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Did you know that email marketing still delivers one of the highest ROI of any B2B marketing channel? Yet, many businesses overlook its potential.
Email marketing is a digital marketing channel that involves sending targeted messages to an audience via email. It allows businesses to build relationships, nurture leads, and drive conversions. Over the years, email marketing has evolved from newsletters to advanced automated campaigns that deliver highly personalised experiences.
B2B email marketing campaigns are one of many channels in the marketer’s arsenal. With more shiny marketing tools and platforms popping up every day, good old email marketing is becoming perceived as ‘outdated’ in some circles.
But implemented well, with a solid strategy, great tech and amazing content, you won’t get better bang for buck anywhere. It’s still one of the highest-converting channels for middle and bottom-of-funnel leads.
But the art form is evolving – and to predict the future, we first need to go back a little.
Even though it’s one of the oldest digital marketing channels, email marketing has continuously evolved to remain relevant. Let’s take a look at how it has changed over time.
Email marketing has progressed in three main ways:
In the ‘old days’, email marketing was only employed by a few forward-thinking marketers and salespeople. The copy followed a letter correspondence-like format. It was regular, intimate, and effective.
One of the first movers into email marketing was Gary Vaynerchuk.
“When I was building up business for WineLibrary.com, I relied heavily on email marketing. It was 1996, and email marketing had not taken off yet, but our list had 400,000 contacts. And my open rate back then? 80%. No joke. Now, they’re in the twenties. They’re in the twenties for everyone. But I reaped years and years of benefit from the 80% rates because I hopped on email early.”
Then the deluge came.
Businesses would purchase huge lists of contacts without making sure the people on those lists would actually care about their offer. They’d blast a sales message out and see what came back. Open rates could be slim and conversions could even more so.
(This practice still happens today and we strongly recommend against it. You’ll end up blocked from your email provider and known across the internet as a no-good spammer).
The backlash began.
Filters were introduced to our inboxes. The Spam Act was introduced to Australian law in 2003. More recently, government regulations like the GDPR in Europe introduced huge deterrents to businesses that obtain customers’ details or contact them without express permission.
Today, email marketing hasn’t slowed down, but the approach has gone from a shotgun blast to more of a gentle hug. Instead of shouting into the void, we’re trying to start a conversation, and new technology means we can personalise our content to make that conversation a lot more relevant to the individuals within our audience.
We can now split our audiences into smaller, much more interesting segments than ever before. We can split audiences by the actions they take, as well as being able to segment by demographics. Basically, we’re trying to recapture that early email magic and achieve the relevance and intimacy that those first email marketers enjoyed.
B2B email marketing has come a long way from mass email blasts with generic messaging. Today, the focus is on segmentation, automation, and personalisation. Businesses leverage data and advanced tools to create tailored campaigns that resonate with specific audience segments.
A modern B2B campaign might involve sending a series of onboarding emails tailored to different industries, ensuring relevance and improving their engagement.
We all love a good stat. In fact, the only thing better than one is a bunch!
Here are a few email marketing stats that every email marketer needs to know about in 2025:
Email continues to go from strength to strength, proving itself as one of the most cost-effective ways to build an audience and a business.
Campaign Monitor (a service we use and endorse 👍 ) updates its email benchmarks each year. 2020’s Australian results make for some interesting reading. A few highlights:
B2B email campaigns generally fall into three categories:
One-off emails for announcements, event promotions, or product launches.
Example: A SaaS company sends a one-time email promoting an exclusive webinar for enterprise clients.
Automated responses based on specific user actions, such as signing up for a webinar.
Example: A prospect downloads a whitepaper and receives a follow-up email with a case study related to their industry.
A series of emails designed to nurture leads over time.
Example: A B2B agency nurtures leads by sending a series of educational emails before offering a consultation call.
Which you’ll use will depend on your audience and your offer. B2B businesses will need a different approach to their B2C counterparts as the sales cycles are typically longer and more information needs to be shared. That’s why email sequences are a great addition to any B2B email marketing strategy.
Let’s dig into each type in more detail.
One-off campaigns: like your monthly newsletter, new product announcement, or an alert for special EOFY pricing.
It’s important to still segment your data and tailor your emails to each segment. You don’t have to create completely new emails for each, but choose a section or portion of the email to personalise, such as the introduction or one of the pieces of content you’re promoting.
If you have a really well set up database with good segmentation, you can use ‘conditional content’ to show different people different things, depending on what’s most relevant for them.
Trigger-based emails: triggered by an action the contact takes – e.g. clicking a link in another campaign or visiting a page on your website.
Sending emails based on triggers requires you to have a little bit of tracking set up on your website. You can do this through your email provider (or we can help).
Here’s how it works: An existing prospect (someone who has already entered their details on your site) revisits a particular page—for example, one of your product pages. An hour later, they get an email asking if they have questions about the product or offering them a 10% discount.
Another example is someone visiting a specific page on your website but not entirely converting (i.e., not filling in a form). If they’re already in your database, you can send them an email asking, ' How can we help?’
General email sequence: a predetermined suite of emails that you send out to your contacts over time, regardless of their behaviour.
A prospect enters their details through your website and is added to your system as a ‘cold’ lead. This campaign aims to pique their interest by sending them content they might be interested in.
You could trigger a general email sequence when a prospect takes a specific action linked to an email delivery—for example, entering their details to unlock an ebook download. You might then send one email to deliver the ebook, one a day or two later to remind them to download it, and another in a week to see what they think and suggest something else.
Nurture email sequence: You can take the single action-based email a step further by applying the same logic across an entire sequence.
This is similar to a general sequence campaign but with an added layer of personalisation based on your prospect's actions.
For example, if the reader visits a page on your website or clicks a link in a previous email, they might trigger a series of emails with more information about the topic they’ve clicked on.
Of course, an email is no good if nobody is there to read it.
You’ve got to start somewhere – so don’t let a small list of contacts stop you from developing campaigns and sequences.
However, you must include email list building into your overarching email (and marketing) strategy because sending campaigns to the same people week in and week out will not yield the results you want.
We encourage all of our clients to focus on building up their customer and prospect databases. Ideally, you want many contacts, each with a lot of data—name, business, locale, and one or two other qualifiers unique to your objectives.
Here are a few quick ideas for building up your contact list:
Knowing your audience is essential when you’re developing your strategy.
Emails sent with the wrong tone of voice or with the wrong kind of content won’t resonate with your audience and will severely hamper the effectiveness of your campaigns.
You also need to consider the timing of all email marketing elements. Sending random emails every couple of months isn’t going to help you build your empire—you need constant conversation.
So before you write an email, decide what you want to achieve?
Before you dive into email marketing, align your goals with your business objectives. Are you focused on generating leads, driving sales, or educating your audience? How will you measure success—open rates, click-through rates, or conversions?
Every business is different, but we think a combination of regular single campaigns, longer email sequences, and action-based emails is a strong mix. You don’t have to build these all at once—you’ll do them over time, starting with the most important and adding functionality and content as you go.
The exact structure will depend on your industry and audience, your internal goals, and the resources you have on hand (or can outsource).
Once you have the structure worked out, it’s time to write your emails.
If you have a copywriter on hand, give this job to them. If not, you might consider giving it to an agency. Your emails need to reflect your brand’s tone of voice and personality while still conveying all the essential information and leading the customer to act in a certain way (by downloading a guide or purchasing a product, for example).
There are a few schools of thought on how and what you should write about. A safe bet is to stay true to your roots and focus on telling simple stories that you can then relate to your product or brand. Businesses we talk to tend to think that because we’re writing for B2B, we need to fill our emails with technical jargon and marketing-speak. Don’t forget that B2B buyers are people, too – they laugh, they like to be entertained, and they see right through you when you try to be too clever.
The journey doesn’t end when you press ‘send’ – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. You need to constantly review and refine your email sequences.
Look through the data and let it tell you what’s working and what isn’t. Based on the emails' performance, it’s important to adjust your structure, copy, and visuals—as well as the timing of the sequence.
Stories: People love to hear stories, and if you can reveal something about you or your organisation, that’s win-win. Businesses are full of interesting stories, but often, our clients don’t see them because they’re too close. A story can come from anywhere, so keep an ear out and announce to your staff that you’re actively looking for tales to tell.
Offers: There’s nothing like a good old-fashioned offer to get people clicking through.
Social proof: Case studies and testimonials from happy clients always make for compelling email content.
Teases: You want to become a welcome presence in peoples’ inboxes – and one way to do that is to build excitement for your next email. Use a ‘PS’ to promote what you’ll discuss next time, or weave it into the body copy if you can.
Subject lines: Too often, we see subject lines treated as an afterthought when they’re one of your most important elements. Nobody will see the email you’ve crafted if your subject is boring; instead, grab your contact’s attention with a clear, compelling subject line.
Example: “10 Strategies to Boost Your Sales in 2024.”
Body copy: Focus on your audience’s pain points and solutions your product or service provides.
Call to action: Use action-oriented language to encourage the next step.
Example: “Download Your Free Guide Now.”
‘One-percenters’: Remember the essential micro-content—pre-header copy, ‘from’ name, and unsubscribe copy (a bit of humour here may stop contacts from unsubscribing).
B2B email marketing remains one of the most powerful tools for engaging potential clients and driving conversions. Businesses can maximise ROI and build lasting relationships with their audience by focusing on segmentation, automation, and strategic content.
Looking to improve your B2B email marketing? Book a free email strategy consultation.
Email list: the list of contacts you’ll be sending emails to.
Data segmentation: Dividing your email list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics.
– for example, locale. You can segment this any way you like, but ensure you have the same information for every contact; otherwise, it gets messy.
Tagging: You can tag your contacts to segment them further or more specifically. For example, if you deal with both government and private organisations and want to speak to each separately, you can tag them as such.
Personalisation: showing readers unique information based on what you know about them (for example, saying ‘Hi Holly’ or giving me a Melbourne-specific deal).
Email campaign (single): Any singular email sent in isolation. These can be regular or one-off.
Email sequence: A series of automated emails sent based on specific timelines or actions, working towards an end goal.
Action-based autoresponder: An email sent based on an action—for instance, someone entering their details to download an ebook will then receive an automatically triggered email to download the ebook. Another example is a ‘forgot my password’ email.
Hard bounce: An email that returns to you because the email address is invalid. Remove these from your database, or they’ll skew your results.
Soft bounce: An email that temporarily can’t be delivered. It could be because it’s too large or your recipient’s email server is down.
Split testing: You can test all kinds of email elements like subject lines, CTA buttons or header images by sending two emails and comparing the results against each other. Your email software will be able to set up and show you the winner. Remember, only test one element at a time so you know what’s making the difference.
Open rate: The percentage of people who opened your email out of everyone who received it.
Click-through rate: The percentage of people who clicked a link inside your email out of everyone who opened it.
It’s official: the third-party cookie is crumbling. The change has been in the works for a while. Now these trackers, hitch-hiking on our every click and page view, are finally staring down the barrel of extinction.
Safari and Firefox have already phased them out. Google Chrome initially planned to phase out third-party cookies by mid-2024 but has since reversed this decision. Instead, Google will retain third-party cookies in Chrome, providing users with the option to enable or disable them.
It’s a welcome change for consumers, no doubt – tired of brands constantly peering over their shoulder. And if it means avoiding death by 1000 clicks from having to customise our consent on every single website, then that’s cause for celebration.
But what does it mean for marketers? Third-party data has been the go-to for so long, raising a few key questions:
Third-party cookies track and store your browsing data. They enable brands to serve you ads related to products you’ve previously searched for, even when you’re on an unrelated website or an entirely different platform.
The truth is, many marketers have already lost their appetite for third-party biccies. They’re actually less effective than we’d like to admit. For every pro, there are also problems, resulting in:
You’ve probably seen this clumsiness first-hand – like being served an ad for a product you’ve already bought. We’re so accustomed to living under a panoptic digital marketing regime that this kind of glitch barely raises an eyebrow, but it still adds up to a frustrating user experience. If brands are going to stalk us, they should at least pay attention to our behaviour, right?
While third-party cookies have been a staple in digital marketing, their effectiveness has been questioned due to several limitations:
So if third-party data isn’t cutting it, what’s the alternative? As third-party cookies become less effective, marketers are shifting to alternative strategies, including:
In an attempt to wean us off third-party cookies, Google trialled FLOC — The Federated Learning of Cohorts, which worked similarly, but tracked groups of users instead of individuals for a ‘safety in numbers’ approach. However, it was red-flagged within the industry for still enabling advertisers to single out individuals through loopholes.
Enter Google’s TOPICs, an even broader data gathering service, which sorts users into topline interest categories – e.g. ‘here’s Stephanie, she likes sports and music’. While this offers users more anonymity, it doesn’t give marketers much to work with. Surely there’s a way to gain useful insights without being intrusive?
While Topics provides more user anonymity, marketers lose granular data, making precise targeting harder. Alternatives like first-party data, contextual advertising, and AI-driven audience modelling are gaining traction as a result.
We’re back in the cookie jar, but with a different recipe this time. The first-party cookie only tracks user behaviour on a brand’s own website. Whatever users do elsewhere is their business, but on your site, it can inform personalised, bespoke navigation. It’s a direct conversation between brand and buyer, with no hidden agenda or invasive data gathering, which means:
One of the big advantages of first-party cookies is personalisation that streamlines a user’s journey. You’re not tagging along and pestering someone while they look at other websites. But when a customer comes through the door of your site, you can provide a warm welcome like they’re a regular in your store—’Hey, we remember you. These items you looked at last time are still available if you’re interested.’
It’s more targeted and a lot less creepy. It’s the difference between assisting a shopper who’s browsing your shelves versus chasing them down the street with a brochure.
If you really want to unearth rich data, a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is the gold standard in data aggregation. It’s a software system that gathers first-party data from online and offline sources, whether it’s through ad clicks or a phone conversation – all above-board and sourced through direct brand interactions. Advantages of a CDP include:
One of the standout elements of a CDP is real-time data, which gives brands the ability to seize the moment with each customer. With dynamic personalisation, instant recommendations and triggered messaging, it can be a smoother path to conversion.
All in all, the abolition of third-party cookies is an opportunity for brands to rethink the way they connect with customers and activate their first-party data strategy. 2024 will be less about reliance on third-party data sources and more about authentic interactions that are timely, meaningful, and give customers a sense of being seen without being stalked.
The bottom line is that the best customer journey is the one that aligns user intent with relevant, targeted cues in the right setting. Not a sustained bombardment until no one can stand the sight of your products, whether or not they need them.
In the ever-changing world of B2B marketing, reporting is essential for making informed decisions and driving strategic success.
This guide will walk you through the key elements of B2B marketing reporting and offer practical tips, tools, and frameworks to turn your data into a powerful resource for business growth.
It starts back at the beginning of your marketing strategy, in the planning phase.
B2B marketing reporting goes beyond simply tracking metrics—it's about telling a story with your data. By analysing your numbers effectively, businesses can uncover trends, assess return on investment (ROI), and fine-tune strategies to meet broader business goals.
Accurate reporting links marketing activities to real-world outcomes, allowing marketing teams to justify budgets, showcase their value, and optimise campaigns.
A clear, structured approach to reporting ensures consistency and clarity. Here’s how to create a solid reporting system:
Align reporting goals with business priorities. Start by defining what you aim to achieve through reporting, whether it's tracking lead generation, improving ROI, or understanding customer behaviour. Your objectives should directly support your company’s broader business goals, ensuring your reports provide meaningful insights.
A simple tip: During the planning phase, schedule two meetings with your leadership team. In the first meeting, ask:
After processing the feedback, reconvene a day or so later to discuss:
Focus on metrics that reflect strategic objectives. Choose key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your business goals. For example, if your aim is to improve customer retention, metrics like churn rate and lifetime value (LTV) are more important than general website traffic.
Take some time to digest this and come together again in a day or so. Now you can discuss these points:
Use automation to collect consistent and accurate information. Consolidate data from CRM systems, analytics tools, and marketing platforms. Accuracy is key, so ensure the data is clean and free from errors before analysis.
Make data accessible with visuals like charts and graphs. Visuals such as bar charts, line graphs, and pie charts help make complex data more digestible. Tools like Tableau and Power BI make this process easier, turning raw data into actionable insights.
Regularly assess and improve your reporting approach. Consistently review your reports to identify areas for improvement. Collect feedback from stakeholders, and make adjustments to ensure your reports stay aligned with evolving business goals.
After each reporting session, take time to reflect and improve. Ask yourself:
Effective reports are both informative and actionable. Here are some key metrics to track:
Tracking these metrics provides a well-rounded view of your marketing performance, helping you refine strategies and demonstrate the value of your marketing efforts.
Reporting isn’t always easy, and many businesses struggle with the same key issues. Here’s how to tackle them:
Integrate platforms to unify reporting. Overcome data silos by integrating tools like your CRM and marketing platforms into a centralised dashboard for a unified view of performance.
Standardise definitions across teams. Ensure all teams are using the same definitions for key metrics to avoid discrepancies and confusion.
Automate repetitive tasks. Use automation tools like HubSpot and Power BI to streamline data collection and reporting, saving time and reducing errors.
Having the right tools makes tracking and analysing data easier. Depending on your needs, these can help:
Mastering B2B marketing reporting isn't just about collecting data—it's about transforming that data into actionable insights that drive meaningful results. Adopting proven best practices will help you sharpen your strategies and maximise the value of your marketing efforts.
Consistency is Essential: Report regularly, whether it’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
One of the foundational principles of effective marketing reporting is consistency. Whether you're reporting weekly, monthly, or quarterly, having a structured and regular reporting schedule is key to tracking your progress. It allows you to spot trends, measure strategy performance, and make data-driven decisions.
Regular reporting also helps stakeholders stay informed, fostering a proactive approach to adjusting tactics and achieving goals. It ensures that your marketing efforts remain aligned with business objectives over time.
Transparency Builds Trust: Share both your wins and the challenges you face.
Transparency is crucial for fostering collaboration and trust within your organisation. Sharing not only the wins but also the challenges builds credibility and aligns everyone—from marketing teams to senior leadership—around the data.
When stakeholders have a clear, honest view of the performance metrics, they are more likely to engage with and support the strategic direction. This openness strengthens team dynamics and ensures that everyone is on the same page, working towards shared business goals.
Actionable Insights Drive Change: Don’t just report the numbers—give advice on what to do next.
A report's true value lies in its ability to drive action. While presenting data is important, it's the insights and recommendations that matter most. Instead of simply pointing out trends, provide clear, actionable steps that can improve performance. For instance, if you're seeing a dip in conversion rates, you might suggest optimising landing pages, adjusting targeting criteria, or refining messaging.
These actionable insights not only make your reports more impactful but also demonstrate the tangible value of your marketing efforts. By focusing on solutions, you turn data into a strategic asset that propels your business forward.
Advancements in technology, particularly in AI-driven analytics, real-time data tracking, and predictive insights, are set to transform the future of B2B marketing reporting.
AI is already transforming the way marketers process data. These advanced tools can uncover hidden patterns and trends that were once too difficult to detect. But it doesn’t stop there—AI doesn’t just analyse past performance, it predicts future shifts, giving businesses the edge to stay ahead of the competition.
Imagine being able to monitor your campaigns in real-time. With real-time tracking, you’ll have the flexibility to adjust campaigns on the spot—whether it’s reallocating budgets, tweaking targeting, or refining creatives. This gives you the power to seize new opportunities or tackle challenges as they arise, maximising ROI on the fly.
Predictive analytics is the future of decision-making. By using machine learning and historical data, these tools can forecast customer behaviour, pinpoint high-value prospects, and suggest the most effective channels and strategies. This proactive approach ensures that marketers are always ahead of the curve, making confident, data-driven decisions that propel business growth.
The future of B2B marketing reporting lies in leveraging the right tools and strategies. By embracing AI, real-time tracking, and predictive analytics, businesses can fine-tune their marketing efforts, drive growth, and prove the value of their strategies. The key to success? Smart, data-driven decisions that keep you one step ahead in the fast-paced marketing world.
Want the exact marketing reporting dashboard used by marketing agencies? Head to the DIY Marketing Project. We have stacks of templates, dashboards and walkthroughs you can download and use to create better reports and amazingly effective marketing.
You often hear about reach, frequency and impressions when talking about the performance of your digital marketing campaigns – and specifically, your social media ads.
Tracking the right metrics is essential for optimising digital marketing campaigns. Reach, frequency, and impressions are three key indicators that impact ad effectiveness across all platforms however particularly on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Not having enough of one (or all) of these might be the reason your marketing isn’t working.
But what are they? And how can you make sure you’re hitting all of the right numbers?
Let’s go in-depth into tracking digital marketing performance. In this article we’ll take a look at each of these terms and help you understand how to track and improve them in a meaningful way.
Here’s a simplified breakdown:
For example, if your reach is 100, and your impressions are 200, you can assume each person (or user) saw it twice (for a frequency of two).
This depends on the platform you’re publishing on. Generally, you’ll have a ‘back end’ with all of your analytics – this will be where your reach, frequency and impressions numbers will be hiding. But not all platforms will give you all three numbers – you may need to do some of your own maths.
For example: Facebook and Instagram give you reach and impressions on your organic posts, but LinkedIn only shows impressions. On the paid side, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn both give you the frequency numbers, so you don’t have to try and figure it out for yourself.
In short, check your platform’s analytics dashboard to monitor these metrics, and be aware that you may need to calculate frequency manually in some cases.
Create different ads to suit different ‘slices’ of your audience. For example, you can have a remarketing campaign for audiences who have already seen your products, and a general campaign for each of your customer avatars. Each campaign should have its own ad with unique copy and visuals. To see results, they need to be fair-sized audiences with a decent budget – so start with one and expand if needed. (As a note an minimum audience size of at least 1,000 is generally needed for most platforms to run a remarketing campaign)
Try to create content that speaks to each of your audiences both collectively and individually. You can boost these posts to specific audiences that match.
To expand your reach, segment your audience and create targeted campaigns:
As a rule, we like the frequency between 2 and 5. Any less, and your message will not sink in—any more, and it will become oversaturated and repetitive.
Many advertising platforms allow you to set frequency caps in the backend, helping to control how often users see your ads. This feature ensures that ads don’t become overwhelming or repetitive while maintaining effective exposure.
Optimising frequency for paid ads can also come from budget optimisation. If you pay more money, you can get in front of your audience more often. To reduce your frequency, simply reduce the budget. If you don’t have the budget but you’d still like to increase the frequency, you can try reducing your audience size.
When adjusting budgets, the best approach is to go slow. Bring it down or up by a few dollars a day and see how it goes – don’t drastically slash or double your budget or your results may suffer!
To summarise optimise your frequency by:
Impressions help gauge ad visibility and performance. Balancing impressions requires weighing the cost of high-value ad placements against cheaper inventory. Higher-value placements often provide better engagement, while cheaper options can help extend reach within a budget.
In addition, impressions are usually more up-to-date figures, so you can look at them every day to get a sense of how your campaign is performing. For example, if your ad has been running for a day or two and has few to no impressions, it means there could be something wrong with your campaign – your audience might be too small, or your ad might be getting penalised because of its copy or imagery.
As a final note, brand awareness campaigns can focus on impressions. The objective is to reach a wider audience and get the name out far and wide. However, you also want to combine impressions with your frequency metrics to make sure the message sticks.
By understanding reach, frequency, and impressions, you can fine-tune your paid media strategy for better engagement and ROI. Regular monitoring and strategic adjustments will ensure your ads are seen by the right audience at the right frequency.
Start optimising your ads today.
The rise of AI has been building for a while now, and it’s impossible to ignore. If you’ve been anywhere near social media in the past 18 months, you've likely seen an overwhelming amount of AI-generated images and strange ChatGPT prompts flooding your feeds. But beyond providing experimental fodder for people’s LinkedIn posts, the practical use of AI for content creation still feels like it’s yet to fully take shape.
Naturally, there’s the usual back-and-forth about its potential to automate repetitive tasks, making our jobs easier, versus the risk of it displacing workers. And we can’t forget the concerning issues surrounding deepfake videos and audio, not to mention AI’s potential to fuel the spread of misinformation.
For the most part, so far it’s been kinda funny, if not fascinating.
Tried using Text-to-Video AI to generate a @BlueJays commercial and it...um...did not go well....🫤 pic.twitter.com/p3tzH9euUc
— Josh Shiaman (@JoshShiaman) June 8, 2023
Unsettling as it may be, the truth is that AI’s role in marketing isn’t exactly groundbreaking. However, its range of applications appears to be expanding rapidly, and it’s certainly becoming more attention-grabbing.
The launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI nearly broke the internet. AI now has the ability to write articles, briefs and product descriptions quickly – albeit with varying success – within set parameters. It’s a serious player, and will only improve over time. Chatbots are also becoming more prevalent in customer service, accounting for the majority of initial customer interactions.
While consumers might argue that this process feels impersonal, it’s incredibly valuable for businesses as a way to filter and prioritise customer inquiries. Interestingly, AI is also gaining popularity as a tool for personalisation.
AI-powered marketing could reduce customer acquisition costs by up to 50%.
AI-powered customer service automation is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 58.5%.
Effective personalisation can lead to 20% higher customer satisfaction and a 10-15% increase in sales conversions.
Sources: Signalytics, REVE Chat, McKinsey
AI is also shaping up to be a game-changer for SEO. Microsoft’s AI-powered (and often criticised) Bing search engine now offers personalised targeting for advertisers. Instead of a general search query, it turns the search process into a conversation, offering far more precision and insight.
At the same time, some AI creative platforms are disrupting the industry by enabling businesses to create high-quality social media creative at a fraction of the cost and without the time needed for location photoshoots.
For now, the big question is: How can you leverage AI for your brand’s digital marketing?
The biggest strength of artificial intelligence in its current form is its ability to process and manage data faster than humans. It can pull vast amounts of info from every corner of the web in moments – analysing, organising, and applying it to algorithms, potentially saving hours of manual research.
Another significant upside is in automation. AI is naturally more willing than most of us to carry out monotonous tasks, over and over. This helps in streamlining repetitive tasks freeing up resources for more strategic and creative endeavours. Other areas where AI excels include:
Personalised Customer Experiences: AI can analyse customer data such as browsing habits, purchase trends, and social media activity to craft personalised marketing messages. By sending hyper-targeted content to the right crowd at the right moment, businesses can boost engagement and conversion rates.
Predictive Analytics: AI has the smarts to predict customer behavior by analysing past data and trends. This gives businesses the edge to make informed decisions, forecast what’s coming next, and adjust their strategies to stay ahead of the pack.
Automation of Repetitive Tasks: AI can take care of repetitive work, like data analysis, posting on social media, and even handling initial customer questions with chatbots. This lets marketers focus on the fun, creative bits while AI handles the daily grind.
Enhanced Customer Insights: AI tools can sift through huge amounts of customer data, giving businesses deeper insights into what their customers like, what grinds their gears, and how they behave. This means businesses can get to know their audience better and craft smarter marketing strategies. Tools like Contented.ai can use recorded customer workshops and meetings and turn them into key insights, analysis of key themes and risk analysis, all of which can support the work developed by marketing teams and agencies.
Copy Efficiencies: AI can lend a hand with creating copy like blog posts frames, product descriptions and short SEO copy. While it can’t fully replace the creative spark of a human, it’s a handy tool for speeding up the initial draft process.
Optimised Advertising: AI can fine-tune paid advertising campaigns by adjusting bids, finding the right audience, and crafting ads that hit the mark based on past performance. This ensures businesses get the best bang for their advertising buck.
SEO and Keyword Analysis: AI can analyse search trends and help businesses find the best keywords to target for SEO. It can also track website performance, suggest tweaks, and even help optimise on-page SEO to boost rankings.
Chatbots and Customer Service: AI-powered chatbots can handle the first round of customer questions, offering quick responses and enhancing the customer experience. This lets human agents focus on the trickier issues, making the whole system run smoother.
Sentiment Analysis: AI can detect customer sentiment from social media, reviews, and other online chatter. By understanding how customers feel about a brand or product, businesses can adjust their messaging or offerings to better meet expectations.
A/B Testing and Campaign Optimisation: AI can test different versions of marketing campaigns to see which one works best. By constantly analysing and tweaking campaigns in real time, AI can help improve performance and return on investment.
Marketing that truly stands out is about more than just executing a data-driven strategy. Creativity plays a crucial role, often pushing beyond pure logic or intuition. While AI can generate insights, assist with idea generation, and streamline workflows, it doesn’t yet replicate the nuanced thinking that turns a good concept into something extraordinary. For example, it can help structure an ad script or suggest creative directions, but the final touch—the emotional depth and originality that make something iconic—still comes from people.
Another area where AI has limitations is in human connection. While it enhances efficiency and personalisation at scale, the most impactful marketing and customer experiences are built on genuine emotional appeal and deep empathy. AI follows set parameters, which can make it less adaptable in moments that require intuition or an unexpected creative leap. That’s why the best marketing strategies blend AI’s data-driven power with human insight, ensuring campaigns are both smart and resonant.
Other AI shortcomings include:
So, can we trust AI enough to give it the keys to the castle, or should we proceed with caution?
The recent exponential growth in AI has been so fast and unregulated that the world is finding it hard to keep up. It’s almost like we’re all guinea pigs for a clinical trial that we never signed up for. It’s a wild west kind of energy, which makes it all the more important to have your wits about you, both as a consumer and marketer.
As with any new technology, there will be wins and losses, as well as challenges in deciphering which of the many existing and emerging applications are actually worth your while. It remains a time of trial and error, but how will we know when it ends? And by the time we have sufficient confidence in the tools available to us, will they already have been outdated?
Whatever your stance on the use of AI, I think we can all agree that its peak use remains in covers of famous songs by animated characters.
Computer, can I get an AI video of Hank Hill singing “Fast Car,” please? pic.twitter.com/E2QRHNKQs8
— William Goodman (@goodmanw) January 14, 2024
It’s okay to have FOMO, or feel overwhelmed by relentless requests to ‘do something with AI’. Suffice to say, it’s probably not time to fire all your staff and kick back in the Bahamas while robots run your business for you. But it’s worth dipping your toes in the shallow end of AI possibility. See what works and what doesn’t. An AI experiment on a few smaller projects, without totally flipping your business on its head, is a good way to start.
In a nutshell, AI tools should continue to become more sophisticated and free us up to put more energy towards creative endeavours and big picture thinking. You know, all the ideas you wish you had the bandwidth to execute and wow your clients with, if only this damn admin wasn’t always getting in the way.
That is, at least until the machines grow tired of doing the grunt work and the uprising begins in earnest. But hey, try not to think about it too much.
Thinking about running a paid search campaign but not sure where to start? Paid search can be an effective way to drive targeted traffic to your website and boost brand visibility. When managed well, it helps your business appear at the top of search engine results, right where potential customers are looking.
Paid search works by paying search engines to display your business at the top of relevant search results. For example, a search for ‘accounting software’ returns the following top three sponsored results.
This puts your business front and centre for people who are actively searching for products like yours. But how do you secure these sponsored slots? What are the ballpark costs involved? And how do you create ads that actually drive clicks and conversions?
Let’s explore how to make the most of your paid search budget and achieve meaningful business results.
CONTENTS
Paid search advertising works on a ‘pay per click’ basis. In other words, your ad can be shown to a lot of people and gain impressions, but you only pay each time someone clicks on it. (You may have heard of the acronym CPC, this stands for Cost Per Click). This makes it extremely cost-effective and results-oriented. In order to secure your spot at the top of search results, a bidding process takes place.
A bidding process determines the hierarchy of sponsored ads and cost-per-click (CPC):
Paid search is distinct from SEO. While both these practices impact search ranking, SEO refers to ‘search engine optimisation’, which only has a bearing on organic search results. In other words, SEO influences the priority of results listed below the sponsored slots – the ones you can’t pay for. Whereas paid search focuses specifically on the first few results. While not all searches will return sponsored results, the majority with commercial intent generally will.
Paid search is like being placed on the shelf at eye-level in a supermarket. Customers can still find other products, but they’ll see yours first – and it’s easier to reach.
While there are key differences between B2B and B2C marketing, paid search strategy remains largely similar for both markets. Business decision-makers are still people, after all. B2B purchases tend to involve more stakeholders, so they'll take longer through the consideration phase. Purchases and budgets may need sign-off from high up, so B2B marketing will often emphasise things like ‘cost-effectiveness’, ‘easy implementation’ and ‘ROI’.
STEP #1
Firstly, you’ll need a Google Ads account.
STEP #2
Then, you need to choose the keywords that you want your ad to appear for. In other words, what search terms will someone be typing into Google in order for your product or services to be relevant to them?
Long-tail keywords are often more effective because they’re more specific. For example, results under ‘gym near me that has yoga’ will deliver more qualified clicks than ‘gym’.
STEP #3
Time to bid (as outlined above).
STEP #4
Create your ads and landing pages that the users will arrive at when they click.
STEP #5
Specify the user demographics that you’re targeting.
STEP #6
Monitor and optimise!
Not sure where to start with paid search? No worries!
Our team of digital specialists can help. We keep you in the loop every step of the way, with regular reporting and ongoing optimisation to make the most of your marketing spend. Get in touch with our B2B marketing agency.
On average, cost per click (CPC) tends to be between $2-4, although certain industries can be far more expensive. Dentistry has been known to get up into the hundreds.
The price will vary depending on the competitiveness of your particular industry and the specific search terms you want to appear for. Just like you’d have to pay more for billboard space on a busy street. For example, XX ads tend to cost more than YY. For example professional services, including legal, insurance, and finance, tend to have higher costs per click compared to industries like restaurants, travel, and e-commerce, which typically face less competition for search advertising.
How long does paid search take to actually start ‘working’?
Generally, you can expect to start seeing results after 2-3 months of running ads. This should at least give you an idea of how you might be able to tweak and optimise your ads. But typically, paid ad campaigns will run for longer, up to 12 months.
Businesses can test, optimise, and start to see an increasing flow of traffic over a long period. The low cost and minimal creative investment required means it becomes a very useful part of any broader multi-channel marketing campaign.
TMP continually monitors and optimises B2B search campaigns to get the most ROI for your ad spend, beyond just boilerplate best practice.
The steps involved for leveraging 1st party data is to integrate as many platforms possible. By integrating Google Analytics and Google Ads, for example, we can evaluate users’ on-site behaviour to influence ad strategy. This enables us to optimise things like keywords, ad copy, landing pages and bidding strategies.
If we can further integrate CRM or offline platforms, we can 'close the loop' to evaluate what data is an indicator that someone will actually become a paying customer. For instance, keywords A and B both generate the same amount of clicks, but keyword A might be generating twice as many paying customers.
Finally, by understanding existing data of a business and their existing customers, we can leverage this to inform bidding strategies. Namely, getting in front of people that are similar to existing customers with the objective of a lower cost per acquisition.
For B2B marketing, 7am - 7pm makes sense as your optimal window to reach people during business hours in the regions that you’re targeting.
In contrast, B2C brands pretty much have a 24/7 window as they’re making purchase decisions at all hours of the day. However, certain sectors may look to be more time-sensitive – for example, food outlets targeting late afternoon and early evening when people are starting to think about dinner.
We tailor our approach depending on the nature of your company and the objective of the campaign. We’ll typically use smart bidding and focus on conversion-based search intent when volume allows. If volume is low, our aim is to maximise clicks and we’ll tend to use manual bids.
This is where optimisation comes in. We’ll have several headline and copy variants lined up, using dynamic responsive ad formats to mix and match. This enables us to quickly find out which combination is most effective, so we can push that option or continue to refine the copy accordingly.
We look at search behaviour across different industries. For example, how Bing usage compares to Google across industries and job types. For example, the prevalence of Microsoft Edge installations depending on someone’s workplace.
Every ad needs to be backed up by a coherent path from engagement through to conversion. It’s one thing to catch a user’s attention. But if they click through to a page that doesn’t make sense to them, or doesn’t match their search intent, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. When search terms, ad copy, and landing page UX are aligned, it ensures an intuitive journey that results in more qualified leads and keeps search costs down.
Lastly, integrating paid search with ABM can amplify your campaign's effectiveness by targeting high-value accounts. Key tactics include:
While paid search can be a straightforward and cost-effective way to reach potential customers, running a successful campaign involves several moving parts. From selecting the right keywords to managing budgets and analysing performance, achieving the best results requires careful planning and ongoing optimisation.
Marketing never stands still—best practices shift, and tools are constantly growing more powerful at a rapid pace. As digital marketing evolves, businesses must adapt to thrive. Over the last two decades, marketing has shifted from a 'spray and pray' approach to a more strategic data-driven 'track and optimise' methodology.
Once upon a time, the only option for marketers was to invest budgets across different activities and take an educated guess at how that translated into sales. Today, with the marketing tools and measurement capabilities available, you can monitor campaign performance from the minute it goes live to understand what channels, initiatives, and messages generate the best results. This means you’re able to report and optimise to double down on what works.
Marketing attribution is the process of tracking how specific messaging and channels influence customer behaviour and purchasing decisions. In other words, what’s engaging them and what obstacles are making them drop off?
For example, you might be running a really effective ad with eye-catching visuals and a value-driven tagline. It gets a lot of attention, but when users click through to your website, the UX is clunky, the CTAs aren’t clear, so a lot of people drop off before completing a purchase. Maybe your ad creative isn’t clearly conveying the benefits of your offering. Or maybe you’re focusing on posting to LinkedIn when more of your audience is on Instagram. Attribution is your means of diagnosing what’s working and what isn’t.
This is extremely useful because it informs a lot of strategic decisions. For example, are you spending time and money in the right places? Are you generating a lot of leads that aren’t translating into conversions?
Having this kind of visibility means you’re much better equipped to optimise marketing spend, improve ROI, and gain clearer insights into customer behaviour. This can be even more valuable in B2B marketing, where sales cycles are longer and are more likely to involve multiple decision-makers.
Typically, in B2B marketing, advertising generates leads which are then nurtured by sales reps until a purchase is made. In contrast, B2C consumer paths tend to be more direct, especially in e-commerce, where leads funnel instantly through to purchases.
B2B marketing attribution is more complex than B2C due to longer sales cycles and multiple touchpoints across diverse channels.
B2B transactions typically involve multiple brand interactions across multiple channels. For example, a prospective client might first encounter your business through a LinkedIn post, then download a whitepaper from your website, attend a webinar, and – finally – make contact with a sales rep. Often, they’re well down the decision path before they’ve even spoken to any of your sales team and identifying which of these touchpoints is most influential in their decision-making process isn’t always straightforward.
New digital channels create more opportunities to reach specific audiences. But that also means there’s a lot more to keep track of. In the past, B2B marketing might have focused more on offline channels like direct mail, trade shows, and print advertising. Now, the mix favours digital advertising such as paid search, email campaigns, social media, and SEO. The good news is that digital channels are easier to track through to conversion. The challenging part is that there’s so much to keep track of.
B2B customer journeys are increasingly non-linear, as prospects engage with content at different stages. According to Gartner, customers typically exhibit a behaviour known as 'looping' during a B2B purchase, repeatedly revisiting various stages of their buyer journey. This includes steps like identifying their needs, sourcing a solution, browsing suppliers, and getting internal stakeholders on board.
Poor attribution in B2B marketing can lead to misaligned strategies, where resources aren’t focused on the most impactful channels. This results in poor understanding of customer behaviour, inefficient ad spend, and – ultimately – lower ROI. For example, overvaluing the impact of last-click interactions while undervaluing educational content higher up the funnel can skew budget allocation away from crucial brand awareness efforts, impacting long-term customer relationships and sales growth.
So, you want to track customer journeys but don’t know where to start? There are many different means of attribution which vary in their level of detail and purpose. And some may be more suited to certain channels than others, or depend on particular variables you might want to test.
Selecting the most effective attribution model in B2B marketing hinges on understanding the complexities of buyer journeys. Here’s what you should consider:
Longer sales cycles with numerous touchpoints may benefit from multi-touch models like Time-Decay or Position-Based attribution, which acknowledge multiple influential interactions.
Evaluate the role and impact of different channels in your marketing mix. For instance, if early-stage awareness is crucial, First-Touch or U-Shaped models might be more appropriate. For more conversion-focused strategies, Last-Touch or Time-Decay models could be better suited.
In many B2B scenarios, mid-funnel interactions such as demos or detailed consultations play a critical role. Models like Position-Based attribution, which assigns significant value to these interactions, could be more suitable.
For highly non-linear customer paths, data-driven or custom attribution models can offer the flexibility and precision needed to account for various journey types.
If your B2B marketing involves a mix of offline and online touchpoints, consider an attribution model that can integrate data from both worlds, such as custom models or advanced data-driven approaches.
Make the most of advanced analytics tools and machine learning algorithms to gain deeper insights into how different touchpoints contribute to conversions, guiding you towards more sophisticated models like Data-Driven or Custom Attribution.
Continually review the performance of your chosen model against actual sales data and be ready to adapt. The dynamic nature of B2B markets means that what works today might need adjustment tomorrow.
To ensure effective attribution, here are some key tips that can guide your strategies and enhance the precision of your B2B marketing efforts.
Multi-touch attribution models, like Position-Based or Data-Driven models, consider multiple touchpoints in a customer's journey. Unlike last-click attribution, which credits the last touchpoint before conversion, multi-touch models distribute credit across several touchpoints, providing a more holistic view of what's driving conversions.
Data-driven models, especially those enhanced by machine learning, dynamically analyse and assign credit to touchpoints based on their impact, adapting to evolving data patterns for improved insights. These models can be very effective in leveraging your data to understand how each touchpoint contributes to your final goal.
Integrating your marketing efforts with CRM systems like HubSpot or Zoho allows you to track long-term customer value, not just immediate conversions. This is helpful in understanding which marketing efforts attract customers with high lifetime value and in making strategic decisions to foster long-term customer relationships.
Ensure that you have robust systems for tracking and collecting data across all channels. This includes setting up proper UTM parameters, using analytics tools effectively, and ensuring data consistency.
A comprehensive view of the customer journey involves integrating offline data (like in-store purchases, phone calls, etc.) with online data (like email open rates, ad interactions, and eCommerce transactions). This gives you a more complete picture of your customer interactions and how different channels work together, which improves the accuracy of your attribution model.
Similarly, with users often switching between devices, it's important to track and attribute conversions across different devices. This can be challenging, but it’s crucial for a complete understanding of the customer journey.
By mapping user interactions from initial contact through to conversion and beyond, you get a complete view of the customer journey. This is how you can pinpoint which advertising efforts contribute the most to customer acquisition and retention.
Combining insights from advertising data and CRM enhances customer segmentation and targeting. This results in more effective advertising campaigns, as messages can be tailored to specific segments based on their behaviour and preferences, ensuring greater impact from your marketing efforts.
By adopting sophisticated attribution models and leveraging advanced tools, businesses can:
In today’s unpredictable economic climate, understanding what drives customer engagement is more critical than ever. B2B marketing attribution is evolving, with machine learning and integrated platforms set to revolutionise how we measure success.
How many unread emails do you have right now? Are we talking hundreds or thousands? Don’t be embarrassed. At some point, it all became unmanageable, so we mostly grew numb to the waves of email marketing.
It’s hard enough to keep up with the flood of emails from people and publications we actually know, let alone the others that just won’t, well, leave us alone.
Between the notifications you don’t know how to switch off, the promos you forgot to unsubscribe from, the ones you thought you already unsubscribed from, and the actual messages of importance, there’s no way to keep up.
Granted, that doesn’t sound like great news for email marketing. But it’s also what frames the opportunity. We know how much junk is out there, and what cues make us disengage. We’re all consumers, so we have a lot of first-hand experience from an audience perspective. We’re all acutely aware of the relentless and irritating rhythm of unwanted emails. So it should be clear how to cut through the noise. Or, at the very least, how not to.
Email marketing is underrated. Here are some key tips on creating impactful marketing campaigns that actually get clicks.
CONTENTS
What should be your goal with email marketing?
What are the main types of email campaigns?
Common mistakes in email marketing
Is it really all about the subject line?
7 steps to create email campaigns that convert
As with any marketing activity, the goal of your email campaigns will be some combination of building awareness, nurturing consideration, or incentivising conversion/loyalty. It’s ultimately just another catchment to funnel prospects towards a desired action.
The exact nature of that action can vary. It could be enticing new leads to your website with introductory offers. It could be nudging near-conversions back to their abandoned shopping cart. It could be upselling or simply reinforcing your value to existing customers.
Awareness tends to be less effective in email marketing. As our inboxes overflow with more emails than anyone could reasonably be expected to read, consumers will only open what adds value for them. No one’s going to open a marketing email for the sake of it. If a new lead has recently signed up to your mailing list, of course you can welcome them with an overview of the goods and services you provide. But without a tangible incentive — e.g. discount codes, free shipping on their first order, priority access, downloadable assets, or some other exclusive offer — you’re not giving anyone enough reason to click.
Email marketing benchmarks
Once you’re clear on your goal, you can build comms around incentivising specific actions. Another important — and often overlooked — step in setting up your email campaigns is to set realistic goals for success.
At first glance, even solid benchmark numbers can look unimpressive. Remember, it’s called a marketing funnel for a reason. Regardless of how good your comms are, the funnel will narrow. Not only does it narrow, but there are holes in it, because consumers can ultimately do what they want. Not everyone who receives your email will see it. Not everyone who sees it will open it. Not everyone who opens it will click. And not everyone who clicks will buy.
Your job is simply to make that funnel as compelling and value-centric as possible, all the way through. This will minimise the drop-off at each step.
Need help with marketing campaign management?
There are several types of email campaigns that serve marketing purposes. These mostly tend to urge leads towards some kind of conversion, but are also important to reassure customers and validate actions, such as purchase or booking confirmations and reminders.
❌ Ignoring audience familiarity & intent
❌ Clickbait, or bait-and-switch offers
❌ Filling space for the sake of it
❌ Overly formal tone
❌ Not providing any clear value
❌ Spam / sending too frequently
❌ Lack of segmentation
❌ Poor UX
That’s by no means an exhaustive list, but a good checklist to start from. For an email to be of value to its audience, it needs to give them something beneficial. This means saving time, money, or providing entertainment. So don’t waste their time. Offer them something they want. And present the easiest path for them to get it.
Well, yes and no. But mostly yes. Of course, the contents of your email needs to back up the promise or hook of the subject line. But no one’s going to enter the shop if they don’t like the shop window.
With every brand email scrambling for that all-important click just to get you in the door, clickbait is rife. A common tactic is ‘limited time’ offers and promos to create a sense of urgency, but for offers that don’t actually expire. It’s the equivalent of a rug store or furniture outlet that always claims to be having a closing down sale. It might work at first, but with diminishing returns, and at the risk of undermining brand trust. It’s a boy who cried wolf scenario.
This is a big part of why audiences are so numb to email marketing. Aside from the sheer volume of messaging, we’re conditioned to have our guard up because we know brands just want our money and will try anything to get it. Exclamation marks? Don’t trust it. All caps? Too desperate.
Your best bet is calling out a tangible value proposition and time-frame without over-egging it — e.g. “SAVE 25% on our entire range. Only until Friday”. Or you can pose a teaser that speaks to an audience need, which can be answered by opening the email — e.g. “Here’s what email experts say is the KEY to conversion 📈”.
It’s not always an exact science. Email triggers and trends continue to evolve. So consider A/B testing different subject line variations to see what resonates with your audience.
There are 4 basic traits of effective subject lines:
It’s easy to treat copywriting as an afterthought in B2B marketing. If people need a product, they’ll find it. And if your product is good, they’ll buy yours. Right?
If only.
Everyone has a basic grasp of language. If you also have strong knowledge of your product, the assumption is that you should be able to clearly convey its benefits in a way that your audience will care about. Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple. The end result is a lot of marketing copy that just fills space but doesn’t convert. In an increasingly crowded marketplace, this just creates noise. And that’s a cue for prospective customers to disengage.
‘Copy’ refers to any text written for a promotional purpose. This could be a tagline on a billboard, an email to subscribers, a video script for an ad campaign, or simply the text that appears on your website.
Copywriting comes with a bunch of subtle rules and best practices that differentiate it from everyday communication. But a few key questions should keep you on the right track:
Let’s unpack what good copywriting actually looks like. Here’s your crash course to improve the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns in an instant.
Contents:
B2B is ‘business-to-business’ – referring to industries that create products primarily for business use. For example, things like accounting software, office furniture, or freight management.
B2C, in contrast, is ‘business-to-consumer’, which accounts for pretty much everything else used by individuals in their day-to-day lives. Products like food, alcohol, clothing and so on.
The common perception is that the tone of voice for B2C marketing is more relaxed and ‘fun’. Whereas B2B is more formal and ‘boring’ by nature. There’s an element of truth to this. For example, beer branding will often aim to simply create a vibe. Maybe it’ll also convey product features like low carbs or alcohol content. But mostly it’s about conveying a sense of sociability and relaxation that consumers can project themselves into.
B2B brands typically have a few more hoops that need to be jumped through, with more technical product offerings that need to be explained. This complexity can potentially weigh down the copy from a ‘vibes’ perspective. This means B2B copywriting tends to require more research to understand audience personas, including motivations and pain points.
B2B purchase decisions also tend to take longer, due to there being more stakeholders involved, along with the need for budget approvals and so on. The role of copy in nurturing leads and justifying the business case therefore takes on added significance.
A few things worth noting: In B2B marketing, your audiences are still people. Even if they have a business agenda, the same principles apply for engaging them. Copy still needs to be concise and attention-grabbing. If anything, you need to be aware that you’re not just winning the attention of individual consumers. You also need to convey a clear business case that they can take to other stakeholders within their business.
Will your product save money for businesses? If so, how? And how much? Will your product save them time or complexity so they can put more resources towards other tasks? And so on.
When it comes to digital copy, it’s as much to do with navigation as it is about persuasion.
Good copywriting – much like design – is ultimately a means of wayfinding for customers. It acknowledges a consumer need, contextualises the value of the solution, and guides them intuitively towards the next step.
Let’s take another look at those questions I mentioned earlier.
Good copywriting understands the needs, wants, and challenges of its audience. Obviously, you can’t talk to everyone at once. Your content needs to be targeted, without becoming so niche that it becomes irrelevant or too niche for people to engage with.
For any piece of content you create, you should have a clear idea of which audience segment you’re targeting. It could be a general audience. It could be for people who work in a certain industry or a certain job type. Or it could be for people who live in a particular region. Their common signifiers will dictate how you speak to them.
A very simple example: If you’re creating organic content for your social media channels, this will primarily be seen by people who already follow your account. That means they’re more likely to be familiar with your brand and have an active interest in your products. If you’re creating sponsored content to run as ads, this will appear in front of a less invested audience, so this content may need to be pitched at a different level. And if you want content to be shareable, it needs to be entertaining and/or informative, rather than salesy.
Audiences have different expectations in different settings. They engage with content in different ways. For example, right now you’re reading a blog post on TMP’s website. That suggests you have an interest in this topic and are willing to engage with long-form content (or skim it at the very least). The purpose and value of this medium is to provide a relatively deep dive into a particular topic.
If you were reading an email newsletter from TMP, however, you might not be actively engaged in this topic, so you might only get a bite-sized blurb to see if you wanted to click through and read more without wasting your time in the body of that email.
On social media, no one wants to read a long caption, so get your point across concisely. Whether you’re posting an image or a video, the visual asset should do the heavy lifting in terms of engagement, while the caption should only be used to complement that hook with a CTA and/or value-adding context.
Even if you’re focusing on primarily visual mediums, copy still has an important role to play. Arguably even more so, because less copy means it has to work harder. For example, videos tend to auto-play silently on social media by default. Strategic copy – subtitles aside – could be what gets someone to turn up the sound and engage with the content. This could be a tantalising question or headline posed at the start of the video.
That said, copy in videos should be minimal. If someone is speaking, or you’ve recorded a voiceover, the copy within the video should align closely with what the speaker is saying, and only used sparingly to emphasise key points.
If it’s a paid ad, copy carries even more responsibility to earn engagement, because it’s not something that users are actively following. You probably only have a couple of seconds – tops – to make someone care about your brand in a sponsored ad placement. You need to find the most attention-grabbing angle to present your product.
Typically, the structure of any content creation will be:
The trick is to make it feel seamless and authentic, in order to tap into prospects’ needs and wants. It’s a balancing act. If you get too specific, you narrow the audience that you’re speaking to. If you’re too generic, it’s less likely to engage.
Often, brands fall into the trap of trying to act like they know everything about you. But it’s easy to miss the mark with copy that comes across as forced or insincere.
Ultimately, regardless of the channel or depth of your content, this basic structure will be present. The problem sets the context of a challenge that your audience will recognise. The solution sets up your product as the most effective way to address the problem. The CTA gives them a clear next step towards that solution – whether it’s to learn more, make contact with your team, or to make an actual purchase.
There are a few ways to earn attention, including:
Copy doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s an extension of your brand. Tone of voice should remain pretty consistent across all the material you produce. Firstly, this creates a stronger sense of brand identity that’s likely to foster more trust and authority as you nurture leads through the marketing funnel. Secondly, this consistency ensures your copy remains aligned to your product and audience expectations.
We’ve all seen big brands trying to be funny or sassy on social media. Or ‘fun’ brands trying to post solemn tributes in the wake of tragic events. The risk/reward ratio isn’t favourable. Brands shouldn’t try to be all things to all people. You don’t need to weigh in on things outside your industry or area of expertise. Stay in your lane and you should be fine.
What’s the point of getting someone’s attention if you don’t give them a clear path to follow?
If you’re trying to convince people to buy your product, create a path for them to do that. If you want them to subscribe to a mailing list, or contact your team, give them the most direct path to do so. Users will inevitably drop off at every step, so the fewer clicks and scrolling required the better. Your call to action should always promise value, and the destination that a CTA button takes users to should reward that click with what they expect to see.
Similarly, too many CTAs on one page can disorient users and not
Sounds simple. But it’s amazing how often this stage of the user journey becomes an obstacle.
It’s easy to fall into bad habits, especially when timelines are tight and resources are limited. Here’s a checklist of common copywriting traps to try and avoid.
❌ Too wordy.
A common mistake in copywriting is to make the text too dense. Trying to say too many things or elevate the tone in an attempt to sound formal. Brevity is important, but so too is rhythm.
Copy isn’t about trying to sound as clever as possible. It’s about being understood and getting to the point. The aim of the game is to create a path between consumer needs and their desired action as concisely as possible. Problem — Solution — Call to action.
❌ Too much hard selling.
Not everyone in your audience is coming in at the same level of knowledge. Some may already be familiar with your brand and product offering. Some may have even made purchases with you previously. Others may be vaguely aware of your brand, while some won’t have heard of you before. You can’t hard sell to everyone.
❌ Ignoring what your audience cares about.
Perhaps the most frequent mistake that brands make is getting too caught up in what they want to say, rather than what their audience wants to hear. Don’t drown them in detail. Be concise. Stay solution-oriented. Speak to their specific pain points. And give them a clear path to take the next desired action.
❌ Incongruous call to action.
Speaking of desired actions, conversion doesn’t always mean a sale. Ultimately, yes, you want people to purchase your product. But there are other objectives that may be more effective along the way.
For example, effective copy might encourage users to ‘learn more’, ‘subscribe’, ‘get a free trial’, or ‘schedule a call’. B2B sales require trust and lead nurturing to increase conversions and encourage repeat business.
❌ Let down by poor UX.
Just as an unappealing headline, or hard-selling CTA might be a cue for disengagement, user experience is just as important. When a user clicks through to a page that doesn’t make sense to them at first glance, they’ll instantly drop off. Good copy is aware of the next steps of the user journey to ensure user expectations are managed and rewarded with every click.
Someone once told me that good copy should act like gravity. Gently pulling prospects down a page — so compelled by their own desires or curiosity that they don’t even notice an external force being exerted. To think about it another way, your copy and user journey is like open-plan architecture, allowing leads to flow effortlessly from room to room.
Here are some tips for more effective copywriting.
✅ Get to the point.
The golden rule for all writing, really. Marketing is interruptive, so don’t waste your audience’s time. Give them solutions. And remember, it’s better to be clear than clever.
✅ Be benefit-driven.
A lot of brands get caught up in what they want to say, rather than what their audience wants to hear. Start with your audience’s needs and work backwards.
✅ Don’t forget the business case.
B2B sales involve multiple stakeholders. You’re not selling to individuals re: ‘ease of use’, you’re
building a ready-made business case for senior decision-makers (e.g. ‘save time & money’).
✅ Clear CTAs & conversion path.
It’s no use winning someone over with a compelling ad if users can’t follow an intuitive path to purchase and/or find out more. CTAs should reflect the copy that comes before it. And the next step in the navigation path should affirm a user’s choice to click.
For example, if you send out an email spruiking price points and discounts on certain products, your CTA should be along the lines of ‘Buy Now’, and clicking that button should take users to a product page where they can directly make an order. If content aims to pique audience curiosity or likely to prompt follow-up questions, a more suitable CTA would be something like ‘Learn More’ or ‘Get In Touch’.
Finally, it’s worth noting that there’s never one definitive answer when it comes to copy. Different hooks or CTAs may be equally effective. While a lot of strategic insight takes place before creating content, that research process doesn’t end when you publish something. Digital copy is a living, breathing thing that you should continue to test and refine to see what resonates best with your audience.
Be sure to check our additional resource on content creation to further enhance your approach.
Ever spent a bunch of time and budget refreshing your logo and brand platform, only to dread how soon you might need to update it all again?
It’s the inevitable cycle of marketing: Businesses trapped in an infinite loop of building, consolidating, and refreshing their brand.
How much capital is there in consistent branding? What’s the lifespan of design trends? How do you know if branding will continue to resonate as your audience grows? And how do you know when it’s time to burn it all down and start again?
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How does graphic design shape branding?
Should you follow industry trends?
What does a successful rebrand look like?
How to use design trends to your advantage
Trends are a funny thing. Whether you’re talking about fashion, music, or graphic design, trends come and go frequently. This can be driven by a range of nebulous factors, like the whims of prominent tastemakers, critical mass of widespread adoption, or the natural cycle of trend revival.
But this poses a dilemma: Should you devote yourself to constant reinvention as dictated by passing fads? Or ignore them and risk being left behind?
In marketing, there’s also an extra layer to consider in terms of the capital built up over time from consistent, recognisable branding. If you hear ‘golden arches’, for example, pretty much everyone knows what brand that refers to. And you can bet that kids will instantly spot the red and yellow sign cresting over the horizon on a long car trip.
Graphic design trends communicate via the common visual language of the time. It acts as a kind of shorthand for effective storytelling that speaks to evolving consumer interests. The flipside, however, is that it can risk coming across as inauthentic or muddy the waters when it comes to brand consistency.
So, what to do? What are design trends worth? Is it even worth being trendy? And how do you evolve a brand without losing what you’ve built?
Whether we like it or not, every piece of brand output — from logos, to typography, to colour palettes, to tone of voice — exists relative to the public’s general perception of trends.
A lot of graphic design is underpinned by deep symbolism and lengthy rationales around why a certain line is at a certain angle in a corporate logo. From an audience perspective, where people aren’t obliged to pay attention to anything beyond their own convenience, the end product largely boils down to ‘vibes’.
Visual branding is littered with clever touches that most casual observers won’t even notice on first glance. Like the arrow hidden in the FedEx logo. Or that the ‘smiley face’ arrow in the Amazon logo goes from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ (while also ignoring that there’s a whole other ‘A’ right next to the Z).
These elements tie together to create something cohesive and memorable. The audience might not always know why it works, but it does. And it’s thanks to the attention to detail applied by designers.
Consider another example. One of the simplest, most recognisable logos: the Nike swoosh. Like the FedEx arrow, it points to the right — the direction our reading eye associates with progress. It also angles upwards, reflecting the positive reinforcement of a tick. It swoops around and tapers to convey dynamic motion — perhaps tracing the path of a tennis racquet, a golf club, or the arc of a leg as it kicks a ball. All of these micro signifiers align coherently with the brand identity. As an audience, this all flickers instantly in our subconscious. Nike = Sport. Sport = Nike.
As trends become more widely adopted, they start to form a recognisable language. At the same time, perhaps that style starts to lose what made it striking in the first place. For example, tech companies have traditionally favoured the colour blue for its clean, understated aesthetic.
Some of these brands have existed for a long time (IBM’s blue logo has been in use since 1946), and aren’t seen as quite so cutting edge as they once were. More recently, Facebook has seemingly become a refuge for ‘boomers’ as younger generations have moved on to other social platforms. Suffice to say that this colour palette which once stood for innovation may now be more associated with legacy organisations. A quick look at popular apps probably reflects how tech and social media brands have since embraced a broader colour palette.
But it can get tricky. Trends are interwoven, and their presence is felt differently by different segments of your audience, depending on their demographic. The perfect font for a 45-year-old builder might be different from a younger architect’s tastes, even though these are both part of a supplier’s audience. That sentence in itself is a pretty absurd thought to consider. So brands often have to exist in the ‘in-between’ in order to balance tastes.
Trend saturation can also be a design hazard. The nature of trends can lead to competing brands all jumping on the same bandwagon — to the point that things which once stood out from the pack become ordinary, even stale.
With this in mind, there’s an argument for going your own way — forging your own cluster of signals, with a unique branding approach distinct from the rest of your industry. However, this approach still requires awareness and fluency in what’s being done elsewhere.
Doing your own thing comes with higher risk, but can command more interest. In the same way that whispering can be a powerful tool — provided you’re interested in what someone has to say. You lean in, pay closer attention. If you’re surrounded by a room full of people shouting, you’re more likely to seek out calmer, quieter energy.
Likewise, if a space is quiet, one person making a racket will stand out. Trends are a little bit the same. If everyone’s doing the same thing, there’s power in pivoting to a completely different approach. It commands greater intrigue. But you can’t stay unique forever without a willingness to adapt.
Trends will continue to be cyclical, however. Consider brands that are able to have it both ways. Coca Cola continues to market itself towards younger generations, while also appealing to nostalgia and periodically releasing old-fashioned bottle designs.
The red and white colour scheme is consistent. You can spot it from the end of the aisle in the supermarket whether it's a cardboard carton of cans or bottles in a fridge. The bottle silhouette remains recognisable. The font flourishes are still there. Coke can riff endlessly to keep things fresh while still holding onto its identity because the base elements of the brand are so iconic.
Of course, there are still natural parameters to consider. Overly sleek typography might match a brand’s aesthetic, but could become illegible in some settings. Firmly established brands like Coke can get away with more riffing and experimentation as they’re so recognisable. But, as a rule for newer or lesser known brands, any design choice that creates a potential barrier for audience engagement is probably not the right choice.
Logo design isn’t always an exact science. There are so many contributing factors. For starters, if your product isn’t compelling, there’s only so much that branding can do to garner attention.
Assuming you’ve got a strong product, your logo should be:
In recent times, there’s been a distinct movement towards minimalism in logo design. This is at least in part due to it being ‘fashionable’. It’s likely also an attempt by many companies to future-proof their branding to a degree — leaning into the ‘simple’ and ‘timeless’ criteria listed above. The less elaborate a logo is, the less likely it is to age quickly.
However, as wordmarks lurch towards the trendy homogeneity of sans serif fonts, the end result is a lot of brands starting to look the same. It’s worth noting that there’s a difference between simple and simplistic.
Are the new wordmarks easier to read? Probably. Are they interesting from a branding perspective? Not really. Viewed in isolation in their respective brand guidelines, it no doubt looks nice and clean. In a crowded landscape of very similar branding choices, it starts to feel a little soulless.
Fonts hanging out pic.twitter.com/rXUzNNlQp7
— Elle Cordova (@ellerhymes) January 23, 2024
Of course, there’s more to branding than logos and wordmarks, but these core graphics set the tone and often provide the basis of visual elements used across the board. There’s also arguably more emphasis placed on logos in the ‘app age’, where brands benefit from being instantly recognisable from a tiny thumbnail.
When rebranding, there are a few ways to go about it. Most brands opt for gradual evolution – refreshing their branding every now and then to keep up with the times and avoid looking dated. While some brands will opt for a hard reset.
One argument in favour of gradual evolution is to retain the capital built up over decades of brand recognition. There’s been a broader trend towards minimalism in corporate logos, prompting many to bemoan the increasingly widespread uniformity, in some senses this is a natural progression for legacy brands. The longer they exist and the more recognisable they become, the fewer visual cues the audience will need to recognise it. And if you can create a logo that’s recognisable without being a distraction, then it makes sense to use it. For a tech brand like Apple whose trademark is sleek, minimalist devices, the simple silhouette logo makes total sense.
In contrast, a brand like Red Rooster that aims to foster a warmer, family-friendly vibe with a little nostalgia thrown in. Minimalist design isn’t as natural a fit here. Having said that, you’ve got to hand it to the double-R chicken face of its latest iteration.
Ultimately, the job of a logo is the same as the job of copywriting — to say a lot with a little. So, in the case of Red Rooster, being able to create a tangible link to the product using only the company’s initials is *chef’s kiss*.
While the brands mentioned above are examples of evolution, what about the companies that burned it all down and started again? And what was their motivation for doing so?
The obvious recent example is that of Twitter becoming ‘X’. Of course, this was a captain’s call on the whim of new owner, Elon Musk. The shift has been jarring for many existing users, and continues to confuse people trying to find the app icon on their phones. The name Twitter and its iconic blue bird was both instantly recognisable and reflective of the platform’s purpose. In contrast, the X branding seemingly came out of nowhere, didn’t make much sense, and reflected a much colder, faux cool atmosphere. In some ways, the rebrand makes a kind of perverse sense, if only as a marker of a broader vibe shift.
Many long-time users have grown disillusioned with the app and claim the platform has changed for the worse during Musk’s tenure. From the controversial paid subscription model, to the increasing proliferation of bots and of alt-right propaganda — not to mention Musk’s own antics — the vibe has noticeably deteriorated. This is reflected in the drop in active users since Musk’s acquisition in October 2022. For many of the users still hanging on, it’s more a case of morbid curiosity and habit at this point.
Twitter/X active daily users 2019-2024 (in millions). Source: Statista
So, objectively an unpopular and unsuccessful rebrand. But one that at least feels ‘on brand’ with its current identity.
Back on the topic of trends, is there a happy middle ground? Most brands inevitably find themselves somewhere in between. No company wants to be seen as out of touch — even if their audience is more traditionally-minded, so it’s important to keep an ear to the ground and stay conscious of changing trends as they emerge and fade around us. A company that was once completely on-trend may fade and become out-of-touch as time passes.
If you’re going to disrupt trends, it can be helpful to keep some familiar elements and not abandon everything at once, at the risk of appearing completely unfamiliar to the target audience. Investment decisions can be made in a split-second, on a subconscious level. So, while you might choose eye-grabbing colour to stand out from competitors, it can be useful to stick to other conventions like typical font choices or website imagery to ensure that connection is still made with your audience.
Sprinkling in trendy surface elements onto a foundation of a brand can be a solid approach. Minor refreshes might include expanding a colour palette to utilise new combinations, or to give a website a touch up with a new font choice.
A unique brand look takes more work, as you need to break assumptions and create new meaning in the mind of your audience. Rather than leveraging established associations, there needs to be a conscious effort to communicate and set your new look as the standard, through marketing campaigns to build familiarity, along with consistent brand story development to ensure that messaging aligns with the brand’s look and feel.
Okay, quick story time.
In 1999, Salesforce was launched and quickly gained recognition for its cloud-based CRM solutions and unique approach to software delivery. It wasn’t until the late 2000s that they started developing a genuine content-based strategy. This included formats like blog posts, instructive guides, white papers, and webinars.
This strategic shift played a significant role in cementing their position as a leader in CRM and cloud computing.
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Salesforce would go on to complement their content strategy with their annual Dreamforce conference, featuring seminars, workshops, and keynote speeches from industry leaders. Over the years, the event has become a content generation machine, providing a focal point for their audience. This, in turn, generates additional assets for engagement and outreach.
Salesforce isn’t the only example, of course. Hubspot, Adobe, and many other B2B companies have made content a key pillar of their marketing strategy.
A survey from the Content Marketing Institute shows that 88% of marketers have successfully reached their goals of creating brand awareness and building credibility through content.
Source: Content Marketing Institute
At its core, brand awareness refers to the level of familiarity that consumers have with a particular brand. This is measured by how well consumers can recognise the brand's logo, name, products, and other offerings.
However, true brand awareness means a prospect understands your brand's character, values, and offerings.
When considering new software, companies are more likely to choose a brand they recognise and associate with quality and reliability. The effect of familiarity makes brand awareness a critical first step in any content strategy.
Brand awareness sits at the top of the marketing funnel. It's the initial phase where a business makes its first impression. This is where brands catch the eye of potential customers and begin to build a relationship. Think of a prospect scrolling through social media and pausing momentarily at a brand's post offering a potential solution to their needs; this is the start of the ‘awareness’ phase.
As potential customers move from awareness to consideration, they might start to shortlist their preferred options. This is even more likely when it comes to bigger purchases that require sign-off from multiple stakeholders within a company. Brands that build greater awareness are more likely to be considered because stakeholders feel more confident to give sign-off. For example, a business needing a cloud storage solution is more likely to consider a brand that’s shown relevant expertise in an article they’ve seen online, rather than a complete unknown.
Finally, in the conversion (aka purchase) phase, familiarity and trust built through consistent brand awareness can strongly influence consumer decisions. It's the reason why businesses will often end up choosing a brand they've already engaged with through other channels. For example, they might have previously viewed a webinar, online workshop, or downloaded a product guide.
In short, by including value-adding content as part of marketing strategies, brands can inform, educate and remain top-of-mind, paving the way for consideration and, ultimately, conversion.
Learn how TMP can help you build a successful B2B marketing strategy.
Brand awareness goes beyond recognition, of course. It offers both tangible and intangible benefits that can profoundly influence business outcomes, particularly in the B2B sector.
Content stands out as one of the most cost-effective methods for generating brand awareness, particularly when compared to traditional marketing channels. It's estimated that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about three times as many leads.
Why’s that? For starters, paid ads are interruptive. Whether it’s a TV commercial during your favourite show or a sponsored post in your Instagram feed, ads get in the way of the content that audiences are actively trying to engage with. Yes, they serve to increase brand awareness. And yes, sometimes they’re funny or informative to some degree, but ultimately they’re obstacles that quickly become annoying and repetitive. This means audiences are more likely to tune them out, or in some cases, even resent certain brands for their incessant ads.
In contrast, content marketing aims to build positive brand association by creating content of value. While the purpose of traditional ads is to ‘sell’ you something in a short space of time, content marketing is a slower burn. But the content gives audiences a reason to seek it out, rather than something that gets in the way. Maybe it’s a seminar featuring knowledgeable speakers from the industry. If you sell a certain product, you could produce a how-to guide for optimising its use. It could be as simple as an informative blog post or step-by-step video.
If you can resist the urge to default to the ‘hard sell’ approach in this content, all the better. When you ‘bait-and-switch’ with content that purports to be useful and then serve users a thinly veiled ad, this undermines any trust you’re trying to build and people will quickly disengage. If you can serve a need for your audience by creating content that’s shareable and actually provides value in terms of the challenges they’re trying to solve, the brand recognition will come.
Unlike traditional advertising, which often requires significant investment for media space or airtime, branded content can be housed on company-owned channels at no cost. Creating digital content is generally less expensive than producing content for traditional media outlets like TV or radio, where production costs are significantly higher.
It’s worth considering the lifespan of useful content too. Once published, content can continue to engage and attract audiences over time, unlike a paid ad that stops generating returns as soon as the campaign ends. For example, a well-written blog post or whitepaper can continue to draw traffic and generate leads for years after its initial publication, offering an ongoing return on investment.
A single piece of content can also be repurposed across multiple channels, such as social media, email newsletters and so on, maximising its reach without additional cost.
Content marketing also supports SEO. Search engines favour high-quality content, which can improve a website’s ranking and visibility without the ongoing costs of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
Customers are much more likely to deal with brands who know what they’re talking about. Publishing insightful articles, industry reports, and expert commentary can establish your brand as a thought leader while addressing the needs and challenges of the target audience.
Salesforce and Canva are good at this. By regularly producing and sharing in-depth analyses, trends, and innovations in CRM and cloud computing, they showcase their deep industry knowledge and build their reputation as an authority in their respective sectors.
Sure, ‘storytelling’ can sound a little pretentious in a marketing context. But really all it means is using a narrative framework that resonates with the audience. We all prefer having things explained using real-world examples. Show, don’t tell – as they say. This can help create an emotional connection and make content more relatable.
SEO-driven content focuses on creating material that ranks well on search engines, enhancing brand discoverability for those seeking related information or solutions. By targeting specific keywords and addressing relevant topics, companies can attract organic traffic, thereby increasing brand visibility and authority. To learn more about how to effectively research content topics, check out our guide on content topic research.
Social media engagement is about actively interacting with audiences on various platforms (doing this yourself or with the help of your B2B marketing agency), sharing timely content, responding to queries, and fostering a community. This approach helps humanise a brand and keeps it top-of-mind.
Providing educational and how-to content positions a brand as helpful and knowledgeable in its field. This type of content often addresses common questions or challenges faced by the audience, establishing your brand as a go-to resource.
Case studies and client stories are a powerful tool to demonstrate how a brand's services or products can solve real business problems, which adds credibility to the company image.
Deloitte showcases its expertise and problem-solving capabilities through effective written and video case studies which include project insights and demonstrable client results.
Marketers can develop user-generated content to create a sense of community and authenticity around the brand, as potential customers see real stories and experiences rather than just brand-driven narratives.
By encouraging travellers to share their Australian journey using specific hashtags, Tourism Australia leverages the power of user-generated content. The real stories and visuals, shared on Tourism Australia's platforms, serve as genuine, relatable endorsements that seamlessly leverage customers as brand advocates.
The significance of content’s ongoing role in nurturing leads is clear. With prospects’ behaviour increasingly influenced by the quality and relevance of the content they interact with, B2B companies must recognise that investing in content is a viable path to growth.
The brands that stay on top of these trends, while adapting and innovating their content strategies, will be the ones to secure higher brand visibility and loyalty in the years to come.
This requires an approach to developing content that’s strategic, engaging, aware of the opportunities offered by the latest technologies and aligned with the evolving preferences of their target audience.
Strategic B2B social media marketing is not just about having an account with a pretty feed that attracts a lot of likes. Nor is it about shoving your products down people’s throats. It’s about using social media strategically to build relationships with your prospects.
B2B social media marketing often falls into the trap of being devoid of personality, out of fear of not appearing ‘professional’ enough. But it’s important to remember you’re not communicating to a business—there’s a real person at the other end of your post you’re trying to reach, human to human.
One of the key differences between B2C and B2B marketing is that the sales cycle is usually much longer for us B2Bs than for B2Cs. We need to spend longer building and nurturing relationships with our prospects. Your sales team can be in contact with someone for a year or more before the sale goes through. If you think about your social media audience as that contact, what conversations would you like to have over the course of that year?
You could argue that building relationships through social media is even more important for B2B brands than for consumer brands.
Social media offers us a place to meet our prospects where they are. A smart B2B social media marketing plan will outline the strategies you’ll use to meet your business goals.
More than half the world is now on social media.
Worldwide, more than 2.7 billion people are on Facebook. More than a billion are on Instagram. LinkedIn has more than 675 million users. Closer to home, Australians spend an average of 1 hour and 47 minutes on social media each day, a figure that has been slowly increasing over the past 8 years.
B2B buyers research before making a purchasing decision and they use social media as part of that research. A LinkedIn study concluded that social media interactions influence 84% of C-level and VP-level buyers before they purchase a product or service.
By ignoring or playing down the importance of social media in our overall marketing plan, we’re handing our competitors the knife to carve off a great slice of pie for themselves.
Despite the prevailing cry of ‘be everywhere’, this is absolutely not true for B2B social media marketing.
B2B social media marketers can and should be far more discerning.
You don’t need to launch a TikTok account just because its popularity is rapidly rising. (Phew! Frankly, my cat’s not that interesting and who’s got time to learn how to dance this week?)
And you don’t have to use every new function of each platform you’re on. It’s OK to be on Instagram and not use Reels for your business.
Use our Customer Research Matrix to help you figure this out and create a clear picture of your ideal customer. When you have great clarity around your target audience, you’ll know where and how your brand should be on social media.
Just like any other business function, don’t bite off more than you can chew. As part of your marketing plan, consider which resources your business has that you can assign to manage your social media presence.
While LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram might be a good fit for your business, if you don’t have the resources and budget to maintain a professional social media presence, show up regularly across your chosen platforms and create fresh content, instead, focus your efforts on the top performing channels and do these well.
There needs to be a good reason for joining a social media channel that aligns to your marketing plan. A hastily set-up and soon-abandoned social profile does not reflect well on a business.
When people visit social media, they’re there to connect with others, be entertained, informed or inspired. They don’t visit their social media channels to be sold to.
Even if sales are your end game, keep in mind that you need to build relationships with people first.
This means your social media accounts should not be self-serving where you push out nothing but promotional posts dipped in sales messages. Otherwise, it will reflect badly on your brand. Promotional posts are fine, so long as they are in moderation and make sense in context.
You should look to educate, entertain, engage or inspire your target audience via your social posts.
Use a mix of social media posts to educate, entertain, engage and inspire
| Educate Share a link to a breaking news story or share an opinion on an industry topic. Share ‘how to’ tips for a common task in your industry. Turn one of your blog posts into multiple social media posts to help build your authority on a certain topic. | Entertain Share a funny meme that highlights a myth or stereotype about your industry. It doesn’t have to be one that you created. Share a video that’s relevant to your audience that you found entertaining or even amusing. Write a personal story that shares a funny experience that relates to your business. | Engage Ask your audience a question about a topic relevant to your industry. Add a poll to a post about a contentious topic in your industry and ask your audience to vote. Ask for help. Share a problem you’re having and ask your audience to solve it. | Inspire Share results another client has gained from working with you. Share a testimonial that outlines how you helped a client overcome a specific problem. Share statistics from your industry that show the positive side of an issue in your industry. |
To avoid appearing too salesy, keep in mind that you’re trying to build a relationship with prospects. B2B social media marketing is still B2-human communication. And because you’re communicating to a real human and not some faceless business brand, your social posts should feel more like a conversation than a billboard.
Your tone of voice should match your brand and position in the market. For example, if you make a utilitarian, no-frills products, then your tone of voice should come across in a similar way — no fuss, informative and functional. If you’re not selling high-end, complex software, don’t try to sound like you are.
If you’re selling data analytics or accounting services, you need to communicate to your prospects in a way that matches your brand and their expectations.
While you can (and should!) give your audience the kind of content they expect from you and in the way they expect it, it’s OK to be creative and try different approaches so long as you remain authentic to your brand. Standing out from your competitors can help your posts get noticed in your prospect’s cluttered feed.
Social media presents an opportunity for us to give our audience a peek behind the curtain and show the human side of our business. It’s where people can see the interesting things we’re working on and get to know us and the other people in our business, better. Consider passing the social media baton to your team members from time-to-time to help humanise your business. It’s a great way to show that there are real people and stories behind your brand. Plus, it keeps your content fresh.
Having a good marketing plan in place will set you up well to create an effective B2B social media strategy.
If you haven’t already identified your core brand pillars (those 4 or 5 top-level categories all your products and services fit under) then take the time to decide what those brand pillars will be. These are the key things you want your business to be known for.
Social media planning is all about working out what you’re going to say and when.
Plan topics and themes under your brand pillars. This will help you streamline your posts by staying focused on those core messages.
Think about important dates in your business—product launches, busy periods, seasonal influences, sales cycle predictions—and plan content to lead up to those events.
Prepare content in batches so you’re not having to scramble for fresh stuff each week. Batching social media posts saves a lot of time. Refer to the educate, entertain, engage, or inspire matrix to produce a good mix of content themes.
Use a social media scheduling tool to line up your posts in advance so they publish automatically across the week or month ahead. Then during the week, you’ll only need to set aside time to respond to comments to encourage more engagement and build those all-important relationships.
While B2B social media marketing might make you feel anxious about creating and executing a plan that perfectly balances a mix of post types that sound authentically like your brand while incorporating your end goal—sales— it doesn’t have to be overly complex.
We’ve prepared a DIY social media calendar to help you create a month’s worth of social media posts aligned to the topics you set under your brand pillars and to ensure you get the right mix of promotional and other post types.
Join the DIY Marketing Project for access to our calendar and plenty of other tools and resources to help you with your marketing.
The key to social media success for B2Bs is to use your authentic voice and let your personality show through while showcasing your knowledge and what you do best.
Keep an eye on your metrics to see which posts get more engagement and which posts don’t. Use these metrics to continually refine your social media calendar.
Use a spelling and grammar checker like Grammarly or ProWritingAid to avoid embarrassing typos that can make you look unprofessional and reflect poorly on your brand. You can hire a graphic designer to set you up with templates that reflect your visual brand and look great, or choose stock images and resize them yourself—we have resizing templates you can use on our DIY Marketing Project platform.
But perhaps the greatest tip is to remember that good B2B social media marketing is all about connecting human to human, not business to business. By showing the human side of your business and offering that personal touch, you’ll have a greater chance of bringing in enthusiastic customers who are on board with what you do.
If you’re a DIY marketer and need inspiration and guidelines to boost your marketing efforts, visit the DIY Marketing Project. You’ll find lots of resources and templates that will help you run your B2B social media marketing campaigns in less time and for better results.
When considering a piece of graphic design work, especially when it comes to your brand’s look and feel, you may tend to use your ‘critical brain’ to analyse.
It’s easy to overthink this, and end up with a result that kind of pleases everybody but doesn’t really say all that much.
In reality, a lot of the communication of graphic design happens subconsciously – without us even knowing. The human brain recognises colours, shapes and textures and adds meaning to them before we even have a chance to make a rational decision on what colour to use for the logo, or what shape to make a specific icon.
If you can understand and harness this subconscious communication, you’re well on the way to creating graphic elements that are irresistible to the brain – those big-brand logos that we all know and could draw with our eyes closed.
Here are three common graphic elements, how they work on our brains, and how you can use that force for good.
Colour is a messaging shortcut to the brain.
It’s always among the first things to be considered when designing for a brand – it forms the backbone of all designs and will usually appear in some form in everything you produce. Colours contain emotional meaning, signifying a tone and energy about the brand that is perceived immediately by viewers.
Colour is powerful as a categorising tool. It helps customers to gain an understanding of your brand instantly. Everyone’s brain already contains a lifetime of associations built up through exposure to thousands of brands. Green might convey an environmental consciousness, or suggest energy and efficiency. Red conveys heat, speed, and famously hunger.
Breaking with these standard associations can work, but it comes with risk – and it helps to understand the rule you’re breaking BEFORE you break it.
Choosing a wild colour, for example, might come at the expense of clarity – but it can make your brand stand out in a crowded space. Think of ONE’s bright pink shipping containers. They’re definitely a standout in the logistics sector, but what do you think of when you consider ONE as a brand?
The foundational elements of a design are colour, images, and type, but these all need to be contained within shapes.
The shapes that holds your design together says just as much as the design itself. Think of the strong ‘shield-type’ shapes that sit behind sports team emblems, or the varying shapes that back car brand logos.
It’s important to be deliberate about how these forms are used. Things to consider when choosing a shape:
Maybe a combination of these ideas is best suited to your purpose. Often these choices will align with your font selection, and should remain consistent across your materials. By combining these elements you’re building up an association between visual tone and your brand for your audience.
Our world is full of rich textures and patterns, both natural and designed by people.
Historians can trace human history through the patterns of different cultures in textiles, stone or architecture – just as biologists can track the vast history of the natural world through textures and patterns in trees, fossils or even on a frog’s back.
Historic or futuristic, natural or manmade – all textures and patterns are both decorative and purposeful in conveying meaning.
Texture often falls into the background as we’re perceiving a design or object, but it’s integral in conveying a sense of quality, tone and purpose. A smooth plastic conveys something different to a machined aluminium surface of an iPhone, for example.
In the design arena, textures and patterns can be brought in as recurring visual elements that add a richness and depth to a design, and communicate a theme in combination with colours, shapes and typography.
I developed this abstract pattern as a visual element for use in TMP materials. It symbolises a transition from chaos to structure, organisation, and routine. It’s subtle, and doesn’t interfere with other elements – but it enriches designs with a little extra depth, and becomes a recurring motif that unifies our designs.
A pattern can be colourful or monochromatic, simple or complex, it’s just important that it supports your brand, is reusable and timeless (won’t become stale when used repeatedly), and is versatile enough to be used on big and small screens alike.
Your ‘brand’ is just an idea in your audience’s head. You help shape that through your actions, the words you choose and the visuals you use to present yourself.
Through these elements you convey a series of associations to your audience: what you stand for, how you do business, your brand’s attitude and outlook on the world. Strike the right tone and you’ll resonate with your target audience – whether that’s corporate professionals, tradespeople, public servants or anything in-between.
The colours you choose, the textures and patterns that carry those colours, and the shapes that contain them, all play their part in conveying to your audience what you’re all about.
Use my tips above to make sure you’re always getting their right impression across – whether your audience realises it or not! For more inspiration, check out these graphic design tools you can use right now to improve your brand’s visual identity.
Marketers often talk about sales, marketing and content funnels. Mastering your funnel is the key to business growth. But it’s not a case of one size fits all.
Read on for tips on designing your own funnel, and making sure each section plays its part.
You probably get the idea of a funnel as a broad term – it’s about the mindset of people as they move along a journey.
Many people enter into the top of the funnel (the wide part). The group gradually gets smaller, and their intentions stronger, as we progress towards the end of the funnel (the skinny part).
In the context of sales and marketing, this funnel’s journey generally starts when a decision-maker first starts thinking about a challenge, and ends when they make a purchase to fix that challenge. Some funnels follow the prospect a little bit beyond that purchase, through to when they start recommending their solution to others.
Why do you need to know your funnel?
Each funnel is subtly different depending on the industry and the department using it. Let’s look at the different types of sales and marketing funnels and how they work together.
This classic sales funnel might bring to mind Mad-Men-era print advertising, or Alec Baldwin’s character in the film Glengarry Glen Ross. It’s a good simple template to follow when selling pretty much anything, and a salesperson can apply face-to-face or digital tactics across the whole journey.
The idea here is to capture the prospect’s attention, and then be interesting enough to hold their attention while you explain the benefits and create some desire for your product. Then, give them the confidence to take action without fear of disappointment.
The marketing funnel follows roughly the same trajectory as the sales funnel – the only difference is that it was created by marketers, not salespeople. This means it naturally has a little more complexity and a few more moving parts.
This funnel is more focused on the mindset of the prospect than the action of the salesperson. It’s especially relevant in B2B marketing (what we do!), where sales journeys are significantly longer, take a lot more thought and involve many more people.
Here, the prospect has an awareness of their challenge, then weighs up potential solutions before converting into a customer. From there, you want to hold onto them to retain their lifetime value, and enable them as an advocate so they can do the selling for you.
Now we’re talking specifically about content marketing, and mapping the content you create across the buying journey. The content funnel closely mirrors the marketing funnel above, but simplifies it into three main sections:
This makes it easier for a content team to create pieces which span the whole buying journey.
You’ll notice the loyalty and advocacy stages from our marketing funnel don’t feature here. But that doesn’t mean you should forget about them. If you engage with your existing customers when creating content – for example, asking them what they’d like to see from your content, or coming to them for an interview – it reinforces their commitment to your business.
Your sales and marketing functions should work in harmony, with content as the fuel in the engine.
Create content for prospects at every stage of the funnel. That way you’ll have something for your sales team to take out to a meeting or send to a prospect whatever stage they’re at, and you’ll have plenty of ammunition to use for remarketing ads and email campaigns.
Good content comes from good communication. Open the channels between your content creators and customer-facing members of staff so that your content is directly informed by customer challenges and queries.
As part of our marketing consulting work we’re often brought in to an organisation to ‘clean up’ marketing activities that are ineffective – AKA ‘marketing fails’.
We go through everything thoroughly – top to bottom, past to present. Sometimes we’re the first ones to really look deeply and holistically at the company’s marketing.
Over time we’ve noticed a distinct pattern that distinguishes the marketing that works with the marketing that doesn’t.
There are lots of reasons marketing doesn’t live up to expectations, but three themes that appear time and time again are:
If you don’t have a B2B marketing strategy and plan, you’re going to end up wandering around aimlessly, throwing all your marketing budget and resources into the latest “fad” rather than those that are actually the right ones for your business.
You may be saying the right thing to the wrong person, or the wrong thing to the right person.
If you want your marketing to work, you need a well researched marketing plan that includes:
It might seem intimidating to write a B2B marketing plan if you’ve never done one before, but it’s achievable if you attack it step-by-step. Start by doing lots of research. Learn everything you can about the current state of your industry and your target audience – remember, it’s not about what everyone else is doing, it’s about what’s going to attract your ideal customer.
If your budget is tight, put the plan together yourself, or if you can – outsource it. It doesn’t matter HOW you get it done, just get it done.
Any business can do great marketing for a month. But the truly successful businesses know how to run the marathon, not the sprint. There are so many benefits to consistent marketing:
I get it – life (and client work) takes over and your own marketing is the first thing to go. However if you don’t get processes in place you’ll never get the systems working, so you need to find the time.
If you can make the most of those ‘down periods’ to get some great processes in place, it won’t be too much trouble to keep your marketing ticking over even when you’re really busy with other stuff. It also makes it easier to delegate down the track.
The right systems will be different for every business, but some common ones I see are:
Successful marketing is backed by solid systems. It needs constant and consistent implementation, analysis and revision. Exciting and glamorous? Not really… But it’s the hard truth.
A term that’s burned into the walls at media agencies is reach and frequency. Reach is how many unique people see your marketing, and frequency is how many times those people see your marketing.
You might also hear the word impressions – this is a digital marketing measurement which covers your total views. For example, if your ad reach is 100, and your impressions are 200, you can assume everyone saw it twice.
You need to strike the right balance of reach and frequency depending on the format of your marketing.
Even if your idea is great, it needs to get out to enough people AND you need those people to see it enough times that it sinks in.
Crafting a message that cuts through and getting it out there in a meaningful way takes a bit of investment. It doesn’t always have to be expensive, but you do have to be on top of delivering your ads and tracking the results.
Hitting the right frequency is all about tracking your ads and optimising your campaigns. Keep tweaking your ads over time for the perfect result.
If you have the time, but not the expertise, don’t fumble your way through – steal some ideas from successful marketers! The (DIY) Marketing Project is full of templates, walkthroughs and how-tos from professional marketers who want you and your business to succeed.
If you don’t have the time, take a look at how you can outsource your marketing for great results without the huge effort.
Almost every day there’s an update for the apps and online tools we use every day at work and at home. Normally we don’t even notice them. Sometimes they’re substantial enough to make our lives a little bit easier.
But what’s really taken our work to the next level is setting up lots of little connections and automations between all of that software using a tool called Zapier. Now things that used to take a few minutes, or a few different people, happen in an instant.
Basically, Zapier helps your different web apps talk to each other and share data.
It can connect with over 3,000 software tools – which means that if you’re regularly moving information from one platform to another, you can probably automate it.
You can also customise those connections with conditions and filters to suit the way you work. For example, allowing different teams to get different information depending on what’s relevant to them.
Let’s look at a few automations you can use to save some serious time.
Almost anywhere that you collect email addresses can be connected to your email marketing platform with Zapier.
You can add your contacts directly to your email marketing platform from your forms, Calendly requests, Facebook lead campaigns, Zoom webinars or even Woocommerce and Paypal transactions. Those contacts can then go straight into any email campaigns you have set up.
You can add tags to segment your database further, based on where they’re coming from and what information they supply in forms. This will help you give each prospect a personalised experience.
Many teams (like ours!) use Slack for internal communication. Slack is great at integrations too, so teaming it up with Zapier is a no-brainer.
Zapier can alert a Slack channel when:
If you don’t use Slack, don’t worry – Zapier integrates with a huge range of team chat apps. See if yours is on the list!
f you use one of the accounting apps that Zapier connects with, you can start automating and sharing information to make doing your finances a lot easier.
You can automatically generate receipts and invoices, track all of your online transactions, set up notifications and even use Zaps to create your budgets.
Here are a few more tips on using Zapier for accounting.
You can add basically anything to a Google Sheet using Zapier – for example, form submissions, staff timesheets, sales or leads from your website or social media. It all updates automatically, so at a glance you have live visibility over whatever you’re looking to track.
You can then trigger an action when new data is added to the spreadsheet – you may want to receive an email or Slack alert whenever someone downloads your latest ebook, send off an invoice whenever you reach a certain number of hours worked on a particular project, or create a new task in your job management tool when you have a new prospect to follow up.
The beauty of Zapier is that it adapts completely to the way you work. Unlike new software or a big app update, there’s nothing new to learn – in fact, you’re doing the teaching. Once you have an ecosystem of Zaps in place, you’ll start to notice that your workload lightens and you have more time for the stuff you’re best at.
We all know that social media is an essential part of any B2B content strategy. But if you’re posting the exact same thing on every channel, you’re missing a huge opportunity.
Each channel has its own unique culture, nuance and audience, and it’s important that you take this into consideration if you want to grow your social presence.
So let’s look at how to do social media marketing for B2B on the most commonly-used channels, by adapting a single content idea and turning it into posts for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.
In each of the screenshots we’re using a recent TMP content idea as our example.
LinkedIn is the place where professional conversations happen every day – and for your customers, it’s a chance to put a face to the name. Use your employees’ individual accounts and the company account in tandem to connect with your audience on a new level.
Keep it professional, but don’t be afraid to mix in some of your personal experiences as well. People want to know why you do what you do and why you’re the best at it. More so than on other networks, LinkedIn is about the people that make up a business, rather than faceless corporate accounts just promoting their products and services. Tell people about the causes you support, shout out your staff and talk about the philosophy behind what you do.
LinkedIn’s format and newly-lengthened character limits mean that you can tell a longer story without necessarily needing to add in a bunch of images. People will take the time to read what you write as long as you grab their attention in the first few lines (and make it worth their while to read through).
Your post will be cut off after the first two lines, so make sure your opening is clear and enticing.
We schedule shares and interactions between the official TMP account and Holly’s account to reach a broader audience.
Facebook is for friends, which means you have a chance to connect with your audience on a more human level. Loosen the tie and post a little more informally, Don’t forget to stay true to your brand messaging – demonstrate what makes your business great!
On Facebook, your content will be mixing in the news feed with people’s friends, family, sporting clubs and community groups. Keep this in mind when you’re crafting your Facebook posts – if it’s part of your brand’s tone of voice, sprinkle in a bit of humour, and keep the tone friendly. Add photos to your posts where you can, and keep your posts shorter and snappier than on LinkedIn.
Text posts – character count is basically unlimited
Image posts – square images are good – we shoot for 1200 x 1200
Story size – 1080 x 1920
A chance to go ‘behind the products’, show the people that make your brand what it is and tell some happy customer stories.
Captions come second to the image, but you can definitely enhance your post with a clever or witty caption. Make sure you view both together before posting to check they make sense together. If your image says all you need to say, then keep your caption minimal. If you do need to explain what’s going on, keep it brief and light-hearted. Make the most of your first sentence – as on other networks, the rest will be cut off behind a ‘see more’ button.
Image posts – square (we shoot for 1080 x 1080)
Image captions – 2,200 characters (truncated after 125)
Story size – 1080 x 1920
Many people find condensing complex ideas into bite-sized tweets extremely challenging. The trick is to narrow your focus. Each tweet has one sole purpose – to get clicked! So you don’t need to explain the whole topic – just give enough to spark some curiosity and get that click.
Twitter’s discussion revolves around the news cycle, so where you can, link your content topic to something going on in the world. Twitter has a tone (and set of slang) of its own, so it’s always good to follow a few hashtags to get the idea before you post. You don’t have a lot of room to strike the right tone, so on Twitter you need to be precise with your wording. Any typos or mistakes will be extremely obvious, so proofread a few times before posting.
Characters – 280 (including links)
Images – 1024 x 512
Taking your marketing – and your business – to the next level requires a bit of background work.
Scattershot approaches will work some of the time, but if you’re serious about building a brand that lasts, you need a brand story.
Your brand story holds the fundamental principles of why you do what you do. It tells anyone reading it who you are, what you stand for, what’s different about you, how you should sound in communication and what the most important things about you are.
We almost always include a brand story with new client projects. It’s amazing what comes out – our clients always discover new things about their own businesses.
It’s made up of five key components – business values, USP, brand voice and key marketing messages.
Let me take you through it.
Any business leader should watch Simon Sinek’s TED Talk, ‘How Great Leaders Inspire Action’. It’s a bit of a sacred text in the business world.
Simon’s idea is simple: people don’t buy what you do, they buy into why you do it.
Great leaders aren’t afraid to say what they think. To give a crap about changing the world (or at least their industry) for the better. Great brands are no different.
People buy from you because they like the journey you’re on and they want to ride shotgun. That’s why it’s so important to have your brand values nailed down, and communicate them to your audience whenever you get half a chance. They show what you truly stand for as a business, your non negotiables and form a foundation for your ‘why’.
Defining your unique selling proposition can be a tricky one for some brands to identify. Not because they aren’t doing great, unique stuff, but because sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective.
Clients we work with are quick to cite aspects of the business that they think are unique, but often we find that it’s an aspect of the business that they hadn’t even given a second thought – for example, something in their manufacturing process, or an tech process they’ve created to save themselves some time.
There are plenty of bad value propositions out there. Often they’re the product of boardroom compromise, and say way too much without actually saying anything. But actually, this should be one of the most exciting parts of the brand story process. It’s the time when you put yourself in your audience’s shoes and ask: ‘What’s in it for me?’.
Your value proposition should answer a few key things:
The good news is that once you come up with this, it’s going to get plenty of airtime. Your value prop should form the basis of your primary messaging – for example, your website homepage. It should be on your business cards and even on the wall of your office.
Try creating your own – let me know how you go!
As a business scales up, it’s important to have some kind of record of your brand’s tone of voice. You’ll have different people from marketing, client services and support all speaking on behalf of the brand – not to mention any freelancers or suppliers you might bring in to support your growth.
So it’s essential that you have something down on paper that captures how your brand should communicate.
This can be as simple as three words, e.g. ‘creative, mature and charming’ – a couple of guidelines – e.g. ‘we talk straightforwardly and don’t use technical jargon’ – or a 20-page document full of specific dos and don’ts, depending on what kind of business you are and how much content you think you’ll be creating.
From our point of view, the more you can flesh this out, the better (our copywriters love detail). A strong brand voice will ensure you’re distinctive and consistent across your website, on social media, in your advertising and in your content marketing.
The final part of the brand story is to craft a set of ‘key marketing messages’. These are the essential statements that cover each of your main selling points. You can then come back to your library of marketing messages and pick the right one for the audience and the context you’re marketing in.
(You don’t have to reuse them word-for-word – but your key messages should be able to be used externally if needed.)
You should have several (we go for at least 5) per audience segment.
Here’s what makes for a good one:
These messages can form the basis for content you create, or work on their own in your marketing and advertising.
A cohesive foundation like this makes everything else easier:
It’ll also make it so much easier to engage (and get the best value from) a B2B marketing agency, should you choose to.
Just remember these steps:
Want some help? Get in touch. We’ve taken lots of clients through this process and we’d love to help you too.
Right now you might be looking at your brand assets – especially your website – and feeling like they haven’t evolved as quickly as your business has.
You might not have the budget right now to build a whole new website from the ground up, but you CAN make a few tweaks and improvements that will make your website feel fresher and help extend its life.
Here’s a quick runthrough of how to do a quick and basic website audit, including the main things to make sure your digital shopfront is doing its job.
With a few quick tweaks in your website’s back end, you can make a real difference to how your website appears in Google’s search results. Check each page to make sure your page titles & meta descriptions have been added, include the page’s target keyword and are the correct length.
If you use WordPress, we recommend downloading Yoast SEO plugin, which will help you edit those titles and descriptions easily and give you some handy tips for improving the SEO of each of your website pages.
And If you’re wondering why your website has disappeared completely from Google, it might be because of security issues or a virus. Google’s help pages also have plenty of good tips which will help you improve Google’s ability to find and crawl your site.
Take a look at your homepage copy (that is, the words on the screen) from an outside perspective. If you can’t do that (or if you wrote the words in the first place), ask a trusted colleague or contact to have a look for you and provide some honest feedback. If you have a good relationship with some of your customers, even better – get them to review your website from a copy perspective.
Does it represent your business in its current form? Is it too wordy or vague? Sometimes all that’s needed is a new line in your homepage banner.
Make sure your copy is ‘customer-centric’. This means making sure you don’t fall into the trap of talking about yourself all the time, rather than what you can do for your customer. Test this by counting the amount of times you say ‘you’, and making sure it’s more than the amount of times you say ‘we’.
Finally, comb through your website and make sure the copy is correct and free of spelling and grammar mistakes. This might seem overkill but it’s better to be safe than sorry – one tiny mistake and many will immediately write you off.
As your business focus evolves, your website should adapt to reflect this as well. If you no longer service certain industries, get them off your website or swap them for industries you’re looking to enter.
Give your XML sitemap a quick audit (you may need someone technical to help with this) to make sure you haven’t got any ‘orphan’ pages that aren’t linked to from your site.
It’s also a good idea to check the ‘flow’ of your website – you might be able to access every page from the homepage, but are the rest of your pages still accessible once you’ve made a few clicks?
Take another look through your website, this time focusing on just the imagery. Are your staff shots or stock photos looking a little “intimate” by today’s socially-distanced standards?
Update your photography to reflect a new working environment – maybe less handshakes – and also to capture the latest visual and photography trends. Having visually appealing, modern photography subconsciously communicates that you have a good eye for detail and you know your stuff.
Stay away from tacky, cliched stock images – use something like Unsplash instead.
Your ‘Call to Action’ (CTA) is arguably the most important point on the page. It’s the mechanism through which your customer carries out the action you want them to take – for example, the ‘buy now’ button, or the ‘subscribe to newsletter’ form.
Check all your pages to make sure there’s a single and clear call to action on each page. Ask yourself, “What do I want my reader to do on this page?”. Then make it easier than falling off a log.
(To be clear, you can absolutely have more than one button on each page – but keep them similar for clarity. your audience should know exactly what you want them to do.)
Don’t forget your ‘thankyou pages’ – the messages or pages people see after they click your CTA. People tend to just forget about them. We’ve seen a lot of outdated COVID-related messages, and even some Christmas closure messages on thank you pages lately!
Is your marketing a bit stale? Feel like you’ve hit a plateau? You might have heard about growth hacking from the startup world, but actually any kind of business can do some marketing growth hacking of their own to see results without huge spend.
For your average B2B business, your best measure of growth on the marketing side is your sales pipeline. So our tips here are all about engaging new leads, re-engaging old ones and making sure they slide smoothly down your marketing and sales funnel.
Here are five marketing growth hacks you can start using straight away to unlock more leads and start having better conversations.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great tool for finding perfect prospects and engaging with them.
Use the tool’s in-depth search functionality to find who you’re looking for. You can search by company size, content keywords, even what school they went to – check out the full list here.
Then you can create lead lists (which only you can see) for specific segments – perfect if you service a few different industries or business sizes.
Don’t just rush in with a sales message – follow what they post and engage with their content. Not only is it a more personable approach, but you might be able to answer a few of your initial sales questions just by what they’re posting. You can build out a clear picture of their personality and their challenges before you come in with a pitch.
Yes, there’s lots of noise distracting from the signal on Twitter, but lots of relevant conversations happen there, and certain industries (like tech) are very active. There’s also a certain kind of discourse that happens on Twitter that you won’t find on any other B2B social media community.
Use hashtags and location search to find people talking about the topics you’re interested in. You can use Twitter’s Lists functionality to keep track of prospects, but keep in mind that every Twitter user can see which lists they’re on.
Once you’ve found your target audience, start getting involved in conversations. If you have some crossover from your LinkedIn list, engage with them on Twitter too – just make sure to do it in a manner that’s appropriate for the platform. The same works vice versa – often you’ll want to bring Twitter leads over to LinkedIn for a more work-focussed conversation.
When you find a trending topic, the next step is to start capitalising on that buzz by setting up a Google Ads campaign to direct traffic to your website (use Google Keyword Planner to narrow in on the specific keywords – the below example is a keyword search for “marketing growth hack”).
You need to send that traffic to a page that’s relevant to the topic and provides some value – for example, sending leads from a specific industry to your industry-specific website page. If you don’t already have one, write and publish a blog on the topic. Otherwise, the traffic will bounce and you’ll just be wasting your money.
Here’s an example from our perspective: if a topic was trending about the rise in small B2B marketing agencies, we could write a blog about how we only focus on B2B (and why), and then set up a compelling Google Ads campaign to direct traffic to it.
If you already have a library of blogs that perform well, you don’t need to get distracted by the need to be pushing out heaps of new stuff. You can add value to your existing blogs by adding in ‘content upgrades’.
This is content that’s more in-depth than the blog but still the same topic – for example, a research report or an infographic.
Put a link to this upgraded content on the blog, but behind a form. This is a great technique to combine with your Google Ads from point four.
Right now you might re-engage with an old contact if you happen to remember them, or you have a new product or service to pitch. But as you grow, you should have a system in place for re-engaging with old prospects.
You can set up an email automation through your CRM software – but there’s nothing wrong with an old-fashioned phone call or email as well. Just make sure you have a trigger which will notify you when it’s time to get in touch.
These prospects could be proposals you didn’t win or leads that fell quiet… there’ll be a lot of them, and it might look like an intimidating list – but remember, they showed interest in your business for a reason. If you have a shiny new piece of content (or you’ve recently updated an older one 😉) you have a perfect reason to reach out.
Now you’re ready to start your own growth hacking campaign with our tried and tested marketing growth hacks. With these techniques you can break that plateau and get your message out to a whole new audience.
Just make sure you’ve refined that message and your proposition is crystal clear before you start – you wouldn’t want to waste the opportunities about to come your way!
Would you rely on ONE supplier for your entire business model? 😬
I’m guessing probably not…
But many growing B2B businesses are doing just that with their digital marketing tactics. They’re concentrating on Facebook as their main channel for connecting and communicating with customers, and neglecting the rest.
As we’ve seen recently, that tap can be turned off in an instant🚰 and there’s not much you can do about it.
So we’ve been thinking about a few ways you can keep the conversation flowing without relying totally on Facebook – or LinkedIn, or Twitter or Instagram or even TikTok for that matter.
Engaged and targeted email lists are absolute gold dust for marketers. With a bit of time, effort and budget you can segment the contacts in your email list enabling the creation of really targeted email campaigns.
A huge benefit with email marketing is that you own the data. You can export your (opted-in) email list and take it to another platform if your email provider bumps up your rates, shuts down or you just decide you don’t want to use them anymore.
And thirdly, you have direct access to your subscribers’ inbox – often the first place people head when they start their day.
Sending out regular, insightful and valuable emails to your subscribers is a great way to build rapport over time. Some email marketers even monetise their newsletter by charging people to receive a ‘premium feed’ on a platform like Substack.
Another cost-effective way to build an audience, writing articles for a blog is the foundation of most effective content strategies. Once you get the hang of getting your thoughts into words, your articles can give your audience a window into your thoughts and opinions on industry topics, as well as an insight into the culture of your business – a great way for them to decide whether they want to partner with you.
This is especially important in B2B marketing, where sales cycles are often longer and there is a greater emphasis on service and knowledge.
Best of all, a blog is multiple pieces of content just waiting to be set free. Grab the best quotes and turn them into images for Instagram, publish a section on Facebook and LinkedIn or do a quick video summing up what your piece is about – all linking back to your own website where the blog is hosted. Once people are there, you can invite them to sign up to your email list, either by offering a free piece of content or the chance to join your newsletter.
You can capture their details using a form like this:
This is an example of an embedded form. Offer your readers a free download in exchange for their email address. Make sure it’s a high-value piece of content to make it worth their while!
It’s one thing to write a blog, but you also have to promote it. Many content experts say that content marketing is 20% creation and 80% promotion! Make sure you have a thorough marketing plan in place to drive traffic to your blog articles.
If you’re less ‘wordy’ and more of a talker, consider starting your own podcast. This is a popular content format right now, so beware of jumping in just for the sake of it. But if you’re a compelling speaker and you have the means to record and edit audio, it should definitely be on your consideration list.
If you’re wary of just adding another podcast to the pile, remember you don’t have to do the same thing everyone else is doing. Mix up the format – if everyone is doing 30min interviews with industry leaders, consider doing a daily five-minute show that tackles one specific challenge. If you have a network of interesting contacts, try to get them involved as a guest or co-host. If there’s something about your work that’s interesting or quirky, use it – for instance, you could record a quick episode in the car while you’re personally delivering a customer order, if that’s your point of difference.
You don’t need to be restricted to just Apple or Spotify – you can embed the audio on your blog, send it out via your email newsletter and cut up the audio into bite-sized chunks for social media. You can even monetise your podcast via Patreon if it really takes off.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is closely connected to your blog and your website. Making sure your website is well-optimised for search engine robots is a fruitful long-term strategy.
There are two aspects to SEO – on-page and off-page. Let’s look at both quickly.
On-page SEO:
On-page SEO refers to the SEO tactics that are on your website – things that you can actively control.
It includes things like:
On-page SEO isn’t just for Google – it’s better for your customers too. Having a website that’s easy to use and keeps prospects engaged means people will spend more time on your site learning about your business, which Google will favour.
Go for quality over quick fixes. Google’s bots are getting more and more sophisticated, so the old “SEO hacks” don’t work anymore. The best thing to do is make decisions that are best for your end user, and will keep them engaged on your site for as long as possible.
Your ‘technical SEO’ also has to be solid. Double-check that:
Off-page SEO:
Off-page SEO is a little trickier, and harder to control. It’s about your brand’s reputation and authority in your industry.
The biggest off-page SEO tactic is link building. This is where you have other reputable brands linking back to your website – and another reason why it’s so handy to have a good selection of blog articles for other sites to link to.
The ‘holy grail’ of link building is to get a link from a .gov or .edu link, because you can’t just go out and buy one of those domains. You have to earn those links – so that means you need someone within your business who can reach out to these websites and build a natural relationship with them that leads to linking between sites.
Additionally, linking TO those high authority sites is a good idea, because Google sees this as you being more reputable. For example, if you’re talking about crime rates, linking to a .gov site gives you more authority on the subject, as you’re citing official sources.
You can (and should) also do a lot of internal link building – that is, linking between blogs and pages on your own website. If you’re writing a blog and you reference something you’ve written about before, link to it! This tells Google that your site is an expert about one key theme, and all your content is connected.
We’re a big fan of creating mutually beneficial relationships with other businesses that have a similar audience as you but aren’t competitors. You can share the marketing load while both getting the benefits!
Reach out to other businesses and ask if they’d be interested in co-creating some content or doing some joint marketing. What you do will vary depending on your industry and business size, but here are a few ideas:
Be sure to use the detail from tactics 1-4 to squeeze the most value out of any joint marketing you do.
And whichever of these tactics you decide to pursue, here’s your golden rule: Be across as many channels as is practical for your time and budget, but make sure a good portion of that activity is on channels you own.
Your company blog is one of your greatest untapped resources for engagement and thought leadership. That’s why every marketer should have competent blogging skills in their armoury.
There are so many benefits: they’re free to publish, you control the environment completely (e.g. no limits on length or images) and best of all, you’re not at the mercy of a changing social media algorithm.
But you might sometimes find it tough to flesh out your initial blog ideas into full articles. Don’t stress – it happens even to the best writers. To get the information out of your head and onto the page, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – just rely on a solid structure to arrange your thoughts.
There are all kinds of structures you can use depending on what kind of information you’re trying to get across. Some are more complex than others, but in this piece I’m showing you how to write a blog post using a nice, simple framework that will draw out your best insights in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand.
Here’s a tried and tested framework any B2B blogging beginner can use for turning topics from your content strategy into fully-fledged articles that grab attention and build your audience.
Here’s where you need to grab the reader’s attention and explain exactly what they’ll get. The biggest headline mistake I see is people trying to fit a complex idea (like a metaphor) from their article into the headline.
Cryptic headlines generally don’t work in a B2B business blogging context. Make a promise instead.
I normally start with a ‘working’ headline in mind which I came up with when first researching the topic. I’ll rarely keep that one in the final article. As I write the piece, I copy and paste any nice lines and paste them up top under the original headline. By the end, I’ve got a list to choose from and I’ll probably add a couple more. Then I’ll test them out or ask for a second opinion.
You don’t always need to start from scratch – you’ll save a load of time if you have a few ‘fallback’ headline formulas. There are many specialist copywriting blogs which will give you a list of proven headlines you can use. As an Easter egg, I’ve taken one from this article for this article’s headline – can you spot it?
And don’t forget to include your SEO keyword! Not only is it good for SEO (of course), it also keeps the headline focused on the reason you’re writing the post in the first place. Keyword research mimics the queries of your audience, so you’ll be speaking in terms they understand.
Here’s mine so you can see my process in this article.
Your first paragraph should do three things:
- Introduce your topic
First, introduce the topic and set the scene. Your knowledge of your audience is important here – ask yourself what they already know about this topic and why they’re looking for more information. Meet them there. Use statistics if you’re talking about a common topic (be sure to reference where they’re from).
Next, raise the stakes. If there’s no reason to act – and act now – you’ll struggle to get people reading through your blog. In other words, why do they need to take action? And what happens if they don’t?
Be explicit about who you’re writing for. Go back to my introduction up top. You’ll notice that I said that these are tips that ‘any B2B blogging beginner can use’. I want my audience (people who work in B2B businesses who know they should be writing blogs but don’t know where to start) to feel comfortable reading this, and know that it’s going to give them some information they can actually use.
To finish off your introduction, explain to the reader in simple terms what they’re about to see and learn, focusing on the benefits (I’ve promised tips that will help you grab attention and build your audience).
Include your SEO keyword at least once in the introduction.
This is the main part of your article, and can be the most intimidating. Many people wondering how to write a blog post feel pressured to tell the ‘perfect’ story here. Leave that to the novelists and master the art of subheadings.
(If you’re looking for the easiest and most effective way to write a blog, this is it.)
Work through your points or arguments one at a time, using subheadings to define each separate thought (like I’ve done throughout this piece, with each section of your article under a different subheading).
You can add numbers to these subheadings to create a listicle, or leave them off to be more of a how-to guide (how I’ve styled this one).
Include your SEO keyword a few times throughout the body and in your subheadings if possible. Make sure it sounds natural – don’t just stuff them in for the sake of it.
One of the most common pieces of writing advice is “write first, edit later.” This might sound obvious, but what it’s trying to say is don’t get in your own way while you’re writing your first draft. It doesn’t have to read well or look pretty.
Write it first without engaging your editing brain (stay away from the backspace key), and look over the whole thing later when you’re in a different mindset. That’s when you can add in some structure and carve out a piece that flows nicely from start to finish.
End your post confidently. A neat writer’s trick is to call back something from your introduction for a satisfying conclusion. In the introduction of this article, I told you that your business’ blog is one of your greatest untapped marketing resources – so for my conclusion, I might say something like:
End with a Call To Action (CTA). Basically you’re telling your reader what to do next. Don’t give them three options – give them one compelling click to make.
Here’s mine: Now that I’ve shown you how to write a blog post like a pro, you can move on to nailing the rest of your marketing! There are more than 100 walkthroughs, step-by-step guides and templates available for unlimited use at the DIY Marketing Project, covering the basics (and beyond) of things like email marketing, graphic design, search engine optimisation, social media and managing your website. Head there and take a look!
Once you’ve mastered the basic blog post you can move up to more comprehensive posts (the kind of thing we describe as ‘pillar’ content).
Here are a few things you can add to take your blogging to the next level:
Happy writing! Don’t forget to visit the DIY Marketing Project to download all of the templates we use for our everyday work (including this basic blog structure guide in simplified PDF).
