How to Build Organic B2B Content Strategies

There are so many moving parts in B2B content marketing that content creators and marketers need to be aware of. Many of their efforts might fall flat because they don’t diversify their approach beyond paid traffic. What should they focus on instead and how can they build something that will ultimately succeed?

That’s why we’re talking to marketing experts Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts (Co-Founders of Marketing Counts) about how to build profitable organic B2B content strategies. During our conversation, Shreya and Paul highlighted the pitfalls to avoid and provide tips on the type of research that should be conducted. They also explained why a well-defined customer avatar and a mix of content types are important, and which metrics to pay attention to.

This episode was brought to you by Leadfeeder: Know who’s coming to your website, convert more leads and get a free trial at Leadfeeder.com/try

https://youtu.be/rjVVnS4aar4

Topics discussed in episode

[2:01] The importance of building organic content strategies
[9:32] How to actively engage on social media
[12:01] Examples of adding value through B2B content
[15:34] The importance of having a proper customer avatar and buyer’s journey map
[20:22] How often you should review the avatar and buyer’s journey?
[22:12] How to conduct the right research for your B2B content
[26:18] Shreya explains how to create profitable organic B2B content strategies
[26:23] Paul explains the real meaning of “constantly showing up”
[34:20] Actionable tips:
- Create the customer avatar
- Develop the B2B content strategy based on that
- Have a mixture of B2B content
- Lead with value
- Capture the leads (e.g. email addresses)
- Be consistent
- Remember to engage with comments
[42:07] Metrics to pay attention to:
- Website clicks
- Sales
- Leads
[42:47] Paul and Shreya explain why B2B companies should optimize the flow between teams rather than getting into silos and details

Companies and links mentioned

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Shreya Banerjee, Paul Counts, Christian Klepp

Christian Klepp 00:00

Welcome to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission, and I’m your host, Christian Klepp, today I’m going to be talking to Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts. They are innovative marketing and lean leaders with significant experience in digital marketing, sales funnels and SEO. They have proven experience creating winning processes that help increase efficiencies across different industries, and offer expert insights into creating promotional strategies that capture emerging market trends. Tune in to find out more about what these B2B marketers mission is. Okay. Welcome to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission. I’m your host, Christian Klepp, and today I am joined by Shreya Banerjee and Paul Counts. Welcome to the show, folks.

Shreya Banerjee 00:45

Thank you so much for having us.

Paul Counts 00:48

Great to be here. We’re excited.

Christian Klepp 00:49

Yeah, so am I. And I, you know, I have to be honest, the last time that we jumped on a call and we had this conversation, after we left that call, I was still laughing, so I’m not sure. I’m not sure what you guys did there, but you had me hooked, and perhaps it’s a sign of things to come. So let’s keep the audience guessing for a while longer, right?

Christian Klepp 01:11

But onto more serious things, because this is a serious topic. I mean, this is something that you guys are not only professionally doing, but it’s also something that you’re extremely passionate about, all right. And somebody out there is going to be like, okay, Christian, The suspense is killing me. Just Spill it out, right? So the topic for today’s conversation is how to build profitable, organic content strategies for B2B. So both of you guys, in your own right, are content marketing experts in B2B, and you have proven experience in creating winning processes that drive results. So I’m gonna kick off this conversation with two questions, and I’m happy to repeat. Okay, so question number one is, why is it so important to build organic strategies for content and number two, where do you see most B2B content marketers fall flat?

Paul Counts 01:11

I like it.

Paul Counts 02:01

Yeah, yes that’s a big one. I mean, the reason you want to be focusing so much on organic these days is because the you know, you don’t want to pay for traffic, like, it can be so expensive to pay for traffic. There’s so many variabilities there. And yes, paid traffic is amazing. It’s got its place. But the problem right now is that they’re so, you know, there’s so many ways to spend your money online, and if you’re not getting organic reach, you’re really a one trick pony. We run into a lot of brands of businesses that they’re just strictly Facebook ads and Instagram ads, or they’re just strictly Google ads, and they have no other, you know, strategies where they’ve diversified. And so having our organic content strategy so critical, and especially more than ever. Like organic used to be amazing from the standpoint of there are all sorts of sites you could publish on. Now there’s even more sites. And what’s even crazier about it is like over 60% of Gen Z audience is now using Instagram and TikTok as their search engine of choice. And so that means you can’t just be running ads on those platforms. You have to be showing up organically, because you don’t even know what they’re going to be looking for. They’re using it like we used Google. So if you are not doing an organic strategy, you are missing out on huge volumes of traffic, and you’re also going to be overspending and wasting your money before you know, unnecessarily.

Shreya Banerjee 03:20

And most of the time we see that when businesses come online and they want to do social media and they want to reach out to organic traffic, they don’t have a plan. They just want to be out there. They want the visibility, but they don’t have a plan. Or they’re boring. I call them boring because they’re just talking about their product, and no one just wants to hear about their product, right? They need to have a good plan. They need to follow trends, and sometimes they also miss that trend. For right now, like, for example, the demure trend is going on TikTok, very it’s all over the place, right? I don’t do too much. I’m demure. How do you apply that to your business? You gotta start thinking a little bit outside the box. Any business can apply that. If you’re a real estate agent. You can apply that. If you have, if you’re selling something in a store, you could apply this like that trend is very easy, but then that would give you eyeballs, right? People that are following the demure trend will follow you now to see, oh, I’m interested in the product or service that you’re kind of offering. So we forget the social part. I think a lot of times when businesses get on social media, they think, I’m still a business. I need to be rigid, but social media is social. So you have to be social. You have to have that attractive character in social media, in your presence, and, you know, reach out to your customers that way. You can’t be a very rigid, solid business account.

Paul Counts 04:42

Yeah, it’s such a great point. You know, one of my favorite, one of my favorite accounts to watch is, like Wendy’s. They do it right? You know, they’re a big brand, but they are hilarious on their social media. So if anybody wants to see, how do you add personality to a brand? They have it spot on. They are just hitting. It out of the park. They do a great job of that. Slim Jim’s another one. They chime in, in their own way. They’re always the first to comment on any viral post. And everybody’s like, well, Slim Jim’s here, you know? But it’s like, they’re, they’re doing that. What Shreya said, they’re making social media social, which leads to organic traffic. And also, like, you know, if you want to amplify your organic reach. Like, let’s say you make a post on LinkedIn, for example. Like, this doesn’t just apply to TikTok and Instagram and Facebook, but like, you make a post on LinkedIn, one of the things you should be doing is spending five to 10 minutes of intentional, you know, intentionally going out there and engaging with people. We call it intentional engagement, and that’s where you post content. Then you go out and engage with similar profiles. And it doesn’t just mean, like, it means leave a comment, because one of the best things that happens is when you leave a comment, now your comment is in front of people that are also your target audience, and so then they go check out your profile. Because if your comment means something, it doesn’t mean you go out and, like, spam them with your links. Like, oh, check out my new post on this topic. Like, you go out and add value, like, just be a normal human. The biggest thing I could say is to echo what Shreya said, is the social media is social, it’s not just media. And a lot of times people get in this rut of like, it’s a one, it’s me posting to the world because they want to hear from me. But the reality is, it’s social too. You have to interact, and they go both ways, and the algorithms will reward you for going both ways on that front.

Christian Klepp 06:26

Absolutely, absolutely. You know, these are some fantastic insights here, and I wanted to just go back to a couple of them, okay, first of all, totally agree with regards to paid because correct me if I’m wrong, even if you do know what you’re doing, right? It can be a little bit like a black hole, right? Just takes your money, right? And then the danger there is, if you stop paying, well, guess what? You stop showing up. No traffic, right? It’s all gone. It’s all gone. No traffic.

Paul Counts 06:55

It’s gone. Yeah.

Paul Counts 06:56

And, and, like, let’s say things happen, like, an election year, your ad costs go up, and you can’t control that, you know. So now you were getting a certain ROI, and your ads return on your investment, you know, your ad dollars, and now you have no return, because ad costs went up because election year, some new big campaign, some large brand came in with their billion dollar budgets, and that’s the reality. 99.9% of business owners out there are small businesses. You don’t have a billion dollar marketing budget, you know. So that’s just the reality. And so if you don’t have a billion dollar marketing budget, you can’t afford to make mistakes, right? You have to be strategic. And you know, to me, true marketers are people that can take a $10,000 ad budget and make money with that. Marketing is not take a million dollars and throw it at a campaign, because I like to use the analogy that a blind squirrel finds a nut some of the time, you know. And that’s true. Anybody can throw a million dollars and maybe make a conversion, you know. Yeah, you’re not going to be ROI positive, but you’re going to make a few conversions, you know. But large brands don’t care about that. They’re just, oh, we got our brand reach out there. But small businesses, we can’t afford that luxury, and so you have to think strategic. You have to have multiple traffic streams. You can’t be a one trick pony. I I know the guys have been, we’ve been fortunate to do this for so long. I’ve been doing this since I was 13. 26 years now, in this business, and I have seen so many people come and go in the space that I’ve worked in, and a lot of it’s because they were one trick ponies. They were like, one traffic source. That was it, one solo traffic source. And when that source dried up, their business dried up. So, you know, you gotta diversify.

Christian Klepp 06:56

Absolutely.

Christian Klepp 08:35

Absolutely, absolutely. I have two follow up questions for you guys based on what you’ve been saying in the past couple of minutes, right? So the first one is this whole notion of, like, you know, it’s about also active engagement on social media. It’s not just posting, you know, you have to engage with other people’s posts or comment or people that comment on your post. You should be answering or commenting, commenting on their comments, so to speak. Right? Why do you feel that a lot of people, they either skip that part or they go down what I call lazy avenue? Right? The name of the software escapes me now, but apparently, and you probably guys probably know it, but there is a software where you It analyzes the post and it comes up with a… it generates a comment, right? And the comment is really just a summary of everything you just said, which I find super annoying.

Paul Counts 09:32

And that’s the… Yeah, that would be the approach that is not going to work even, even using software for it. Some people have tried that, yeah, but it becomes so canned and so generic, and it just looks out of place. And when you do this, it’s so easy to do easy street AI has made it so easy for people. And you know, and I’ve got a warning I’m going to tease out here that I’m going to tell people about using AI in just a little while, but it’s a little warning. I’m going to open that loop here. But the the reality is, with AI and all these things, it could be easy to go down easy street. So either you decide, okay, I’m just going to use canned responses. Well, that doesn’t work, because if you want, if you’re doing the intentional engagement right, you make a good comment to somebody, and you want the people that are viewing that person like, I love to go to the post where there’s like, this person has 100,000 followers, and I’ll go make a comment on their stuff, because all of a sudden, 10 other people are going to comment below me. Now, if I just said, Oh, great post, thumbs up, you know, like that doesn’t do anything, but if I say, you know, I really agree with what you’re saying. Because in my experience, I’ve dealt with this, you know, now, all of a sudden, I’m a human now, all those 10 people that commented below it now are interested in what I have to say, you know, because they saw that I gave value. So now they end up on my profile. Now they end up some of them, like me, connect me, get to know me, whatever. And that’s how that, that’s intentional engagement, you know, getting in front of the right people and so it’s quality over quantity, too. So people would say, like, oh, go to 100 of these and do it all day, because you can, you have the tools to do it well, you’re not going to be effective with those hundreds. So do it three times and do it well. That’s kind of what it comes down to.

Shreya Banerjee 11:10

And I would also say that it’s about the value you provide, and not so much just generic content that AI spills out. So I know it sounds like, sounds like a old person giving you advice here, but even in this day and age, it’s value. Whether you’re giving value with your post or providing a reply to somebody else’s post, you’re giving value. That’s what people remember you for.

Christian Klepp 11:32

I’m so glad you brought that up, Shreya, that keyword, that buzzword, value, because I want to dig into that a little bit further, if you’ll permit me. From your perspective and your professional experience, define what it means to give value, because that’s another one of these words that that’s been thrown around so loosely out there and some people, and you’ve probably seen it, that people go in with a pretext that they’re adding value, But it’s actually a veiled sales pitch.

Shreya Banerjee 12:01

Yeah, right, yeah. Actually, one company that does it amazingly is Zapier. Even the ads, it’s a tutorial. It’s a they’re showing you how to connect and get your workflows together, which is going to save you time. And they’re obviously, they’re selling you their service so that you’re zapping things here and there. But the way they do it, it’s just a how to video, and you as a user are so engaged in watching that because you want to learn how to fix your problem, because you obviously have that problem, right? You want to automate things. I think Zapier does an amazing job. They’re providing value, but still selling their stuff. By the way, in order for you to simplify this, you’re going to have to use our program, but this is the way you make your life easier. And everybody’s looking for that.

Paul Counts 12:46

It’s just giving people helpful tips, helpful advice, helpful strategies. You know, I think too many times people are so worried about, you know, thinly veiled value. So they’re like, Oh yeah, I’m giving value. And then they’re going to pitch you right at the end, and it’s like, you’ve just got to speak from the heart. If you deliver true value, true content to people, it also means don’t hold back on your good content. I mean, I’ve learned that the hard way too. In the past. I used to be like. Yeah. We used to do that. Honestly. I used to be like, Well, we know this little secret strategy. I might share it with people, and then some knucklehead down the road, who really I was, literally, was like, I don’t even, this guy is a clown. He barely knows marketing, and he’s sharing this strategy. And I’m like, Oh, okay. And then I learned, like, we just need to share, you know, share the best value, because they’re gonna remember you for sharing that rather than them. So like, you know, now we don’t hold back, you know, it just we share it because the internet’s so big, there’s no new idea out there from a marketing standpoint. You know, there might be new adaptions to things as always, but you’re not going to create the new whiz bang marketing idea that nobody else knows. You know, it’s probably been done 100 other times.

Shreya Banerjee 13:55

Or if you do, it was done 20 years ago, and it’s making the resurface like SEO, right? People are going gaga over SEO and organic traffic right now. That’s been there since the beginning of internet.

Paul Counts 14:07

Nothing drives me crazier than an Instagram guru who I saw recently, yeah, talking about how, yeah, there’s this new thing called SEO that you do in your post and you put keywords in there, and it’s starting to work. And it’s, and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me, you know? Like, this is like…

Christian Klepp 14:22

Unfortunately, they’re not kidding.

Paul Counts 14:24

They’re not they’re yeah

Christian Klepp 14:26

They’re dead serious.

Paul Counts 14:28

And people are listening to this person who just discovered SEO, and they’re following him like he’s the next guru… he didn’t even know. So it’s… wow.

Christian Klepp 14:36

Yeah. I’m getting a little confused here. Guys, are you like stuff from 20 years ago? Are you talking about B2B content marketing? Are you talking about the music industry and fashion?

Shreya Banerjee 14:47

Yeah, a lot of pants are back.

Paul Counts 14:52

Oh yeah, no. I remember my kids on a side note. They they came back home from school all excited to share this new dance they learned. And it was the Macarena. And where were they…when I danced along to it with them. They were like…

Shreya Banerjee 15:06

For them right then and there.

Christian Klepp 15:07

Yeah. They were like how do you know this…

Paul Counts 15:10

Yep, yeah.

Christian Klepp 15:16

Love it. Love it. I’m gonna move us on to what I call the deadly sins, right? So talk to us about the pitfalls that B2B content marketers should avoid if they’re trying to build profitable, organic content strategies.

Paul Counts 15:32

Yeah, yeah, go ahead Shreya.

Shreya Banerjee 15:34

One of the main ones is not having a proper customer avatar. Thinking that your product applies to everyone is the biggest mistake that we find. It might apply to everybody, but the way you talk to everybody is different. The way you would talk to Paul is different than the way you would talk to me, right? We both might be your customer, but it’s a little bit different. So having that customer avatar completely dialed In is very, very important. And we see every single client that we actually work with ends up that they don’t… either don’t have something at all or it’s not very clearly defined. So that’s always a starting point. And the biggest pitfall, pitfall that we see.

Paul Counts 16:12

Yeah, and for customer avatar, you’re really just looking at what are their interests, what are their likes, what platforms. I just did this with the client, we were trying to reevaluate their social media strategy. So I was like, no, no, let’s go back to the basics. You know, who is it that you want to reach? Who are you hearing? Who comes to your events, who comes to your live workshops and online webinars and master classes and all this, you know? And then we drilled it down and realized, okay, what do they like? What are they seeking? What solution do they want? You know, here originally, we were targeting weight loss, but the reality is they just wanted to get rid of inflammation and not feel pain anymore, you know. So the ads were mismatched for that targeted group of people, right? So now the ads are being reframed to be like, Okay, we’re going to focus on your you know, inflammation issues. You know now, now we can speak to them better, because when you reevaluate and reassess, what are your customers really want to know? That’s what that’s about. And it’s also knowing, like, what websites do they visit? What platforms do they know about, what influencers do they follow? You know, because you can get ideas from those people. And if you don’t know who your customers are and it, nobody wants to do it because it’s not sexy, it’s not attractive, it’s not the newest marketing trend, it’s old school. But the reality is, if you want a business that’s going to last for 20 years, you’ve better put the old school tactics into place. That’s why business owners are around for 20 plus years. If you want a business that’s going to be around for a year or six months, follow the fads, you know. And so everybody wants to follow the fads, because that’s fun and trendy. But if you do that, you’re not going to have a business for long. So you got us have these foundational pieces there.

Christian Klepp 17:51

Yeah, exactly. What about, like, the understanding of the buyer’s journey, and a mapping out those critical touch points? I mean, I would have it, I guess, if that’s critical tool.

Paul Counts 18:01

Yes, oh, yeah. Customer Journey part is so good. It’s like, yeah, understanding where do you want them to go next? You know, we were just working on a project where it was like, okay, when they visit our website, you know, what is the next step we want them to go? Is it straight to a quote form, or is it to a informational page? You know, especially you know, one of our clients, they’re selling a 30, you know, they’re reaching B2B sales, right? They’re reaching a 30,000 plus dollars a unit sale, you know, for high end equipment, right? And so people aren’t going to go to their website click add to cart. It just doesn’t happen. Not to mention that their customer base has to get a PO from the city, you know, most the time. So it’s not a credit card order, so you have to take them through a journey, right? So that journey is, go to the home page with enough information to wet their beak and get them excited. Then take them to a separate page which sells that specific product, and then take them to the, you know, request a demo page or quote page, you know, because whereas, like, if I was selling just, you know, house plants. Let’s say, you know, they’re gonna come to my our Shopify store, or Shopify website, whatever, and they’re gonna find the house plant that looks good, click on it and, okay, it’s a $25 purchase, bam, I’m gonna click on that and buy it right there. You know, that’s a different customer journey, because, you know, you can use a credit card for it, so it’s, you know, very different experiences.

Shreya Banerjee 19:22

Yeah, but you still can’t do that without customer avatar, right? That is still the first step.

Paul Counts 19:28

Yep, you’re not gonna speak at all to those people.

Christian Klepp 19:31

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So they should focus on the customer avatar and not something like marketing Mary or frustrated Frank. I mean, we’re talking about like some serious avatars here, right? Yeah, with their pain point, the objections and whatnot, right? What’s going on in their lives that trigger that demand, trigger that motivation to look for a certain service or product, right? And then having that that respective customer journey map? How often would you say, B2B marketers should be reviewing these avatars and journey maps, because, you know, these are not set in stone, right? The markets change. You guys talked about an election year. I’m over here in Canada, so I empathize with your predicament. But how often do you would you suggest customers look at that?

Shreya Banerjee 20:22

Yeah, we say at least six months. Yeah, at least every six months, reevaluate it, just because things do change, something that might be working. And then you also, when you’re reevaluating, you might find out a few things, because if you’re spending money, now you’re actually collecting the data too, right? The first thought when you’re doing it, it’s what you thought it was, but now you’re getting inputs from your customers, so things might change a little. They might give you that feedback. So it’s very important to keep that updated all the time.

Paul Counts 20:53

Yeah, it’s a big deal to really just keep it fresh and, you know, keeps you top of mind. And the other thing, if you get your customer avatar, this is going to, hopefully this will trigger and get some people excited to do customer avatar. If you get your customer avatar, right, you can do the trendy things now. You can have the great post on social media. The difference is, instead of you just blindly throwing stuff out there, it’s now going to stick and have a chance at reaching your audience with the message they want.

Shreya Banerjee 21:20

It helps you with your strategy.

Christian Klepp 21:23

Absolutely. I love that you guys brought up research and collecting data, because that’s a great segue into the next question, right? And you guys have probably seen customers do one or the other, and what I mean by that is they either don’t do any research at all or they don’t do it properly, right? So talk to us about the importance of conducting the right research. And so what I mean by that is, what should they be looking out for, and what should what type of approach, rather should they be using so that they’re researching with intention?

Paul Counts 21:57

That’s so good, yeah. So some of the biggest things that you can do there is, you know, look at YouTube. We love to do this kind of research. So there’s a tool that Shreya knows about with YouTube that we use all the time. Do you mind sharing that Shreya that?

Shreya Banerjee 22:11

Vid IQ.

Paul Counts 22:12

Yeah. Vid IQ is the tool. Vid IQ. Vid IQ. It gives you a really good idea. As far as, like, if you look at channels that you are competitive with. It’ll tell you things like, what channel tags are they using, what keywords are they using in their videos? How are their videos ranking? What are they doing, optimization wise, that you could do better. You know, what kind of content are they sharing? It gives you really good ideas around that, and that’s more of a deeper dive, but it’s a really good tool. And if you want to just go like surface level, you can go out to YouTube itself and just start typing in how to lose or how to get rid of or how to whatever your niche is, right? You know, back pain. Just type in the word back pain, and you’re going to see a whole bunch of suggested searches where YouTube is pre filling that data, and YouTube’s literally saying this is what people also searched for related to this niche. You can do the exact same thing over on Google and do the exact thing, and actually scroll down to the bottom, and Google’s gonna say people also search for and they’re gonna give you about 10 other keywords related and Google is literally handing you this data on a silver platter. And so it’s one of the best things you can do. The other thing we love to do is Quora and Reddit are two great sites. Those are forum sites. Those are informational news sites. And you can go out there, B to B, B to C. It does not matter your industry, right? You’re going to find people asking questions on specific topics. Those become ideas. I get a lot of social media content or ideas of what to do based on questions I see people asking on these forums, you know, and Reddit and Quora are forums. And I know I’m saying forums, I’m we’re going back here, you know, we’re going back to the old school. That stuff still works. And I’ll tell you right now, the reason those sites is my own little side note. Those sites are blowing up right now. Reddit and Quora, Google just paid $100 million between the two of them to license their content on the first page of Google. So if you look at almost any search result now, you see Quora and Reddit results show up.

Christian Klepp 24:11

I did notice that, actually, yeah,

Paul Counts 24:12

Yep. Okay, so you’ve been seeing that, yeah, Google paid to license their content. And you want to know why that is my prediction, simply because of the fact that it’s their forum content. It’s not AI generated, it’s human policed. Redditors will kick you out faster than anything if you use AI content. I have watched them literally roast people in non business niches, call people out for using AI to get their karma score up on Reddit. And so Google knows that like so AI has no place there, and Google does not like AI because AI content is ruining the content game. And I’m not saying AI is terrible. It’s got its place, but you can’t use it for the easy button solutions. You can’t use it to go comment on all these Reddit threads. You can’t use it to do that like you have to use AI intelligently. And that’s what I’m saying. That was my you know, when I talked about earlier, if you’re going to go out there and Google’s already slapped websites using AI, and I’m telling you, Instagram and TikTok and Facebook reels and YouTube shorts, they’re next. If you start using your AI for your captions and your descriptions, it’s going to destroy your rankings overall. Google’s already gotten rid of them, Reddit and Quora already, you know, big on that, like you just the easy buttons, not there. Everybody does. We’ve been in this business 20 plus years. Everybody wants to rush to the easy button. The reality is easy button just basically, you end up not having a business in a few years, or a few months.

Christian Klepp 25:34

Exactly.

Paul Counts 25:34

So business takes a little bit of work, you know, you got to get you got to think. You got to think intelligently and outside the box.

Christian Klepp 25:40

Yeah, funny thing that that, it takes a little bit of work, right? I thought, yeah,

Paul Counts 25:44

Right, yeah, yeah.

Christian Klepp 25:45

Thought that was an easy button. Or, what’s that? What’s the alert trending phrase, chasing the next hack, right? Like,

Paul Counts 25:51

Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants the next hack. You know, there is no hack.

Christian Klepp 25:57

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, I’m gonna move us on. And for this question, I want you guys to break it down, if you can, right? So what I mean by that is break down for us, like what type of organic content strategies there are. And here probably comes the more difficult question, how can you ensure that these will ultimately be profitable?

Shreya Banerjee 26:18

Yeah, so actually, you could do multiple things, and it needs to be a mix of things, right? Lots of people say, reels are it. They say videos is only thing. Carousels are the only thing. It needs to be a mixture of everything. It’s when people share their lives on social media, they give a mixture of everything. So that’s you’re pretty much kind of mimicking a human for your business, right? And that’s why it’s so important to have that attractive character set for your business, whether it’s a guy, Go, get, go, or, you know, whatever, even if it’s a gecko, it’s the attractive character for your business. So once you have that, then it’s a good mixture of different things. I think National Park Services, they do an amazing job on their social media where you know, they’re national park, you wouldn’t think that they would have a good social media presence, but go check them out. They do an amazing job. And it’s a mixture of everything. It’s video, this carousels, it’s quotes. Is funny, funny stuff, because people relate to funny things. I think there’s a Tampa airport that has a giant Flamingo.

Paul Counts 26:18

Yeah, the Tampa Airport’s one of the best as far as humor.

Shreya Banerjee 26:23

People relate to it. Right? When you’re flying and you’re thinking of, where should I get my Florida ticket to. Tampa airport sticks in my head because of their funny social media posts, yeah. So it’s a mixture of all of those things. You cannot just say, I’m only going to post five videos a week, or, like, it’s not structured that way. You’re almost mimicking a human. think about that.

Paul Counts 27:51

Yeah, I think some people too, they get into this, this rut and exactly what trace. And you have to have variety. But people also are like, Okay, I gotta make my social post by 10am every day, and I’m like, stop. Like, like, No, you don’t. Like, not everybody’s as rigid as you, you know, like, you gotta post at a different time. Like, it’s okay. Like, yes, I’m all about consistency, and that’s wonderful. But like, you can post at different times. Quite frankly, you don’t know. I used to send emails at the exact same time to my list, come to find out, I was off by about 12 hours as to when they responded the most. So if you’re gonna go out there and post at the same time, you don’t know you might be missing the mark. Your audience might be looking at your post at 2pm so you know, like you’re only gonna know that if you continually post at different times, and the time varies by days too. Some days people are active in the morning. Some they’re more active in the evening. Some are more active middle of the day. So you just be have a variety and I’ll give somebody another really interesting tactic. So we’ve, you know, we’ve been around a lot of people in this marketing world and in this space, and especially the Instagram gurus, the experts on Instagram and goobers. And what we’ve come across, is they don’t know it any more than any of us do, to be honest, they don’t. They really don’t. They think they haven’t figured out. And just when I think, I’ll be the first to tell you, just when I think I haven’t figured out, I don’t, it comes down to being consistent and giving valuable content, like we talked about, on a consistent basis. It doesn’t mean 10am every day. It means, you know, constantly showing up, constantly providing value, interacting with people. That’s when you see the growth. But, you know, Instagram is one of those things. I see this with the gurus too. They’ll have a million followers, some of them, and they’ll have one post do 5 million views. The next post will do 5000 views, you know, like they did nothing different, and they’ll admit that too, like it’s just a game of social media. So you can’t sit there and expect one piece of content to change your life, because it’s not. You’re gonna have to show up every single day. And that’s really what separates the winners from the losers in this business game. Are the ones that keep showing up? Yeah, yeah.

Shreya Banerjee 30:02

So don’t like when people ask, what’s a set strategy for social media? It’s a good mixture of things, and it’s going to be different for you and your business than it is for somebody else’s business.

Paul Counts 30:13

And your avatar too, yeah.

Shreya Banerjee 30:15

Based on your avatar, based on where your customers are looking for so it’s going to be a little different, but that’s something to keep in mind. Now, the one thing that everybody fails at is they don’t monetize their social media. Yeah, make sure you’re capturing your leads. So everything that you’re doing that should be at the back of your strategy is, how is your content, not only just getting likes and follows and you know all that, but how are you capturing their email address? That’s a very important metric to even keep in mind, when marketing teams are, you know, collecting metrics, it’s not just likes and comments and follows. It’s also, are we getting new email addresses? Are we getting new leads?

Paul Counts 30:55

Yep, yeah, that’s that’s the biggest thing.

Christian Klepp 30:58

Exactly, exactly. So, yeah, again. So this begs the question, how do you ensure that your organic content then becomes profitable? And I know that’s a that’s a tricky one, because it’s not like, oh, well, it’s easy. Just download this app and then, poof, right? It’s, yeah, it’s something that happens over time. It requires, as you said, a lot of effort. Um, some people it might even take months, years.

Paul Counts 31:20

Yeah, oh, months, yeah, yeah. No. A friend of mine is a real estate agent, and she just started her Instagram from scratch, or realtor one, and you know now she’s got 800 followers, but when she’s in her videos, when she started, we’re only getting 100 views, or whatever. And fast forward three months, and I kept telling her, be consistent. Be consistent. Just don’t give up. Don’t give up. Now she’s got 800 followers, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but for her niche, it worked really well. Now her views videos get 4000, 5000 views. Now she’s getting leads of people wanting to talk to her about a $2 million home, or a million dollar home or, you know, and she just keeps showing up on social media. She just kept doing it. Kept doing it. She stuck it out, you know. Now she’s seeing the results, but it took a couple months, right? It’s, and I think of the lure that happens, a lot of people get sucked into these ideas that if I’m going to be doing, you know, marketing on my social media, it’s going to be an instant thing, because social media is so big, and it’s not, it’s it takes time and energy.

Paul Counts 32:18

The other thing I’ll say, is repurposing your content. I can’t stress that enough like how valuable that is. Like, it’s so big, and if you’re already going through the effort to make the video for Instagram, why not post that video on LinkedIn, and why not post that same video on YouTube shorts, and that same video on TikTok, and that same video on Instagram? And I know it seems like effort because you’re going through multiple channels, but it is amazing to me how, like one piece of content on my TikTok might get 500 views, and then my Instagram posts will fall flat on its face, and then you reverse it, and you’ll get 5000 views on your YouTube video, and it’s the same piece of content. And I can’t tell you why one platform chosen over the other. Honestly, it just depends. And so, like, I’ve been amazed by that, where I used to just do, okay, just Instagram, you know, and next to, you know, get a few views, then I’d have a great day, you know. And then I finally realized, like, if I diversify this, it’s amazing because one platform is going to jump to the other. And I know it seems difficult, but literally, if you’re making one video. It’s nothing to sit there while you’re watching TV and upload it four other times, or pay somebody to upload it for you. Like, you know, put your social media team to work, you know. Or put the person at your front desk playing solitaire to work, you know. Like, do something you know.

Christian Klepp 33:35

Does anybody ever still play that stuff these days?

Paul Counts 33:38

I don’t know people do play solitaire. Wow, I feel old now. Yeah,

Christian Klepp 33:41

Probably, probably, Pokemon Go.

Paul Counts 33:43

Yeah, Pokemon Go, yeah. I’ve been tick tock, and I’m like, saying play solitary.

Christian Klepp 33:51

Yeah, no, but I hear you. I totally hear you. I totally hear you. No, fantastic. Um, so we come to the point in the conversation. You guys have given us plenty already, but like, Give us something actionable here. And what I mean by that is, if somebody is listening to this conversation between Christian Shreya and Paul, and you want them to walk away with three to five things that they can take action on immediately on this specific topic, right? What would those things be?

Shreya Banerjee 34:20

Customer avatar. Make sure you have that. I feel like that’s a passion of mine after talking, because I’ve mentioned it so many times here. So make sure that that’s dialed in. Start creating a content strategy based on your target audience and your customer avatar that you just did. And also remember have a mixture of everything in there. Talk give value, lead with value, and make sure you’re somehow capturing their email address. Because it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Best Buy, it doesn’t matter if you’re Walmart, it doesn’t matter if you’re like any of them. They capture emails. Everybody capture email. So whatever you’re selling, whether you’re ecom, your brick and mortar, whatever you’re selling, you need to capture your leads email. So that’s a huge step, if you’re not doing that, and start working on that,

Paul Counts 35:11

Yep, yeah, that’s such a, such a big step. You have to have that and, you know, and I would say, you know, set up a time like to be consistent. You know, there’s that, there’s a book out called Atomic Habits, and it’s all about, you know, doing little, you know, habits every day and it’s amazing how you can do small habits in your life, right? That add up. And one of the habits that you can do it, like, one of the things I’ve gotten into, and it’s really helped my business, like our business lately, is, I’m now been like, Okay, I’m doing one email a day. I’m gonna make sure nothing else happens during the day, at least, get one email out a day, you know. And it’s been steady over a while, and it’s starting to help. And, like, that’s a big thing. And then so, like, same thing goes to social media, if you’re like, you know, do one short video or one short clip, or post something. Or some people do batch things too. I mean, I’ve but come up with what it is that works for you. Like, you know, I know a guy that is a prolific podcaster, 2500 episodes, but he does five episodes on Monday. That’s, you know, and then he’s done for the for the week, but he does all his episodes on one day. And, you know, I know people have done that with social media, where they batch do their social media for the week. They’ll do five or seven posts in one day, and that’s fine, but then go in, and then every day you go in and make those posts then, because the contents already done. So it’s just a matter of, like, coming up with what works for you, but coming up with that consistent flow, and that’s going to be critical. And I would say the third thing to add on there is to the, you know, everything we discussed is, don’t forget about the social part of social media. Like, if you miss that, you’re going to miss the mark big time. In fact, the algorithms we reward you for that, one of LinkedIn SSI scores, you know, the Sales Navigator scores that they give you on LinkedIn, and the higher your SSI score is, the better your stuff ranks in LinkedIn when you post it, especially for B to B side. But if you are interacting with people, it actually improves your score. So if you’re commenting, these platforms are all the same, though, that’s the funny part. They’re all greedy. They want your time and attention. So if you are showing them that you’re willing to produce good content on your own wall, but then also engage with other people to make people stay in the app longer. They’re going to reward you for that. So that value stuff Shreya talked about earlier is real, you know, if you’re giving value longer, people are going to stay longer. So it’s going to you’re going to get rewarded for it. Yes, it takes a little bit of effort, you know, but again, a lot of its mindless effort, because you’re just talking about your niche already that you already talked about, and you can do it from your phone, you know, just, you know, maybe come up for air from your phone during dinner. But, you know, there’s times to do it. You can make it work. So.

Christian Klepp 37:52

Yeah, no, I love it. I love it. Don’t forget about the social part of social media. I think that that’s worth repeating, because, you know what I’m sure you don’t mean by that is, Hey, Christian, bumping this to the top of your inbox. That’s probably one of my most hated phrases ever.

Paul Counts 38:11

I can’t stand that one. Oh, that’s the worst. Yes, that is not social.

Christian Klepp 38:18

No, that’s not social. That’s, that’s, that’s just spamming.

Paul Counts 38:21

Yeah. And I would say some people think that social part of it, they think, Oh, I’m just gonna leave a like, you know, yeah, that doesn’t do anything, you know, like, leave a comment because it didn’t, you know, it’s funny because I run into guys at events that I go to. I’ll go to an event, a person’s like, you know, you always like and comment on my stuff. I’m like, it might have been intentional, but I don’t tell them that, but they realize it, because they see, like, I run into people, oh, I appreciate you, because you’re always in there on my post. Because, like, the comment game is so big, especially on LinkedIn, and like all these platforms, comments are big, and it’s, it’s funny to me, though, if you look at the ratio, like, you’ll see 100 likes on a post, and you’ll see three comments. And I’m like, what you know? Like, just think, if you went and made a comment, those 100 people that liked it actually would see what you wrote and maybe like what you wrote, and it also is going to help the person using it to be like, Wow, that this guy’s, you know, cares about me.

Christian Klepp 39:21

Is that what they call a pod? You guys have heard of that, right? Yeah, a pod.

Paul Counts 39:27

What’s that?

Christian Klepp 39:28

A pod. So,

Paul Counts 39:30

Yeah, pod, yeah.

Christian Klepp 39:31

So, artificial engagement, right? So, you like, when I was first starting to, like, get active on LinkedIn during covid, um, I post something out there and I get probably, like, seven likes. And I, you know, I crack open a bottle of champagne, right? But then you get all these people that are posting stuff which I love it. A friend of mine here in Toronto, um, coined that phrase, so I can’t claim credit for it, but he wrote, some people post absolute nothing burger, and they get 1000 likes, all right, yep, but then you’ll see it in the comments, right? Like, to your point, Paul, right? Like they say, Oh, amazing post. Thumbs up, right? Yeah, absolutely, I agree. Such a great post, but there’s nothing of substance in any of the engagement. Yeah, right, yeah, that blows my mind.

Paul Counts 40:22

Yeah, it’s mind blowing. And, you know, this goes back to the, we’re going back old school here, right? This reminds me of the old days where you comment on blog posts. That’s that, that no longer really is a thing, so, but this does go takes you back to that, yeah, where, if you added value, your your comment would be seen, you know, and heard. But, but, yeah, it’s, it’s fun how these things, kind of, you know, all fit together.

Shreya Banerjee 40:45

It’s amazing how you stand out by just being yourself and providing value, which is so silly to me, but that’s how you stand out in this day and age,

Paul Counts 40:55

Right. No, that’s people ask us all. We have some incredible partnerships in our business that we’ve been very fortunate to have and people ask us, How did we get those partnerships? And I was like, consistently showing up and adding value. I mean, that’s what it is like, showing up to these people’s events, caring for them, supporting their movement, interacting with them on social media, sharing their posts, commenting, being in their life, sharing it with our following, like, all these things add up, and then, you know, builds this trust and this rapport, and then it’s easy to get into these deals. And people just think, oh, it just, it just happened, or you’re lucky, but reality is, you’re just showing up and, you know, you add value. It’s all the difference,

Christian Klepp 41:39

Absolutely, absolutely, speaking of value, here comes the love it or hate it. question, metrics, because at some point in time, you or your customers are going to have to go to somebody internally and report back and say, hey, look, it’s working. So what are some top level metrics that you would recommend B2B marketers pay attention to when you’re talking about profitable, organic content strategies.

Paul Counts 42:07

Oh, I like this. So the biggest thing I would say is, you know, really, when you’re looking at it, is look at your overall website clicks. That’s number one. I mean, what are your website clicks to? And look at it by channel. You know, one of the things that B to B sales does this, we’ve worked with some B to B organizations. One of the worst things that can happen is, is… The other metric is look at overall sales and overall leads. Those are the three metrics I look at. And this seems so basic, and so like, you know, so basic. But we live in a world. And I just got off a call with a client that their sales are B to B, and we do the organic SEO strategy, and one of the issues we’re running up against is, for example, their ad team is thinking that, you know, basically, they just want to track every lead, and they want to know, okay, did the lead come from organic SEO, or did a lead come from ads? Or did a lead come from here? Now, overall, the company’s leads are up. Company leads are up, sales are up, revenues are up, right? But now they’re trying to silo it down and figure it out. And I had to bring up the point today where I said, You do realize that when SEO captures that, you know, or you know, traffic’s up from SEO by 6000 clicks year over year, you know, for in one month period, which is great for their brand and what they’re doing. And I said, Do you realize that with all this increased traffic, those people now are getting pixelated, so now the ads team now runs ads to people that their first touch point was from an organic content strategy, whether it was a blog post, you know, Instagram post, whatever. And so do you realize like that potentially came from SEO, but it’s not getting credited for an SEO lead, because you can’t really track it that deep. And also, the other thing that happens in a B to B world, and in any online business world, is all these new browsers that have popped up. There’s the brave browser, there’s the all these different browsers that have all these safety measures in place to to block third party cookies and block JavaScript and all these things your phone is loaded with privacy things. Now you know, iPhone, Android privacy protection, there’s only three metrics to look at, or clicks up, or is traffic up, leads up and sales up for a business. And I think too many businesses try to silo these things down. And there’s, I think there’s too many type A personalities in the business world, which I’m not one. And I think there’s too many of them that want to know every little detail. And it’s like, can we just accept that? Yeah, and it happens every time with every brand we work with. And the other one I see in B to B world that drives me bananas, is, was this a marketing win or a sales win? And I’m like, okay.

Shreya Banerjee 44:44

It needs to be cohesive, like, you can’t put one team against another team, right? The company is winning. Let’s celebrate that, and let’s see how we can optimize the flow between the two teams and everybody else, and how can we move them forward? And even the product team. Let’s get feedback from them, so the marketing team can use that as you know, new marketing things, but that doesn’t happen as soon as leads go up. And this is like a warning for any, any of the owners, right? Because you’re going to fall into this trap. And it’s okay, because every single person we have worked with has fallen into this trap. Leads go up. You apply these strategies, you’re going to start thinking, Okay, we need to go in more detail, more detail, more detail. This is a time to make everything come together, every team come together and start working better, not siloing them, not separating them out, not putting them against each other. That’s the worst thing you could do because then things start going down. Because why would anybody and and also this day and age a person needs… it used to be seven touches before they make the buying decision. Now it’s more than that, probably 14 touches. So yes, they might come in as an SEO lead, or yes, they might come in as an ad, but then an email could trigger the sale, a retargeting ad could trigger the sale. So whose win is that? It doesn’t matter. It’s the company’s win, right? It’s the team’s win. It’s overall team’s win. So that’s something that you have to look out for yourself and say, I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to drive that culture, because that drives the wrong culture within the team, and then things go they start going down again, which is very sad.

Christian Klepp 46:25

Yeah, unfortunately, I think it’s the nature of the beast, though, right? A lot of these organizations are structured that way. It’s not necessarily because people want to swim in that direction. It’s just the way that they become wired, I’m gonna say, once they join, right? And I find that to be true in bigger organizations. And I think we’ve all worked for big organizations, and coming out of that experience, I came to this realization that I am not wired for big organizations, right, but because that’s the way they were wired, like exactly what you guys were saying. Oh, was this a marketing lead or a sales lead, and almost all the time, the sales will claim the credit for it because they closed the deal, right?

Paul Counts 47:07

Yep. No, it’s one of those where it’s going to be an ongoing problem, but it’s, you know, I would say from the metrics that people are tracking. I also, the other reason I bring up the metrics is, with all these privacy things. It’s not as easy as it used to be. Like email. Email metrics are near impossible. Now, there’s proton, you know, emails or Gmail, where people don’t want to track opens and all this. And so, like some people have asked me, like, you know, and there’s robots that open emails now, all these things, right? So when people want, if I want to know the health of an email campaign, I look at clicks, how many clicks happened, and how many people visited that page, and how many people purchased or took an action you wanted to on that page. That’s the metric I look at. It’s as bare bones, basic as that. Open rates. Yes, I do like to track those things to get an idea, but it’s not a one to one anymore. There’s just, it’s just not. There’s too many privacy and blockers and ad blockers and all these things that traffic is no you know, and I think businesses, instead of, they focus so much on the minutia, instead of what actually could make a difference, you know, in the organization, and they worry so much about the granular details. And it’s like, look at the big picture, focus on the stuff that works. Yeah, that’s what you should do.

Christian Klepp 48:22

Exactly, exactly. Okay, guys, two more questions, I promise, then I’ll let you go. Okay, so here comes the bonus question, and that’s the only one you know that I I’ve been keeping to myself all this time. If you were stuck on a desert island, what are the three things that you would take with you?

Shreya Banerjee 48:44

Water, food, okay, I don’t know, water and food. Those are the basics for me to survive.

Christian Klepp 48:52

Okay, all right,

Shreya Banerjee 48:54

Yeah,

Paul Counts 48:56

All right, I’m bringing let’s see. Let’s see. Okay, I’m bringing my phone. Okay, I’m gonna, I’m bringing a solar phone and a solar battery back. And I, you know, I’ll bring my backpack. That’s what I’ll say. I bring my backpack, which has my, my entire business fits in the backpack, so I’m bringing that, and that’s one item my backpack with all my items in it.

Christian Klepp 49:26

Okay,

Paul Counts 49:26

Oh, wait, you said three things. Okay,

Shreya Banerjee 49:30

You’re cheating (laughing)

Paul Counts 49:30

Okay, so I’m bringing my… Okay, then I’m gonna bring my phone and a solar charger, a solar portable charger, and then water. 3 things.

Christian Klepp 49:40

Okay, nice,

Paul Counts 49:41

Yeah, because, you know, because then I can still get off the island. I can, you know, write a book, write a business, do all sorts of things on my phone. So

Christian Klepp 49:50

That’s fair enough, I would probably bring a portable desalination plant if that thing exists,

Paul Counts 49:56

Yeah,

Christian Klepp 49:58

Toilet paper. And a book.

Paul Counts 50:04

There you go.

Christian Klepp 50:05

Because if it’s not for entertainment, at least I could use it for kindling, right. There you go, like it. There we go. Shreya and Paul good. This has been a fantastic conversation. And you know, I’d love to talk for 10 more hours about all this stuff, but, you know, I want to thank you once again for coming on the show and for sharing your expertise and experience with the listeners. So please, quick intro to yourself and how folks out there can get in touch with you.

Paul Counts 50:30

Yeah, definitely. They can find us marketingcounts.com you can just take a look at us there marketingcounts.com and you can also email us at support@marketingcounts.com if you have any questions about the show, so you can just do that. Those are two easy ways to get in touch with us.

Christian Klepp 50:48

Fantastic, fantastic. Once again, Shreya and Paul, this is such a great conversation. Thanks again for your time. Take care, stay safe and talk to you soon.

Paul Counts 50:57

All right. Thank you.

Christian Klepp 50:58

Thank you. Bye for now.

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