No Soup for You - Does My B2B Company Really Suck This Much?

Recently I was looking for a few new ways to give my printing company a little social media boost and I ran across a small company that has created a full-service social media management solution, Main Street Hub. After visiting one of their landing pages, I submitted my information to their online form requesting a free social media assessment. A few days later they sent me back an email thanking me for my interest but letting me know that it doesn't seem like my business is one that they can service. Instead, Main Street Hub solely focuses on providing their social media management solution to local, brick and mortar retail businesses.  Overall the email was cordial, but at the end I was left with the same problem I started with, how can I improve my social media marketing efforts?

I applaud Main Street Hub for knowing who they are. There is something to be said for creating a niche and getting really, really good at that type of business. We could all be so fortunate to be in a position where our business was growing so fast we can pick and choose our clientele. They simply believe they can't service me or choose not to because I don't fit their ideal customer mold. I get it, I'm not in a business-to-consumer (B2C) industry and I can certainly tell you from experience, it's not exactly easy to engage with customers through social media as a printing company. It's a hard problem to solve. But when I look at this email, all my mind sees is opportunity. What if there was an expert who understood exactly how to help me with my type of business? Chances are there are a few brave soles like this out there but I just haven't found them yet. But that is something I'd certainly be willing to pay good money for!

I know a lot of business owners might be familiar with this type of rejection, especially those with business-to-business (B2B) companies. And when you look at all the marketing resources available out there, it seems a majority of ideas and solutions are created with B2C businesses in mind. In fact, it is extremely rare to pick up just about any marketing book off the shelf and find that many examples of brilliant marketing strategies implemented by B2B companies. Why? For one it's harder but two, it's probably because it's boring content as well. No one wants to hear about marketing strategies of the Dunder Mifflins of the world! Instead they'd rather focus on some cool new digital campaign by Zappos. And while it makes sense to me that a brand like Zappos would bring more social currency and buzz with it, as they have a significantly larger customer base than your average B2B, what doesn't make sense is why so many marketers avoid the challenge of solving problems for B2B companies. B2B or B2C, money is still money. After all, a recent article in the October 2013 issue of Inc Magazine pointed out while promoting the benefits of investing in B2B start-ups, "They are really good at making money." Call me crazy, but a company with solid cash flow probably has a few extra dollars to spend on marketing.

I know my printing and marketing company solves problems for just as many B2B outfits as we do for our B2C clients. As a B2B company ourselves, it seems only natural that we should help our own kind. But the true irony of the message I received from Main Street Hub is I bet they are extremely good at B2B marketing and would actually be the perfect company to help my business! After all, they got me to their site through the use of good PR and well placed banner ads, they got me to download an informative white paper from their cleanly-designed landing page, they offer good content and they subscribed me to their email list. Not to mention they have over 3,000 likes on Facebook. Not bad for a small B2B company. So if they are going to go to the trouble of collecting all these leads from B2B companies, do something with them!! Heck sell these leads to me, I'll find a use for them.

My challenge to those reading, if you're a marketing company trying to grow your business, stop ignoring us! Yes, our businesses can be extremely difficult to understand and rather boring but once you get it, you suddenly become an expert in a less competitive landscape. How many other agencies would you be up against who are self proclaimed experts at marketing third-party logistic services for example? Also, while the response rate for B2B marketing efforts may be low at times, the ROI can still be very high as a B2B sale is typically in the thousands of dollars range. While a consumer facing marketing campaign may require a year round investment of both time and resources to generate results a B2B company can sometimes make their year with just one simple deal. I think I'd rather solve the problem of trying to find just that one B2B customer rather than the thousands needed to sustain a B2C.

Google Isn't Perfect and Why You Must Build Your Brand Beyond SEO & Online Marketing

My business depends on the popularity of direct mail. Of course it's no surprise then if I tell you that the past few years have been a little scary with all the popular attention digital marketing has received. What started with simple banner ads and basic Google adword campaigns has morphed into an all encompassing online lead generation strategy where only the strong survive. Those with the resources and smarts to ensure they consistently rank #1 in Google are capturing market share at unprecedented rates never before seen. And is this a fair system? Is trusting the wisdom of Google a fair way to decide the outcome of an economy? 

Today, if your not on page one of Google then you're all but dead to the online world looking for your services. The solution? Hire a really good SEO expert to do a number on your website. But, in doing so you run the risk of segmenting your brand away from potential customers. Take for instance the tale of two banks. Say I'm new to the Tulsa market, so I do a search for "Tulsa banks" in Google. Note - the results of this search were captured on October 14th, 2013 and are subject to change. At the top of this search is F&M Bank, a small local bank with nine Oklahoma locations and three in Dallas. In addition to F&M, four other local banks also reach page one but to my amazement, I have to go to page two to find Bank of Oklahoma (BOK). Not only is BOK the largest local bank in Tulsa, with over 100 Oklahoma locations, it's one of the 50 largest banks in the United States! My eyes must be deceiving me for how could BOK be on page two!?! 

What is it that F&M Bank is doing so well that BOK isn't? Well, maybe not anything. If I tweak my search to "Oklahoma banks", suddenly information about BOK appears but I have to go all the way to page six to see F&M Bank. So is F&M good for Tulsa but not the rest of Oklahoma?  Not at all, but their SEO and content marketing strategy could potentially limit them to these types of results. Because with SEO you have to make choices. And these choices often disqualify you from a key segment of customers you would like to work with.

One of those critical choices F&M Bank has made that influences their Google ranking on certain keywords is with their website title, "F&M Bank | Tulsa - Owasso, OK | Dallas - Fort Worth, TX". By including Tulsa in their title, they are making F&M Bank more relevant to Google in regards to being affiliated with Tulsa. And because Tulsa is a relatively small market, something as little as a title can make a huge deal. But not surprisingly though, they do not show up on page one of a "Dallas banks" search, due to greater competition in a much bigger market (in fact they don't even rank in the top 100 results for "Dallas banks"). So how exactly can F&M expect to grow in the Dallas market when there is little chance they'll ever rank high enough to gain attention via internet search results? Note - the Google algorithm uses hundreds of factors to index and rank web pages with page titles being just one small influential cog in the big machine. To understand other ways you can influence your ranking, consult an SEO specialist or contact me and I'll be happy to give you a starting point.

The reality that F&M Bank and businesses everywhere face is that in order to gain attention and grow, more traditional forms of advertising must be incorporated. The last thing that I would tell you is that SEO isn't important. To the contrary it is extremely important. But, SEO and content marketing is a bit of a zero-sum game typically not effective enough to enable a business to gain all the customers it needs to thrive. And that is exactly the reason why a supposedly old-age business like mine, that offers print and direct mail solutions, can continue to service customers, add value and actually grow our sales in the year 2013.

Every year, billions of advertising dollars are spent with newspapers, billboards, magazines, radio, television, email marketing, word of mouth, POP displays, branding campaigns, messaging campaigns, print ads and of course direct mail. So, for anyone to tell you that print or any of these other forms of advertising are dying, they just aren't educated enough on marketing to realize that all of these continue to generate customers a return on investment. And perhaps the greatest irony of continuing traditional advertising methods is that they typically help you improve the results of your overall SEO and content marketing plan. But because you may then spend less on digital marketing, the fact that going traditional still works is the dirty little truth many SEO marketers just don't want you to know.


Author's note - I'd love to hear from you about what traditional advertising methods work for you. If you are kind enough to comment on this post or share with your network, please give a shout out to your own favorite old school advertising method. #directmail