Table of contents
Key takeawaysCollaboration platforms are essential to the new way of workingEmployees prefer engati over emailEmployees play a growing part in software purchasing decisionsThe future of work is collaborativeMethodologyIntroduction
Here is an overview of the essentials you need when building your B2B marketing tool belt with Tom Pick.
Tom Pick is a B2B marketing consultant who’s helped dozens of small to midsized organizations, from solopreneurs to $100 million enterprises improve their online visibility, website traffic, lead generation, and business results.
He has helped companies address tough B2B marketing planning and execution challenges, improve the customer experience, and optimize marketing technology strategy.
He has also been awarded with Disruptive Marketing Influencers: New Year 2020, 15 Powerful B2B, Marketing Influencers You Need to Follow, Bright Minds of Martech: 14 Visionaries to Read & Follow, Top 100 Social Media Marketing Influencers to Follow in 2019, and more.
Interview with Tom Pick
The following section is a summary of our interview with Tom. But if you'd like to listen to the whole interview, we've left our Spotify podcast for you to listen to below.
There’s a lot of technology right now for everything to be automated and streamlined. For example, there are over 8000 tools available in 2020 for MarTech.
If a digital marketer who was starting out looked at this, they’d be overwhelmed, so here’s a simpler diagram by Mark. You’re essentially using tools for four different steps.
First, we have the planning stage- this is using technology to plan what kind of content to put out. We’re using technology for research and topic ideation, competitive research, etc.
This is then followed by the production stage. Using tools like Grammarly, for writing, to produce content. This is not just limited to writing tools, there are also visual content tools, like Canva, Visme photo editors, video and audio editors, and more.
Then we have tools to distribute our content in an optimal way. This is where SEO tools like Stormlocal, keyword researching, auto-scheduling tools, and email marketing come in. This is where marketers ask themselves- how do we distribute this content to as many people possible?
And finally, we have the analysis phase, where we try to understand how our audience perceives our content. This is where web analytics and competitive intelligence tools come in.
These are the basic four stages of how to leverage tech to streamline each process, but there are also personal productivity tools, for example. And we keep progressing, we now also have tools like AI-powered chatbot, like Engati to nurture. We have tools to handle sales, influencer marketing, etc.
Essentially, it’s about understanding what’s out there and what it can do for you.
There are a variety of models to explain this. We first had models such as the PESO model, which stood for Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned. Which then evolved into the POSEE model, which stood for Paid, Owned, Shared, Earned, and, Emailer.
But according to Tom, it first starts with our owned content. Followed by social media management, then paid and advertised content. This is the top of the funnel. Then email can be used to not only, gather cold leads, but for lead nurturing as well. Which is why companies need customer software engagement tools.
Your content is a demonstration of your expertise and helpfulness. At the end of the day, people need to have a familiarity with your brand. They need to know what you are and what you stand for.
Influencer marketing is a great tool to build communities for your brand. They’re also great at helping with getting the word out about you. It’s important to distinguish between the B2C influencer, and the B2B.
The B2C influencer is more image-oriented. This is where we see the Instagram influencer. We have to be careful about using these kinds of influencers. There’s a lot of concern due to the superficial nature of image-oriented credibility. There’s an overall lack of credibility and ethics so it may have an adverse effect on the brand.
The B2B influencer is different. It’s more knowledge-oriented so there’s more credibility. This "earned credibility" has a lot of potential for SMBs to work with influencers for content development, expanding the network, and referrals. This means there’s more trust, so the community that gets built becomes more tight-knit.
Both are important. Tom has an analogy that he likes to use- We have the tomato plant vs the apple tree.
Tomato plants are like paid marketing. They produce products very quickly, but it doesn’t last long. We have to keep monitoring them, and nurturing the plants to consistently give a high yield of product.
Then we have the apple tree, which is content-marketing. It doesn’t do a lot initially, but it builds over time and has many long term benefits. Content-marketing is evergreen, so it’s important to spend time here. Try to get content from the founder. The heart and soul of content comes from the founder, so it’s important to get that passion out for your content.
For paid-advertising to work, we have to keep doing it, i.e, we have to keep paying money. It’s an excellent tool for startups to create brand awareness, but it gets expensive very quickly. Both advertising and content marketing are important so here are a few tips to get the most out of them:
