As the author of a recent post on the growing importance of marketing
How Marketing Grew to be the Most Important Area of Your Business (without your knowledge)
I decided to share advice by this sales and marketing on how to get started with marketing. This will be a series of articles on important marketing topics. I dedicated it to the foolish companies who sent me rejection letters in 2013 - shame on each of you.
One suggestion is that, if you want a good document to read on BtoB demand generation, then go download the great white paper How to Find New Customers. You’ll find it at the Home page of Find New Customers - no signup required. And Find New Customers is the nicest company in BtoB marketing today.
The area I suggest you start with is developing a deep understanding of your buyers. Why? If you want to write meaningful content to buyers, you need to understand how they buy and the terms they use. After all, future potential buyers will use the same terms and thoughts as past buyers. In fact, Joe Pulizzi says Epic Content means less marketing. How can you create epic content without understanding buyers.
According to Adele Revella of The Buyer Persona Institute. almost 1/2 of companies (44%) but almost 9 out of 10 say they are not using them effectively. The reason I believe is that buyer personas are like scuba diving. You don’t scuba dive unless you are trained and certified. (I am a certified scuba diver, by the way.) Buyer Personas require expertise that comes from good training.
Joe Pulizzi
In the great book by my friend Joe Pulizzi of The Content Marketing Institute, his recent book, Epic Content Marketing, talked about the importance of “audience personas.”
Please keep in mind what is required to do good customer interviews:
- Know whom to interview
- Know how to conduct a successful interview
- Know how to document your findings
- Know how to use those documented findings in your marketing campaigns
With that in mind, I find the best way is to use people who are trained by the Buyer Persona Institute, in the Buyer Persona Master Class, like Jeff Ogden of Find New Customers was.
Spend some time investing in learning the behavior of recent buyers and your marketing will vastly improve.
To contact this award winning marketing expert, just fill out the form below.
What do you think? Love comments here.
This blog is written by the award-winning marketing expert Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor - President of Find New Customers. You can follow me on Twitter at @fearlesscomp
