B2B Monday Myth: Positioning Your Brand As ‘The Best’ Is a Good Marketing Strategy
by MGB2B
The Myth: Everyone Wants the Best, So That Should Be Your Claim.
The Truth: Find Your Point of Differentiation, or Your Competitors Win.
Maybe you actually are the best manufacturer of aerospace components, the best provider of recruitment services, the best commercial construction company in the region. But B2B buyers are so used to hearing businesses call themselves “the best,” it falls on deaf ears. They are practically born with BS detectors inside their brains.
So even if you’re the best in town, what you need to tell them is why you are the best.
You can start your positioning process with these questions:
- What are you competitors saying about themselves?
- What do you do differently?
- What do you better?
- What can you claim that no one else can?
- How is the personality of your brand different from others in your category?
The truths you discover by answering these questions will help drive your strategic brand positioning. Even if you already knew the answers, if you are marketing your business as “the best,” your message likely does not include them. And will have to go a long way to resonate with your target audience.
The questions listed above are just an introductory step to discovering your brand voice. There’s a lot more discovery you may have to do to develop a full positioning statement and a marketing strategy that’s inline with what you find. It is one of the most important exercises for a B2B brand to go through.
Positioning B2B brands correctly takes a little bit of research and hard work. But the results will help you not only be “the best” in your category, but the best at getting quality leads. If you want to increase your market share, say goodbye to “best” and hello to something even greater.
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B2B Monday Myth: Landing Pages Should Always Be Short and Sweet
by MGB2B
The Myth: Landing Pages Should Always Be As Short As Possible
The Truth: One Size Does Not Fit All. Sweet Definitely. But Not Necessarily Short.
Perhaps you’ve asked yourself the question: How long should my copy be? Or maybe you’ve heard that in order to maintain your audience’s attention, your messaging should always be short, sweet, and to the point. However, you should never write copy with a predetermined length in mind. Whether you are creating an argument, a story, or an explanation, the length of the copy will depend on what you have to say, who you are talking to, and what you want them to do after reading your page. So how do you identify a prospect’s state of awareness? And most importantly, how do you nurture them into making a decision?
In this article written by Brian Clarke, he references an ideology thought up in the book Breakthrough Advertising by one of the greatest copywriters of all time, Eugene Schwartz – the 5 stages of prospect awareness. By understanding these stages, you can more easily define who you’re talking to and more clearly set your goals. These are the stages as Schwartz outlines them in Breakthrough Advertising:
The 5 Stages of Prospect Awareness
Most Aware – The prospect is aware of your product and is only interested in “the deal.”
Product-Aware – The prospect is aware of what you sell, but doesn’t know if it’s a good fit for them.
Solution-Aware – The prospect is aware of how to solve their problem, but doesn’t know if your product will do the job.
Problem-Aware – The prospect is aware of the problem, but doesn’t know how to solve it.
Completely Unaware – No prior knowledge of anything besides their own identity and opinion.
Now that you have an idea who your landing pages are targeting, you can start to zero in on how much information is needed to inspire a decision. Circling back to the article by Joanna Weibe, she created this chart to help guide that process:
Chart Source: Joanna Weibe on Copyhackers.com
The more unaware your target is about your product, the more word mileage it will take to captivate them. Similarly, it will take longer to convert them as well. On the contrary, the more aware your target already is about what you have to offer, the less they’ll want to read. They just want you to cut to the chase. The main thing that matters is that whatever you include on the page, whether it’s a paragraph or a tome, the content can sway your audience.
One of the best tests you can do is to bounce your copy off someone who is at the level of awareness you are writing to. How do they react? What is interesting to them? What’s making them yawn? Next time you ask yourself: “How long should my copy be?” take their answers into account before you go back and edit your landing pages.
Need a hand creating landing pages? Drop us a line.
Continue Reading6 Ways to Use Twitter Moments for B2B Brands
by MGB2B
Photo Source: Twitter Blog
Twitter has been bending over backwards to gain new users. You may have noticed a slew of new features such as: “What’s Happening?” at login, a channel-wide push for live video, and notifications that tell you what people you follow are saying on Twitter. Yet, what is possibly the most useful tool Twitter has released in the past several weeks seems to have slipped under the radar: Twitter Moments. The feature is accessible to everyone as of a few weeks ago. And it is now available for use on mobile for the first time!).
A Little Background on Moments
Maybe you remember all of the pomp and circumstance around the release of Moments in late 2015, topped off with a TV ad campaign earlier this year. Moments launched as a feature visible to all Twitter users, but customizable by only a few. These collections of five to ten tweets about topics like science, sports, and entertainment were curated exclusively by Twitter employees and select publishers, leaving average users rather disconnected. Now that they are available for all users to create and with the ease of using your phone, Twitter Moments for B2B brands can become a useful tool in your social media arsenal.
Unlike a single retweet, a Twitter Moment allows you to collect and share several tweets at once from other users. For example, if you were to create a Twitter Moment about Elon Musk’s recent presentation on traveling to Mars, you may have selected a tweet from The Verge showing people flooding into the room, a tweet from a fellow viewer as Musk took the stage, and several tweets highlighting main points Musk made, as well as questions from the audience. While none of these tweets came from you personally, they would represent discussions and points of view that interest you.
Once you have a handle on how to create them, check out these 6 ways to use Twitter Moments for B2B brands:
- Cover events and trade shows. B2B trade shows create a flurry of great tweets and exchanges between exhibitors and visitors. In addition to pumping out content about your own experience at the show, use a Twitter Moment to aggregate 10 or so tweets that sum up the event. You or someone on your social media team can create Moments as in-the-moment updates during the show or as a summary of each day of the event.
- Offer commentary on conferences. Similar to the trade show tips above, Twitter Moments can create valuable summaries of conferences, webinars, workshops, and other live events for you and your followers. A Moment consisting of tweets posted throughout the presentation can help demonstrate your company’s perspective on a topic or simply act as an outline of the information you just received.
- Bolster product launches. Many trade publications rely on social media just as heavily as email to distribute news about new B2B products. As you send out your press release, create a Moment to aggregate tweets from these publications as they spread your news on Twitter.
- Follow market trends. Use Moments to track things that impact your industry (or your customers’ industries) such as new regulations, research, and other changes. Follow emerging technologies that could become new applications for your company’s products. Or monitor fluctuations in market value.
- Showcase your company’s interests. Does your company support a cause? Or are you closely tied to the surrounding community? Help your followers learn more about your company by sharing Moments about things that are important to you.
- Position your CEO as a thought leader. A CEO who maintains an active social media presence can offer many benefits to their company. Most importantly, it ties a personality and face to the company. This creates a persona customers can connect with. It’s a great way to demonstrate interest in things that impact the company’s well being. Yet with only 39% of Fortune 500 CEOs using social media, many Twitter users following B2B companies don’t know who CEOs are or what interests them. This is something you can take the lead on.
Now that the feature has been extended for use on mobile, Twitter Moments for B2B brands can become an even more versatile tool for PR and event coverage. Time to seize the Moment!
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