5 Marketing Tips Manufacturers Can Take from Steve Jobs
by MGB2B
Whether you loved him or loathed him, Steve Jobs knew a whole lot about marketing. He wasn’t a brilliant engineer. That was his buddy, Woz. But Jobs knew how to sell the brilliance. How to package it, how to market it, and how to stay ahead of the competition in ways that the CEO of any manufacturing company would envy.
After all, isn’t that what keeps you up at night? That burning question: How can I keep up with – and surpass – my competitors? As I’m reading the Steve Jobs biography, it’s easy to see that Jobs was a master at this. Sure, he had his failures. But his successes were far greater.
Here Are 5 Marketing Tips for Manufacturers That We Can Gather from Jobs’s Time as the Face of Apple:
- Put Innovation Ahead of Money. While he was referring to his use of LSD when he said it, Steve Jobs famously declared, “It reinforced my sense of what was important — creating great things instead of making money.” It seems elemental, but in the hot pursuit of the almighty dollar, creativity often gets lost. Don’t lose sight of what ultimately drives business – creatively solving the problems of your customers.
- Think Different. While this was a longstanding tagline for Apple products, it perfectly embodies the Jobs philosophy. You can read anywhere that he stole the idea of a Graphical User Interface (as opposed to green characters on a black screen) from Xerox. But that’s only half of the story. Jobs and his team thought differently than the folks at Xerox PARC. They took something that was designed for businesses and made it a seamless, friendly, intuitive experience for the consumer market. In doing so, Apple eventually attracted different kinds of businesses from what Xerox was pursuing. Design-focused companies like ad agencies and architecture firms were an easy match for the Mac’s simple yet graphically advanced platform.
- Get Inside the Heads of Your Customers. Like the design of products, the design of your ad campaigns, web content, and any brand communications should be created with your consumer in mind. You want them to know your features. They just want to know what they’ll gain. But they also want to trust your brand. They want to feel like you know what their day has been like. Like you can offer them something to make it better or easier in some way. Jobs knew this. And almost every decision he made – whether for marketing or product development – was driven by it. Today, there’s an easy way to use your customers’ desires and needs to drive your decisions. A core user study. Smart engineers do them. Smart marketers do them. And smart CEOs live and breathe by their results.
- Don’t Be Everything to Everyone. Apple is for dreamers. For creators. For people who want to make change. That’s how they positioned the brand in 1997. The legacy that Steve Jobs created stands true even today. And it applies to both products and advertising. Focus on what you’re best at instead of adding mediocrity into the mix. Keep your message on-point. Don’t sully it with unnecessary excess. Simplicity is the name of the game.
- Know Your Enemies. And your friends. Apple’s relationship with Microsoft was on-and-off over the years. And even when Microsoft succeeded, Jobs knew what Apple’s reaction would be and how their products would be different. As mentioned earlier, he kept an eye on what Xerox was doing, and used what he learned from them to create the interfaces we now use every day. Don’t copy your competitors. But know and understand what they are doing, so you can rise above them.
Steve Jobs had many flaws, for sure. But his product development and marketing instincts have changed the way we live today. Manufacturing companies would benefit from any one of these tips. Take them all together, and you might just find inspiration to revolutionize your industry. That sounds a whole lot better than simply “increasing the bottom line.”
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: My Company Doesn’t Need Visual Content
by MGB2B
The Myth: My Company Doesn’t Need Visual Content
The Truth: B2B Brands Should Increase Emphasis on Visual Content Marketing
Now more than ever, our world is flooded with content. This leaves B2B brands struggling to have their voice heard in a crowded marketplace and stand out from competitors. Well maybe it’s time to focus less on being heard and more on being seen.
Simply put, visuals help us to remember things. According to HubSpot, when people hear or read information, they’re probably only going to remember 10 percent of that information three days later. But if a relevant image is presented with that same information, people retain 65 percent of the information after the same three days. This statistic has huge implications. Many people think visuals are only important for consumer brands — but these rules are universal. Visual content is just as important in targeting B2B brands as it is for a clothing or lifestyle brand.
HubSpot also indicated that only 50 percent of B2B markets are treating visual content as a priority. So how can you make your company stand on the right side of the divide? Worry not — there are some simple ways you can incorporate visual content into your plan that don’t require too much time, money or resources.
Here Are Four Tactics to Get You Started:
Infographics. If you’re looking to shift your focus to visual content but want to keep your marketing as informational as possible, the infographic is still one of the most effective visual content formats. Studies show that our eyes are drawn to information that encompasses visuals. In fact, infographics are “liked” and shared on social media three times more than other types of content.
Instagram. Many B2B brands have shied away from Instagram in the past. But it is gaining more popularity, and with good reason. Instagram allows you to take gritty fields like manufacturing and make them beautiful and interesting. And it’s an appealing platform for millennial buyers and decision makers with short attention spans (and anyone with little time to spare).
Tweets with Photos. Since users scroll through social media quickly and sometimes mindlessly, a tweet that only consists of text is not as likely to catch anyone’s eye. Tweeted images are shared and liked much more frequently than just text. It’s also important to remember that visual content is key to helping you define your brand’s look, feel, and overall personality.
Article Images. Many B2B companies produce blog or article content to share knowledge about their company or industry. The photos accompanying your content are just as important as what you write. Try putting an image at the beginning of every article. You might also want to include photos within the story to break things up and let the reader breathe. Use a variety of images — graphs and charts, stock photos, cartoons, memes, and screenshots.
Visual content marketing is here to stay. These are just a few of the easy ways to make your B2B content come alive visually while still keeping things informative and relevant.
Continue ReadingB2B Monday Myth: Sales and Marketing Teams Are Born Adversaries
by MGB2B
The Myth: Sales and Marketing Are Born Adversaries
The Truth: Sales and Marketing Collaboration Leads to Higher Revenue
The Problem
Within many B2B companies there is a both sales team and a marketing team. But what you will rarely find is sales and marketing in a healthy relationship that ensures mutual success.
Why is this?
From the marketer’s perspective, their number one priority is to generate leads. They are the professionals when it comes to creating a campaign. Leads only get handed over to sales once they enter the buying process.
On the other hand, salespeople sometimes think that marketers are too far removed from customers and the business. How could they understand what’s involved in closing a deal?
Assumptions and doubt from both teams don’t help anyone. Often, one group thinks they could do a better job than the other. Add in different tactics, different mindsets, and varying timeframes, and you’re in trouble. What results is a relationship characterized by tolerance at best, and sales and marketing collaboration is not a priority.
What should happen instead?
The responsibilities within the buying process are often presented as a “funnel.” The very top and widest part of the funnel is buyer awareness, and the narrowest part at the bottom is the actual purchase. A marketing team focuses on top half of the funnel, identifying customer segments. They develop the branding and outreach that will resonate with these customers. Then, they circulate materials across relevant channels to get this message across. Responsibility stays with marketing through the “interest” phase of a customer’s process. Once a customer moves into “consideration” or “intent,” they get handed off to sales. At this point, the salespeople are entirely in charge of making a transaction happen.
The line where marketing efforts end and sales begin varies from company to company and is sometimes a little blurry. It’s clear that both teams integrate simply by the nature of their work. They both work to convert a lead into a sale, and some level of collaboration is necessary to make this handoff seamless.
But the key is that not only does the integration of sales and marketing need to be acknowledged. It needs to be capitalized on. If sales and marketing efforts are completely aligned, your company can improve sales substantially. In fact, the Digital Marketing Institute reported that sales and marketing collaboration potentially generate 208% more marketing revenue for a company and 36% higher customer retention.
So how can this be accomplished?
There are several steps you can take to ensure your marketing and sales efforts are aligned.
- Bridge the communication gap: It sounds cliche, but in this case, communication really is key. If sales and marketing aren’t communicating frequently and efficiently, valuable leads can get lost in translation. On the other hand, constant contact will ensure that both teams are up-to-date on what the other is doing. No one is left in the dark. It can also help each side to hold the other accountable for producing and accomplishing what they should, and making sure they report it correctly.
- Collaborate and socialize: In order to eliminate some of the negative assumptions sales has about marketing, or vice versa, it helps if both teams get to know each other. This doesn’t mean everyone has to become good friends, but genuine face-to-face conversations can create more authentic relationships and a better understanding of what everyone’s role is.
- Create uniformity: There are few things more effective than a consistent message. If sales and marketing are able to synchronize, their combined efforts will be much more powerful than either would be on its own. This may actually mean that some things cross over between the two groups. For example, marketing can adopt some of the quantitative metrics used by sales, and sales in return can use some of the more qualitative marketing techniques when it comes to retaining customers.
Sales and Marketing Collaboration – Mutual Success is Possible
You ultimately may not be able to eliminate all of the tension between your sales and marketing teams. Any two groups within an organization who operate under different strategies and perspectives are naturally going to butt heads every once in a while. But following these tips can help you begin to bridge the gap between two teams who are executing very important work for your company’s main goal.
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