Last week we discussed the importance of developing your buyer persona when creating your content marketing strategy. But once you’ve built your strategy, what can you do to make sure your content gets your sales pipeline pumping?

Here are 5 tips to consider when developing your content:

1. Relevant content: Creating relevant and informative content that speaks to your buyer persona will not only get them thinking, but connect with purchasers in the right stage of the buying process and start those light bulbs going off. A lot more effective than pumping out random sales messages hoping to catch a nibble.
2.  Know your sales process: Be aware of what happens in your sales funnel. Ask yourself – where do people enter my sales funnel – and where do I lose them? Knowing the answers to these questions will help you generate content that moves your buyers along the funnel to conversion, without losing them along the way.
3.  Compelling offer and call to action: The key to success is creating a reason for your audience to engage with your content: Dangle a carrot of information that your audience wants or needs and make it compelling enough for them to want to sign up, call or download your content.  Inserting a call to action is also paramount to the success of your content – make sure you tell your audience what to do next.
4. Test! Split your testing across platforms and content pieces to test what words, design and platforms your audience are engaging with. We find Google Content Experiments a great place to start.
5. Design and Copy: Your copy and design should be an extension of your brand and should mirror best practice wherever possible. Using headers, subtitles and bullet points are all a great start in copy making your copy easy to read. Simple, easy to use design elements of all content should be employed – the last thing you want is for your audience to get frustrated with your content and go away!

What next?

Start by mapping out your plan and develop your individual pieces of content using the above steps as a checklist to make sure you have your content working for you – not the other way around!

Need help?

Brand chemistry develops content marketing strategies and content for clients who want to connect with their audience more effectively. Find our more here  or contact us today to find out more.

OK b2b-ers. It’s time to get personal. When developing your marketing strategy, campaigns and other pieces of content, don’t forget it’s a real-life person you’re talking to, every step of the way.

Sounds like a no-brainer, I know, but you’d be amazed how frequently b2b marketers make the mistake of aiming marketing and sales materials towards a company persona, instead of a buyer persona: i.e. companies in X industry, with X number of employees,  that need X service or product.

Sure a company persona is a reasonable place to start, but in order to create messages that really work, we actually need to go a step deeper and consider who is buying their product or service – and this is where the buyer persona comes in.

The problem with the company persona

There’s one good reason why we don’t stop at the company persona: because this method of thinking tends to lead you down the long, winding path to product-centric messaging: which isn’t always relevant to your buyer, and can easily turn into a sort of corporate chest-beating, given half a chance.

Creating a buyer persona helps take the focus off you and what you are trying to sell and focuses instead on addressing the problems that your prospects are facing. Not only will this make it easier to empathise with your prospects, but should also make it easier to ‘set off light bulbs’ in the minds of your targets: in turn stimulating great sales conversations and hot leads!

Defining a buyer persona

Most companies have multiple buyer personas, particularly in b2b where the buying process can involve several decision-makers. To keep it simple, try to identify the few main decision-makers, and the characteristics they share in common. You can identify whatever features are most relevant to you, but here’s some inspiration to get you started:

1. Caricature: Draw a picture of your ‘typical’ purchaser. Think about their gender, age, marital status, education, location. Give them a name: it makes planning a whole lot easier.
2. Role: What industry are they in? Role type, function, responsibilities?
3. Attitudes: What is their attitude towards your industry, your product, and the issues it addresses?
4. Motivators: What motivates them to get to their desk in the morning?
5. Fears & annoyances: What are their biggest fears and annoyances in relation to their work?

How to find them

Buyer personas are often developed in collaboration within internal team members, in particular those with client-facing roles such as sales and customer service. You could also consider interviewing some trusted clients if you felt it was appropriate.

What next?

After you have a clear idea of who you’re targeting, it should be easy to craft sales and marketing messages to press that person’s buttons. Now you’re well on your way to connecting and engaging with your dream client!

Need help?

Brand chemistry facilitates buyer persona workshops for clients who want to connect with their dream clients. Find our more here or contact us today to find out more.

Oh my goodness. All those hours, emails, dollars and reams of paper getting your marketing strategy locked down. And now, it’s… let’s see… Not delivering the punch you’d hoped for? Not feeling as relevant as it did a few months ago? Feeling a little lacklustre?

Yep, you’ve got a clear case strategy fatigue. Here are the 7 most likely reasons your marketing strategy has lost its mojo:

Your strategy doc lives in a drawer:

Many organisations expect a marketing strategy to last them a year, or sometimes even longer. The thing is, things change (as they should in any healthy environment): your company changes, the market changes, the competition changes. Your business objectives might even have had an about-face since you last put your strategic pen to paper. The best marketing strategies are like a living, growing beast (like those dreadful friendship cakes you used to get in the eighties): changing all the time.

Too much detail:

Take another look at your marketing strategy. Have you specified each minute detail of every campaign? Hang on – how did you know what your strategy was going to need when it came to delivery o’clock? Of course you didn’t – there’s no way you could have: leave your campaigns air to breathe and room to grow and watch them spring into life.

You lost sight of your business objectives:

Just like Dorothy and the Tin Man, you always need to have a clear view of where you’re trying to get to. If your strategy isn’t 100% aligned to your business objectives (or you got so caught up in the campaign fun that you lost sight of them somewhere along the way), then they’re not going to do what you want them to do.

It’s all about the document:

Now, we love a good marketing strategy (geek me up, baby!) but we never lose sight of the fact that it’s just a means to an end, not an end in itself. If it ain’t working, change it! The most effective strategies are those that receive the most abuse: it should be curled up at the edges, scribbled on, ripped up and started again on a regular basis.

The execution let it down:

It’s easy to blame the strategy, but before you do, look at your execution: is it in line with the business objectives and plans outlined in the strategy? (Even after the 12^th round of changes?)

It lacks focus:

My favourite creative director’s favourite expression used to be ‘You can’t please all the people all of the time’ and he was right. Make your target smaller, do your homework, and get more bang for your buck, every time.

It was never written in the first place:

You went straight to ‘execution’ without stopping at ‘strategy’ (Stay behind after class, young’un!).

Need a hand? Give Brand chemistry a shout.

We know what you’re thinking: “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they!”

But really – and putting all self-interest aside – even if we’d given up b2b branding and were now running a pizza bar in Coober Pedy (What’s that you say? There’s one there already?) we would STILL be exhorting you to leave your brand in the hands of… well, the folk who are best equipped to look after it.

Here’s why:

Seeing the wood from the trees:

We meet so many clients who have become so tangled in the day-to-day running of their businesses that they find it almost impossible to take a step back and look at their business as a whole. Imagine trying to identify your USP, when all you can see are its inside workings?

The thought behind the pictures:

Did you know that coming up with the visual and language elements of a brand is often the easiest bit? There are lots of guys out there who can design a beautiful visual identity – and lots of awesome writers too. But what you really need is someone who can help identify what sets your business apart, and then build the gorgeous brand on top of it. As Michael Caine would (almost) say, not many people know how to do that.

The hairdresser effect:

People will open up to strangers. Fact. One of the best ways to get a really good handle on what really makes your business unique is to talk to its employees, partners and clients, and someone from ‘outside’ will always get a more frank and genuine picture of your business than the most personable member of your internal team.

Taking the bird’s eye view:

No man is an island. A good b2b branding partner will help you take the whole competitive market into consideration.

Making sure you gain mileage from your investment:

What’s going to happen after your brand has been created? How will you ensure that your team uses the right brand, in the right way, all the time? Building brand guidelines and training your team in how to use their new brand is a specific skill set that often sets a branding agency apart.

To find out more about branding for b2b, click here.

You know, there are some really great b2b brands out there. Here are some of our favourites :

Marketo

Just look at these guys! Things we love about them: They manage to speak equally to the big guy and the little guy – AND they make sure they have relevant content for everyone. Their site is super-interactive, with plenty of conversations and giveaways. No flat, one-dimensional ‘product brochure’ websites here.

LinkedIn

Love it or hate it (it’s the former for us), there’s no disputing that LinkedIn has really established itself as a brand now. In fact it has its feet so firmly entrenched under the table that many of us don’t even really think of it as a b2b brand at all – it’s just part of everyday life. We love how they pitch themselves equally well to business and the individual.

Baudville

If you’re ever feeling that Fun and Feelgood are two ingredients in short supply on the b2b menu, take a look at these guys. It starts at their bold and ballsy logo – more at home on a baseball pitch than the b2b arena – and goes all the way to their fun, human and surprisingly cheese-free products (check out the t-shirt that says ‘My boss thinks I’m kind of a big deal’). Loads of fun.

Kimberly-Clark

Kimberly-Clark are a nice example of how a house of brands can serve both the b2c market and the b2b market: they’re doing a good job of walking the tightrope between achieving harmony between two brands and keeping them separate and distinct.

Which b2b brands do you think are leading the way right now?  Drop us a line and let us know what you think.

Smaller companies and start-ups with no marketing department often assume that much marketing activity is off-limits to them just because they don’t have a dedicated in-house team. And back in the days of mainstream media domination, this may have been true: most marketing efforts meant carefully-built networks of contacts and chunky media budgets.

But the advance of new media means that a whole range of marketing options is now open to companies with little or no marketing head count. With a little bit of nouse, and a sprinkle of outside help, there are now a huge range of killer strategies available for companies with few or no marketing bods on the payroll.

Here’s our top 5 tips to help you get started without a marketing team (and without spending a fortune!):

1. Start small: don’t aim to cover all areas of marketing – just start with a couple of projects and focus on tweaking them to get them performing well.
2. Keep track of your results: don’t rely on gut instinct or hearsay to tell you what’s working and what isn’t.
3. Get the foundations right: If you only have a limited budget for outside help, consider investing in a marketing strategy to help get you started in the right direction.
4. Focus on digital: scalable and affordable, digital marketing is a great DIY option.
5. Invest in the future: Supercharge your marketing nouse by investing in training and coaching).

Brand chemistry offers strategy, training and coaching across many marketing avenues, so if you need help, you just have to shout.

Need some help? Give us a shout!

Beaker is the official blog of Brand chemistry.

I bet you’ve seen them as often as we have: the dodgy logos, the incomprehensible (or downright silly) strapline, or the look and feel that just feels… well, plain wrong. You don’t have to look far to find branding disasters, both in and out of the b2b arena. As well as the obvious shockers, there are the hundreds of brands that are indistinguishable from the competition and just merge in with the others in its category. And in our world, blending in is a disaster too.

It costs precious time and money to brand (or re-brand) your business, so if you’re going to do it, you need to do it right. So how do you make sure your next branding experience is a hit? Here are our top four tips:

•  Get your thinking straight: In many ways the strategic planning behind a brand is more important the brand itself. Invest some time and effort into getting this bit straight and the actual development of your brand should be plain sailing.

• Hire a professional for at least some of the process: even if your budget doesn’t stretch to hiring an outside team for the whole journey, consider getting in some outside advice to help you stand back and see how your brand looks (and has the potential to look) from the outside.

• No matter how tempting it may seem, don’t pay someone to design your logo and then just apply it to your collateral yourself. Branding is about so much more than just plonking down a logo, and important consideration needs to be made around how the logo fits in with your other design elements, and how your brand works across different materials to ensure consistency and a professional finish.

• Invest in brand guidelines. These don’t take long to create, but give you a watertight guide of how your brand should be used, now and in the future. A good set of brand guidelines will make sure your branding investment is protected, no matter who is working with your brand.

Branding or re-branding your business is an important consideration and a huge investment, both in terms of cost and reputation. If you need help or advice with any branding issues, please feel free to get in touch. That’s what we’re here for.

So your business has not only survived the turmoil of the last few years, it’s actually gone out there and grown – congratulations! We don’t know how you managed it, but we’re glad you did. If this is the case, you’ve probably been so busy fielding sales enquiries that you haven’t had a chance to breathe, let alone think about the future.

But the truth is, as your business has grown, it’s probably changed too, and the chances are you’re so in the thick of it that you haven’t had a chance to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. What’s more it’s likely that your market has shifted while you’ve been away making your millions, and there might even be some new markets that you might not even have considered before your period of growth.

So, what do you need to do, to capitalise on this? And in what order do you need to do it in? Here’s your shopping list:

•  Look again at your market : consider how it may have shifted or expanded. Are there new areas you haven’t considered before but are worth looking at now?

• Review your marketing objectives : no doubt they will have changed since you last looked at them. What are your priorities now? Expansion? Investment? Consolidation? Sale?
• Think about your positioning (this is the promise you make to your customers). If your company has changed, chances are the unique benefits you offer your customers have, too.
• Re-familiarise yourself with your customers : have they changed? Or are you just looking after more of them now? This will impact your positioning and your market review, too.
• Look anew at your brand strategy, and consider whether you need a brand refresh : if you’re playing in a bigger market now, you may need to rethink how you present yourselves to the outside world.

The team here at Brand Chemistry can help you with any of these objectives. Whatever it takes to help you continue enjoying your company’s growth so give us a shout!

Beaker is the official blog of Brand chemistry.

So we’re all familiar with witty, memorable and emotionally charged consumer branding and marketing, whether it’s the 2012 “Share a Coke” campaign of Coca-Cola or the “Rhonda and Ketut” campaign of AAMI.

So what happened with b2b? With a couple of notable exceptions, b2b branding and marketing has a less-than-sexy reputation of safety, middle-of-the-road syndrome and the (hang our heads in shame) the downright dull. What’s the story here?

Yes, we often have more product detail to get across than b2c, and yes, often our budgets are more pinched. But we all know that while it can be nice to splash the cash on pricey media, funky widgets and breathtaking photography, at the end of the day a good idea costs no more than a crap idea. And what’s wrong with finding clever and innovative ways – and places – to get your lengthy product info across, especially now that there are so many different media options at our disposal?

We know too that b2b purchases tend to involve multiple decision-makers, and marketing to a committee was never going to win anyone any creative awards. But perhaps the biggest obstacle has been what our audiences have in common, rather the their diversity. Because historically speaking your traditional b2b buyer has been male, suited and booted, mid-50’s, executive type. So the way we communicate with them has reflected this: we’re talking navy blue, corporate stock images, nice thick letterhead, you know the type of thing. Added to the fact that generally we’re asking b2b consumers to make big serious lose-your-job-if-you-mess-it-up type purchases, and suddenly things start looking very safe and staid indeed.

So here’s the thing – the good news. The market is changing. Sure a big chunk of today’s b2b decision-makers are still your man-in-a-suit, but times are changing : decision-makers are getting younger, many of them are women (‘What’s that!’ I hear you cry!), and some of them – get this – don’t even wear suits any more!

All this is making us think maybe it’s time for a new wave of creativity in the b2b market. Maybe it’s time to start lightening up, involving the emotions more and having some fun in the ways we communicate with each other. The opportunity’s there, and the tools are at our disposal too. It could be a great way to stand apart from the competition, too. Anyone up for the challenge?

Need some help? Give us a shout!

Beaker is the official blog of Brand chemistry.

So we have all heard it – lot’s of talk about Big Data. Some of you might be wondering what all the hype is about. Here’s a short and speedy ‘Dummies Guide’ to Big Data and what it could mean for you and other B2b organisations in 2013.

What is it?

Big Data is a broad (and slightly fluffy-round-the-edges) term for the massive sets of data held by governments, corporations, and other large organisations, that influence the way they deal with your average Joe (you and me) on a day-by-day basis.

Unless you work in this field, Big Data might be best recognised as the data that determines which friends Facebook recommends to you, the reads Amazon suggests for your kindle, or the point at which your electricity supplier decides to offer you a freebie as a ‘valued customer.’

Although the definitions around it are vague, ‘normal’ data becomes ‘Big Data’ when there’s lots of it, when it’s immensely varied, complex, it’s amalgamated from various sources and is churned out at lightning speed.

Why is it relevant to me?

A particularly brilliant McKinsey article highlighted the 5 main ways in which Big Data can impact business : first by making information more transparent and usable; second, for producing more accurate and detailed business performance information; third, by allowing ever-narrower segmentation of customers (meaning we can talk to them more accurately); fourth, to facilitate smarter decision-making; and finally, to improve the development of the next generation of products and services. Sounds good, hey? Click here to read more.

Now, you might be thinking that Big Data is the domain of behemothic multinational consumer corporations, but the truth is that the benefits of analysing and using big data is just as applicable to b2b, and equally useful for enterprises of all sizes.

How easy is it to get involved?

There are a number of business intelligence tools out there which are relevant to the b2b market, and also aimed less at massive corporations. SiSense’s Prism software, for instance, is aimed at companies from 20 people upwards and can visualise trends in real time. It also works well with CRM databases such as Salesforce.com. The nice thing about Prism is that it’s aimed at marketing people and business analysts, rather than IT experts, so it’s easy to use and intuitive to interpret.

We think big data is going to be getting bigger and bigger for b2b in 2013, so watch this space. We certainly will be!

Need some help? Give us a shout!

Beaker is the official blog of Brand chemistry.