Know Your Enemies: A Checklist for Manufacturers
by MGB2B
In the early stages of developing a Marketing Plan, it is crucial for manufacturers to understand not only who their target audience is and what they desire, but who else is within the realm of consideration. Sometimes you think you know your competitors well. But you can learn a lot from doing a robust competitive analysis and a little core user research.
START WITH A RE-EVALUATION OF YOUR COMPETITIVE SET
The competition can change from year to year, so it’s very important you don’t gloss over this part. Perhaps one of your competitors switched their main focus from defense to aerospace. That affects you in one way or another, so you’ll need to do a bit of homework. Knowing each competitor’s game plan is essential.
There are many questions you can ask when evaluating your competitors, but these four are required in order to position yourself correctly:
- What’s their primary message?
- How do they position themselves?
- What do they do differently than you do?
- What do you do better than they do?
Evaluate your competitors with as much depth as you would your own brand. Make a list of your major competitors. Go over them one by one, and ask yourself the questions above. Then look at their websites, their social media sites, their ads. Leave no stone unturned. And have a very detail-oriented person on your team create a spreadsheet to house all of this information. This way you can evaluate over time. By the end, you’ll have a thorough assessment of where your brand stands and how you can stand out to prospects.
CONDUCT CORE USER RESEARCH TO GET MORE QUALITATIVE INSIGHTS
Beyond the competitive set, core user research can give you more qualitative insights into how you are regarded in comparison to your competitors. The second part of your checklist is aimed at what you want to find out from your core users. Keep in mind, these are people who like you, so they may be reluctant to tell you what they like about your competitors. That’s why it’s always wise to get a third party involved to gather this research.
You’ll want to ask:
- Who did they consider partnering with before they chose your company?
- Why did they choose to work with you over the others?
- What do they like about the other manufacturers that you didn’t offer?
- What are all the aspects they consider, and in what order, before choosing a manufacturing partner?
- Who in their company makes decisions?
These are just a few questions to get the ball rolling. You can make your research as robust as you’d like as long as you don’t take up too much of your customers’ time.
Once you have both your competitive analysis and core user research done, you’ll know your enemies (er, competitors) better than yourself. And you can start building personas and a Marketing Plan that’s more effective than ever. May the force be with you.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: My Brand Doesn’t Have a Story to Tell
by MGB2B
The Myth: My Brand Doesn’t Have a Story To Tell.
The Truth: There’s More Than One Way to Tell (or Spin) a Story.
As the Internet becomes more crowded with B2B content, it is increasingly difficult for brands to stand out. One way to do so is by telling more compelling stories than your competitors. While you may already be aware of this, perhaps you don’t consider your brand’s story intriguing enough to get the job done. Well, here’s some good news. Even if your company’s story isn’t worthy of a Hollywood film adaptation, there may be an angle or two you haven’t looked at yet.
Do your clients have compelling stories that you have contributed to and are allowed to discuss publicly? For instance, a company that manufactures plastic parts may seem uninteresting. But if that company manufacturers a part that helps a scientist make a medical breakthrough, that’s a storytelling opportunity. Even if you don’t have that kind of story, you may be able to, as an industry expert, provide insights on relevant stories in the news. Many manufacturers already use these approaches for storytelling.
Here are a few examples of creative B2B brand storytelling:
GE – GE has an entire separate website devoted to content. It not only showcases their own case studies, but also highlights other stories. There are articles that don’t even contain “GE” anywhere in the copy. Instead, they represent the innovation with which GE has made itself synonymous.
Cisco – Cisco is a master at content marketing and another example of a B2B brand that has its own website just for content. They also have a gigantic content team to keep it running. Cisco has established itself as the authority in digital networking, which means they can easily discuss topics like smart cities. And their words carry significant weight with their prospects.
Betatronix – Even if you aren’t a highly visible B2B brand like GE or Cisco, you can still try this approach. Betatronix, a company that manufacturers potentiometers and other components, may seem uninteresting at first. But not when you find out who they work with – NASA. Just one of many clients with major news stories that Betatronix can either contribute to directly or provide expert commentary on.
If you think your brand doesn’t have a story to tell, take a step back and look at the big picture. By analyzing your impact on your more well-known client’s projects or looking at what’s going on in the industries surround your brand – you’ll be able to find plenty of stories to tell. You don’t need a 100-person content team to make it happen. You can simply use your blog to distribute your stories as often as you can. Doing so will establish a more personal connection with your consumers and prospects. It’s a strategy that will feed your lead-generation engine well into the future.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: I Don’t Need to Test My Emails
by MGB2B
The Myth: I Don’t Need To Test My Emails
The Truth: A/B Testing Can Help You Turn Your Email Program Into a Lead-Converting Machine
You are likely among the 93% of B2B marketers who distribute content via email. But are you doing it right? If you’re not using A/B testing, there is likely room for improvement. A/B testing is one of the best ways to gain insights about your audiences, fine-tune your efforts over time, and increase open, click-through, and conversion rates.
It’s important to remember that when testing B2B emails, you can only test one thing at a time. If you do it all at once, you won’t know what caused your email to succeed. Or tank. And then you’ve lost a truly helpful tool.
Here are 5 different elements you should test to fine-tune your email program:
- Subject Line. This is the big one. This is what gets people to open your emails. Does a question perform better than a statement? Does your core target audience appreciate humor? Or do they prefer you to get right to the point? Subject line tests can help answer those questions and increase your open rates.
- Day of the Week/Time of Day. When you test this, do it when you’re not testing subject lines. Or any other elements. Send the exact same subject line, message, and layout to one half of your audience on Wednesday at 6am and the other half on Thursday at 6am (for example) to test day of the week. Then with an entirely different email, test Wednesday at 6am and Wednesday at noon, to determine time of day. This is something you’ll want to log and perfect over time. It’s not something you can determine with only one email blast.
- Message. You’ve already tested subject lines, but what about the message once people open your emails? Which headlines perform the best? Which calls to action are people clicking on? Each individual copy element can be tested. But again, only one element at a time. Testing too many copy elements at once won’t tell you what you need to know.
- Layout/Design. What happens when you change the order of your articles? The color of your calls to action? Each variant can change the outcome. Test each one until you find what works. Before you even begin testing, make sure that you are using responsive design. If your audience(s) can’t read your emails easily on their mobile phones, this will negatively affect your results, and your reporting on other testing elements will be skewed.
- Type of Content. If you have a newsletter-style email promoting many different types of content, what performs the best? Do you have a higher CTR when you drive the audience to an infographic? A white paper? A blog post? Determine which kind of content your audience craves most — you might find it varies by segment.
Testing B2B emails takes time and patience. But in the long run it will help you give your audience what they want and take your leads further down the sales funnel. Email is one of the most important tools in the B2B toolkit. Get it right, and you’ll be miles ahead of your competitors.
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