If you have a dog, you know that we tend to treat dogs like people. Furry, barking, chewing, slobbering people ... But you know what I mean. We know dogs aren't the same as people, but their behaviors and personalities are so aligned with human behaviors and emotions that we treat them like people. Anyhow, I bring this up because I came across a LinkedIn post the other day about what you can learn from dog training about training and leading people.   The author of that post is my guest...

I think most B2B marketers would agree that it's important for a company's leaders to be visible on social media, sharing ideas and stories. But most CEOs and other leaders don't have time to write articles and LinkedIn posts and such, and so the task falls to a copywriter, who does some research and, ideally, interviews the CEO and then tries to write something in their voice. The degree to which this process works to produce content that comes across as authentic and impactful depends on...

In our age of remote everything, the elevator pitch is a bit of an anachronism. When's the last time you pitched an idea in an elevator? But the concept is still relevant and important! If you're in marketing or sales, you need to be able to explain what you offer is a way that's succinct, clear, and compelling ... and do it in about 30 seconds or less. Now, crafting a great elevator pitch isn't exactly quantum theory ... but it's not easy, either! And in fact, according to my guest,...

We're all familiar with The Funnel ... We know there's a top of the funnel, a middle, a bottom ... and everything in between. The top is where we just try to make prospects aware that we exist ... And once they're in the funnel, the marketer's job, alongside sales, is to nudge them further along until they're at the bottom, where, presumably, prospects are just about ready to buy ... and we marketers do our part by supplying bottom of the funnel content to help get them over the finish...

One of the biggest sources of tension between marketing and sales is the quality of leads. From the point of view of sales, marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, are notoriously iffy, derived from people downloading gated content and signing up for newsletters and so on. Marketing hands these leads over to sales, thinking, we've done our part! But sales turns around and says, these leads are garbage! People who download an ebook or whatever are not necessarily in the market. We need leads...

In some very basic way. the purpose of marketing is to support sales. And so it stands to reason that the more marketers know about how sales actually works, the better. But marketers often have only a hazy understanding of what motivates salespeople and HOW they sell. I know that was my experience when I worked as a copywriter in the medical device industry. I actually went through sales training and did ride alongs with reps. But still, in my day to day work I wasn't really seeing things...

There's nothing more frustrating for marketers than pouring your heart and soul into a piece of content, only to have sales reps ignore it or use it the wrong way.   My guest on this episode has lots of experience dealing with this issue. He is Nick Loise, founder of Sales Performance Team, a leading fractional sales leadership and new business development firm. We talk about what causes marketers to produce content that sales people don't value or understand and what marketers can do to...

Have you ever thought about getting into speaking? If so, then this episode is for you. Juli Lassow, an entrepreneur, founder of JHL Solutions, and a frequent speaker. We talk about how to get started with speaking, how to overcome the fear of public speaking (right up there with death as many people's #1 fear!), how to use speaking opportunities to market yourself and your business, and much more! The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners...

Buyer personas are a staple of any b2b marketing playbook, for obvious reasons. They give marketers a target to aim at and provide insight and guidelines for how to engage prospects and convert them into customers. The problem, though, is that buyer personas are based on information about, well, buyers, which at any given time comprise only around 5% of your total market. What buyer personas typically DON'T take into account are the whopping 95% of your market that's not in buying mode. Would...

It stands to reason that the most effective content is content that's informed by data. Specifically, data about what customers value about a company's products and services. The better you design a piece of content to speak to the specific needs, desired outcomes, and preferences of the people you're trying to sell it to, based on what you learn from your current customers, the better that content is likely to perform.   Actually doing this, though, is easier said than done. My guest today...

Podcasting can be a great way to reach and engage an audience, create and repurpose a lot of content, and have meaningful conversations with people you want to get to know. But starting a podcast can ALSO be a powerful driver for personal growth. In this episode, Bryan Huhn, a financial advisor and host of the Affordable Freedom podcast, talks about how podcasting has helped him become more confident in meeting and having conversations with new people, becoming a better listener, and much...

Interviewing is easy, right? You just ask a bunch of questions, record the answers, and that's it. Of course, if you're a regular listener or if you know me at all, you know that's not true. Interviewing at a high level is an art & a science, involving complexities that are hard to appreciate until you encounter them. For example, people in positions of power, such as a CEO, are often very careful during interviews to not say the wrong thing. And so they lapse into corporate jargon and...

4 years ago, when I started Connversa, I built a website using Wix, the drag and drop DIY website platform. But I felt a little weird about it, because I had it in my head that REAL websites are built on Wordpress ... AND that a website I built myself just wasn't good enough. And so, after a few years, I hired a company to build me a real, professional Wordpress site. But did I HAVE to do that? Maybe, instead of paying a lot of money to get a brand new website, you can opt for hiring...

We all know that case studies are among the most useful kind of content any B2B company can have. According to the 2023 SaaS Marketing Case Studies report, from Uplift Content, SaaS marketers ranked case studies as the most valuable type of content to increase sales. Other reports have found similar results in other industries. But the Uplift report also found that only 12% of SaaS marketers are very satisfied with their case studies. So, there's apparently lots of room for improvement.   To...

The basic idea of content marketing is to publish stuff that's not all about your products and services but instead about your audience, their problems and pain points. At this same time, though, content DOES need to point to, or maybe gesture towards, your brand and your solution. Which can be tricky. How do you create content that's not so product and brand focused as so come across as overtly sales-y, while at the same time making a clear connection between the educational content you're...

We create content with the aim of standing out and showing our audience how we're difference and valuable. But given the volume of content being published every day, that's hard to do. There's no secret silver bullet to solving that puzzle, but there are some basic principles that can guide us. Adam Robinson, founder of Strategexe and, more recently, Markexe, sheds light on what companies can do to differentiate through content. The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping...

So, you have an idea for what you're sure will be a killer new business. The first thing you should do is build a website, right? I mean, how else will people be able to find you? Sure, there's still a lot of stuff you need to figure out, but you can always update the website as you go. Or, maybe not. Maybe a website ISN't the first thing you need. In fact, maybe it's more like the LAST thing. To help us unpack this, my guest is Luke Netti, a website strategist and Webflow specialist.  The...

Demand gen. Lead gen. What do these terms mean, what's the difference, and which is more important for B2B marketers? In this episode, ⁠Deanna Shimota⁠, founder and CEO of ⁠Growth Mode Marketing⁠, talks about why b2b marketers should prioritize demand gen over lead gen and what it looks like to build a high-powered demand gen engine. Check out Dianna's podcast, ⁠The Demand Gen Fix⁠. The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping you create a month's worth of...

ChatGPT has taken the world of marketing by storm, for better and for worse. And by worse, I'm referring to all sorts of questions about privacy and the accuracy of information, intellectual property rights, deep fake technology, and on and on. In short, AI presents us with incredible and tantalizing possibilities, but also with a lot of risks, many of which we're only just beginning to understand. And if you're a B2B marketer and you're using AI or you're going to use it, you need to be...

One of the tenets of good copywriting is that you must have a strong "hook." Something to grab the reader's attention and keep them reading. At least, that's advice you commonly hear. But what is a "hook", exactly, and is using one the best or only way to get attention? My guest today has a problem with the concept of the "hook," and he's here to tell us why. Derek Pollard is the owner of Constellar Creative, a marketing and thought leadership agency for financial planners. Derek...

Back in the good old days, when interest rates were super low and money was cheap, most tech startups were in full-on growth mode, using all that sweet sweet VC money to grab as much market share as possible and worrying about profits later. But today, when access to cheap capital has dried up, those same startups have had to pivot on a dime and start making a profit! And so, marketers at those companies have had to pivot, too, while seeing their budgets cut and headcount...

Once upon a time, in the olden days, sales held the key to b2b growth. If buyers wanted to learn about a product or service, they had little choice but to talk to a salesperson and hope for the best. More recently, since the rise of the internet and social media, marketing grabbed the keys, cranking out and endless stream of blog posts and white papers and ebooks and videos to engage the large percentage of buyers who prefer to do their own research before talking to anyone in sales. Over...

There was a lot of hype around generative AI when ChatGPT debuted, how it was going to replace human writers and so on. But now that the dust has settled a bit, I think there's a growing consensus that AI isn't quite ready to take over for human writers and other creators.  Which begs the question, what exactly IS gen AI good for? To help us answer this question, my guest is Brad Smith, a serial entrepreneur who owns three companies, codeless, wordable, and uSERP, all in the b2b marketing...

YouTube is a mysterious beast. At least, it is to me. It's one of the world's most powerful search engines, yet the vast majority of videos get very little engagement. Which might be just a little concerning if you spend a lot of time and money producing video content. What keeps all of us on the video bandwagon, I think, is the vast POTENTIAL for leveraging video and YouTube as a marketing channel. My guests for this episode, Matt and Ben Tompkins, co-founders of Two Brothers Creative...