Transform Your Marketing From B2B to Person-to-Person (P2P)
Your company has been around for years. You have a set of loyal customers that know what you offer. They call your office to conduct some kind of actual business, but your employee must first talk about the soccer match from over the weekend, how the house project they are working on is going, and how the kids are handling wearing a mask all day at school.
Project Manager
To a hard-nosed business owner, this may sound like time that will need to be made up at the end of the day; and no, not during happy hour.
But, believe it or not, the customer that called has actually transitioned from buying products from your business to buying them from your staff. They no longer say they have to call “Business X” to order something, instead it’s become “I have to call Bryan,” (which, by the way, just happens to be the name of one of our Project Managers. Coincidence? I think, not.)
This happens because even in the business to business sales world, people still buy from people.
MARKETING YOUR BUSINESS TO PEOPLE, NOT OTHER BUSINESSES
Salespeople want to transition from “Business to Business” (B2B) sales into “People to People” (P2P) sales as quickly as possible. They do this by building a relationship, learning personalities and creating a friendly environment between the companies.
If this is the plan for your sales staff, why does your B2B marketing effort present differently?
Far too often we think that our B2B marketing has to be stuffy, vague and unwilling to share all that information on what your business actually does. Yet, people buy from people, right? So why does your brand message not reflect that?
MAKE STORY TELLING INTERESTING
Marketers have been screaming from the mountain tops that in order to be heard you need to put out great content. For those of us not in Colorado (where the mountains are) this means you have to be spreading the word about your business for others to read, watch and digest.
But what happens when you write content (blogs, articles, press releases, website copy, etc.) and your audience needs a 4-shot cup of espresso just to get through the opening paragraph? More than likely it’s because the content was written for a business and not an actual person.
Your business can combat the insomnia-curing, instant-deleting content dilemma by telling your company’s story. Social media has taken this concept to new levels by allowing users to share…. you guessed it, stories. Your business content should take a similar approach as well.
FINDING YOUR BUSINESS’ VOICE
Your business is exciting. What you offer to customers leaves them thinking “well that’s awesome.” So, the message that you present to potential customers should lead to a similar reaction.
When you go about telling your story it is important to think about the voice of your business. Think of it as your company mascot, your guy in a chicken suit selling used cars. Businesses did that to be eye catching, clever and memorable.
Now with the noise that is digital marketing (social media, digital ads, banner ads, etc) it takes a lot to grab people’s attention. Which is all the more reason to think people to people and not business to business when you’re putting your content together.
Creating a voice should be a reflection of your staff. Think of the personalities of those that do the work for you. How do they interact with customers? How do they communicate? What is their style of conversation?
Take these big personalities that make your office fun and entertaining and allow your business voice to reflect them. You hired them because they had the right personality for the company and a resume that fit the job. So, if you had the confidence to pull the trigger and bring them in, why not share who they are with your potential customers?
HOW TO TELL THE STORY
At Signalfire, there isn’t anything we like more than a morning filled with coffee, Kwik Trip dunkers and talking about the things we love, like connecting with clients to tell their stories. Well, that and maybe a beer on Friday afternoon. And the weekends… we love the weekends.
If you and your staff run on coffee, cheap donuts and beer, like we do, let’s talk. Give our office a call to set up a time to stop in and Bryan will make sure he has some coffee ready for you.