Improving on this subject is something we are constantly trying to do. Many times b2b clients reach out and want to build a solid presence on social. But here’s the harsh truth – building a community around a brand is almost impossible. However, positioning personas within the company, and leveraging their influence to grow the company page is way more feasible.
There are the rare examples of companies such as Gong and Zest who are knocking the ball out of the park with a killer company page, but they’re the exception to the rule (and they are also fueled by strong personas that have become authorities).
This post will focus on LinkedIn, however, there’s much to be said for Quora, Reddit and Twitter.
Here are experience-based tips on what works:
When posting make sure all posts are readable with white space out
Linkedin don’t appreciate linking out of the platform. Try to avoid it as much as possible. When you do, paste the link in the first comment (and mention “link in the first comment”)
The more people click on your posts the better – LinkedIn will get an indication of relevancy. So:
write texts that are long enough for people to need to click “see more”
for the same reason when posting images – aim for more than 5
Speaking about images – it’s always better to show people than scenery
Hashtags are important! – before using them check they have enough followers (hundreds and up)
Use emojis
Post in the morning when people get to work, noon when they’re on a break or afternoon as they head home
On top of the above: wadidigital published this fantastic breakdown on the types of posts the LinkedIn algorithm favors, keep it in mind.
Now let’s roll up our sleeves: Here’s a typical breakdown we try to stick to weekly for b2b c-levels who’s presence we manage.
Rule of thumb – we always try to strike emotions/ be controversial in the content, and to ADD VALUE:
1 Conversational type of post – ask a question “what music do you listen to when working”, “do you outsource tech or rely mostly on an inhouse team” etc
1 List type of post that end with a question “these are the top 5 books any tech pro should read, which would you add?”
1 Infographic with insights
(at least) 1 Share of a company blog post with a personal angle (we play around with these and sometimes also post entire blog posts as Linkedin articles, the jury is still out regarding the efficiency of this)
1 Viral type of post (the legendary Larry Kim does that so well we actually name those LK posts internally)
Daily Engage with peers, like comment and share
I hope this helps, if you have further tips to share, please let me know!
How well do you know your brand’s target audience?
Or, how well do you think you know your target audience?
We find that many brand managers in Europe assume they know their audience very well indeed. They might even have a very clear image in their head of the type of individual they are trying to target with all of their advertising and marketing strategies.
What is often the case, however, is this image in their heads isn’t always completely correct. When it comes to targeting your audience in Europe and motivating them into making a purchase, you need to ensure that your understanding of this group is bang on. Any slight differences between what’s in your head and your audience could result in some of your targeted work falling flat.
If you know that you have this problem in your business currently, here are steps to take to understand your target audience better. If you follow them through, you’ll know how to discover your target audience and start fine-tuning your aim for them in all your campaigns.
Brainstorm your target audience.
The first thing you should do is sit down and brainstorm what you already know about your target audience. Think about the characteristics that all of the individuals who are most likely to buy your products will share. Are they in the same age group? What is their job title; what kind of salary do they earn? You should also look at the common challenges, needs, and objections that this group of people might face in their life.
One great tip is to take a look at the audience that your competitors are targeting. How does that group differentiate from yours? Examine the data-driven insights using the right tools to understand the entire funnel, and how you can leverage this data to incorporate your USP to retarget.
Take advantage of brand trackers.
Use a brand tracker to get measurable and actionable data on your audience. This data can give you various, but specific insights. For instance, tracking brand awareness will tell whether or not your ideal target audience actually knows about you. As well as that, tracking brand consideration will show if they would consider using your brand. You can also track this data for your competitors and compare how your brand fares against them.
In addition, you might even discover that this isn’t actually the best audience for you to be targeting. By digging deep into all of this brand tracking data, you might see new audiences appear that you had never previously considered. Just make sure to choose a brand tracker that caters to niche audiences.
Develop a persona for your target audience.
Now it’s worth creating a persona of what the quintessential member of your target audience is like. There are so many benefits from audience personas, so why not use it?
For example, if you target the millennial generation, go beyond a generic idea of a millennial and think more closely about who you are selling to. If you find that millennial females who live in urban areas and work in the tech sector buy your product more than anyone else, then their defining features and characteristics should also be those of your audience persona.
Once you have made a persona, it’s important that you inform everyone on your team. To keep everyone on the same track with all their strategic work, you all need to be targeting the same persona.
Start targeting.
Now that you know who you are aiming at, it’s time to start trying to reach them. In order to target your audience, focus your efforts on the channels they use most often.
If you know that your target audience spends a lot of their online time using Twitter, then it’s worth starting a campaign on that social media platform. However, if you are targeting an older audience who might prefer to spend their evenings in front of their TVs than tweeting, think about running some TV adverts.
Researching the channels that your audience use really can help you immensely — not doing so could end with you shooting blindly and completely missing.
How does running marketing campaigns help find your target audience, you may ask. Well, how can you be positive that they are the audience for you unless you see if they work? And don’t forget…
Continue to monitor.
So you research your target audience well and then start to target them using suitable methods and channels. Job done, right? Not quite.
Sure, you’ve taken the right kind of steps so that the right kind of consumers will see your brand marketing. But how do you know whether that’s really happening once your adverts and promotions are out there in the wild? How do you know that they are helping your sales?
Keep your eye on the ball and monitor how your marketing efforts are doing. You can do this by tracking your brand guidelines and campaigns to make sure that they are hitting the spot.
It’s also worth noting that target audiences can change or shift over time, so monitoring them is a continuous task for every brand manager. As long as you do make monitoring a habit of a lifetime, then there’s no risk of you ever being left behind by competitors.
Those steps don’t sound too difficult, right? If you follow through with them, you should discover new things about your target audience that you might never have realized. And those nuggets of wisdom could help you polish up your marketing campaigns like never before.
Not only that, but you can now carry out all of your campaigns confidently, as your target audience shouldn’t be even easier to reach.
By: Steve Habazin Entrepreneur Leadership Network VIP
If you’re interested in starting your own B&B, here are some essential steps you can use to get up and running.
Evaluate the Market
Before you actually set up your bed and breakfast, it’s a good idea to look at your area or the area where you plan to set up shop and determine whether it can support such a business. Is it a popular area with tourists? What other lodging options are available? Will you be offering something that travelers can’t find with those other options?
Marcus Smith, owner of Chez Vous, Chez Nous writes, “Starting a B&B in a location with minimal hotels and accommodations would be the best idea as competition would be less compared to an area flooded with the same. Therefore, you need to do some home work and especially remember that the mere fact there are many hotels in an area does not necessarily mean they offer B&B.”
Secure a Location
Once you’ve chosen a general location that you think will work for your business, it’s time to secure an actual property. Aside from the basics like price and the ability to accommodate your ideal number of guests, you’ll also need to check with your local zoning board to make sure that any location you consider is zoned for commercial use.
Get Licenses and Permits
You are also likely to need a business license and permits from your local government. The exact requirements vary from city to city. But check with your local governments about general business licenses, food service permits and any other pertinent forms you may need to submit.
Customize the Space
People who are looking for a generic hotel room to crash in don’t often stay in B&Bs. So your target customers probably expect more of a unique experience, which should extend to the design and decor of your space as well. Many B&Bs offer some kind of theme, like country cottage for rural properties or a nautical theme for houses in beach communities. But even if you don’t choose an outright theme, it is important to have a layout that’s conducive to receiving guests and setting up breakfast each morning, along with an aesthetically pleasing vibe.
Create a Daily Tasks List
Once the actual property is up and running, you need to be prepared to actually run the day-to-day operations. This can be a fair amount of work, so it helps to be organized beforehand.
Susan Poole of The B&B Coach says in a post for BedandBreakfast.com “In order to stay on top of everything, I have a daily to-do list that includes 15 daily tasks that take 15 minutes or more to complete.”
The most time consuming tasks on her list include preparing breakfast, cleaning rooms and making sure rooms are booked.
Calculate Finances
Take a look at your books to determine the investment required to get up and running and then what your operational costs are likely to be. This can help you determine what you need to charge per night in order to keep your business going strong.
List Your Rooms
From there, you should be about ready to accept guests. But first, you need to allow people to actually find your business online. You can list rooms on your own website. But especially when you’re just getting started, it’s important that you also list on popular travel sites that people are more likely to be familiar with, including Airbnb and Kayak.
Encourage Customer Reviews
Customer reviews are becoming increasingly important for all businesses. But they’re especially relevant in the travel industry, since consumers want to ensure their safety and happiness while in another location. Sites like TripAdvisor can make a major impression on potential visitors, especially when you have a business that’s relatively unknown.
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If you’ve read the SnapApp blog (or any marketing publication recently, for that matter) you’ve probably seen the increased importance of sales and marketing alignment. Buyers are increasingly demanding a world where marketing and sales is seamless – there is no handoff, it’s simply one engine that fuels your customer journey.
By gating all our assets we’ve basically created a dynamic that forces buyers away from our website and content. Buyers today prefer to do their own due diligence before offering up an email address that basically guarantees them the sales call or email that follows.
Audience’s increased preference to engage on their own terms and in a personalized manner has left marketing looking to adapt experiences while sales spends hours and energy crafting hyper-personalized, unique email messages to stand out from the competition. Finding the right balance of quality vs quantity of sales follow up isn’t easy, and has resulted in increased automation and hopeless attempts at humor to simply get any response. See:
Clearly what we’re doing isn’t working – on the marketing or sales side. So what do we do?
At SnapApp we might be a little bit biased, but we believe that interactive content is more than a shiny new piece of content that simply is cooler than a white paper.
Interactive experiences can also drive meaningful sales and marketing alignment by collecting critical qualifying information on your prospects before by some minor miracle they find themselves on a discovery meeting after a cold call.
By putting control back in the hands of your buyers you can improve engagements and uncover the challenges truly facing your prospects, helping get back to what they really want… value.
Let’s explore how interactive content can transform your marketing and sales alignment drive real results.
Let’s Begin with the Basics
By now you’d probably heard of interactive content but what is it really and why do it? Let me start with a quick pitch (I know, I’m sorry, but I’m in sales and we all knew this was coming.)
Interactive content is a better way to educate, entertain, and engage your audience. It’s anything that requires the participants’ active engagement — more than simply reading or watching. In return for that engagement, participants receive real-time, hyper-relevant results they care about.
How Does Interactive Content Help Sales?
Last August we partnered with Heinz Marketing to research generational buying differences. Our biggest takeaway: it is clear buyers are tired of the standard marketing and sales playbook.
And that means our “best practices” aren’t the best practices when buyer journey’s have chanced so drastically.
In today’s world where marketing has to own more of the buyer journey like you can see above, the same level of qualification of prospects needs to be done in the middle of the funnel, but your prospects aren’t willing to do it with your sales team.
Using interactive content throughout your buyer journey means that you’re constantly asking questions and learning more about your prospects, which means that when the time finally comes for them to have a conversation with sales, your team is prepared.
Interactive can help provide value and context to prospect outreach. Instead of a generic marketing message; “Thanks for downloading, be sure to also check out our blog” or, even worse, a sales follow up “I wanted to touch base with you regarding your form submission on our site. Can you give me some details of what you’re looking for so I can get you to the right place?” interactive will help you have a digital conversation without scaring off your prospects.
Sending generic marketing messages after a content download? Replace it with a CTA driving an interactive assessment asking them how they want to engage going forward.
Sending form submits right to sales? No problem, the answers and interactive insights captured can provide the context we lack today when attempting to personalize the message.
With this approach you’ll immediately showcase you’re listening, understanding their needs, and most importantly, you’ll be treating the prospect like a human – not a name on a list.
This will even help sales prioritize the best leads and help marketing understand what’s driving bottom line results. As an individual contributor myself I can attest to the fact that at times, with one quick glance, I’ll determine if a lead should be prioritized or put on the back burner. Sales people are busy too and with revenue as the ultimate objective you better believe your sales team is investing time in proven areas more than others.
This results in leads falling through the cracks or potentially even going completely untouched. Instead, with interactive you can help understand what leads should be prioritized because they include the all-important qualification and context sales desires.
You’re probably thinking, “sounds great, Greg, but where do I start?”
Let’s take look at a few examples of how you could start arming your sales team with the information they need to be successful today, alongside marketing activities you’re already doing.
Interactive Content for Events
Marketers and sales people alike love events — they’re great for brand recognition and present a unique opportunity for that all important face time with prospects. It’s no surprise they’re highly valued in most marketing operations – it’s the best opportunity to present value and many times yields the highest ROI.
The struggle with events? The same as your other demand gen initiatives… it’s hard to know what leads are the highest quality. You could scan hundreds of leads but usually there are only a handful of highly qualified prospects. Are you sending them all as MQLs? What if they really just wanted the cool socks you had at your booth? The list will go to your sales team resulting hours of calls/emails to prospects that might not even be considering your solution, while competing with every other vendor that attended.
Instead imagine leveraging an interactive experience. Ask; “How do you want us to follow up with you” with an interactive assessment.
At SnapApp we used the assessment above to do just that, and flip the script event follow up. By using interactive content inside our events, we don’t waste time on the people who just appreciate our taste in SWAG, and also don’t miss anyone who might not fit for our ideal buyer persona, but loved the message.
You’ll maximize your ROI and help qualify event leads faster. But the interactive follow up value doesn’t end with just WHO sales should spend their time on. It also makes sales outreach personalized and powerful.
We’ve all sent or received generic event follow up like this:
Generic Email – Low Personalization:
Hi [prospect],
It was great meeting you at [event]. I heard we had a great conversation around [value prop 1], so let me know if you would be interested in schedule a 30 minute call to learn more about each other’s businesses and how we can help!
And both prospects and sales people alike know that it works inconsistently at best.
However, with interactive conversations are rich and focus on your prospect, not on you.
Interactive Enhanced Email – High Personalization:
Hi [prospect],
It was great meeting you at [event]. Thanks for filling out our post-event assessment. Looking forward to scheduling a call to highlight your goals of [Goals Answer 1A] and [Goals Answer 1B] this quarter. I noticed you’re also currently using [Product/Solution Answer] to support these efforts today. We worked with [client example A] and [client example B] who experienced similar challenges and replaced [Product/Solution Answer]. When can we schedule 30 minutes to discuss further? How does [X/X @ X:XX] work?
According Content Marketing Institute’s 2018 B2B Content Marketing Report, 72% of B2B marketers use pre-produced video content, 17% use video live-streams, and 4% create documentaries or short films. Combined, this makes video one of the hottest types of content among B2B marketers.
And it’s not without results, either. Video marketing boasts some impressive stats, including:
Marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. – Aberdeen Group
Video drives a 157% increase in organic traffic from SERPs. – Brightcove
Embedding videos in landing pages can increase conversion rates by 80%. – Eyeview Digital
Social video generates 1,200% more shares than text and images combined – Brightcove
51.9% of marketing professionals name video as the type of content with the best ROI – HubSpot
It seems like a no-brainer, right? But like with most things in marketing, it’s knowing where to start and what to create that’s the hard part.
As with any marketing tactic, you want to choose the right content type and style to engage and nurture your audience. Plus, the content you create needs to align with and support your marketing goals—video is no different.
To help you figure out how to get started with video marketing and how to incorporate it into your integrated marketing mix, we’re breaking down the many types of videos for marketing and when to use them.
1. Teasers
The name implies it all—these videos are short, sweet, and meant to give audiences just a glimpse of what’s to come. More specifically, teasers are short videos that promote other content, services, products, or events and generate excitement or interest in them. At no longer than 10-30 seconds, this means you have to do your best with the time given to you through high-energy language, fast-paced content, and plenty of information; motion graphics are an especially great teaser format.
Teasers are great for generating excitement and are very short in length, making them a great fit for social media promotion, where you’ll be looking to generate buzz for an asset (i.e. eBooks, podcasts, infographics, blog posts, webinars). The biggest thing to remember about teasers is that they need to have a call to action that promotes another piece of content. The goal of a teaser is to spur action in an audience, whether that’s registering for a webinar, downloading an eBook, or listening to a podcast episode.
Length: 10 to 30 seconds
Where to Use It: Paid and Organic Social Media
Best Assets: eBooks, Podcasts, Infographics, Blog Posts
Trailers and previews are another type of short video content. However, where trailers differ from teasers is that a trailer actually features a sample of the content its promoting. For example, a teaser might use new visuals and graphics to get people excited, but a trailer will actually feature a preview of what’s to come. Just take a look at movie trailers—most of them show you scenes directly from the film.
If you’ve already created the content, you’ve already done most of the work for a trailer or preview. Just take content included in your videos, infographics, eBooks, and other assets and edit them into a trailer format that gets people interested. While trailers perform well on social, they’re also a great addition to landing pages as landing page videos have been found to increase conversions by 80% or more. Depending on where you’re planning to have this content live, decide if and when a CTA is appropriate.
Length: 30 seconds to 2 minutes
Where to Use It: Paid and Organic Social Media, Landing Pages
Best Assets: eBooks, Podcasts, Long-Form Video, Infographics
Example: Eloqua, Journey to Modern Marketing
3. Explainers
We’ve already covered videos that are used to promote other pieces of content—teasers and trailers. But what about when you have a standalone topic you want to cover in a video? Maybe you want to create a tutorial on how to use your software or educate your audience on how to launch an employee wellness program. This type of marketing video is called an explainer. Explainers are original pieces of content that educate and inform the audience on a subject.
The best explainer videos focus on appealing to an audience’s curiosity by answering common questions or solving popular pain points. In providing useful and compelling information, the video helps add to your brand’s authority. As a video that can stand on its own two feet while offering helpful advice, explainer videos can make a great complement to a power page or blog post. They also perform well on social channels as it’s a quick and easy way for you audience to absorb a lot of information. And because all of the value is within the video itself, explainers typically don’t have a call to action. But again, depending on where you plan to have this content live, make a decision on if a CTA makes sense.
Length: 30 seconds to 3 minutes
Where to Use It: Paid and Organic Social Media, Power Pages, Blog Posts
Example: Slack*, “So Yeah, We Tried Slack”
4. Video Essays & Companion Videos
Can you cover a topic in-depth in under three minutes? When you need to dive deeper than an explainer video allows, video essays are the perfect type of video to turn to. Video essays are original, long-form video content that explores a subject in-depth. A good video essay might be an 8 minute discussion that covers your thoughts on new changes in the market or new trends like cryptocurrency.
Because of their length, video essays are the perfect place to showcase your brand’s thought leadership and expertise through education and entertainment. In covering all sides of an issue or topic, you have more opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, improving trust and credibility among your audience. Jam-packed with valuable information, video essays are a great addition to power pages, blog posts, and social media channels.
But what if you’ve already covered the topic in-depth for a power page, blog post, or eBook? Should you still make a video essay? The answer is yes as 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text. Given this information, your video essay could perform better than your existing content in terms of generating leads or strengthening engagement. In this situation, take your existing eBook, blog, or power page and turn it into a video essay, giving your audience an alternate channel to consume your content.
Length: 1 minute to 10 minutes
Where to Use It: Paid and Organic Social Media, Power Pages, Blog Posts
Example: HubSpot, What Is the Difference Between Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)?
Your Directorial Debut
Video is rapidly becoming the preferred way to consume content for many audiences with 82% of all web traffic expected to be video by 2021. If you’re not making videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, you could be missing out on an enormous opportunity to improve your organic traffic, landing page conversions, social engagements, and more.
And to make sure your videos are helping you reach your marketing goals, it’s important that you select the right types of marketing videos and content they will support. Using the guide above, you’ll be able to pair your video and content together in a way that fuels results.
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Adam Erhart
