Comments from K2 Global Communications

 

Sales enablement content is the bridge that connects the challenges your customers face to your solution’s features.

Topics: Messaging, Sales, USP, Sales enablement content, UVP

Robert, CMO of a cybersecurity business, devotes his energies to making his company’s solution stand out in a very crowded marketplace. He ensures his marketing and sales teams stay on top of the latest available analytics, CRM, social media, and other technologies that’ll help them achieve his goals. While Bob is a super-effective CMO, he’s also a fanatical sportsman - forever trying to fit tennis matches in his already busy schedule - as well as a devoted dad of three.

Topics: Marketing, Message, Messaging, B2B, Customer journey, Integrated marketing

Hmmm…should this be a blog or rant?

We’re constantly amazed at the number of companies who’ve been around for years and don’t have a cohesive messaging document (MD).

While I understand the aversion – MDs are difficult to execute, with various stakeholders within the company trying to get their voices heard – a well-conceived MD creates a virtual paint-by-numbers scenario, where all of your unique value propositions/unique selling propositions (UVPs/USPs) are well defined for audiences across the purchasing chain, smoothing the account-based marketing process.

Topics: Marketing, Brand, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, Corporate communications, Client relations, Integrated marketing

 

Understanding the role of market research and up-to-date intelligence

Many companies are overlooking the critical importance of market research and fail to use it to get actionable insights about their customers. With unpredictable markets, up-to-date intelligence from effective research can help B2B marketers stay on top of customers’ evolving needs to clearly understand what they want or don’t want - knowledge that can inspire truly customer-centric messaging.

Topics: Market research, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, B2B, Marketing strategy

B2B messaging should clearly explain the unique value and selling propositions (UVPs/USPs) and myriad advantages of your solution to everyone participating in purchasing process. Sometimes, that just isn’t achieved.

Fail 1 - The “too-broad” B2B messaging

General marketing blah-blah is not appreciated. Technology products are very rarely designed for general use, and the more specific you message to your personas, the better. Messaging must make it immediately apparent who benefits from your product and how.

Topics: Persona, Customer communications, Message, Messaging, B2B

Run Smooth-as-Silk Analyst Briefings

Analysts are undeniably one of today’s top enterprise influencer groups - providing value with their finger on the pulse on the market, understanding of customer needs and pain points, and ability to advise clients which vendor and solutions to consider.

Topics: Analyst, Analyst relations, Messaging

At the end of the day, businesses market to people, not to faceless decision-making committees or a bunch of same-demographic consumers. Whether you’re selling to CEOs or stay-at-home dads, your marketing should speak to individual customers - think “human” instead of “the client” or “the client company” - each with his or her own tastes, interests, expectations, preferences, life, and work situations.

Topics: Content marketing, Content, Marketing, Brand, Customer communications, Audience, Messaging, Corporate communications, ABM, PESO

Consumers are overwhelmed with offers – WhatsApp ads, retargeting, Facebook and LinkedIn ads, text messages, and some even still watch TV and listen to the radio. In today’s super-competitive climate, if you want to get prospects’ attention and money, you’ll need to hook them with highly targeted messages wrapped in something:

Topics: News value, Content marketing, Marketing, Customer communications, Messaging, Personas, Sales, Client relations, Video, B2C

Recent research indicates that influencer marketing can generate 11 times greater ROI than more traditional strategies. Unlike conventional tactics that push a message in front of sometimes reluctant audiences, influencer marketing delivers your message via credible, authoritative experts to audiences who trust their content over that from brands. Moreover, influencer marketing is more critical for B2B than for B2C: With B2B purchase price overwhelming B2C’s, word of mouth and endorsement is critical to the former’s success.

Topics: Marketing, Analyst relations, Inbound marketing, Messaging, PR, Account-based marketing, Sales, ABM, Influencer

Have you ever booked a hotel on Kayak or ordered a food processor from Amazon? These are all classic examples of business to business to customer (B2B2C), in which the manufacturer sells a product or service to the channel or route to the customer, making the latter’s end-product more valuable to the consumer.

Topics: Content, Marketing, Inbound marketing, Customer communications, Messaging, PR, Sales, B2C, Influencer, B2B2C, B2B