As a B2B marketer, I’m sure you’ve had days where you’ve dreamed of working on the latest Under Armour spread or the newest Red Bull campaign.
While it would be exciting to work on one of these brands, there are certainly ways to make your own B2B brand stand out all year.
Below are six simple steps to help light a fire under your brand and make it sizzle.
Identify your big idea
Every industry vertical within the B2B space has something happening that is a leading trend impacting business decisions. This big idea could be a problem that your company can solve, a technology innovation or a consumer shift that is impacting upstream raw material suppliers.
Identify your experts who can speak to the big idea
Social media has caused consumers to expect immediate access to people and information. Consumers want to connect with industry experts, and they want to do so with the same sense of immediacy and intimacy. Identify your company’s subject matter experts for your big idea.
Build your story on the big idea
Identify all the ways your company can help other organizations deal with the big idea. Take a stand on what your company is doing and how you plan to make a difference. Even in the B2B space, a great story has personality, and is memorable and unique.
Distribute your story
Your big idea has many different aspects. Take your big idea and develop it into your presentation deck for the year. This now serves as your main messaging platform — the long form of your Big Idea story. Your team can use this to present at conferences and to customers.
Once you have the long form of your story, you can break it into shorter articles. These articles should delve into a specific aspect of this big idea. They can become content for your monthly email newsletter. Now take each article and break it into three to five shorter snippets. These now become your social posts and your educational teaser copy that you use on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
Animate your story
Now that you have your Big Idea in writing, how else can you bring it to life? Can you create a video that demonstrates how your company addresses the big idea? What about an infographic that shows the steps for solving the problem?
Measure your story
It wouldn’t be 2015 marketing if you didn’t measure the impact of your big idea. How many follow-up conversations did you have from your conference speaking engagement? How many people opened and clicked through your email or interacted with your social post?
Following these six steps can ignite your marketing plan for your company’s industry experts to share throughout the year.
