The art of telling a story for your target audience w/ James Grady

If you have a dog, you know that we tend to treat dogs like people. Furry, barking, chewing, slobbering people ... But you know what I mean. We know dogs aren't the same as people, but their behaviors and personalities are so aligned with human behaviors and emotions that we treat them like people. Anyhow, I bring this up because I came across a LinkedIn post the other day about what you can learn from dog training about training and leading people. The author of that post is my guest today! Joanna Bowzer is director of marketing at ClearVoice, a content production partner for brands of all sizes.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think most B2B marketers would agree that it's important for a company's leaders to be visible on social media, sharing ideas and stories. But most CEOs and other leaders don't have time to write articles and LinkedIn posts and such, and so the task falls to a copywriter, who does some research and, ideally, interviews the CEO and then tries to write something in their voice. The degree to which this process works to produce content that comes across as authentic and impactful depends on the skill of the writer, of course. But it also depends on the collaboration between the writer and the CEO, specifically the degree to which the writer is able to help the CEO articulate their thoughts and shape them into a coherent piece of content. To explore the ins and outs of this collaboration, my guest is Oleksii Klochai, founder of Wizard on Demand, a content marketing firm for technical products and services.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In our age of remote everything, the elevator pitch is a bit of an anachronism. When's the last time you pitched an idea in an elevator? But the concept is still relevant and important! If you're in marketing or sales, you need to be able to explain what you offer is a way that's succinct, clear, and compelling ... and do it in about 30 seconds or less. Now, crafting a great elevator pitch isn't exactly quantum theory ... but it's not easy, either! And in fact, according to my guest, many companies struggle to explain what they do and why it matters to non-experts. Jarie Bolander is many things ... He's head of market strategy at Decision Counsel ... the author of several books, including Story Driven Outreach ... and host of The Entrepreneur Ethos Podcast.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're all familiar with The Funnel ... We know there's a top of the funnel, a middle, a bottom ... and everything in between. The top is where we just try to make prospects aware that we exist ... And once they're in the funnel, the marketer's job, alongside sales, is to nudge them further along until they're at the bottom, where, presumably, prospects are just about ready to buy ... and we marketers do our part by supplying bottom of the funnel content to help get them over the finish line.But for my guests today, this tidy little picture is maybe a little bit too tidy. Tas Bober is founder of Delphinium Solutions, an consultancy specializing in landing page strategy for growth-stage SaaS companies ... and Lashay Lewis is founder of Authority Plug, a content marketing advisory firm.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the biggest sources of tension between marketing and sales is the quality of leads. From the point of view of sales, marketing qualified leads, or MQLs, are notoriously iffy, derived from people downloading gated content and signing up for newsletters and so on. Marketing hands these leads over to sales, thinking, we've done our part! But sales turns around and says, these leads are garbage! People who download an ebook or whatever are not necessarily in the market. We need leads that are actually ready to buy!It stands to reason that marketers could do with a better way of sourcing and evaluating leads before handing them to sales. What could that look like? My guest today is here to paint us a picture. Quincy Johnson is a senior consultant at Compound Growth Marketing, a demand generation consultancy.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In some very basic way. the purpose of marketing is to support sales. And so it stands to reason that the more marketers know about how sales actually works, the better. But marketers often have only a hazy understanding of what motivates salespeople and HOW they sell. I know that was my experience when I worked as a copywriter in the medical device industry. I actually went through sales training and did ride alongs with reps. But still, in my day to day work I wasn't really seeing things from a sales perspective. To help us better understand what marketers ought to know about how sales works, my guests today are Joel Barker and Karl Steiner. Joel is creative director and principal at Lion's Way Content, and Karl is lead writer and principle Lion's Way.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There's nothing more frustrating for marketers than pouring your heart and soul into a piece of content, only to have sales reps ignore it or use it the wrong way.  My guest on this episode has lots of experience dealing with this issue. He is Nick Loise, founder of Sales Performance Team, a leading fractional sales leadership and new business development firm. We talk about what causes marketers to produce content that sales people don't value or understand and what marketers can do to create content that salespeople DO value.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Have you ever thought about getting into speaking?If so, then this episode is for you. Juli Lassow, an entrepreneur, founder of JHL Solutions, and a frequent speaker. We talk about how to get started with speaking, how to overcome the fear of public speaking (right up there with death as many people's #1 fear!), how to use speaking opportunities to market yourself and your business, and much more!The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Buyer personas are a staple of any b2b marketing playbook, for obvious reasons. They give marketers a target to aim at and provide insight and guidelines for how to engage prospects and convert them into customers. The problem, though, is that buyer personas are based on information about, well, buyers, which at any given time comprise only around 5% of your total market. What buyer personas typically DON'T take into account are the whopping 95% of your market that's not in buying mode. Would it not make sense to ALSO create personas for that large segment of your market that isn't ready to buy?This insight led today's guest, Matthew Lewsadder, to write and publish a book on the topic: Buystander Personas: How to gain breakthrough insights into out of market b2b audiences, create massive demand for your brand, and win where others aren't competing.Matthew is also founder and CEO of Brighttail, a B2B demand marketing agency.The B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It stands to reason that the most effective content is content that's informed by data. Specifically, data about what customers value about a company's products and services. The better you design a piece of content to speak to the specific needs, desired outcomes, and preferences of the people you're trying to sell it to, based on what you learn from your current customers, the better that content is likely to perform. Actually doing this, though, is easier said than done. My guest today is here to share her process for infusing content with valuable product user and product lifecycle data. Ashley Litzenberger is a product and solution marketing expert and founder of Ashley Litzenberger Consulting,Link 1 linkedin.com/in/alitzenbergerhigheredThe B2B Content Show is brought to you by Connversa, helping busy CEOs and business owners create a month’s worth of difference-making video content in 60 minutes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.