B2B marketing and sales are changing fast, and while experience matters, we need to keep up with the latest. Launch Team uses a mix of formal and informal, in-person and online, peer groups, and book clubs to support a continuous learning culture.
Our latest ‘book club’ was a discussion of a Netflix special, the Social Dilemma.
Already four years old, this is an apt discussion but a dated one. Today, algorithms are more advanced, and the data lake is far bigger, and the same concerns over social media should now focus on AI. It raises some interesting questions:
As the platforms are optimized to promote addiction, how can we optimize and gamify for positive action?
B2B tech isn’t spending enough to win this game in social media on most platforms. We’re competing for airtime with consumer influencers, and now in an election year, a massive amount of political ad spend.
You can, however, use the same psychology of gamification internally. We’ve worked to gamify positive change adoption for employees in change management and improved sales with activity leaderboards in CRMs. Externally, pay attention to psychology, A/B testing everything, and use it to improve engagement in social media, digital, and email marketing.
How can marketers fill the gap in real human connection?
Sales, marketing, engineering, and customer service must work together to provide a consistently excellent customer experience. Marketing can support improved connections with market research, customer demographics and personas, and customer interviews. It’s marketing’s job to help the company understand the customer and tell a (true) story that resonates.
Providing a consistent omnichannel experience is key today – some customers want to talk to a person, others want only to interact digitally, and some want a combination. The key is to provide all of it in a consistent manner and allow your customers to choose how they want to interact.
Find and use your authentic voice when creating content for social media or other platforms. AI can be great for research and proofreading but don’t hand over your voice to those tools. Your customers and prospects are interested in your unique perspective, expertise, and opinions; don’t lose that.
What is performing best in design today?
AI is driving a templated approach, and that is creating a ‘sameness’. It is efficient and best practice-based but ineffective in building an authentic and unique brand.
Think about what resonates with your customer, and balance that with your branding. Campaign-specific and platform-specific design is performing well for us. It brings a freshness of thought and creativity.
What else have you seen working on social?
Our clients are getting very good results mixing paid and organic social and using paid to grow audiences. If you already have a large follower base, organic can work well. However, paid is very effective in growing audiences if you have good content to promote.
Consider direct downloads and newsletters right in the social media channel. We are already jumping enough from platform to platform while looking at social media. When we are on LinkedIn and see a resource that is interesting, we want it immediately. Long gone are the days when we jump from platform to website to form to get a download. Direct downloads within social platforms allow for a fast experience in finding and reading resources. They will capture the user without pulling them to other platforms they don’t want to head to.
An example we’ve seen work well is LinkedIn’s article posts. These are more suited for long-form content and are similar to a blog post - including a banner image, title section, and more advanced styling features. These can be used to give a glimpse of an article or blog post that’s hosted on your site, with the full article linked at the bottom of your post.
What do our clients need from us today?
An understanding of the algorithms, how to raise visibility and engagement in an increasingly noisy world, and now more than ever, how to create genuine connections with customers and prospects. This has recently moved into sales training, particularly in highly technical sales models. Those teams need to reset how and when customers want to connect. We’re doing more live events at tradeshows, creating brand experiences, and might see the return of direct mail.
We’re happy to share our book club list, or talk through how you can improve connection to your customer base. Let’s book a time.
