peers?

Try to avoid hitting them with the hard stuff too early. Yes, they may need some solid facts at some stage but first, think about how you’re going to lure (ahem) lead them in. Although B2B products may not be bought for emotional gratification, it doesn’t mean the marketing behind it can’t include plenty of warm fuzzies. Make them feel safe, show them how cost-effective it is and let them know your company cares about them as an individual.

Get your flirt on
Let’s face it, you’re trying to make an unsexy product desirable so just like a finely-tuned Tinder profile, show a shit tonne of charisma and put your best profile pic forward. Social media is the forum to do this; it gives you a chance to present a familiar, less formal side to your business through the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Instead of your customers feeling like outsiders learning about your business, here’s their chance to get in on the action by joining conversations and sharing with their friends. Showing pictures of your staff is also a great way to ‘humanise’ your brand – “oooh, they look like a warm, down-to-earth company – in fact, they’re the kind of company I can see myself starting a relationship with” (sigh).

Stick to the game plan
Right, so now you’ve got an idea on how to make your company relatable and look super snazzy (side note: don’t go too far and use words like ‘snazzy’) so what now? Avoid going in hot without a strategy. You’ve got fun stuff and you’ve got boring stuff, now how are you going to roll it all out? Do continue things that have served you well in the past (we never said get rid of those white papers all together). Do target more than just the top dogs – an idea can come from any person in the company. Do aim to reach people outside of work hours too because, well, people are addicted to their phones and tablets. Don’t lose yourself – brand identity still needs to be evident in everything you do. If all else fails? Offer free stuff! Everyone loves a little win, even if it’s as simple as a free e-book.

Last but not least, don’t forget the plug. Whenever you get the chance, talk up your company and offer the easy click. For example, BallantyneTaylor would say something along the lines of “we know you’ve enjoyed this article, so don’t play hard to get – if you want to get a little stalky and see what other great things we’ve done (and could do for you) check us out riiiiight: here.

Mixing things up – how to sprinkle a bit of B2C into the B2B marketing pool

Written by Steve August 15, 2016 advertising b2b marketing b2c marketing business business development content creative content social media

Now is as good a time as any for B2B marketers to loosen that top button and see what they could learn from their not-so-distant B2C relatives. Let’s take a look at how to spice things up in the marketing department to create a whole new breed of innovation.

B2B marketers have traditionally focused on using rational arguments to persuade customers to buy their products but with it becoming increasingly harder to grab the attention of potential buyers, marketers need to think smarter. While logic leads to conclusions and emotions lead to actions, audiences are now accustomed to being approached in a personal, emotive way meaning not taking this angle could have the potential to make your brand seem distant, disconnected or bland. So, clever marketers understand the need to tug on the heart strings/funny bone/[insert emotive body part here]. We’re not saying turn your whole marketing strategy on its head, but rather think about how to inject more personality into your messaging. Remember, it’s not just the product or service you’re representing; it’s the personality and values of your business too. So yes, the number one goal may be to educate in a professional way but while you’re at it, think about how you could also show your audiences that you’re fun, charismatic and original too.

Get creative with the tools you’ve got as well as one’s you haven’t used before. B2C marketers use the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat to paint a picture and get conversations started. B2B marketers can consider employing social media too but it means thinking outside the square. What else could you talk about/show that is relevant and will get audiences paying attention? Don’t be afraid to have a bit of fun with your content. Whether it’s mixing things up with a new tone of voice, creating some fun visual elements, or even making a video (which many B2B researches watch during the entire path to purchase), there’s plenty of options to consider . Everyone appreciates a good laugh so this could be your chance to jump on social media and show a less formal side to your business while aiming to make your audiences smile.

B2C knows that mobile means money which is where B2B needs to lift its game. It’s not just B2C audiences that will have their attention grabbed by a well-placed banner ad, video, or sponsored content – B2B audiences are real people too so don’t be afraid to get down and digital. Research from Panvista Mobile shows that “59% of B2B purchase decision makers and influencers use smartphones to gather information about B2B products and services, and 65% of executives are comfortable making a purchase from a mobile device.” Ensure your content is optimised for mobile so you never miss out. Google did a study in 2014 with Millward Brown Digital which discovered nearly half of all B2B researchers are millennials (digital natives), and 49% of B2B researchers who use their mobile devices for product research do so while at work. They’re comparing prices, reading about products, comparing feature sets, and contacting retailers.

In the end, everyone is a consumer in one way or another so keep reaching out to them. Stick to what you know works while also aiming to surprise and connect differently with your audiences. Tap into habits and thought patterns when working out what makes your audiences tick on a personal level. Deliver something that will make them sit up and think ‘that’s different… I like it’.

5 ways to reach the right audiences with Programmatic Advertising

Written by Steve July 8, 2016 ads advertising business content Google marketing online programmatic SME

1. Specific targeting

Want to reach 20 – 25 year-old males who live and breathe video games, tend to be on the internet between 2am – 6am, and live in Invercargill? With Programmatic Advertising you can do just this. You have the ability to target any market you choose – no matter how niche.

Instead of applying a ‘spray and pray’ approach, Programmatic Advertising allows a user to work out exactly who they want to reach, when they want to reach them and how they’re going to reach them. Instead of publishing your ad to a large, broad network where many of the people won’t see your ad as relevant or interesting, you can ensure that your ads are reaching specific audiences where your messages are more likely to resonate.

Using the marketing intelligence you already have (such as from your API or Google Analytics) is a great way to determine how you will proceed with your ad placements. This data should help identify any already occurring trends and opportunities to take advantage of.

2. Speed and time-saving

Through Programmatic Advertising, an ad can be served up in a matter of milliseconds. Once you have done all the background work in terms of placing your bidding price and setting the specifications on who you want to reach, your ad simply sits in cyberspace waiting for its first bite. When someone makes a search that links in with your ad (e.g. they have Googled prime fishing spots and you sell fishing equipment) your ad will suddenly kick into gear, competing with other ads for a spot on that person’s screen. If your bid is the highest then your ad will be served to them at lightning speed.

Programmatic Advertising proves time-efficient in terms of set-up and how fast it delivers. Instead of booking your media the traditional way (researching, finding a contact, discussing rates, negotiating, scheduling) programmatic puts you in the driver’s seat. You control the budgets and placements with real time bidding (RTB). Once the groundwork is done, the algorithms take it from there.

3. Cross-device targeting

Ever heard of a micro-moment? They are captured when a potential customer makes a decision or has their opinion swayed. Ensure your intent-fuelled, breakthrough moment is waiting around every corner for your customers – whether it’s via mobile, tablet or computer.

By deciphering your target market’s technology-user-habits, you can apply Programmatic Advertising to set your ads up like a well-prepared army – poised at all the right stations and ready to lurch. It also allows for brand/message reinforcement where your target might be exposed to your ads several times over various different devices, keeping your business top-of-mind. A good example of this would be to start promoting a weekend sale on Tuesday or Wednesday to build up interest over a few days.

4. Cost-efficiency

When implementing Programmatic Advertising, you can determine a budget and then decide how much you are willing to bid. Although this is similar to Google advertising, the major benefit with programmatic is that you are reaching out further than just the Google network. You will also be drawing on other ad exchanges like AppNexus, Microsoft Advertising, OpenX and rightmedia.

Ads are typically sold on a CPM basis (cost per 1,000 impressions). On average, programmatic CPMs range from $5 – $8. When compared to non-programmatic CPM which are closer to the $20 – $30 mark, it’s easy to see what option is the most cost-efficient. It is now possible to take a traditional online advertising budget and stretch it 5 times further with programmatic, which is particularly beneficial for SMEs that have a limited budget to start with.

5. Experts can do it for you

The best part of programmatic? You can get experts to do all the nitty-gritty for you!

Simply set the parameters in terms of who you want to reach and what you want to achieve. From there, experts can bring your strategic Programmatic Advertising plan to fruition. You may already have data and creative that a specialist can draw on, but if not, this is something they may also help you with.

The joy of taking this approach is that you reap the rewards but you don’t need to invest the time and energy needed to learn and implement the system. You can also receive a breakdown of how your ads are performing along with suggestions on how to further improve them.

BallantyneTaylor are experts in the field of Programmatic Advertising and can give your business a helping hand. Get in touch today and find out what you could achieve with them.

Make your content relatable and actionable

Written by Admin November 4, 2014 business content marketing marketing strategy

The amount of content on the internet is infinite, and it’s been noted that users rarely read content in-full. If your content doesn’t reach your audience on a personal level, prepare to suffer from a high bounce rate. Content must be relatable and actionable to increase your customers’ attention spans.

First, you will need to find out what resonates with your audience and create a plan to boost it across all of your platforms. Once you’ve done that, you can start developing a plan of action. But what content tactics will engage an audience and encourage them to take the next step?

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1.) Keep it simple

The best way to write content is to understand your readers could range from industry experts to amateurs and anywhere in between. If the piece of content you are creating is overly technical and industry jargon is necessary, make sure and explain it in easy to understand terms.

As we mentioned before, your audience suffers from a short attention span, so write for the skimmer, not the reader! Here’s a few tips:

• Use bullet points to break up long paragraphs
• Focus on clarity over jargon
• Link out important terms to Wikipedia or expert posts to provide more detailed explanations for terms you don’t cover

2.) Tell how to do, not what to do

Writing the “what” is a very on-the-surface content goal. Eventually, you or your reader will desire to delve deeper into the subject. If you want to be seen as a resource, you must discuss the “how” of your topic with your reader:

• Describe your personal processes and tools and explain how you use them to gain a competitive edge
• Give examples from your work and research and how you read the data
• List your resources and share how they helped you improve your knowledge or skill

3.) Include visuals

Showing visuals is one of the easiest and fastest ways to answer your reader’s questions (which appeals the short attention span we keep coming back to). Use graphs, screenshots of tools/buttons/ tabs you used, descriptive images or videos. Anything that will grab attention.

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4.) Answer questions

Since Hummingbird, the web is geared more than ever toward answering users’ questions. During the writing process, think about the queries your audience might have and answer them in a short, to-the-point way. You readers will be happy and Google will be happy. And when Google is happy, you rank higher in search.

5.) Be innovative

Create your content in a wide range of formats and mediums, and be as unique and innovative as possible. Consider your content to be another form of branding yourself. Don’t hide behind your professional website – use innovative content to show users that your brand is personable, relatable, and human!

Want to learn more about how content marketing can improve your digital marketing strategy? Talk to Managing Director, Steve Ballantyne. e: steve@b2bpartners.nz

Or check out our ebook, The Superheroes of Digital Marketing, which features an entire chapter on content marketing alone!

4 “must-haves” of high converting copy

Written by Admin October 22, 2014 content marketing Conversion Rate Optimisation digital marketing marketing strategy

First-class copy is the best way to attract and convert prospects into customers, and customers into repeat buyers. But like so much of conversion optimisation and digital marketing, it is not easy to produce.

That’s why we’ve listed these four absolute essentials of high-converting copy. If you can nail down these characteristics, you’re well on your way to producing some high-converting copy.

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1.) Be clear

The type of content you produce/share is closely related to the product you sell. Users need to understand what your product is, and in order to convey that, you must have clear copy. Clarity is more important that humour, more important than grammatical perfection, more important that anything.

Clarity is about understanding. If users don’t understand your product, they won’t buy your product.

2.) Be casual

We’ve got to break away from stiff and formal writing. Write like you speak! Use simple words and be direct! No one wants to read a landing page that sounds like a university essay. Here’s a few tips to make your writing a little more casual and a lot more engaging:

Break grammatical rules – incomplete sentences, expressions, colloquialisms and slang are A-Okay!
Try dictating your copy rather than writing it. Pretend you are telling a friend about your product.
Refer to the reader as “you”.

3.) Make sure you’ve got a killer headline

On average, five times as many people will read your headline over your body copy, so you had better make it good. A great headline convinces more people to read your copy while a poor one sends them searching somewhere else.

And you don’t have to stop at just one headline. As long as you space them out, size them appropriately and back them up with great content, use as many headlines as you want!

4.) Good copy is easy to scan

Great writers make sure that the content they produce is scannable. It’s not just about breaking things up visually, but rather an entire approach to writing altogether. So, what makes your content scannable?

It has short words.
It used short sentences.
In contains plenty of visuals – they break up your copy and make it more engaging.
It uses bullet points – they’re short, powerful and direct.
It’s utilises “white space” – no walls of texts here!
It contains headlines and subheads.

So you see, it’s just that simple. If you can improve your copy, you can improve you conversions.

What else would you consider to be a “must-have” of high converting copy?

Want to find out more ways to improve your content marketing strategy? Talk to BT Managing Director, Steve Ballantyne. steve@b2bpartners.nz

Or download our ebook, The Superheroes of Digital Marketing, for free!

5 rookie mistakes in content marketing (and how to fix them)

Written by Admin October 8, 2014 content content marketing marketing strategy ROI

Content marketing isn’t hard, but it isn’t exactly easy either. We can’t just blindly whip together some content ideas, throw them into the Internet oven and expect it to come out as a content marketing soufflé. Without proper considerations and strategy, all our hard work is going to collapse in on itself.

Like anything else, content marketing takes continuous trial and error, and a fair few mistakes along the way. So without further ado, here are our “Top 5 Rookie Content Marketing Mistakes” and some quick tips on how to fix them.

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1.) Your content is too branded

Overly branded content looks like a traditional advertisement and thus, will be responded too like a traditional advertisement – like you are trying to sell rather than to engage your audience.

Fix: Form ideas around the overall values and objectives of your company, not the brand itself. Content that is presented in a natural way is far more likely to be well received. This doesn’t mean you must omit any essence of your brand, just be subtle.

2.) You don’t have a strategy

We’ve all been there – devoted time and energy into creating a fantastic piece of content, only to realise…you have no idea what to do with it. To get the most out of your content marketing programme and actually build your brand, engage your prospects and customers and drive sales, you need more than activity. You need a strategy.

Fix: Take the time to understand your audience, develop clear conversion goals and decide what types of content to create. From here, you can develop a content map or matrix for all the possible distribution tactics you can use, and tier them based on content.

3.) You’re not getting your audience involved

Content marketing is not a one-way stream of conversation. Don’t talk at your audience, make it an interactive conversation. It will open doors for new customers.

Fix: Craft content that is interactive – allow audiences to click, explore and participate. Comments and other means of feedback can allow your potential customers to interact with your content and feel more connected to it.

4.) You’ve got the facts, but where’s the emotion?

Content isn’t all about teaching and informing; it’s about connecting and experiencing. Content that is both memorable and impactful taps into the thing that brings us together in real life – emotions that ignite empathy.

Fix: Think of your content as a story. What does the information actually mean to your audience and how can you express that? Let your content evoke an emotional response.

5.) Listen to the data – not your gut

Content marketers who have a comprehensive knowledge of their target audience often create content that they personally think is best without considering any outside sources. One of the most importance sources being data.

Fix: By data, I mean your performance metrics. The ones that tell you which pieces of content are being shared and which ones are being ignored. Rather than to assume what your audience likes, know what they like based on the information you’ve collected.

Content Marketing is a hugely effective method of increasing ROI and overall customer engagement. If you’re making any of the mistakes above, now is the time to improve your process.

Talk to Managing Director, Steve Ballantyne for an audit on your content marketing strategy: steve@b2bpartners.nz

Or you can check out our ebook, The Superheroes of Digital Marketing, which features an entire chapter on content.

Thinking small in content marketing

Written by Admin September 16, 2014 Atomised Content content marketing marketing strategy

This is typical: you expend a lot of energy into a chunky piece of marketing content – then retire it, move on and start working on the next piece. When you do that, not only are you leaving a lot of content value behind, but wasting a real opportunity to get more bang for just a little more work.

“Atomising” is a term coined by Todd Defren in 2008 to mean “sharing content in small bits.”

Breaking your content down into smaller, more consumable pieces is not only more appetising to your already-to-busy customer base, but will feed your business’ content pipeline and increase overall impact.

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We have to disavow ourselves of the natural inclination towards a “bigger is better” mentality, and here’s some excellent reasons why:

5 reasons to atomise your big idea

1. Atomised content is more searchable

Breaking your content up into snack-able portions puts more bait in the water to attract your most important customer – Google. Producing disparate pieces of content gives you the opportunity to highlight a wider number of search terms, cross-link your content and increase your total number of ranked pages.

2. Atomised content is more findable

This is especially true when you repurpose your content and atomise it. Think about it; what will get more exposure for your company? A blog post, or a blog post plus a Slideshare presentation? Every presentation you make should also be able to be found as a blog post. And every blog post you write has untapped potential to become a presentation!

3. Atomised content gets consumed more

In a social media dominated world, where 140 characters equals a fully-formed thought, what is going to get consumed more? A 90-second video or a 25-page ebook? Social media and content marketing trends are shifting toward brevity anda “show me, don’t tell me” mentality.

4. Atomised content gets spread more

The potential for small content to go viral supersedes large content in almost every case. And it’s easy to see why. We are far more likely to recommend or share something that we have actually read. But it’s also a case of simple maths – if you have a fantastic ebook, it’s going to get shared, but if you break that same ebook up into episodic sections, the collective shares for those components will be higher.

5. Atomised content generates more leads

Thinking small in content marketing gives you more opportunities to include CTAs. For instance, a 5-piece series gives you 500% more calls-to-action than one giant volume of work. Additionally, the smaller your content, the fewer words, pictures and other content elements compete against your CTAs, which could provide additional attention and conversions.

The next time you are brainstorming a content execution for your brand, think about how you can take that idea and turn it into two, or four, and so on. That’s thinking small.

Want to find out more about how you can optimise your content marketing strategy? Get in touch. Talk to Marketing Director, Steve Ballantyne: steve@b2bpartners.nz

Visual content marketing: The proof is in the percentages

Written by Admin September 10, 2014 content marketing digital marketing marketing strategy

This year, according to research by eMarketer, it is estimated that some $134.7 billion will be spent on content marketing.

Meanwhile, international market research pro, Mintel, has predicted double digit growth for content marketing in the next five years. With this ever-increasing spend, it’s vital that you are getting the most out of your budget.

You’ve got to give your users what they want. It starts with giving them content that they will actually take the time to consume, and wall-to-wall text, is not the answer. Messages get weighed down and hidden in excessive quantities of text, but images are understood at a glace. So forget your whitepapers, let’s get visual.

Visual content shows your products without telling people about them. Images break through the clutter of online content by communicating ideas quickly, like a snapshot. They also evoke emotional responses. Don’t believe me? Check out the stats below. Our infographic shows how visual content marketing can be advantageous to your brand.

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Visual content marketing is set to dominate 2014. People simply respond better to images, it all comes down to our natural learning style and how we retain information. Have you tested visual content v. written content for your brand yet?

If you want to find out more about how content marketing will work for your business, check out our ebook: The Superheroes of Digital Marketing!

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