Cleartax Guide To e Verification

9/21/2017 10 Business-to-Business Mistakes | Smart Insights
10 Business-to-Business Mistakes
About The Author
hatshotdigital/september- Jill Quick (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillquick01), a Digital Marketing Consultant at Quick Marketing
(http://www.quick-marketing.co.uk/) who works with clients on their overall digital marketing strategy.
With a data-driven approach, she focuses on analytics and measurement, targeting, segmentation and
messaging. She is also a Lead Instructor for General Assembly where she teaches a 10-week digital
marketing course and workshops on Analytics and Content Marketing and Expert Author for Smart
Insights.
1. Thinking that user experience is just for web and developers
If I’m honest, even though I totally agreed with the principles of user experience the 1st time I studied it back in 2008, and
I loved Steve Krug’s book “Don’t make me think”, I’ve read Jakob Nielsen “Web Usability”, and I’ve used user ows and
use cases for my web personas.
However, post website projects I’ve left user experience alone.
What a mistake that was.
If you really want to succeed and provide products and services and market them in a way that’s really going to connect
with your prospects you need to get into this. It will make you more money, I promise.
Usability means making sure something works well and that a person of little experience can use it for its intended
purpose without getting hopelessly frustrated.
The key fundamentals of good UX is to:
1. Identify the user needs. This comes from having a deep understand of your customers which take shape in the
form of personas and customer empathy maps.
2. Understanding your business goals. You should have clear KPI’s and map back to an objective rst approach for
all your campaigns and activities.
3. Technical constraints. Does it Better will always beat Did it First.
Personas
B2B marketing generally has a longer sales cycle and process than you would nd in B2C and you must have a good
understanding of your decision-making unit and how they go about nding information. If you have a persona drawn up,
use them. I still see people that go through the process of creating a persona, and in their head a box gets ticked and
http://www.smartinsights.com/advice/10-business-to-business-marketing-mistakes/ 1/57
they carry on as they did before. Without really using or sharing the personas throughout the company.
Knowing your customers and prospects is the most powerful driver of innovation you can have in a business. When you
think of successful businesses they generally have the ability to embrace change, they are data driven, but above all,
they have an obsessive focus on the customer. Every single decision made has its customers at the forefront of their
mind and this is one of the hardest skills for marketing because you have to pull your head out of your bubble and put
yourself in the shoes of your customers and empathise with them.
My favourite B2B personas are the Hubspot and MailChimp examples. I like them because they are simple but they get to
the point. You don’t need to write an essay!
Focus quickly on the challenges, issues and pain points. Why they are going to love your product?
hatshotdigital/september-
Hubspot Persona: Marketing Mary
Hubspot Persona: Owner Ollie
Mailchimp Personas
Brainstorm with your team and other stakeholders, such as sales, customer services, your actual customers and identify:
 Who are your users?
 Why do they use your product or services?

 Where are they getting information from?
 When do the experienced a problem that your product or service solves?
 How are they accessing your products or services what are they doing?
With your personas all bagged up, think about your prospects and customers experience with your physical processes,
interacting with your online or physical products, marketing, campaigns, anything that they touch from your brand should
be delightful to interact with, yes, B2B can be delightful people!
Customer Empathy Maps
To punch up your personas a notch and really embrace UX, you need to create a customer empathy map for your
personas.
The empathy map has 6 di erent components:
1. How the customer thinks and feels

What really counts? What do they aspire to do? Do they get preoccupied with something else?
2. What the customer hears

Things they would hear from their boss, friends, peers, in uencers, news, podcasts etc What channel does your
customer use the most? Are they easily in uenced? Do they get persuaded more by coworkers or from
in uencers?
3. What the customer sees

What do they see in their physical or online environments, what problems does your customer face in that
environment? What is your customer exposed to everyday?
4. What the customer says and does

Ideally you should put in direct quotes from your customers. How does your customer respond to others? What
does the customer say to others? What information does your customer hold back from others?
5. The customer’s pain

What are their fears, frustrations and obstacles? Dig deeper into the pain points from your existing personas and
dive into what your customers fear the least / most? What obstacles do they need to overcome everyday? What
frustrations could your customers have in the future?
6. The customer’s gain

This should focus on their wants and needs, how will they measure success? What kind of success has your
customer had? How did they get it? What long term goals do they have? What experience goals do they want?
Example empathy map:

https://innvolve2014.wordpress.com/2014/05/21/customer-segments-empathy-maps/
Persona Sara
Empathy map of Sara Persona
User Experience in Marketing
So, you have a persona and customer empathy map. Now what?
The 1st focus should be around your company’s website. Is it a good website? Are your landing pages working? Beyond
your site and marketing materials looking good and being on brand, are they easy to follow, can users nd the right
information, can they perform the right actions at the right time?
“User experience’s greatest impact to SEO is through the increase it creates in organis sharing and distribution”
Rand Fishkin, Moz
Having an e ective website is a critical part of digital marketing and more than likely the website underpins all the
campaigns and communication that we do but good websites require continual improvements.
How do you know if you are on the right track? Start to use user ows.
User Flows: don’t do any digital marketing without them
A user ow is the path you construct for users to convert, you need to design each step of your ow with intention and
watch how tra c, leads and sales grow. The process is simple, but powerful and all you need is a sheet of paper, pens
and maybe some post it notes, use the symbols to walk through the path you want your customer or prospect to take.
Think back to an experience where you have gone through a few steps, only to land on a 404 redirect page, or a landing
page that you had already been on, or the wrong page. A broken user experience is hard to recover from. Find your weak
spots and x them.
I would recommend any B2B marketer doing email programmes, or paid search campaigns, and for any process on their
site e.g. sign up to a newsletter, create an account etc. to use this tactic to map out their process.
User ow chart icons

Using a flow-chart to summarise campaign waves
This example gives a more visual representation of a multi-wave campaign through time showing the “Sense and
respond” or “digital body language” approach where follow up triggered communications depend on whether the email
has been open or which links have been clicked upon.
Example ow chart
Source: http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/behavioural-email-marketing/how-to-plan-event-triggered-email-
campaigns/ (http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/behavioural-email-marketing/how-to-plan-event-triggered-
email-campaigns/)
A super-intelligent approach assesses the value of the customer and their propensity to convert and then follows up with
the most appropriate medium to gain conversion. So a high value customer may receive a phone call or direct mail which
could maximise conversion.
Tools to help
It has become a lot more a ordable to do UX test, you can get 10 videos of tests from whatusersdo.com for £300 and
add lter questions to who gets the test so your matching to your target audiences.
Usabilityhub.com can give you insights on things like your navigation, or click tests for your latest DM campaign or
landing page, responses start at $1 per response. $1! Cheap as chips.
What impact can you get?
I asked Timi Olotu (https://www.linkedin.com/in/timi-olotu-3973b740/), Senior Writer & Content Strategist for What Users
Do, he shared a case study from Pan Macmillian, they increased click throughs to book retailers by 400% after watching
user tests struggle with completing their business goals.
“It’s amazing the things we can overlook when we become acclimatised to our own sites or lack the mindset of a
user genuinely in need of a solution. For example, Pan Macmillan – one of the world’s largest publishers and B2B
businesses – increased click-through to book retailers by 400%, simply by adding a ‘Buy’ button next to book
descriptions. The company never had these because the site was traditionally considered to be an ‘online
catalogue’. But having watched UX testing videos of how people actually use its site, the Pan Macmillan team
realised a ‘Buy’ button would not only be great for users, it would also be great for business.”
New addition after UX study

Source: http://whatusersdo.com/clients/resources/case-studies/pan-macmillan
Your to-do list:
 Check if you have personas
 When were they last updated?
 Pump up the persona with more user centric insights
 Create a user ow for a campaign or email programme
Recommended resource: Persona Guide by Smart Insights
Guides to help:
Customer Persona Guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/customer-persona-toolkit/)
“Examples and good practices to help you create better marketing personas and customer journey maps”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/customer-persona-toolkit/ )
Recommended resource: Email marketing posts on Smart Insights blog
How to plan event-triggered automated email campaigns (http://www.smartinsights.com/email-

marketing/behavioural-email-marketing/how-to-plan-event-triggered-email-campaigns/)
by Dave Cha ey
Using Personas for Email Marketing

(http://www.smartinsights.com/email-marketing/using-personas-email-marketing/)by Kath Pay
Access resource ()
2. Not setting up your Analytics to correctly track your leads
This is a very deep subject, but for this guide I am just going to focus on some of the common issues I have seen with the
B2B analytics accounts that you should be giving some attention to.
Not having goals set up on your website.
Not having any goals set up in Google Analytics is more common than you may think. At its basic level, you want to track
an enquiry form or someone clicking on, for example an email address i.e. info@yourcompanyname.com
(mailto:info@yourcompanyname.com) , right up to logging a conversion when someone pays to use say, a SAAS service
or buying a product directly on your website.
But don’t just go for the big hitting goals, you need to know how the little guys are doing. I want you to think about your
goals from a macro and micro level. Why do this? Well if you had an ass-kicking site converting at 4% (well done you) for
every 100 people, 4 parted with their cash, but what did the other 96 people do? Knowing what these micro moments are
helps you understand their behaviour which you need to track, this gives you insights into what triggers and activates
your visitors.
Hypothetically, let’s say we are selling a SAAS product, an email marketing platform direct to marketers. You have some
clear business objectives and goals to track here.
Example: Business examples and goals
What about the smaller goals? The micro moments?
I like to map out the ow of the business through their funnel, from top to bottom, and check what tracking solution they
need (based on their website con guration). This is a worthy exercise to do as you may nd that you’re not tracking
everything correctly for you to understand and nd a solution to the questions you are trying to answer.
For example, you have a lot of video content assets and you want to know if they help people convert for a free trial,
therefore a micro goal would be ‘watched a video’. So in your analytics audit you need to check and set up event tracking
on your website to see this data.
Check what type of tracking is required
To really add some weight to the goals, and to help build segments, add a value to the goals. You can do something as
simple as going down your list of goals and adding a sliding scale, better still if you know what your conversion rates are
at each stage of the funnel you can do some basic maths to work out what each micro and macro goal is worth to the
business.
Example: Adding value to goals.
Not using events- track actions that drive your business
I really like this feature, you will need to get these events tracked in Google Tag Manager, but the insights and bene ts
are wonderful. Events can give you a load of information about additional activities that happen on your website which
are not tracked as standard by Google Analytics.
What if the user downloaded an ungated PDF, added to a basket, played a video, shared on social media, printed the
page?
Google Analytics chart of events from website
One of the reasons I have seen B2B sites not have any goals set up was down to their site built in a way that any enquiry
form or lead form was a submit button. With no destination URL to go the team had assumed they were unable to track
that goal.
Setting up a goal in Google Analytics

In these cases you are going to have to set up the Event using Google Tag Manager, and use the category, action and
label of the event to build your goal.
Not using segments
In order to get insights, you need to segment your data to see context. Google gives you default segments such as Direct
Tra c, Search Tra c, Mobile Tra c but you can also create your own custom segments to answer your questions.
I love using advanced segments to show the ROI on content assets so you can understand what is driving growth for your
business.
For example, you could build a segment showing how many people downloaded a PDF that came from a particular
channel eg organic. Or people that watched a video, are they more likely to convert if they watch a video? These are the
kinds of insights you can get by using Event tracking and building clever segments to see what moves the needle for
your micro and macro conversions.
Using advanced segments to understand and improve conversion
The possibilities are endless, try the Google Analytics Solution Gallery
(https://www.google.com/analytics/gallery/#landing/start/) check out anything from Avinash Kaushik, Justin Cutroni, or The
Google Analytics Team and search for Segments to see what has been pre built to import to your account, or check out
the support page on Google (https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/3124493?hl=en).
Not Using Custom Dimensions or Data Import
Google Analytics comes pre-cooked with a number of super dimensions for you to report on. It also gives you the option
to add 20 custom dimensions to your account. As you are all a unique and special snow ake there are a lot a potential
custom dimensions that you could use.
How do they work?
Imagine your Google Analytics account is a brick of wax, you want to add cost data for your paid social campaigns. Well
this data, for now is like a cup of oil, if you throw it on your brick of wax then it’s just going to slide right o . For it to stick
you need something to anchor into the wax, Google calls this a key. You have your data and Google Analytics data which
needs a link or key so that your data sticks. So for our example, the Custom Dimension would be called something like
Facebook/CPC and the key will be the medium which will = paid social/ source Facebook.
If you do only one thing with your custom dimensions I recommend that you load all your marketing costs.
If you are familiar

hatshotdigital/september- with the reporting interface you will see that AdWords will always pull in the cost of your AdWord
campaigns. Now, if you are doing any other paid campaigns for example paid social eg promoted Facebook posts,
sponsored tweets, promoted linkedin posts, or other PPC campaigns across Bing or Yahoo, then you should be creating a
custom dimension for your cost data and the key here is going to be the source/medium.
By doing this you can start to track the return on investment and return on ad spend on all of the interactions on your
website with regards to your social media. Which I think is pretty cool.
Example of marketing costs in google analytics
Another Custom Dimension you could use is page author, or category of page. A key driver for tra c and lead gen in B2B
is around content marketing. Imagine, instead of looking at a report full of page URLs if you could also add a secondary
dimension where could nd out if a category of content is driving leads, or a particular author is smashing your goals and
delighting your visitors with their content.
Example of marketing costs in google analytics
Example of results sorted by Pageviews, with Custom Dimension “Author” included in results
Example of setting up custom dimensions. In this example: Author, Category and Post-type have been created
Your to-do list:
 What are your main objectives?
 Map them to RACE so you cover all micro and macro conversions
 Do an audit, are you tracking everything?
 Setup and use event tracking
 Segment, segment, segment.
 Use Custom Dimensions and Data Import to pack more punch into your analysis and insights on how well
campaigns and content types are working for you.
Recommended resource: Google Analytic Guides by Smart Insights
Google Analytics Setup Audit (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/google-

analytics-setup-guide/)
“Customise Google Analytics so you can prove the value of digital marketing for your business”
Guide Level: Expert

Using Google Analytics To Improve Online Marketing

(http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/google-analytics-7-steps-guide/)
“Get more value from Google Analytics with our guide for marketers”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource ()
3. Not testing improvements
“We don’t use A/B tests to pick winners. We use them to avoid losers as we stack con rmed winners”.
@growthtactics (https://twitter.com/growthtactics)
When you have FREE tools like Googles Optimize, Convert.com or Optimizely for your website, and nearly all campaign
programmes from Adwords to email have FREE options to test, and people are STILL not doing it.
AB testing is not just for ecommerce testing to see if a man holding the shoe gets more people to convert that a woman
holding the shoe. You should be testing everything, all the time. Make it a company culture.
A few small changes is all it can take to make your marketing e orts go further. We all have a leaky bucket, wouldn’t it be
nice to understand what is stopping people from converting?
Well you can, we are not mind readers (I really wish that we did have the power to know what will trigger the lead) until
you start to test and have data to show what works, you are just another person with an opinion.
Testing is more than just changing the colours of your CTA buttons, or doing 2 subject lines for your email campaigns and
crossing your ngers, you need to approach this in a more structured way.
Understand your eco system
If you have a low conversion rate, you cannot be sure that it is because of your button colour. To really understand what
your website’s biggest barriers to conversions are, you need put yourself in your uses shoes. It could be down to a lack of
trust on your website maybe from a dated web design, perhaps it’s a long conversion process which seems like too much
work for your users, your copy may be confusing with no clear value proposition, or perhaps the marketing campaigns
that lead users to your website sends them to the wrong product or landing page. In other words; your UX may suck.
Conversion rate optimisation is not about guessing what your users want, yes gut feelings are important but for you to
really understand the issues we have to go back to point 1 of this guide, look at doing some usability testing. Actually ask
your customers to complete certain tasks on your website and see where they get stuck.
Google Analytics is wonderful, but, all that data, all those numbers, they are just a proxy for people. You are going to need
to blend some qualitative and quantitative data to really base your hypotheses on.
What to test?
You can test anything: calls to action, the location of the button, the colours / shapes and sizes, gated content against
ungated content, how your content is displayed (e.g. do users prefer to scroll or click through to another page to learn
more), you can test your forms, test your images, test you navigation. You really have so many possibilities.
You don’t need to run o and totally recreate a landing page, just testing a word can make such a di erence.
“In 9 years and 40 million split tests with visitors the majority of my testing success can from playing with the
word”. Craig Sullivan, @OptimiseOrDie (https://www.twitter.com/OptimiseOrDie)
Don’t believe me, here are some A/B tests I did for a hotel company targeting B2B bookings. If we used the word star
instead of using an asterisk I got more sales, it was a simple as that.
Changing words as part of an A/B test can improve results
Getting Started
You need to start o by having a good understanding of your Analytics and your goal performance you would have used
funnels and segments to see where you have issues leaky buckets, you’re looking at your UX research, and if you are like
me, you’ll nd yourself staring down the CRO tunnel, almost paralysed by the number of places that you could be testing.
It doesn’t have to be like that, it can be as easy as PIE.
I am a big fan of Widerfunnels PIE framework, as it really helps you to understand where you should be focusing your
attention.
You need to rank each page with a score out of 10 over these 3 areas.
1. Potential – How much potential for a conversion rate increase does this testing opportunity have?
2. Importance – How important is this page? How many visitors will be impacted from the test? What is the tra c
volume? What is the cost of the tra c? What is the quality of the tra c? What is the impact on ROI?
3. Ease – How easy is it to test on the identi ed page? What are the barriers, both technical and political, to testing
that surround this page.
This gives you your test order.
Example of using the PIE framework to rank the importance of testing
Make a good hypothesis
What makes a good hypothesis?
1. Is testable – Your hypothesis is measurable, so that it can be used in testing. It goes without saying that you need
to de ne a metric for success, otherwise you really are just tinkering for the sake of it. You need to de ne the
quanti able change in the metrics you want to improve eg you convert at 1% and you want to move the needle to
1.5%.
2. Has a goal of solving conversion problems – Split testing is done to solve speci c conversion problems. Your
hypothesis needs to de ne why you believe a problem occurs, you will link this to your data and user testing.
3. Gains market insights – Besides increasing your conversion rates, split testing will give you information about
your clients/visitors. A well-articulated hypothesis will let your split testing results give you information about your
customers. A tip here is not to freak out if the test doesn’t go your way, you just found out something about your
customers. Go back to the drawing board and test something else.
CRO Case Study
IG (http://www.iggroup.com/?utm_source=behave), a UK-based online trading company with over 152,600 clients

worldwide, is looking for new ways to increase its client-base. One of the company’s primary lead gen tactics relies on
capturing the email address of prospective clients on-site and nurturing relationships with them through email.
QUESTION-LED OR INSTRUCTION-LED COPY?
 Key Performance Indicator (KPI): Lead captures/sign-ups, account subscriptions
 Tra c Source: Desktop users viewing selected pages on IG’s UK domain
Hypothesis:
Based on previous experience and tests run by IG, the team suspected the instruction-led copy would outperform the
question-led text.
They speculated that instruction-led copy is stronger because it provides the user with clear directions for next steps to
take.
Di erence between versions:
Version A: Overlay with question-led copy: “Do you trade shares? Take your portfolio to the next level with our free three-
part guide.”
Version B: Overlay with instruction-led copy: “Enter your name and email address to get our free three-part guide.”
Example of A/B test to improve customer database.
Source: https://www.behave.org/case-study/question-led-instruction-led-copy/ (https://www.behave.org/case-

study/question-led-instruction-led-copy/)
Results:
Winner: Version B – the instruction-led copy took the strong lead, driving a 41% lift in email capture rate over Variation A
and a 1536% lift over the control group, at 99% con dence.
Your to-do list:
 Use the PIE framework to identify your test order
 Use your insights from user testing and your analytics to build a good hypothesis.
 Start small, changing 1 word can create a lift.
 Keep a log of your tests and group by type, eg landing pages, website pages, AdWords, Email Subject lines etc
Recommended resource: Guides to help in testing for improvement
7 Step Guide to Improving Results from your Website (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/improving-results-

from-your-website-7-steps-guide/)
“Use a structured review to increase leads and sales and satisfaction from your site”
Guide level: Expert
7 Steps to creating high-converting landing pages (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/boosting-landing-pages-

7-steps-guide/)
“Learn best practice for higher-converting B2C and B2B Landing pages”
Guide level: Expert
Essential Digital Marketing Tools 2016 (http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-platforms/essential-

digital-marketing-tools-infographic/attachment/essential-digital-marketing-tools-2016/)
“Are you making the most of all of these insights and management tools?”
Guide level: Basic
Access resource ()
4. Buying technology and not knowing how you will use it
Sales using one CRM, Marketing using a Marketing Automation tool, both not talking to each other and thinking that some
new tech-tool is the magic wand to make things better. It isn’t. You need processes, you need procedures, you need data
and content in place for it to work. I have spoken to a few marketing managers recently who are spending time doing
admin to add more detail to the database which is just an email address and sometimes a name.
There are loads of cool tech solutions to make our marketing pop. However, if you jump in and buy the technology before
you know how you will use it, and how it will t into your current ecosystem, you can waste money, and actually hinder
your sales. The tech works but with no data, it is just an expensive place to hold your mailing list.
We do need to change our approach to marketing, less outbound more inbound, more sales enablement than sales
support, but when it comes to changing our legacy technology to a more cutting- edge solution, you need a plan, a
change management plan.
1. Have a good understanding of your customer.

What do they want, what content are they looking for, what format? The user ow we talked about in point 1, use
it! Map out what you are going to do and the ideal responses you want your prospects and customers to make.
What will happen at each touch point, how will you use this tech to delight your customers?
2. Audit your team’s skills set.

The tech always looks so cool and easy to use when you get the demo run through by someone who uses the
tool every-livelong-day. You don’t know what you don’t know, so speak to your team, this is not a witch hunt. Who
needs training? Most companies that sell the shiny toys have resources and training sessions to get the most out
of the tool, and of course, Smart Insights has a number of guides to bring you and your team up to speed on how
you are going to approach the tools from a strategic point of view.
3. Organisational Cross Function.

The tools we use cross over a number of departments, so bring them on board, and do it early. Sales and
Marketing need to be aligned, you may need to get Legal involved for data and privacy issues, Finance will want
to know what it will cost and you show how the investment will improve sales, IT will need to help with work ows
and possibly on integrating legacy systems or handing over from the old to the new, external consultants to help
manage change. Identify who the stakeholders are, what their role is, and depending on the size of the project,
create a working task force or group to lead.
4. Get everyone bought into the vision of why you are investing in this technology.
Explain to everyone why you are doing this and how everyone’s work contributes to the end goal. Being more
emotionally bought into a project will help when you hit that dip of dismay which all transformation projects, no
matter how small, will hit.
5. Set clear goals, metrics and timing, hold people to account.

Projects can drift if you are not careful. So set your goals. For example ‘you want to increase pipeline and revenue
contribution by 40% within 6 months and reduce churn of customers by 15%.’
6. Create a road map.

Do the pre work, you, dear marketer who wants the shiny toy, you need to de ne the project, the strategy
BEFORE the work begins and you sign on the dotted line.
I had a good chat about this topic with John Odam-Adjei, founder of Medasi, he has worked for large, multinational
technology-oriented transformation projects for large multinational companies and now helps startups and established
SMEs take advantage of cloud technologies to better engage customers, reduce their costs and increase pro ts. To do
more with less, if you will.
“It’s really important to have a roadmap when deploying a new solution such as CRM. It doesn’t have to be complex
at the start – that tends to happen anyway as the project unfolds. A roadmap is a good tool to hang, discuss and
structure ideas for how the new business processes and tools will impact the business. From there, you can craft a
project plan to get the outcomes you need.
A roadmap with realistic, aspirational dates that aligns with the strategy and goals of the business is not only
essential for planning but a great communications tool. Make it as visual as possible. It’ll then become something
that people can rally around and ask questions about and be excited by. Your visual roadmap for a CRM project
might look something like this:
Example of simpli ed project roadmap.
Transparency is key to success when deploying new systems. If you give people who’ll be a ected by the new
system, the opportunity to ask questions – and you’re honest with your answers – they can turn into the project’s
greatest advocates.
It’s important, I think, not to let projects like CRM deployments go on for too long because project fatigue can set in
as people lose sight of the reasons they’re doing it and the bene ts they’ll gain. Instead break a single, big project
into several smaller ones, celebrating the success of each as it delivers. This maintains high enthusiasm for those
already involved. And because people like to be associated with success, it brings in new stakeholders who drive
and maintain momentum.”
John Odam-Adjei, (https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnodamadjei/)Medasi http://www.medasi.com/

(http://www.medasi.com/)
Your to-do list:
 Have updated personas and user ows to see how the technology is going to support your customer touch points
 Audit your team, you never fail if you invest in your learning and you can not know what you don’t know. Who
needs
hatshotdigital/september- training, who needs to swot up?
 Get everyone on board across functions of the business and agree and align on the goals, set clear metrics and
timelines.
 Get people emotionally bought into the project, show how this will have collective gains across the business,
show how each team member’s work contributes to the end goal
 Create a road map, use this as your tool to hang, discuss and structure ideas for how the new business processes
and tools will impact the business.
 If needed, get help from external consultants to help with the project and change management.
Recommended resource: Marketing Automation best practises
B2C Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/marketing-automation-

best-practices-guide/)
“De ne best practices and make the business case for Marketing Automation”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/marketing-automation-best-practices-guide/)
5. Content Mapping: Aligning content assets to the Sales Funnel
“We are thinking about content marketing as campaigns, we need to do better. 9/10 marketers are doing some
content marketing, 50% don’t have a strategy or know what success looks like. On average only 30% of content is
e ective”
Joe Pulizzi, Content Marketing Institute.
You know the drill, create original, relevant content that mirrors your personas pain points, use it to communicate a
message to your audience and hope to drive a pro table customer interaction. Blahblahblah.
Content is a meaty subject, and needs to have a de ned strategy, you NEED content! It feeds your website, your email
programmes, your social comms, everything. When I teach this topic, or work with clients on content, I almost always get
a response that they have a content marketing strategy, when you dig in, it is typically an editorial calendar.
After you have de ned your personas, and worked on your pain points, content themes, and objectives with clear and
solid KPIs, I always do an audit.
Audit your content and map to your funnel / sales cycle
Before you jump into creating more content, have a look at what you have got. Do an audit, but map this to the sales
funnel. This is going to show you gaps and priorities on what to start creating rst, and will identify content that could be
recycled or repurposed. You should lter this through personas and target audience to ensure you have content that
matches their pain points, and to sectors if that is relevant for your business.
It is vital to audit the content you have, there may be content types that you have produced that would be a better t if it
was reformatted into another content type. For example, a white paper could have been a better t as a series of blogs.
We recommend a couple of approaches here starting with the Smart Insights content matrix which is for a high-level
review for brainstorming
content gaps and identifying priorities for new types of content. Then we have a more in-depth
review of individual content assets.
Smart Insights content matrix
For the detailed mapping uses something like an Excel template laid out as below. Using Excel visually map out your
content by type, and make notes of the contents source e.g. company owned, curated, co-created, recycled. If the
content is gated (required email address) and if there is a repurpose opportunity, e.g. turn a collection of blogs into a
book.
B2B Content to Buyer Journey
Repurpose your existing content to other formats
Repurposing content is where you take an item of content that you have created and adapt it for use in a di erent format.
For example, you may have invested in an in-depth ebook. You should repurpose this into a series of blog posts, a
podcast, an infographic, a press release, a slideshare, short snappy social media posts. This technique also works in
reverse, for example a series of in-depth blog articles could be repurposed into an eBook or webinar.
Look at your content audit that you have competed and see where you have gaps, then nd your best performing piece
of content and work out how you can repurpose. It is also worth nding old blog posts, and revamp and update them.
Hubspot are a great example of taking content and repurposing. In this example they had a hero piece of content, which
was a detailed case study of 7 companies that used HubSpot versus 7 companies that didn’t and compared their results.
Life for this content started as a Blog. It proved to be a very popular post.
Example of repurposed content
Due to the popularity and the need to keep content relevant and uptodate they extended the blog which was more of an
opinion piece to a study. The study was published on a page (http://www.overgovideo.com/inbound-marketing-with-
hubspot#.WFpumBuLSUl .)similar to a blog post but was more responsive as it o ered various things as you went down
the page.
Content turned into a case study
It then got changed to a Podcast, where their President, Rick Kranz featured it on his fth episode where talked about the
study. He titled this Episode “Using Marketing Automation to Grow Sales.”
Content turned into a Podcast
They also needed something a little lighter, easier to digest on social and get people interested in reading the blog
content or invest in the podcast. So they repurposed again as an infographic.
Content repurposed as an infographic
The last item, they pulled all the content and extended the edit to turn the content into a PDF eBook.
Content created into a PDF le
Your to-do list:
 Audit your content to the funnel, this will take some time , but it’s invaluable to show where you have gaps in
content formats or if you have been writing to a particular audience or vertical, or writing en mass to anyone who
may be interested in your product or services.
 Investigate how well each item performed, dig into the analytics, did a blog post or infographic get shared like
crazy on social, did a webinar close more sales?
 Repurpose, take a popular piece of content and work through di erent content formats.
Recommended resource:
B2B Inbound Marketing workbook (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/b2b-

inbound-marketing-workbook/)
“Follow the templates for the 7 key inbound marketing tasks in this workbook to create your inbound B2B
marketing plan”
Guide level: Expert
Content marketing strategy guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/content-

marketing-strategy-guide/)
“Create a structured plan to reach and convert more using the power of online content”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource ()
6. Using social media as a billboard
“View social media as a two way medium. You have to o er something interesting or valuable in order to garner
engagement. Simply broadcasting your o ers will put people o . Think immersive store experience vs market
trader”.
Andrew White, Media Solutions Consultant, Linkedin
Social Media is supposed to be Social
I think there are a lot of brands, that see social media as a channel to broadcast their marketing messages. Personally, I
think that we have become a little jaded and don’t ‘trust’ brands and their social content, and some brands struggle to
have a uni ed and authentic brand voice on social media.
If a brand is using social as a broadcast channel, then that brand voice will never be heard. You need to understand your
audience, how they use social media, and max this out with empathy. This is hard to do as you may need to let go of
some of the control and be media neutral putting yourself in the shoes of your customers.
I interviewed Dana DiTomaso (@danatitomaso (https://www.twitter.com/danatitomaso)) Partner at Kick Point Agency, after
seeing her super keynote at MozCon2016, Social Media: People First, “Rules” Second.
She talked about how we use social media extensively, but asked the question do we use it well? “A lot of social media is
an old medium slapped onto a new product, it is a digital billboard.” You can take a post from Facebook and put it on an
outdoor advertising and it would look like it belongs on that billboard. Dana points out that no one wakes up the morning
and says “I can’t wait to engage with my favourite brand on Facebook!” She challenges us to think about how we
approach social media and start with the market in mind, don’t start the ideation process with the billboard, this brings us
back to the 1st point in this guide about having a more UX approach with our marketing.
Dana also identi ed that the language and words we use to report on social media metrics doesn’t help:
 Audience: I can talk to you but you can’t talk back.
 Impressions: Like it is a TV advert
 Reach: How many people scrolled past your post.
When social rst appeared we all thought it was wonderful, the concept that “I can talk to you and you can talk to me”
was captivating, yet marketing and businesses have morphed into forms we are more familiar with, the billboard, radio,
TV.
To move away from billboard to social. Dana recommends we look at social from a SMUX perspective. SMUX stands for
Social Media User Experience.
SMUX was created with the goal of rewiring our brains to think of social media from a more person approach. It goes
beyond your personas and uses data to build what they call ‘attention research’ . This attention research is the process of
discovering what gets your market excited and there is a tool to help you.
Rival IQ (www. (http://www.rivaliq.com/)rivaliq (http://www.rivaliq.com/).com/ (http://www.rivaliq.com/)) is a tool to track

what your competitors are up to BUT you can also throw in the social media accounts of your best customers, these can
be Twitter, Facebook, Pintrest, whatever. Rival IQ will then create a landscape and evaluate it and show you a LOT of
really cool data.
Dana used in her MoZCon keynote an active example where she populated the tool with all the Twitter accounts of the
MozCon
Rivel IQ adding accounts
Rivel IQ Landscape
The data showed what the popular #tags are, when they are active. This helps you understand when you should be
focusing on social, what content gets people excited and interesting. This is a deeper research on top of your personas
that will build a pro le of your market which you can use to de ne the best social channels to use for di erent types of
posts, what message you should be saying?
“People like to talk to people who are like them. Go back to Rival IQ and review those top posts again. You can
search the post content and see if your market is using the same language that you want to use. In particular, use
the keyword research from your search marketing and see which of those words your market is using on social
media.”
Dana DiTomaso.
B2B brands that do social really well.
Intel on Facebook to celebrate the diversity of its own engineers .It called attention to the strength of Intel’s corporate
culture and surely went a long way toward helping its recruitment e orts.
Intel celebrates diversity of engineers on Facebook
Oracle used Twitter to really show their 440,000 followers its philanthropy side, gives prospects, customers, and potential
sta a chance to see a softer side to the brand.
Oracle demonstrates their philanthropy on Twitter
Your to-do list:
 Go back to your customer personas and pump up the pro le using Rival IQ to get deep attention research.
 Review, with an honest eye, how you have been using social media. Are you using it as a billboard, could you be
doing better?
 Outline the strategic steps needed to break the billboard cycle and become more social.
Social Media Management Checklist (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/free-guide-to-create-a-social-media-

marketing-plan/)
“A free, practical checklist to review and improve the returns from social media marketing”
Guide level: Basic

Social media marketing strategy guide

(http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/social-media-marketing-7-steps-to-success-
ebook/)
“Create a plan to manage social media marketing to support your commercial goals”
Guide level: expert
Access resource ()
7. Not cleaning your database
Hands up. Who has a data strategy?
It is not the most glam of all marketing tasks, but your data is the blood that runs through your marketing body, and your
blood may be a little toxic. Having a data strategy and process of how you manage data will keep your blood ow moving
in the right direction.
You have all heard the phrase that B2B data decays faster than B2C, around 25% of your data, on average, will be dead
in a year, job moves and changes, that sort of thing, yet you will still meet businesses that have NEVER cleaned their data.
Data is just a proxy for people and the truth is, you can not do email, CRM, Direct Marketing campaigns to your prospects
and customers if your data is poor.
Crap in, crap out.
The term dirty data was created for a reason, and you should be scared by it. But what to do? The rst step to recovery is
to de ne a data strategy.
 Step 1 – Do an audit
Where does your data sit? Is it in several places around the business? What format is it in? CSV les, a master database,
some data in a CRM, another in a marketing automation tool, a USB stick (I wish I was joking with the latter). You also
need to understand how long the data has been sitting in that database.
1. Step 2 – De dupe
With a few data depositories and di erent ways to collect data, you will nd when you do your audit that you may have
the same record on di erent databases. And you need to dedupe everywhere! You can dedupe in say Eloqua , but that is
marketing’s tool, the same record could be duplicated in Salesforce.
Deduping is not a di cult process to work through and will save you cash. You are paying to email the same person, the
same message more than once, add to that if you use a solution that works on a cost per record, you are getting charged
again and again for the same person.
On the other hand, your recipient is getting annoyed losing trust in you, will ignore you, and unsubscribe. I have been
getting 2 emails per campaign from Econsultancy for a good 18+ months. So if you are reading Econsultancy, can you
please dedupe your records
Econsultancy duplicate mailings
 Step 3 – Check and honour preferences
You have a duty to manage your customers preferences and to make sure you are keeping in line with the law. Go
through your now deduped data and segment your data sets into who wants to get what, when. For example, you will
have people who have unsubscribed from marketing, but they should still get customer related noti cations. Some may
have registered with the Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS) is a list of organisations (limited companies,
public limited companies and Scottish partnerships) who have registered their wish not to receive unsolicited direct
marketing calls (http://corporate.ctpsonline.org.uk/ (http://corporate.ctpsonline.org.uk/)). Others may prefer to hear from
your newsletter, but opted out of a welcome email series.
 Step 4 – Enrich your dataset.
Not all data is equal, you may have a % of data records with just an email, others an email but no company name, the
more data you have the better, you can do more personalised email and marketing programmes with improved data.
Add the date the record was created, what was the source, a campaign landing page, a direct enquiry etc? What data can
you add toeach record, such as social pro le, what they are interested in, can you use content to progressively improve
the data? Hubspot are masters at doing this. They already have data on me, which is pre populated (lovely UX) BUT to
get the guide, I need to give them just a little bit more information.
Example of Hubspot data collection
 Step 5 – Write as formal document
I am not going to lie, data management is hard work, and you are more than likely going to need the help of other
departments, and external agencies to dedupe, clean and audit your data. This will cost time and money, BUT not as
much money and wasted time on hoarding data that is crap and not worth using. Let’s also not forget the cost of the nes
you can get!
The ICO really do ne people, don’t take the risk, play fair and honestly, or face the ne. You can keep a track on
companies that have been ned by the ICO here. https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/
(https://ico.org.uk/action-weve-taken/enforcement/) You can see for yourself, a lead generation company was ned
£200,000 for sending out unsolicited marketing text messages, there are nes for people leaving laptops in public places
with excel les of personal data, people calling and emailing people without consent, or mining data when they have not
been clear about what the company will do to the data that they collect .
Writing your data strategy down as a formal document will get management buy in, be clear about the objectives, you
want to do this to manage and maintain a high quality, clean database with a focus on quality not quantity in order to
nurture and convert prospects and customers. The whole purpose of this super data set if so that marketing can do its job
in executing e ective email and direct marketing campaigns, it helps sales close faster with the right prospects, and it will
save the business from paying out from someone who complains to the ICO.
Beyond the clear bene ts of having quality, clean data, the costs of a ne could send your business under, so invest
wisely.
Your to-do list:
 Do an audit of your data, nd out where it sits, how long ite been there and what the source of the contact was
 Dedupe your database, you will have duplicate records, there can only ever be 1 unique email address, this is a
quick win.
 Have a plan on how to clean and enrich your opted in data
 Keep in line with the law. Full Stop.
 Write a data strategy and get company wide buy in on its importance, get help from agencies if you need it.
B2C Marketing Automation Best Practices Guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/marketing-automation-

best-practices-guide/)
“De ne best practices and make the business case for Marketing Automation”
Guide level: Expert
Why Customer Data Should Shape your Marketing Strategy (http://www.smartinsights.com/customer-

engagement/customer-engagement-strategy/customer-data-shape-marketing-strategy/)
“Taking action with the collection and analysis of survey data to help improve the customer journey and
strengthen company processes.”
Guide level: Free blog
4 ways to clean up your data and boost lead engagement (http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-

platforms/big-data-digital-marketing-platforms/4-ways-clean-data-boost-lead-engagement/)
“Dirty data leads to costly mistakes. Here’s how to prevent them”
Access resource ()
8. Not following best practices in Organic or Paid Search
Is your Search working?
Search is a high intent channel, people head over to Google and are actively looking for information, you may have the
best product, super smart website, but if no one can nd you, you don’t catch any sh and will go hungry.
This year I have worked with clients and trained many people who are working through some form of a digital
transformation project, and there has been a common thread among them all. Not using best practices in organic and
search marketing.
Below is an example of the website pages for a B2B site. There is no way they could rank when their URL structure and
on page data is a mess, they had some good links, but it was wasted.
Example of the website pages for a B2B site
“Only 3% of searches have the classic 10 blue links”

Rand Fishkin, MozCon 2016
3% of searches show 10 blue links, I had to reread it, and what do we all ask for? ‘Hi SEO team, can I rank #1 for this
page……”
Keyword Research and SERP Features
If you are not using the keyword tool from Moz, you really should give it a whirl. What I like about it is the ability to group
your keywords into themes, and these themes can be grouped can be grouped with similar words with a similar lexicon.
If you have followed all the points in this guide the rst one being having a clearly de ned persona and really digging into
the empty of that potential or existing customer, doing user experience research on social using a tool like Rival IQ it’s the
best starting point when doing keyword research. You are after all trying to be found by your customers and they are the
ones that are instigating this search then you need to use the language that they are using.
What’s nice about the keyword tool from Moz, is the ability to see for each of these keywords and phrases the volume,
who’s ranking for those terms, how di cult it will be to rank for those terms, what’s the opportunity for growth and my
potential.
The example below is a snippets from one of my B2B clients where we have after doing user experience research and
identi ed a cluster of keywords that we were currently not ranking for and there is a lot of opportunity and potential to
rank for these terms.
Keyword potential chart
Now going back to Rand Fishkin’s point about 3% of global searches being 10 blue links, another feature that is very
useful within the tool is showing where you currently rank for all the di erent types of SERP features.
If you go back to our content repurposing activity, are there opportunities for your content to be featured within di erent
search results? Is there an opportunity for you to rank for a video instead of a web page or a rich snippet?
SERP features
With your content ideas and your keyword research do you need to make sure that your website house is nice and tidy
and ready for those lovely spiders to come and visit and sit down and have a cup of tea.
I’ve always believed that as long as you adhering to Google best practice guidelines in creating and setting up your web
site and you’re producing valuable relevant content that people want to read and the people want to link to, then you’re
all good. There is a tool called Screaming Frog which is free to use and it will pull all of your web pages, the title tags, alt
tags, meta descriptions, keywords for you to export as an Excel document for you to audit and tidy up your house.
PPC
Paid search is a form of digital marketing that involves the Promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in the search
engine results pages through paid advertising. It works because like organic search you have high intent consumers who
are actively trying to buy your products or services and where SEO can take a while to rank you can be up and running
with a paid search campaign within the hour.
It is also testable, you can AB test your subject lines, landing pages, keywords used to determine the best performing ad.
PPC is also very targeted, you can show your advert based on location, time of day, device and thanks to the tracking,
you get instant return on investment metrics to see which campaigns are driving sales.
The process for paid search campaigns is to have a good campaign structure, at the heart it comes back down to your
keyword research. Ideally you will split each of your campaigns by objectives and there will be a clearly de ned budget
and targeting settings, and within the campaign you will have a number of groups that will all contain common themes for
your keywords and ads.
AdWords account structure of PPC advertising
All sounds simple enough in theory but in practice I regularly review an AdWords account where they have one Ad group
with A LOT of keywords that should be separated. The result is a poorly performing campaign where the ads are rarely
shown due to the low quality score and in some cases Google will stop the adverts from showing. That’s right, Google
won’t take your money.
Another mistake I see with paid search campaigns is bidding on the wrong match type, for example a phrase match for “
industrial hats” would show up for a search term such as ‘buy industrial hats’. You may also want to identify negative
match keywords this is where you will block the ad from being displayed if the search term contains a speci c keyword
e.g. ‘rent industrial hats’
2016 saw quite a large change to AdWords in the form of expanded text ads. You have until January 2017 to edit all of
your PPC adverts before they roll over to the new format. Previously we had headlines of up to 30 characters, a single
description of up to 80 characters. Now you have almost a 50% increase in the amount of space for your adverts.
As you audit and tweak your ads also check for ad extensions and site links, you can use site links to drive people to
di erent pages on your website, you can use call out extensions for speci c value proposition messages, you can have
all localisation extensions to show where your business is located, what time you open till etc.
All of these features are free to use and they provide additional information in your advert not to mention you take up
more space so you have a greater impact.
Just take a look at this example from a search I did for “disaster recovery” the top ad looks good although I would have
added some sitelinks here, but look at the advert at the bottom this could take up a lot more space with callouts,
localisations, sitelinks and expanded ad copy.
Disaster recovery search results
Sloppy Remarketing
I am a big fan of remarketing, actually let me rephrase that, I am a big fan of people that don’t do sloppy remarketing. I am
referring to the business that follow me around the web like a little lost puppy based on the notion that I came to your
website and didn’t convert your big-hitting-we-are- going-to-die macro conversion……. so they stalk me. What’s worse is
when I actually convert and ll out your damn form or buy your products and services, you still follow me around the web.
You can build very clever bespoke remarketing lists based on the actions of your users on your website by creating
segments and using these to build your remarketing lists.
But to do this you need to have actioned the tips in the Google Analytics part of this guide, if you have set up event
tracking on your website you can use this to build clever segments based on what your users are doing and as long as
you link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account you can create remarketing list o the back of your
segments that you can create.
I like to build the segments using a step-by-step approach. For example:

 People that visited the website and bounced
 People that visited the website + speci c product page
 People that visited the website + speci c product page + 25% of the video
 People that visited the website+ speci c product page + 100% of the video but didn’t convert
 Etc. etc.
If you map out all the micro and macro interactions you can start building segments and if you click on the little upside
down triangle next to the word Actions, there is an option build an audience for for your remarketing.
Re-marketing segments with Google AdWords
Clever remarking would be to follow people around the web that visited your website viewed a speci c product page and
only watch 25% of a key video but as they didn’t watch the punchline shown at 75% of the video, so followed them
around the website with the punchline and try and bring them back to the site to complete the action you wanted them to
do. Or if you know that I’ve downloaded a few PDF documents but didn’t ll out an application form follow me around
with reasons why I should ll out the application form, and don’t forget to set a limit on how often you will stalk me around
the websites I visit and when I convert close the door, I shouldn’t see these messages anymore.
Your to-do list:
 Using insights from your UX and persona research, carry out a more detailed keyword research for your SEO and
PPC campaigns
 Audit your current website using Screaming Frog to see what pages need attention and tweaking.
 Look at your content audit to nd opportunities of content formats which you could optimize for di erent SERP
features
 Review your account structure for your paid search campaigns
 Improve low quality schools by sending users to Quality landing pages that match the key won’t than
expectations.
 If you
hatshotdigital/september- were not AB testing start AB testing.
 Build segments based on a sliding scale of interaction with your site and content assets and create a remarketing
list for each segment.
Successful SEO guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/seo-7-steps-to-

success-guide/)
“Our comprehensive guide to Search Engine Optimisation best practices isn’t just for SEOs, the clear
explanations mean that it can be used by marketers to ask the right questions to boost their SEO”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource ()
9. Car sales copy
Inside the mind of the consumer
Broadly speaking marketers are not natural storytellers, and when we do think about writing copy or we are given copy
and asked to make it “on brand” we default to the old fab method, feature, advantage, bene t copy.
The problem with this is that your customers really don’t want to listen to all the wonderful features and bene ts of your
products and services they just don’t care enough. You need to bring storytelling to the table and inspire people to
behave di erently.
Now storytelling has become a buzzword in marketing circles over the last few years but I think there’s something in this,
we have lost the art of storytelling that marketing had over 100 years ago, we would rather chest thump our messages
like big angry gorillas than to speak to customers the way that they would like to be spoken to.
DropBox is a great example of using storytelling to connect to an audience, because the truth is your customers will
relate better to the story if it can identify with the characters or personalities within. Drew Houston the founder of
Dropbox could have just started with the story of “we have invented a le hosting system o ering a personal cloud as a
service”. Back in 2007 people didn’t really understand what a cloud was, the FAB message didn’t stick. So instead he
opted to start with a story that his target prospects could identify with and that story started by reminding people about
the frustration of leaving behind USB sticks or being given a USB stick which might have made you worry about getting a
nasty virus on your laptop and then he started talking about Dropbox .
How do you write customer centric converting copy?
Well, stop talking about yourselves for a start. Again, have an honest look at your site copy, email copy, landing page
copy, see how many times you have used the word “we”.
If you want some tips on writing high converting copy, follow Joanna Wiebe from @copyhackers
(https://www.twitter.com/Copyhackers). She talks about getting the right messages to people, because as marketer, our
job it to get the attention and keep the attention of our prospects and customers.
“You will see 5,000 ad messages a day. You will recognize 50 and remember 4. When we are writing our emails and
landing pages, we don’t think how tired the brains of the people who are consuming our messages are.”
Joanna Wiebe, Copyhackers (https://www.twitter.com/Copyhackers)
Out of all those ad messages your prospects are looking at, you are actually only competing with around 4 messages, the
ones that people remember, the rest are just noise. Joanna explains that “Save Time and Money” is one of the most
common messages that you see, it’s short and snappy and we are trained to boil are messages down. The problem is
that if everyone is saying the same thing, it all blends into the same noise.
How do you keep attention so we can convert?
Copy Hackers have a great case study of how they took Wistia welcome email campaign. This contained 8 emails, a time
based sequence of emails to move trial based users to paid users. Joanna got 3.5x more conversions for paid customer,
yep, that’s right, for every 100 the old sequence brought in, Joanna’s new copy for the same 8 emails, brought in 350
customers.
So what is the secret?
Well, the copy was longer. Which is hard for us to accept. We are always told to get nice, snappy messages, but boil it
down too much and the message is vague and not speci c enough.
Is the copy obviously about me. Whoever is reading needs to connect.
Wistia email
They hypothesised that this email, although it’s good, and it does convert but they want to get more sales. The new copy
is longer, and very speci c and the call to actions are split with 2 CTA one in the 1st person and another a little vague.
Wistia: Good news, people are watching your video – email
Wistia – email improvements
This new version,

hatshotdigital/september- it feeds the ego, and is able to connect the dots, your readers want to know what to do with the
information that you have just given them, and we are too busy and tired to work it out, so make it easy and then
empower your reader to do something about it with CTAs that are in the 1st person.
The next point Joanna makes is to use word pictures, which she links to the Wistia example. When they emailed a
customer to say, ‘Hey you can change the colour of your video player’. To make this pop, make your concepts concrete,
instead of saying “you can change the colour” to” you can have hot pink, or dollar bill green” the reader can visualise the
message.
Your to-do list:
 Review your most important pages on your website or email campaigns. Where can you make your copy more
user centric, less ‘Me! Me! Me!’ more ‘you, dear reader, all about you’
 Follow CopyHackers tips, are you being speci c, do you connect the dots, what do you want people to do with
the information you are giving them, put your CTA in the 1st person.
 AB test your hypothesis. Prove what works for your audience with data.
Using Storytelling Narratives to Improve Your Marketing Mix (http://www.smartinsights.com/content-

management/content-marketing-creative-and-formats/using-storytelling-narratives-improve-marketing-mix/)
“An introduction to the “Hero’s Journey” method of storytelling”
Visual Storytelling, Digital Marketing, and 2016 Trends (http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-

strategy/visual-storytelling-digital-marketing-2016-trends/)
“Digital Marketing will increasingly become about visual storytelling”
Access resource ()
10. Not aligning Sales and Marketing
You can have a small or a large sales and marketing team for a business and there is always some silo behaviour
between work streams, but for us all to get along and achieve the same company wide objectives we need to work
together.
Sales generally speaking are in the present, they are pushing with prospects and clients to close a deal, build
relationships, and can work independently and with some ambiguity. They are closer to the ground with target customers,
so they have valuable input into customer personas and what drives these customers to buy. Sales can also be a great
source of content ideas.
Marketing on the other hand, we are looking at the future, at market focused conversations, our messages are typically
one to many, and we work to build our brands reputation and nd channels to drive our messages to pull in the leads and
nurture them so that sales can do their job. We can provide insights into the behaviours of customers and engaged
prospects which can re ne sales pitches, proposals and presentations.
Align sales and marketing’s objectives and plans to RACE
Both teams are tasked to work together to bring in the business goals.
Could you have a service level agreement (SLA) between the two departments and work together to master the
technology you are using to manage your prospects and customers?
Your SLA document aims at providing mutual accountability by agreeing project plans and responsibilities together at the
start of any marketing programmes or campaigns through to what sales intend to do with leads when they get their hands
on them.
Ideas for your SLA:
 Quotas: how many leads do marketing need to deliver to sales over a set period.
 De ne what a lead is: all data is not equal, therefore not all leads are created equal. Agree with sales what a
quali ed lead looks like and either set this up in your automation system or take a spreadsheet approach.
 Timescales for follow-up – agree what the follow-up will look like and within what time scales this will be
completed. Do prospects get a welcome email as soon as they ll out a form, when will someone call if they
request a call back?
Map strategy and tactics to RACE to visualize activity to achieve goals together. I have found this very powerful for the
whole company to see how each cog turns the wheel, and to expand on this and identify how marketing is going to nd
customers, how they will manage the leads, and when they hand over to sales.
Input from both parties is critical, recently I have worked with an agency where sales have worked in silo to marketing,
who have provided leads, but they don’t convert as prospects said it that the product was too expensive. This had gone
on for a year!
When we mapped the marketing programmes and sales activities to RACE everyone could see what impact each
department had on the sales cycle and how insights from both sides on the camp could improve the marketing machine!
Reach, Act, Convert, Engage (RACE) by Smart Insights
Your to-do list:
 Discuss with Sales having a Service Level Agreement between departments
 De ne what a lead is
 Have input to each other’s work streams, Sales can help with insights for persona and content, Marketing has
data on how campaigns are working.
Agree on timescales for follow ups and campaigns.
Sales and Marketing Integration Guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/sales-marketing-integration-guide/)
“Sales and Marketing Teams should get along, our guide will show you how to improve performance and
communication, leading to better results”
Guide level: Expert
Access resource (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/sales-marketing-integration-guide/)
This is part of the

Business-to-Business Marketing Toolkit
View the Toolkit (/toolkit/b2b-marketing-toolkit/)

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9/21/2017 10 Business-to-Business Mistakes | Smart Insights

1. Thinking that user experience is just for web and developers

However, post website projects I’ve left user experience alone.

What a mistake that was.

The key fundamentals of good UX is to:

3. Technical constraints. Does it Better will always beat Did it First.

Hubspot Persona: Marketing Mary

Hubspot Persona: Owner Ollie

 Who are your users?

 Why do they use your product or services?

 Where are they getting information from?

 When do the experienced a problem that your product or service solves?

Customer Empathy Maps

The empathy map has 6 di erent components:

1. How the customer thinks and feels

2. What the customer hears

3. What the customer sees

4. What the customer says and does

5. The customer’s pain

6. The customer’s gain

Example empathy map:

Empathy map of Sara Persona

User Experience in Marketing

User Flows: don’t do any digital marketing without them

User ow chart icons

What impact can you get?

New addition after UX study

Your to-do list:

 Check if you have personas

 When were they last updated?

 Pump up the persona with more user centric insights

 Create a user ow for a campaign or email programme

Recommended resource: Persona Guide by Smart Insights

Customer Persona Guide (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/customer-persona-toolkit/)

Guide level: Expert

Access resource (http://www.smartinsights.com/guides/customer-persona-toolkit/ )

Recommended resource: Email marketing posts on Smart Insights blog

How to plan event-triggered automated email campaigns (http://www.smartinsights.com/email-

Using Personas for Email Marketing

2. Not setting up your Analytics to correctly track your leads

Not having goals set up on your website.

Example: Business examples and goals

What about the smaller goals? The micro moments?

Check what type of tracking is required

Example: Adding value to goals.

Not using events- track actions that drive your business

Google Analytics chart of events from website

Setting up a goal in Google Analytics

Not using segments

Using advanced segments to understand and improve conversion

Not Using Custom Dimensions or Data Import

How do they work?

If you are familiar

Example of marketing costs in google analytics

Example of marketing costs in google analytics

Your to-do list:

 What are your main objectives?