Ad Victoriam Solutions | B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of

Aug 17, 2021

B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of – Part 2

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

The job of Sales and Marketing is to work together towards common goals, helping their company grow and securing business. While their job functions differ, working together as one maximizes business profits and growth.

Companies that unify Sales and Marketing hold the advantage of collaboration. Rather than functioning as separate entities, exchanging information and ideas between Sales and Marketing can improve results and create a seamless buying experience for prospective customers. The responsibility of creating content that generates qualified leads lies on the marketing team. From customer stories, case studies, and collateral, Marketing uses methods of promoting services to warm up leads. It is then up to Sales to follow up, build relationships, and close deals.

For Part 2 of our “B2B Marketing Tips You Have Not Thought Of” blog series (Read Part 1), Vende Digital Founder/CEO/B2B marketing guru, Paul Slack, who recently guested on AdVic’s “Salesforce Simplified” podcast, offered a five-step guide of strategies that can unifying Sales and Marketing teams:

1. Importance of Sales and Marketing Alignment

“Sales and marketing have to work together as a system within an organization,” Paul states. “It’s not the sales department and the marketing department, it’s sales and marketing working together because at the end of the day, buyers don’t buy the best solutions. Wouldn’t it be awesome if they did and we had the best solution? But what they actually buy are the solutions that they understand the most from people that they like. And so when you think about that statement, that they buy the solutions that they understand from people that they like, sales and marketing plays a role in both of those.

“Marketing’s job is to make sure that there’s a solution out there that your solution is one that they understand.

“Sales’ job is to make sure that the solution they’re buying is from somebody that they like. That’s that human component.”

Paul describes the content Marketing produces as “Chum in the water that attracts prospective customers, that then allows reps to go in for the sale.”

2. Content Warm Up

Marketing uses methods, tactics and a variety of channels such as content marketing, social media marketing, SEO, email marketing and ads to target consumers. The content that Marketing produces is used as bait. Paul describes it as “chum in the water that attracts prospective customers, that then allows reps to go in for the sale.”

3. Cutting Through The Noise: Create Meaningful Content

Cutting through the noise is providing your prospects with impactful content. There is an abundance of content available that may not resonate, empower, or educate them, be the brand that does.

Paul provides us with questions and solutions to be successful in content creation:

“If you’ll take the time to really understand who your customer is and what are the problems that they’re trying to solve, and not only as a business, but what are they trying to solve as a human? And really began to talk about what we call kind of an aspirational identity. What is their business going to look like when they solve their problem with your solution? What are they going to look like? How are they going to be the hero of their organization? And you can create content around those things. Instead of speeds and feeds, instead of features and benefits, really talk about the customer where you can kind of begin having, engaging in the conversation that’s already going on in their head.”

4. Social Ads for Optimal Success

Paul advises, “Promoting your content [on social media] is just as important as creating it. Promoting content to your audience is a way to stand out. It provides their problem with solutions and allows them to make educated buying decisions.

5. Reps on Socials

Social media is a powerful tool for digital selling and marketing. LinkedIn in particular is notorious for networking, job hunting and connecting with previous colleagues and classmates, but is also beneficial for B2B selling.

Pauls says, “Sales reps on social media should present themselves as experts that solve problems, not candidates looking for the next big opportunity. Their profile should display expertise in their field.”

In addition, Paul suggests a ”3×5 LinkedIn Marketing Plan” for sales reps:

Reach Out to Five New Contacts: Send connection requests to five new contacts.
Comment on Five Posts: Engage with content on your newsfeed, especially from prospects.
Send Five Direct Messages a Day: Use five direct messages to provide connections with useful information.

“If you’re doing this in tandem or coordination with the marketing department,” Paul remarks, “again sales and marketing alignment, then you should have lots of great resources that you can DM (Direct Market) or the sales reps can DM to their audience.”