According to Ron Carucci, executive leadership coach and co-founder of Navalent, many executives experience “altitude sickness” upon arrival into their roles for the first time. As a result, 50-60 percent of executives fail within the first 18 months of being promoted or hired.
Facebook and Instagram provide tremendous B2B marketing opportunities – if your B2B creative is good enough to grab viewers’ attention. This is especially important in the niche B2B tech context, where generic creative really doesn’t fly.
In B2B data-driven marketing, your data is a bit like a bicycle chain.
Amy Peck believes in the bright future of AR and VR — or at least, in trying to make that future a reality. Check out the latest episode of B2B Revealed for everything B2B companies need to know about AR, VR, and Mixed Reality.
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
Surprise! — employees aren’t productive in their first day on the job. Guest Maia Josebachvili, VP of Marketing and Strategy at Greenhouse, has gone beyond that conventional wisdom and helped to create the Employee Lifetime Value Framework. This Framework helps companies understand how employee effectiveness changes over time. In this episode, we’ll help you understand the Framework.
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
David Fisher, author of Hyper-Connected Selling, knows that technology-enabled sales is great, but it’s never going to satisfy the need for human connection.
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
Chloë Thomas, author of “B2B eCommerce MasterPlan” joins us to talk about B2B eCommerce. Yes, B2B companies need to go online. No, they shouldn’t be taking their cues from the Amazon consumer experience.
Chloë’s book: http://a.co/fZpuzum
The best way to listen to the episode is through Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, or Overcast. You’ll be able to listen to past episodes and subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes.
As we mentioned in the show, if you’re enjoying the B2B Revealed show we’d love it if you would leave a nice review on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to the show.
It’s not just newly-promoted, doe-eyed marketing managers who make serious management mistakes. Seasoned enterprise executives aren’t immune to expensive screw ups either. On the latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast, Herding Tigers author Todd Henry explained that mismanagement of creative teams leads to talent loss and companies that underperform compared to their peers. Henry shared some tips for conscientious creative leadership.
Managers need to make sure their teams understand how their work affects the larger business goals of the company. This helps avoid an ego-driven company culture. Creative success should be measured in terms of business results.
“The reality is, for most of us, we engage in work that we don’t always love, we don’t always agree with necessarily, but it’s our job to get it done,” Henry said.
In a business setting, creatives need to be able to produce great work even when they don’t control the larger vision for the project.
Leaders need to understand how to build an environment where creativity thrives. According to Henry, that requires providing stability without getting near the border of Boredom Land. Without stability, the team will find itself working on the same problem over-and-over again, without every finishing the project. With too much stability, the team won’t feel creatively challenged. It’s the leader’s job to walk that fine line between stability and boredom.
To key elements of a great creative environment are:
Todd Henry teaches leaders and organizations how to establish practices that lead to everyday brilliance. He is the author of Herding Tigers.
Like it or not, meetings are a fact of life — especially on creative teams that depend on collaboration. Yet, even though we all wish we’d only have to sit in on useful meetings, the opposite is often true. That’s why at some point in all of our careers, we’ve all walked away from meetings scratching our heads and wondering, “Wait, what did we decide again?” Great creative leadership is about making this as uncommon as an enterprise company with no marketing vendors.
According to Henry, good leadership means being able to say, “Okay, this is the decision and now this meeting is over.” That’s true even if there are still 20 minutes left on the scheduled event. That kind of clear action is uncomfortable for people who don’t want to put their neck on the line for controversial or risky decisions, but is critical if your creatives are going to do effective work. Decisiveness eliminates confusion. Don’t less unnecessary meeting time detract from needed periods of creative focus.
Focus on building a culture that fosters creativity, but in a way that doesn’t just seek to flip over tables and start from scratch every time. To illustrate this, Henry referenced two quotes.
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road” Henry quoted G. K. Chesterton, the notable English writer. “The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
Then, in contrast, Henry pointed to a quote from Anton Chekhov, the famed Russian poet, who advises, “Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it’s not going to be fired, it shouldn’t be hanging there.”
A great creative leader knows how to balance these two extremes. They know that they shouldn’t just throw everything out because it doesn’t make sense, but they also know that they need to remove unnecessary distractions for their team. Finding that balance creates an environment that allows creatives to reach new heights.
This interview with Henry was packed so full of valuable insights we couldn’t fit them all in one article. Listen to the episode for more on constructing a creative environment, best practices for managing a creative team, how to (smartly) give up control over decisions, the secret benefits of having a pet project, and some great book recommendations.
The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B expertise in your life? There are many ways to follow us.
Your video doesn’t need to go viral to be a success. Despite that, too many marketers chase views at the expense of reaching the right viewers. In the latest episode of the B2B Revealed Podcast, we dug in on this topic with viral video expert David Feinman, the co-founder of Viral Ideas.
Many professionals are tempted to craft a video with the sole intention of getting thousands of likes. For Feinman, that much emphasis on going viral is a waste of resources.
“In the B2B space it’s really tough to make something pop,” said Feinman. “What we like to think about from a B2B perspective is do you actually need to go viral?” B2B audiences are limited by nature. It’s more important to convince your niche pool of potential buyers than to go viral with the general public.
Feinman went on to give an example of a trucking company. They could have spent months creating a video that reached millions of viewers. However, there were only 20,000 purchasers in their vertical in the United States. For them, having a video that reached only that 20,000 people was more valuable than reaching millions of people. Why go viral with people who aren’t going to buy?
It’s a bit like sending a letter to a friend. Sure, if you send mass mail to every household in Boston they’ll get your letter, but you could save a lot of time, effort, and money by simply addressing the letter specifically to your friend.
David Feinman is the co-founder of Viral Ideas, which helps companies create impactful video content.
Spend time finding a topic that will allow your video to further your business goals. When picking a topic, Feinman stresses that what you personally find interesting is not necessarily what customers will find interesting.
The best way to make sure you’re making a video that’s customer-centric is to use the messaging that’s already proven to drive sales.
Once you’ve got the subject matter locked down, you need to figure out the why behind the message, says Feinman. Explaining why you do the things you do will keep your viewers engaged. Then, instead of feeling like they’re watching an infomercial, they’ll feel like they’re being told a story — one they’re invited to be a part of.
Will this approach lead you to the top of the YouTube leaderboard with a viral video? Unlikely. Will it get you business? Yes.
If reaching the right audience is more critical than total views, you may be wondering what goals you should have for a video. As Feinman explained, most B2B businesses should be looking to go viral inside of their own vertical. After all, you aren’t looking for a consumer-scale viral video that lands on Good Morning America. Instead, you’re looking for a video that goes viral in your industry.
“Thinking about and reframing where you need your audience to be in a B2B environment might not be viral, per se,” said Feinman. “But, it might be micro viral in that we hit our entire target market. To me, that’s a huge win for any B2B audience.”
That’s a win that’s achievable for B2B companies, so long as they make the video in the right way. For that, listen to the interview. You’ll learn what the video making process should look like and some practical tips for creating a stand-out marketing video on a budget.
The B2B Revealed Podcast is brought to you by Cascade Insights, a market research firm specializing in B2B technology. Need more B2B expertise in your life? There are many ways to follow us.
Mistaking a fancy title for thought leadership is a common mistake in the book publishing business. After all, a fancy title does not a good author make.
B2B is a complex and challenging field, but most of all, it is fascinating. Join Sean Campbell, CEO of Cascade Insights, as he shares over 20 years of experience in the B2B market.
