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Category Archives: B2B Monday Myth

B2B Monday Myth: Email Marketing Is Dead

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email marketing RIP

The Myth: Email Marketing Is Dead

The Truth: Email Is Very Much Alive – and You Should Be Using It

B2B marketers still rely heavily on email to reach their audiences. According to the annual B2B Content Marketing report by the Content Marketing Institute and Marketing Profs, Email Newsletters are tied with Social Media Content as the second most critical content marketing tactic in 2017. First place went to blogs.

There’s a reason for that. B2B marketers recognize that Email Newsletters are one of the most effective ways to distribute content like blog posts and white papers. They’re also a way to show your most engaged customers your latest video or share case studies with them.

Here Are a Few Tips to Make Sure Your Email Marketing Program Is Effective:

  1. Use Buyer Personas. Buyer personas are an important part of any content program, and your emails that deliver content should be written for specific personas. These will help define your segments as well.
  2. Segment Your Audiences. There are several ways to segment your audiences. The goal here is to make sure each one of your prospects is receiving a message that resonates, instead of one that falls flat.
  3. Test Your Emails. Test subject lines. Test lead story. Test headlines. Just not all at the same time. Testing will help you fine-tune your email program, and deliver the right messages to the right personas.
  4. Don’t Get Too Promotional. Your customers mostly want helpful information, not a product sell that hits them over the head. Give them the content they want, and you’ll drive up engagement.

These are just a few tips to help you take your email marketing to the next level. The key is to invest time into making email marketing run effectively. Instead of letting it die on the vine.

 

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B2B Monday Myth: More Is More on Social Media

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B2B social media strategy

The Myth: More Is More in Your B2B Social Media Strategy

The Truth:  Scale Back on Quantity, Scale Up on Quality

Social media is growing up. At this point, the hustle to fill space is over. Audiences have set the pace of what they want to see, and when. It’s true that, as marketers, our goal is to move that needle – albeit with a deft hand. There is value in restraint: unbridled social calendars can have a detrimental impact on your goals. Take a moment to audit your current B2B social media strategy, and see if anything sounds familiar.

  1. What Are You Posting? Take a closer look at your content. Is there value to it? Or are you merely posting to meet your daily quotas? Think critically on this. While you do need to stay active throughout the week, posting your FAQs page just for the sake of having a post isn’t the path to engagement. Content that isn’t valuable to your audience won’t be valuable to your sales funnel either.
  2. Abandon the Spray & Pray Method. How many times and across how many platforms are you posting? There’s a good chance a large portion of your followers is the same across the social landscape. If you are blowing up their feed throughout the day, especially with invaluable posts (see above), you risk the chance of pushing them to hit the unfollow button.
  3. Who Actually Are Your Followers? For B2B businesses, this is especially important – it’s not about how many people are following you, it’s about whether they matter to you. Buying followers or hooking in demographics that aren’t in your customer base is a waste of time and budget. A focus on smaller, yet appropriate audiences will yield more valuable engagement for your brand (read: more shares, more click-throughs). If you haven’t already, creating customer personas will help you find your focus.

Since so much can be done on social media for free, it seems like a smorgasbord for strapped B2B marketing departments. Find your strength in reserve: refine your B2B social media strategy to the most helpful or interesting content, and you’ll see both your content longevity and customer engagement increase.

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B2B Monday Myth: B2B Copy Should Be All Business

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b2b copy tips

This may be a myth you’ve heard debunked before. It’s not a new concept: B2B doesn’t need to be boring. And it 100% should not be. Especially if you want to stand out in a sea of B2B mediocrity.

Because even though the All-Business-All-the-Time Myth has been debunked many times, there is no shortage of stiff, unreadable B2B copy in the world today. In fact, that describes the majority of B2B copy.

Now how much you can loosen up depends largely on your audience. While you want to be conversational, you also don’t want to take any guidance from say, your favorite stand-up comedian. But most likely, what resonates with your audience will fall somewhere in between where you are now and Stand-Up Johnny’s saltiest script.

Here Are a Few B2B Copy Tips to Get Started: 

  1. Look to Your Audience First. A little research can go a long way. Talk to some of your key salespeople, staff members and customers to establish a brand voice and messaging that will resonate with your target. Once the brand voice is established, make sure that voice appears everywhere. You don’t want someone to click on an ad and discover a website that looks and sounds like a completely different company.
  2. Write Like You Talk. Pretend you’re having a conversation with a friend. Whether your audience is reading a blog post, an ad, or your website, they need to feel like you are talking to them. They might be looking for ways your brand can help or empower them. But, just like your friends, they don’t want to hear you bragging about yourself.
  3. Tap Into the Emotions of Your Potential Buyer. It turns out that B2B buyers are not that different from the average retail consumer. The purchasing process is not devoid of emotion; in fact, emotion is often what drives the process.
  4. Include Calls to Action. Ads need them. Emails need them. Websites and landing pages REALLY need them. Even direct mail. The Call to Action. It’s almost like the holy grail of copy. Why? Because that’s how your prospects will know what to do after they’ve read your friendly B2B copy. That’s how you convert them. And that, most important of all, is how you’re going to know which channels work, and which ones don’t. Which brings us to…
  5. Reevaluate and Refine. Today’s analytics can tell you a lot about what’s effective and what’s not. You can test messages almost anywhere. Banner Ads. Paid Search. Subject Lines. If you test which messages are most effective at converting your prospects into customers, you’ll be able to become consistently more effective with your messaging.

So What Now? Where Do I Begin?

Pull a few different pieces from your marketing arsenal – both online and off. Read them out loud. Have your significant other read them too. Does the copy sound strained or boring? Time to breathe some new life into your brand voice.

Does it sound smooth and conversational (but not too salesy)? Maybe it only needs a few tweaks here and there. Either way, a simple review is an exercise worth going through. You might start by hiring a professional writer or an ad agency to help you evaluate and get your brand headed in the right direction.

One thing is for certain – in today’s competitive environment, you can’t afford NOT to have effective copy.

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