Video is playing an increasingly more important role in our lives than anytime before. According to recent statistics collected by Google, people around the globe collectively watch more than one billion hours of video content on YouTube every single day. The prevalence of accessible video content in our modern society is reshaping the way that we share, learn, connect, and market. 

At the same time, video production has become much more accessible. Recent advances in production technology have allowed for non-professionals to create studio-quality video without a lot of specialized equipment. With this change, we see the customer appetite and expectation for new video content continue to grow for every video application, from entertainment to education, and marketing. 

Possibly one of the simplest reasons why you need to incorporate video content into your marketing mix is that 71% of people watch more videos than they did a year ago and that trend is predicted to continue to grow.

For businesses, it is important to embrace these trends as a catalyst for change in the way that we market products and services online. Video is changing the way that we all communicate with each other and that extends to the way in which businesses share information. 

To best use video content in your B2B organization, we break down the most important ways in which video content can benefit your marketing strategy.

Engage and Retain Customers

Customer engagement and retention has long been one of the most important considerations for any marketing or communication strategy.

The B2B market is unique for a number of reasons. There are normally more stakeholders who are involved in a purchasing decision when compared to a B2C sale. Business stakeholders will likely respond to marketing messages much more critically than a normal consumer. They typically will require more specific information about a product or service before making a purchase decision. 

In this example for TEMPO, a software platform application for mining and aviation fleet maintenance, we were able to break down complex concepts into easy  to understand, engaging segments that are critical to audience needs and explain how the platform works. 

 

Compared to other traditional forms of media, video has the potential to more effectively engage potential customers, explain complex concepts and communicate value. 

Video has consistently been shown to be a more engaging platform than text or audio because of how easy it is to format content to address multiple needs of the consumer. Content can be created to be not only stimulating and entertaining, but also to deliver key messaging to an audience, answering questions they might have about a product or service. 

B2B video also allows you to hook audiences in ways you can’t with other traditional media. Once hooked, the long-term format of most videos increases audience retention and website visit duration. With video being such an engaging platform, it is no wonder that 94% of marketers who use video already plan to continue doing so into the future.

Create Versatile Content

One of the biggest benefits of video marketing is that the content is very versatile and can be deployed for a number of different applications.

Creating content that might be used across several platforms can significantly increase the amount of website traffic and customer conversions that a company gets. Crossposting content will also positively impact the amount of impressions that one piece of content creates. A 2020 study showed that 65% of executives visit the website of a company after viewing a branded YouTube video. This is just one example of how deploying versatile content across many platforms can help to an increase in leads and website traffic. This phenomenon extends into social video sharing platforms, in which marketers are seeing extraordinary results from video marketing campaigns. 

And social media is just one option for using video. It is common now for marketing departments to make the most of their content marketing by creating video versions of written content to expand engagement to a larger audience, thus getting more mileage out of one piece of writing. 

A single video can be used for: 

In this sense, it is much more cost effective than other forms of media. Also, long form video can be edited into shorter snippets used to fuel social media, email, and digital advertising campaign efforts.

Stand out from competitors and establish your brand 

With good, consistent, and engaging video content, audiences will develop a unique perspective of a brand. This unique customer relationship is strengthened through consistency, and frequency of content that creates familiarity and builds trust. Audiences will be much more likely to make a return visit to a company’s website if the video content hosted on that website is predictable, consistent and informative. 

Video is the ideal platform to create content that makes you stand out from the competition. Video allows for businesses to create unique content that communicates the personality of your organization in ways that text cannot. One can highlight unique cultural aspects of their organization through testimonials and interviews to show why their company is different. The possibilities for expression in video helps to give audiences a more distinguishing perspective of your company and brand. 

For Canon Medical Health Informatics, we were able to deliver key attributes of their imaging platform along with a brand point of view by creating a master video and then editing it into shorter segments for use across various media. The result was a clear differentiation of Canon HIT from its competitors.   

Use Subject Matter Experts to Build Stronger Relationships

Video allows organizations to share their company’s personality by including key subject matter experts, engaging spokespersons ro customer testimonials. Incorporating these experts will help to engage your audience through an appeal to authority, essentially helping to make your content more credible and persuasive. This can be a very powerful tool in establishing your brand and building trust with your audience, as you open doors to the people behind the product or services you offer. 

As the way that individuals interact with media continues to evolve, it is easy to recognize the increasing use of video as a means of B2B communication. Its benefits as a marketing tool are consistently proven to be too great for any business to ignore. 

Reaching one’s goals for engagement, messaging, and branding opportunities with video is much more attainable than with other forms of media. The return on investment is unmatched as video content can be effectively deployed across more platforms than audio or text alone. 

Nearly 87% of B2B businesses are already sharing some form of video on their website or across social media. What is stopping you from incorporating video into your B2B marketing strategy?

Where do you start? 

Getting started can be a daunting task. If you are considering video as a part of your marketing, we can help. Spend an hour with us and we will walk through a video storytelling framework that will help you shape a master brand video and a video strategy. 

To effectively market in today’s noisy, fractured marketing landscape, you’ve got to be firmly in charge of your customer’s experience. That starts with a strategic B2B marketing plan that revolves around your potential buyers. 

B2B buyers are bombarded with choices, but they are unequivocal in what they demand: relevant information delivered through a coordinated and personalized decision-making experience. If they don’t get it, they’ll take their purchasing power elsewhere and look for alternatives to meet their needs.

With the hype of marketing efforts from social media to influencers to content marketing, it is tempting to leap into tactical initiatives when beginning to formulate an annual marketing plan. But without an overall marketing strategy driven by your customers’ value journeys and your business needs, you’re missing the critical “why” behind the tactics.

It is important to step back and follow some fundamental principles that help guide your strategy and identify which tactics will be implemented and how they influence buyers at different stages of the customer value journey.

The 7 steps to build an effective, strategic B2B marketing plan:

    1. Analyze your company’s situation in the market.
    2. Outline your buyer.
    3. Define the Customer Value Journey.
    4. Set SMART goals.
    5. Identify tactics to meet strategic goals.
    6. Establish Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
    7. Set your budget.

These steps, done properly, will set you up for success. 

1. Analyze Your Company’s Situation in the Market

Before you can get started with your marketing plan, it is a good idea to do some self-examination by revisiting or defining your current state or situation.

This entails three key areas of focus: 

Conducting a basic SWOT analysis is an important foundational and fundamental step to creating an annual marketing plan. It is essential to review and define your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the context of your marketplace, competition and your recent efforts. If you have done this in prior years, it is good to review previous SWOTs, measure progress, and compare changes in the marketplace.

The temptation is to skip this important work and just begin “planning.” Don’t do that. Like practicing the fundamentals of any sport, this is essential to performance. Doing this will reward you with new insights and fresh opportunities, and will have a positive impact as you begin to better align with your customer wants.

2. Define Your Target Audience

If your company already has buyer personas, we encourage you to revisit these and refine them. If you don’t have a buyer persona, you should create them.

We are big proponents of bringing marketing and sales together during some of these initial planning steps. Your sales team is an important resource when creating buyer personas, and a few of the steps to follow; helping define the customer value journey and defining parts of your measurement plan. 

A recent survey by Hubspot found that when sales and
marketing teams work together, companies see 36% higher
customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates. 

For defining the customer audience, we use Customer Avatars which are similar to personas but go deeper to help you understand your customer’s world – the stressors, the opportunities, and the vision for the future. 

The Customer Avatar is a snapshot of a person in time that defines:

Once you have this information detailed, it’ll help you define a Customer Value Journey for your buyer. 

According to Gartner, the typical buying group for a complexB2B solution involves six to ten decision-makers, each armed with four or five pieces of information they’ve gathered independently and must de-conflict with the group.

We recommend you have an avatar for each key audience member that defines the different details that impact their information gathering and decision-making within their role. In some cases, you may have multiple audiences for a single product or service. 

3. Define the Customer Value Journey

We believe documenting the Customer Value Journey is arguably the most important step in formulating a sound marketing strategy for businesses.

The Customer Value Journey is a blueprint for creating a predictable flow of customers. It defines the step-by-step process of how buyers interact with products and services, providing a framework for converting casually interested prospects into high-value customers and brand promoters. 

Modeled after human relationships, it includes additional steps not found in a traditional marketing funnel. These steps lead to a more natural sequence of interactions, and helps align organizational and customer interests around shared success, leading to satisfied customers, advocates, and promoters. 

This framework, completed properly, will identify a current state and will reveal a host of gaps and opportunities to market to prospects. It helps you meet them on their terms through the channels they use to gather information and provide the right information to address their needs.

4. Set SMART Goals

Once you have a Customer Value Journey defined, you can determine what goals you want to achieve and how they impact specific stages of the journey.

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This means that your goals should be specific and include a time frame for which you want to complete them.

For example, your goal could be to increase sales qualified leads by 15% in six months, or a simpler goal would be to increase levels of engagement on a specific product page by the next quarter.

If you don’t have clearly defined SMART goals before you move into tactical planning, you will have little direction around what you are trying to achieve and you will not be able to hold your marketing organization accountable for ROI.

5. Identify Your Marketing Tactics

The ultimate purpose of a B2B marketing plan is to map out ​​a strategy to attract more prospects, convert more leads, close more sales and build loyal advocates. That requires selecting, implementing, and integrating the right tactics to achieve the goals you’ve set to reach your goal. 

Primary Marketing Goals: 

With these four areas in mind, determining tactics is part art and part science. The challenge is identifying the right ones and integrating them to lead your audience deeper into engagement with you.

Digital Marketing Tactics We Use At Risdall:

6. Establish Your Key Performance Indicators

You must determine key performance indicators (KPIs) that provide measures of performance against your goals.

Many times, companies do a lot of activities without a clearly outlined framework of how to measure whether those activities are having an impact. 

We recommend you begin the KPI process by focusing on a handful of the most important, actionable metrics to gain insight into the effectiveness of a particular tactic, campaign initiative, level of engagement, or even the performance of an outside specialist. 

A Growth Scorecard provides the framework needed for periodic review and assessment of initiatives and can reveal opportunities to optimize an initiative. It also provides a crucial point of accountability with senior stakeholders who need to have a line of sight to how marketing is performing.

Learn more about Growth Scorecards. 

7. Set Your Budget

Before you can finalize your marketing plan, you have to know your budget and prioritize activities to fit.

Once you have defined the tactical elements of your marketing strategy and the KPIs you are measuring, you should categorize them by importance and impact. Then, you can prioritize the tactics you will invest in first, according to the available budget. 

Create Realistic Estimates

It’s helpful to note an estimated budget or budget range for each tactic. Consider carefully who should be involved in this process, the person doing the work would be best suited to estimating the time needed. Some tactics may be managed by internal resources as part of your marketing operations budget, while other tactics or initiatives may require external specialty resources such as a contractor or agency partner. Some of your marketing budgets will need to be allocated for out-of-pocket costs associated with media. 

Conclusion

In summary, your final B2B marketing plan should be written to communicate your plan of action to stakeholders; a clear strategy, opportunities based on your SWOT, goals to address those opportunities, tactics you plan to use to achieve those goals, and a clear framework for how you will measure those tactics. 

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Looking for a trusted marketing partner to help you create an effective marketing plan? Contact our team today.

Longtime professional hockey player, coach, and broadcaster Barry Melrose said skaters should work their hardest when on the power play and it’s the defense that can sit back and settle in. While hardly anyone would claim to be on a “power play” right now, the analogy is closer than may first be obvious. 

During a power play, both teams have obstacles to overcome. One team is physically short-handed while the other is trying to beat the odds. This past hockey season, teams on the power play scored only about 20% of the time and, in fact, were scored against about 3% of time.

While both teams have disadvantages, their desired outcomes are very different. One team aims to get back to where things were, business as usual, so to speak. The other team – the one Barry Melrose said should work their hardest – aims to come away with a goal.

During these unprecedented times, many leaders of organizations say they just want to get back to business as usual, with some saying they just want to get back to work, period. That’s understandable. But it’s also the mindset of being on defense, and means the probability of coming out ahead is drastically lower.

Organizations often find themselves focusing their sights inward and losing a view of what is taking place outside of their organization. This tends to happen when organizations are busy, and doing the work takes priority over other tasks, and/or when organizations get bogged down by the business of being in business and operational functions take large chunks of the day.

In hockey, a red light signifies a goal has been scored, and by using the R-E-D technique, organizations can use this time to increase their chances of coming out even stronger.

R-E-D focuses on three actions that tend to get overlooked by many organizations: Research, Evaluate and Develop.

Research

When was the last time you took a thorough look at your industry? And, for those in B2B, how about your clients’ industries? 

Many organizations say it’s hard to find the time to invest into staying up to date on: 

Good intentions often become low priorities and, eventually, afterthoughts. If you can’t confidently say that you are an expert on what’s happening in these industries, now is the time to catch up. 

Evaluate

After completing the research phase, do this classic exercise: imagine a competitor to your business that, if it existed, would keep you up at night. What does that organization look like? How does it operate? How is it structured and how are its processes superior? What capabilities make it a threat and how does technology factor in? What kind of employees do they have, how do they attract them, and how do they keep them? 

Now, examine each part of your organization and evaluate it against this imagined, existential, threat-posing competitor. 

Develop

Now that you’ve done research and feel confident as an expert on your industry, and have evaluated all parts of your organization against an imagined top-performing competitor, it’s time to take action. 

Develop the framework, structures, processes, tool box, and team to align your organization, as closely as possible, to outperform the imagined competitor. 

Most everyone has obstacles right now. The separator is mindset. Is your mindset to sit back, settle in, and have your aim focused on getting back to business as usual? Or, is it to work your hardest and focus your aim on coming out ahead?

Ryan Richardson helps and empowers organizations to become more effective, efficient, and accountable. Though never playing, coaching, or broadcasting hockey at a high-level, he did have the hair for it.

Like millions of other college students over the last 60 or so years, my college career started with freshman Art History. 

Twice per week that first semester of college, I’d trudge across campus for the 8:30 a.m. class. Joined by a couple hundred other freshmen, we’d sit in a darkened auditorium as the professor would project classic works of art onto a large screen and describe the history of each one.

The lectures didn’t seem to be customized, dynamic, or unique. They were probably repeated, more or less word for word, each year to a new freshmen class. The class was a lecture; there was no Q&A, discussion, or any interaction at all. I’m still not exactly sure from where the professor delivered the lectures, but it was rare to actually catch a glimpse of him. There was no roll call and it’s doubtful the professor even knew the names of those taking the class. 

As concern over COVID-19 intensified and precautionary measures increased, countless organizations have begun to grapple with how to adapt to a time of sheltering at home, self quarantining, and social distancing. They are rediscovering and realizing what matters to keep customers engaged, much like the lessons I learned from my Art History class.

Lesson 1: Interaction Matters

Gyms were some the first businesses to close as COVID-19 spread through communities. Initially, many group fitness instructors live streamed their classes.

The instructors quickly found that their good intentions had difficulties – poor lighting, echoing sound, awkward framing, and maintaining live broadcasts at normal class times although their clients’ schedules had gone awry. Another problem they faced was competing with the already existing and mature industry of workout videos; exercise streaming services allow people to take any class at any time, following along with slickly produced videos. 

Others, including the dance studio my children attend, found success by making meaningful interactions. Instead of just broadcasting or recording dance classes, akin to the workout video model, they use video chat technology and maintain two-way communication. Dancers ask questions and instructors watch and give instruction on form, steps, and the routines. 

Lesson 2: Personal Connections Matter

Over the past few weeks, I’ve received numerous emails and calls from organizations stating how they are dealing with the COVID-19 situation, with many asking for support. Most of these people and/or organizations I hadn’t heard from for an extended period of time, and often times needed a reminder of who they were/what they did. 

Personal connections have always been important. We are more at ease placing our trust in those we feel we know. This may be a shopkeeper or sales rep we’ve worked with, or an organization that prioritizes authentic and meaningful communication.These personal relationships, that consisted of what seems like a continual conversation, were where support was quickly offered and accepted. 

Lesson 3: Community Matters

Seemingly overnight, amidst business changes because of COVID-19, the movement to support small businesses was put into hyperdrive. 

Communities sprung into action to patronize and organically promote small businesses and ones with strong connections to the communities in which they operate. The deep reservoirs of goodwill these organizations had established with their communities meant their communities naturally rose up to support them and show appreciation for the dynamic, adaptive, and personal ways the organizations have served them. Some of these companies have been so overwhelmed with community support that they have been barely able to keep up with fulfilling orders. 

Soon the pandemic will end, and organizations will go back to business as usual. Gyms parking lots will once again fill up, commerce will rebound, and communities will chat about more than the latest COVID-19 prediction model.

In any crisis, lessons can be learned to make tomorrow better. Many are now discovering or rediscovering the importance of interactions, personal connections, collaboration and community.

As it was, my entire freshman Art History course could have been recorded by a professor anywhere in the world and made available for anyone on Earth with an internet connection to watch at their leisure. Take the time to make sure your clients, prospects, and connections know what about your business is unique, that you understand their needs, and that you truly care about making them successful. 

Ryan Richardson is the Director of Media at Risdall Marketing Group and has a deep appreciation for classical art.

Ted Risdall, our Chairman and CEO, was honored to be featured on the WeMentor Mondays podcast for September 2019. In this in-depth episode, Ted discusses what it takes for second-generation businesses to succeed in today’s marketplace. Specifically transitioning Risdall to a digital-focused firm during the biggest communication and technology revolution of our lifetime.

Ted talks about how he and his Dad, agency founder John Risdall, led together until 2016. Then how Ted and his wife, Jennifer Risdall, became sole owners of this digital marketing agency. Through these ongoing transitions, Risdall has become known as one of the most innovative, integrated advertising agencies in Minnesota.

Download the complete podcast here.

Risdall’s VP of Digital Strategy, Erik Hinds, was honored to be selected as a judge for this year’s WebAward Competition. This annual award was created by the Web Marketing Association (WMA) as a way of setting high standards for internet marketing and web design and development. 

Judging this competition is particularly interesting to Mr. Hinds, as Risdall has won dozens of WMA awards in the past. “After years of being a participant, it’s a really interesting experience to be on the other side of the table,” said Hinds. “This competition allows me to see the best of the best in web development as well as employ these new ideas and practices into our own work at Risdall.”

During this competition, 20 to 30 mobile websites will be reviewed, with only a select few being honored as recipients of WMA awards. These awards help push the continuous development and improvement of standards across the web. The judging period wrapped up at the end of July.

Our entire team is thrilled to be part of this competition and hope to continue this relationship in the future.

As a marketer, there is nothing more I would rather say than that an outside consultant or agency is the solution to all your digital marketing problems. While we can do a lot to guide you to remarkable achievement, we have found organizations that align marketing and sales have much greater rates of success. 

The facts don’t lie. When sales and marketing are aligned, good things happen. At the end of the day, they are responsible for the ultimate goal, bottom-line business growth.

Alignment is easier said than done, right? As an agency, we don’t think so. We’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly and there are some key approaches we’ve found to be successful in creating alignment between sales and marketing. These are two different perspectives, but equally important roles within a company.

When sales and marketing are working well together, it is great to be a part of but when they aren’t, there can be tension and lack of collaboration. These are a few of the things of the negative perceptions we’ve seen.

Sales perspectives on Marketing

  1. Marketing acts as the brand police and a support to sales 
  2. Marketing is not able to generate Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs). They are good at awareness building.
  3. The leads marketing provides are not qualified and low value.
  4. Until we see a better approach, the way we network is familiar and still works pretty well so why change? 
  5. Consultation is the best way to derive client needs and establish a healthy sales relationship.
  6. Since marketers aren’t with customers everyday, they don’t understand what they really want or need.

Marketings perspective on Sales

  1. Salespeople don’t care about the awareness generated or the tools made available to them. 
  2. Sales doesn’t follow up on the leads provided.
  3. Sales is unwilling to consider new ways of reaching audiences.
  4. Sales struggles to define the target audience beyond general explanation.
  5. Sales tends to dictate messaging based on what they are trained to say about the product.
  6. Sales struggles to embrace new ways of measuring progress other than revenue or number of sales.

Most sales and marketing teams tend to be siloed, questioning their peers’ strategies, skills and perspectives. What we have found is they either don’t talk enough, don’t talk about the right things or don’t talk at the right times. 

How is your process working today?”

Take this survey by rating these things on a scale of 1-5, with 1 being awful and 5 being great.

  1. How often during campaign planning do sales and marketing communicate?
  2. How willing is marketing to involve sales in the marketing planning process?
  3. How involved are sales and marketing in shaping marketing initiatives together?
  4. How willing is sales to allow marketing to access their customers to conduct research?
  5. How involved is sales and marketing in collaborating to define the customer together and outline their decision-making journey – behaviors, needs, and what resonates with them? 
  6. Do marketing and sales find alignment on brand purpose, key messages and proof points for each of their customer segments?
  7. Do sales and marketing define what an MQL (marketing qualified lead) and SQL (sales qualified lead) is together? 
  8. Do sales and marketing agree on each other’s role in impacting MQLs and SQLs?
  9. Are both sales and marketing willing to review and share marketing and sales plans with each other?
  10. Do your sales and marketing teams determine together various levels of success from top-of-funnel to bottom – success metrics/KPIs pertaining to each initiative?
  11. Do sales and marketing have a shared ROI outline?
  12. Do sales and marketing have clearly agreed upon shared and exclusive attribution for SQLs?
  13. Do sales and marketing conduct monthly sales and marketing meetings to foster communication, promote understanding and report success?

If you scored lower than a 3 on any of these you need to be concerned. If you scored a 3 or 4, you still have work to do. If you scored a 5 on all, you can stop reading.

Suggestions for improvement

Below are some disciplines we have found helpful in bridging the gap that often exists between the teams We refer to them as disciplines because they need to be regularized in your organization in order to be effective long term. In many cases it falls to senior leaders to reinforce them.

The  ultimate goal is to foster better communication, collaboration and understanding between sales and marketing. That may be uncomfortable for both teams but it will prove invaluable. 

Disciplines for better alignment

  1. Creating constant points of communication, collaboration and alignment
  2. Clearly defining the marketplace
  3. Clearly defining a brand’s purpose and social mission together
  4. Clearly defining the audiences’ decision making journey and the content that meets them in their journey
  5. Setting clear marketing goals together. Clearly define KPIs together. Clearly define an SQL
  6. Clear agreement on attribution

Let’s explain each one of these in greater detail and why it is important.

Creating constant points of communication, collaboration and alignment

Meeting regularly – Creating a cadence of interaction is the best way to begin to have alignment between sales and marketing. Having marketing people sit in on sales meetings and having sales people join marketing meetings will begin to foster a greater understanding and sense of team.

Providing marketing overview for new sales people and vice versa – This is often overlooked but is very important. Just as an outside agency or consultant must explain their role, approach and capability, it is essential new sales team members have a clear understanding of marketing. The reciprocal should be true for new marketing people. They should be given a sales orientation. 

Planning meetings – Any major effort would benefit from the presence of both sales and marketing at the table. This collaboration will lead to richer information sharing gathering, ideas being shared and to better outcomes. Workshops are a great way to gather information and draw out information that would otherwise not be shared. Focusing on three areas; audience needs, marketing journey roadmap and desired Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) takes the focus off what marketing does or what sales does and puts the focus squarely on what is best for reaching customers. 

Regular meetings – Set up a meeting cadence. You should meet at least once a month using this time to review progress, clear any hurdles that have presented themselves and analyze results.

Clearly defining the marketplace together 

How big is your marketplace? Where is the greatest concentration of opportunity – are there regions or audiences that are more target rich? Are there timing or trends impacting sales? What are the current sales strategies? What are their goals? Who is the competition and what are their advantages? What differentiates our brand/product or service from our competition. 

These are some of the questions that sales and marketing should explore together in initial discussions. Including sales and marketing in a discovery workshop will build a better understanding of the competitive landscape, and define target audience.

Clearly defining a brand’s purpose and social mission together

Much of the time the focus is on the “what” in selling a product or service and not necessarily focused on the why. Defining the “why” a company is in business separates companies that sell products in the same category and helps create a deeper emotional connection to a product or service with an audience. A social mission can be very empowering for a brand, demonstrating a commitment to community, the environment and the general greater good. Working on these two areas will help differentiate your brand and elevate your messaging and purpose for all marketing communications.

Clearly defining the audiences decision making journey and the content that meets them in their journey

95% of buyers choose a solution provider that provides them ample content to navigate the buying journey. –Marketing Essentials

By defining our buyer personas together in marketing terms, marketing can help sales understand the ways marketing approaches defining various needs, and the information that impacts the decision making process at each stage of the buyer journey. By doing this in a collaborative workshop, sales will see that marketing is genuinely concerned with impacting audiences beyond building awareness – developing strategies to deliver the right content to navigate each stage of the buying process and shorten the sales cycle.

If you are constantly promoting new offers and content, it’s important to keep the sales team up-to-date with these promotions so they know what recent offer their leads are receiving.

Setting clear marketing goals together. Clearly define KPIs together. Clearly define MQLs and SQLs

Keeping your team focused and united requires setting clear marketing goals and defining KPIs that everyone can agree to. It helps to think in terms of the marketing funnel and define KPIs accordingly. 

A general example of KPIs could be:

MQLs – Marketing qualified leads

SQLs – Marketing qualified leads

Nurturing and cross-selling

Having clear KPIs defined at each stage of the buyers’ journey will allow sales and marketing to rally in support of both functions.

Clear agreement on attribution

Successful attribution requires having the right technology, people and processes in place to measure multiple touch points along the customer’s journey. 

As marketers, we need to understand which content and campaigns are driving the best results and leading to sales. Regular reviews of campaign metrics with the sales team allows you to share information and data and allows them to provide feedback on lead quality.

Multi-touch attribution will require a disciplined approach to data capture and analysis, requiring sales and marketing to have an understanding of the technologies that measure various touch points during customer journey and agree upon their weight (significance) in influencing customer behavior.

Further, since customers don’t always buy immediately it will be important for sales and marketing to define latent conversion KPIs that might be triggered by email or a retargeting campaign and a new offer. These activities may happen after a sales contact and determining the credit can be a challenge. Agreement on KPIs for the entire journey and the attributabution of an initiative is critical for sales and marketing to share credit appropriately and optimize efforts for greater effectiveness.

Companies with tightly aligned sales and marketing departments see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates. – Hubspot

If you have reached this point and feel the need to develop a more collaborative relationship between sales and marketing, Risdall can help. We offer strategic  planning workshops designed to establish the structure needed to collaborate better and market more effectively. Contact us today to talk more! 

It’s a pretty safe guess that most business professionals are familiar with the concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But after that, SEO is an enigma that we all know is important, but we either hand it off to someone else or we completely ignore it.

When Risdall originally put together our Guide to an Effective SEO Strategy, the goal was to demystify SEO and break-down effective SEO strategy into several main areas. While most companies will want to work with an experienced SEO partner, there are methods and activities everyone can do to improve how search engines are reading (and finding) your website.

Guide to an Effective SEO Strategy cover

Ultimately, every company should have a proactive SEO strategy, not to mention a dedicated budget, but Risdall’s Guide to an Effective SEO Strategy will explain the main concepts everyone should understand about SEO and the essential components that should be in every SEO plan.

Click here to download the eBook.

After 47 years as a marketing firm and being at the forefront of digital marketing, we’ve heard it all:

Fortunately, thanks to our expertise in digital marketing, focused targeting, and understanding of the buyer’s journey, we’ve had great success in connecting companies with the unique and specific audiences that purchase their product.

A sub-sub industry

Risdall recently partnered with Bone Foam, a respected manufacturer of patient-positioning devices used during orthopedic surgery. In layman’s terms, these are the positioners that keep your legs and arms in optimal placement during surgeries or for x-ray imaging. Traditionally, many facilities would position patient limbs with pillows and blankets, so our goal was to communicate a situation where there was a great new product that can simplify the lives of a very specific audience within the healthcare industry.

An assumption that had to be challenged and tested was the belief that healthcare professionals didn’t talk about products online and that advertising these solutions on social platforms was a risky proposition.

Finding a connection

While having a specialized audience does reduce the total size of people you want to connect with, it allows us to target people our clients are looking to connect with very accurately. In Bone Foam’s case, our team researched professionals who worked in a variety of roles around orthopedic surgery. This includes surgeons, nurses, operating room (OR) technicians and specialists.

By targeting this audience with content and ads for Bone Foam products, we were able to attract new customers as well as encourage discussion between professionals who are existing Bone Foam users. The amount of discussion generated on social media was significant and incredibly positive, as were the overall results of this campaign.

During this specific campaign the effort reached over 140,000 targeted people, generated 1,825 reactions to promoted posts, sparked a 300 percent increase in traffic to Bone Foam’s website, and a 120 percent  increase in quote requests.

Recreating success

This case illustrates how Risdall is able to effectively target and connect with very specific audiences that fall within larger categories. Instead of simply focusing on healthcare, we were able to connect with the specific influential professionals that have a strong interest in the solutions our client offers.

This strategic approach is not limited to healthcare and can be recreated for targeted audiences within any industry, geographical location, company, and/or job title. However, when planning a targeted marketing campaign, it’s essential to partner with a marketing agency that has experience in reaching specific audiences.

Read the complete Bone Foam case study here!

In the decision phase of a conversion or sales funnel, prospects will often do comparisons to competing products or services. Fortunately, this provides an opportunity for both organic and paid media campaigns. In this post, we will help you take advantage of this comparison process and tip the decision balance in your favor.

Sales Funnel

Snag low-funnel opportunities and the lowest hanging fruit using comparison pages in four easy steps.

Here are the four steps:

  1. Find out what/who you are compared to
  2. Build a comparison page
  3. Optimize for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  4. Build a paid campaign

Step 1: Your Competition

You may already know who you are being compared to. But just to be sure, you should check with the authority on the subject; Google.Begin your research by entering your brand or product into Google and add “vs” to the query to get an autosuggest list of competitors.

Below we will use Freshbooks, and online accounting platform as an example:

Google search results

Google will provide you with a list of competitors that people are actually comparing you to online. (Bonus: Use the Chrome plugin Keywords Everywhere to get search volume and cost-per-click.)

From the query above, we can tell that we should definitely setup comparison pages for:

Step 2 – How to Build Your Comparison Page

Before we get into any page building, you have to make sure that both:

  1. The comparison is relevant
  2. Your offering is superior

Start by mapping out the comparison points that showcase your offering in a positive light. (Note: do a separate comparison for each competitor. Don’t align all of them and judge them on the same criteria.)

Plan on building a separate page for each competitor. At a minimum your page should contain:

As an example, let’s look at how Freshbooks approaches a comparison to their main competitor; Quickbooks:

Using Comparison Pages to Leverage SEO, PPC Campaign Opportunity

Comparison Grid

Remember, we are looking to position your differentiators. Freshbooks goes to the extreme and puts all the checkmarks in their column. While it looks impressive at first glance, this could come off as disingenuous.

Once you have compared apples to apples, it’s time to establish other benefits of your offer.

Additional Benefits

Below we can see how Freshbooks shows additional selling points. These may be offered by your competitors as well, like 24/7 support:

Using Comparison Pages to Leverage SEO, PPC Campaign Opportunity

Keep in mind that you are attempting to make the conversion decision a slam dunk.

Once you have checked all the internal boxes for features, the next step is to establish trustworthiness.

Building Trust

Any conversion focused web page needs to establish trust with the visitor. Using social proof and trust iconography are good methods for trust building.

Relevant trust iconography and symbols:

Using Comparison Pages to Leverage SEO, PPC Campaign Opportunity

Sample customer service review

Unisys review

Other high profile customers or media mentions:

Using Comparison Pages to Leverage SEO, PPC Campaign Opportunity

Now that you have established trust with the visitor, guide them to the next step.

Build a Call to Action (CTA)

Before you start designing and developing a web page, outline your desired next step you want the visitor to take.

Examples include:

Using Comparison Pages to Leverage SEO, PPC Campaign Opportunity

Try for Free button

Make sure that your CTA is used multiple times throughout the webpage:

Step 3 – Optimize for SEO

Now that you have designed and built a great landing page, you need to make sure it can be found.

Follow SEO best practices and use YOUR BRAND/PRODUCT vs. YOUR COMPETITOR  in the following:

Meta Description

Take great care in crafting your meta description. This is where you get your chance to make a first impression.

For example; “How does ABC compare to XYZ? Find out the pros and cons of both solutions and find the right fit for your situation.”

Internal Linking  

Next, make sure that the page is included in the sitemap.xml file.

Then, find several pages within the website to link to this new comparison page. Google indexes some pages more than others, so try to put a link somewhere Google goes to frequently. (You can determine this by examining your Google Analytics reports.)

Some companies put comparison links directly in the footer of the website, which is completely acceptable.

Build Links

Search the web for places that are discussing your competitor and offer links to your comparison page. Great places to find this discussion include:

That should cover the bases for organic search. Now let’s ensure placement with paid campaigns.

Step 4 – Build a Paid Campaign

In reality, you’ll want to build two campaigns:

  1. PPC ads to drive traffic from the “vs” search
    1. Strategic campaign structure with carefully selected keywords and match type to ensure quality traffic is being driven to the site
  2. Remarketing campaigns for those who do not convert
    1. Retargeting is low hanging fruit and can be quickly rolled out with banner ads, paid search ads and further extended into youtube video inventory with bumper ads or :15s and :30s

Also, use this campaign as an opportunity to learn more about your audience. Try adding different audiences set to “Observation.” You may discover some people with certain audience characteristics are outperforming others. Use this data to then tailor your ad copy and landing pages.

One trick we’ve used is to create a custom audience based on the comparison URL. You can then run display ads which appear to that highly targeted custom audience…people who are interested or in-market for the keywords on you page.

Conclusion

The reality is that by the time a customer comes to your website, they’re likely quite a way down the sales decision path. They’re researching your competition and the best way to take advantage of this customer behaviour is by following the steps listed above.

Above and beyond the benefit you get in the sales process, knowing your competition is a great way of making sure your company is at the forefront of your industry and you’re not falling behind. By combining competitor knowledge with a low-funnel opportunity campaign, you can make sure both your customers and your sales team is knowledgeable about your product/service, the competition, and how to address common objections late in the sales process.

Please note the comparison page references came from Freshbooks’ cloud accounting website – https://www.freshbooks.com/compare/quickbooks-online-alternative.

Bonus: Other Great Comparison Pages

Some other examples of businesses that excel in their comparison pages:

GDPR stands for General Data Protection Regulation adopted by the European Union (EU) in April of 16.  It extends and codifies previous “agreements” between EU and US regarding transfer of personal data and applies if the data controller (collector), processor, or subject (user) is a EU resident. The regulation includes steep sanctions of up to four percent of revenue or €10 million for violators.

Ok… What does that actually mean?

Ultimately GDPR is a series of regulations that give EU citizens greater control of their data.

It’s a concern for companies that have users in both the EU and the United States because there have already been regulations passed in California that are similar to GDPR. It’s expected that these regulations will continue to expand across the United States and to other countries throughout the world, so we recommend being compliant regardless of where your users and customers live.

Fortunately we’ve broken down what you should do into four areas of focus:

# 1 – Inform

When data is collected, clearly inform users what data is collected, the legal basis for processing, how long it will be retained, if their data is transferred to a third party, and if any automated decision-making is made on a solely algorithmic basis. Data subjects (users) must also be informed of their rights to data access and erasure.

When updating your online policies for GDPR, consider including the following:

There are a variety of tools that can be utilized to scan and inventory your site for data collection but it’s important to partner with a company that understands these results and can help you to get your website GDPR compliant.

#2 – Consent

Attain informed, explicit consent to collect user data, and be able to demonstrate compliance by following these steps:

Make sure you’re adding the appropriate consent fields and integrating them with your existing consent management system. There are tools available that ensure your cookies and consent management are compliant with GDPR regulations, but again, it’s important to have someone on-staff or working with a partner that understands this software and GDPR compliance.

#3 – Access and Erase

Allow users to access and delete their data, as well as change their consents at any time.

To ensure your users can update their data consider these steps:

Creating workflows and processes for dealing with user data can be time consuming and tedious work as it involves all personal data, not just data collected or accessed by your website.

#4 – Alert

Perhaps most importantly, inform users if there is a breach of their data. The standard is to alert your users within 72 hours if there has been a breach of data. This may involve working with a crisis communication professional, posting the information on your website, and creating a press release or series of communications depending on the level of the breach.

Conclusion

GDPR can sound incredibly overwhelming  but there are many dedicated professionals and businesses that have strong commitments and expertise in guiding companies through compliance. If there were any topics in this post that didn’t make sense, or you weren’t sure if you have them employed on your website, we strongly recommend talking with your website and IT teams/vendors to make sure you’re headed towards compliance. If your internal resources can’t ensure compliance, reach out to a trusted partner like Risdall to walk you through the processes to ensure you’re handling user data appropriately and avoid noncompliance in any current data regulation.

This is the first in a series of pieces from Risdall about GDPR. Check back soon to keep up-to-date on what you can do to be GDPR compliant.

As the digital landscape continues to evolve and change, it’s hard to know what to focus on to make the coming year successful. We’ve asked the members of Risdall’s team to share some observations and tips for 2019. Here are their answers:

Mahmood Khan – SVP, Digital Media & Analytics

Measurement and attribution

Smart-media mix allocations that are data driven, not based on a gut feeling. Whether your company has a mid-sized or large budget, determining how to measure each media channels’ attribution is key to smartly allocate your budgets. This could be for multi-channel lead generation efforts tied to a sales CRM, online-to-offline attribution for determining lift in foot traffic or, in the case of e-tailers, multi-touch attribution that can pinpoint channels that drive lift in sales conversions.

Read more about attributing offline traffic to online sources in our blog post.

Erik Hinds – VP, Digital Strategy

Optimizing content for featured snippets and voice search

Really, this was the “it” thing in 2018 but it is still very important. Now that we have a good amount of historical trends of the types of content, the format and keyword triggers that Google is looking to promote to “position 0” we can really start to optimize. A lot of the top flight SEO tools like BrightEdge and SEMRush make identifying opportunities easier than ever. We’ve seen our clients achieve a 40+% click-through rate by properly utilizing these tools.

Video SEO

Often overlooked as a channel for search optimization, YouTube offers a lot of fertile ground for organic visibility. Did you know YouTube is the second largest search engine next to Google itself? But like Google search, YouTube has an algorithm that can be optimized for. How would you like if your videos showed up as suggested videos after someone plays your competitor’s video?

Dave Schad – EVP, Managing Director

The use of data to integrate marketing and sales functions

Far too often we see companies who have separate silos of sales and marketing activity and metrics reporting. Companies need to be deliberate in bringing sales and marketing together to integrate data sources to truly measure what is working. During our strategic planning process, we encourage sales and marketing to work collectively to define KPIs and agree on attribution across channels and technologies. In doing this, you will build greater understanding between sales and marketing, make better collective decisions, and have a clearer picture of ROI driven by your digital marketing efforts.    

Kristen Nottingham – Digital Media Planner

People are influenced by people similar to themselves

It’s easy to forget that people are influenced by others similar to themselves so start your campaigns by micro-targeting segments of people with related job titles or fields of study. Because people are on their best behavior with their colleagues they are more likely to comment on your ads in a positive and professional manner. In doing so, they build the social proof your brand needs. And don’t be afraid to target very specific titles and industries on social media. We’re finding that nearly everyone is active online and looking for info related to their career. They will respond to information in their social feed that is relevant to them.

Dave Folkens – SVP, Director of Account Service

Video, Video, Video

A few years ago having video content was a nice way to set yourself apart from the competition. Now, video is a key component of a successful and comprehensive content strategy. When we’re talking about video as part of the content mix, it’s not all a highly-produced, difficult endeavor. Simple, short videos that are authentic and created for social channels can provide great engagement opportunities for your brand. Fortunately, it’s never been more cost efficient to create quality, engaging video either in-house or with a trusted partner.

Joel Koenigs – Chief Technology Officer

Don’t forget about regulations

Many US-based companies have been slow to respond to GDPR from an operational and marketing perspective. Those that have are in a stronger position to comply with upcoming domestic regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). Those that have not risk fines and legal fees, and are likely delaying the inevitable. Similarities between the CCPA, GDPR and previous privacy measures such as Safe Harbor, Privacy Shield, etc. provide more than writing on the wall as to legal expectations for the treatment of personal data. Marketing teams should familiarize themselves with the regulations and adjust strategy, tactics, budgets and partners appropriately.

Jon Bauer –  Business Development & Marketing Director

Personalization

Prospects and clients are used to their online experience being personalized to their preferences and tastes. If you’re not customizing their journey through your site, messaging and content, you’re missing a huge opportunity for connection and (eventual) sales. 

Contact us today to talk more about how we can optimize your website and apps to make sure they’re allowing a personalized experience for every visitor and customer.