Right About Now with Ryan Alford - B2B Marketing is Ready for an Injection of Humanity - w/ Ryan Alford & Robbie Fitzwater

Episode Date: January 21, 2020

B2B Marketing has changed but there is a long way to go. On this episode of the podcast, Ryan and Robbie discuss the enormous opportunity for B2B companies to leverage more B2C tactics while infusing a bit of humanity along the way. Think B2H - Business to Human Tons of great tips here for businesses of all sizes. Please share a review after listening! Links from this Episode: YouTube Video of Podcast - https://youtu.be/yjLA-MjwURQ If you enjoy this episode please check out the rest of our episodes on our channel. Please share, review, and subscribe! Radical Podcast is always looking forward to meeting both aspiring, and grounded professionals across the country! Slide Ryan or Radical a DM on Instagram and let's make it happen! @radical_results @ryanalford www.radical.company Sponsorships: off for this episode If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. 

We the underrated, we the underdogs, I'm the estimated, we the ones, yeah, yeah, we the ones, yeah, yeah, we the ones, we the ones, yeah. Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radical Company Podcast. We're back to Podcast Friday. You never know when you'll be listening to this, but it's Friday here at Radical. Things are a little bit loose, but I'm excited to be joined by Robbie Fitzwater again, one of our growth marketing strategists, and just all around one of my favorite people, Robbie. You are. It's a dear honor to be that. Ryan, you're that for me too. But I actually mean that because, Robbie, you know, being in the marketing business and all that, I feel like we're on the same wavelength as it goes with both, you know, marketing strategy tactics

and just kind of that fuel and energy and hunger for knowledge and more and more stuff. So I appreciate you coming on again, Robbie. And I know we're going to be rapping about a lot of different things in the future. But today, we wanted to talk about the changing nature of B2B marketing, and really how B2B is becoming more human and needs to be more human. And the convergence really with how B2B marketing tactics have a great opportunity to leverage more of what traditional B2C has been, Robbie. And so I'm excited to kind of get into that with you. Yeah, it's a fascinating space. And anybody that says B2B, you generally think stuffy, a little bit more buttoned up than you'd get on a normal consumer-facing marketing. But

the world's changing and expectations are evolving. You're getting a younger group who are taking the role of buyers and organizations. You have people making decisions who have grown up with social platforms, social proof, and Amazon as their context for so much. And the expectations are different, and companies really need to understand how do I use this to my advantage and how do we also make things more efficient on our own teams and and save ourselves some time

in a lot of ways yeah so I think there's some cool opportunities that people aren't always taking advantage of that really could and unique ways that sales and marketing could could want once come together and be friends so true you know the irony in this for me and certainly the proliferation of the tools the technology and the data um is enabling some of this thinking and some of this ability. But at the end of the day, companies have always been run by people. People work for businesses, but people are consumers.

Consumers are business people. It's a little bit of irony that we haven't gotten here a little faster for the humanity and just the realization that Johnny Decision Maker also is on social media. Johnny Decision Maker has kids at home that have soccer practice every other day. Johnny or Sally, business decision maker, is buying things on Amazon every day. And that's not new. And to think that newsletters and conferences were the historic ways to you know talk to businesses uh why we haven't gotten here a little faster i'm not sure but i think it's important in 2020 uh that we approach it differently and we counsel both our clients that we work with but in trying to educate the masses here

as best the radical podcast can uh, the real opportunity at hand. So I think, and this is going to get super in the clouds really fast, I think a lot of it in some ways comes back to kind of the emotion around B2B decisions altogether. People think a B2B decision is completely matter of fact, it's completely objective, it's completely perfect. I don't necessarily think that's the case. I don't think any human makes a decision completely objectively. And when you can win their head, you also have to win their heart. And I think that's one part that doesn't come into play as much with some of these decisions. And I think they kind of undervalue the level of passion that that person probably

has for that industry. And when I think about this, I think I lean towards content. I love content. I love content marketing. But there's no Netflix for IT security infrastructure. There's no Netflix for plumbing. There's no Netflix for A, B, C, D industry. But those people who are passionate about the work they do, there's probably a desire for good content in that vertical that they would engage with. That's right. And if you can provide that, even if it's average comparatively to a lot of other businesses that, again, sexy, it's not going to be Red Bull-like content, granted.

But if it's adding value and helping them with the process of doing their job better, and you can position yourself as an expert and authority, then that's really valuable information that you can give to them and respect and credibility you can build ahead of time. And like, I think we were talking about this ahead, you can save your sales team and your organization a lot of time on the tail end because if that person is being educated through the course of their buyer journey, they're already qualified by the time they get to the sales decision. And your sales team knows they can close 80% of their sales as opposed to 10% of their

sales because they have a qualified lead who they don't have to worry about hand-holding, getting on early phone calls that are never going to convert at the end of the day. So there's so much that can be done for the buyer to kind of help them through that journey, allow them to go through it themselves, and really satisfy their emotional need in a lot of ways too. Yeah. And right now, the big companies are starting to get their hands around this with hubs and different things for content. But YouTube and LinkedIn search are really the only hubs or destinations

for people to really find that type of thing. I'm sure there's one off. Someone's going to inevitably DM me or text me later that listens to this and go, hey, well, you forgot about the Symposium of Plumbing. Sorry, we forgot about that. But mainstream, and maybe there's a business idea here that we're cracking on or finding here. I mean, allowing yourself to be found, if it's published on YouTube, it's indexable. And if you're doing yourself justice, you're probably posting that through your blog

that's hopefully keyword rich. That's going to, you're identifying keywords you want to focus on or problems, problems, common problems that you're solving. And if you solve a problem that people are searching for, you're going to be answering it right there at the top of the funnel. If you can have content through the rest of the funnel that they see, they're going to also enjoy that too. Saying like, Hey, I have a, I have an issue. This is my problem. Here's the solution. Here's other ways that you can go about solving that problem. Here's what you should be looking for in the product that does solve that problem. Here's who you should be looking for as a resource and a partner in solving that problem. And oh yeah, we solved that problem for you give us a call here and it's it kind of goes back to i mean providing a value before you ask for the transaction

and it i mean it's a tenant of so much of the business that goes on but you allow that person to go through that journey themselves and i think the typical b2b funnel, if this were 1982, I realize I have a problem. I probably look up a few people. I pull up my yellow pages. I look up a few businesses in that space and I pick one or two of them. I call them. I maybe call two or three to see who has the best initial phone call. And then I let them walk me through the process. I don't, that doesn't exist anymore. If I have a problem I search for it and I start working to solve that problem myself now. And I'm halfway through solving that problem through a million, a bunch of DIY videos on YouTube where they're generally being created by just individuals on their own. Why can't that be done by a brand? Why can't they

be the ones taking the risk and taking the chance to do that stuff? Because they probably have the experts in-house. They just need to find ways to package that in a way to bring that expertise into the digital space. Yep. And the scary thing is, you know, a lot of the B2B companies that I've worked with over the years, it's amazing how much stuff they're doing. You know know they're doing a lot of stuff they're doing it like there's collateral everywhere they've kind of got a couple videos and all this but they don't they're either they're not optimizing for seo they don't have like true

digital marketing around it they're not atomizing the content for use across other things. It's just like they check the list off. I've got a brochure. I have a flyer. I have a video. We have 30 million of them depending on how big the product is or how big the category or the brand is. And they're doing a lot of stuff, but they're not, it's the left is not talking to the right. And that's one of the biggest things within these companies is the larger one, B2B companies, is the silos of the organization. But the real opportunity for them is getting that into a hub-type environment, getting that in a feed-type environment, and then atomizing it, sharing it, and then leveraging what we're doing with some of our clients, that wall of sound across mediums. Because a lot of these companies

are sitting on tons and tons of data, customer data, information. It's almost like sitting there with a pizza in front of you going, I'm hungry. I mean, really. I'm hungry. I need a knife and a fork.

And some of it probably comes down to fear and just not wanting to make a mistake, not wanting to try something different and fall on your face. But that's the way marketing has been done for so long. And so many people tell themselves, hey, that's true. And that's true over there, but not in my industry, not in my industry. My industry is different. We've done this for years. This is the way things are done. Yes, human relationships and human connections are always going to be valuable in a B2B context.

But if you can improve your marketing and improve the way that they feel about the brand leading up to that human connection, it's probably going to be a lot better and a lot more beneficial for your brand as a whole. And then you can do the long-term play of positioning yourself as an expert in the long run and then have them as a client for the long term. Because if they have a problem, next time they have an issue they're looking to solve, you're going to be the first person on their radar, or you're leading them down a journey of, hey, the people who have this problem normally do this. Also, you may see this, this, and this, and this is how we can help you solve all of those, or be ready for all of these problems that may also arise later on down the road. So it gives you the opportunity to kind of

hold their hand, walk them through that first time around, but also keep them the second, third, fourth, and fifth time around because you're adding value, you're providing information that's going to be relevant to them, and at the end of the day, like I said, that emotional side, you're giving them the Netflix for plumbers, and they're excited about it because you get them. You see them as not just a prospect, but you see them as a person. And you can distribute that through your channels, but you can also give that to your sales team to let them distribute through their individual channels

and talk to their clients, their list. And then, yeah. Sorry, I may cut this two seconds bit. I went down a tangent. I apologize. All good. But the interesting thing to that end, back to kind of the purchase funnel for B2B, thing to that end back to kind of the purchase funnel for b2b it used to be that purchase would take place only at the bottom of the funnel and because they've been led through the sales process

like you talked about earlier but now if you're serving up the content and letting them self serve their way through the funnel purchase can happen actually further up the funnel so that everything doesn't have to be so salesperson pressure focused. And what's interesting is, okay, I think people may be hearing that nodding. Okay, that makes sense. I get that. But what you have to do is then your messaging and your approach from your salespeople has to recognize that is happening and thus not turn into the shark and know that he's already has someone qualified that's been pushing them down the funnel and be reactive to that knowing that that funnel's

changed knowing that that person's at a different place in the journey and not having to approach and communicate with them in a way that they would before. Yeah, so it does come down to a lot of communication. I think that's a huge point because if you're not communicating that and they think they need to start from zero, they're going to be wasting everybody's time. If that person's already down the sales funnel to a certain extent, if they already know, hey, I know this, this, and this,

I feel comfortable and safe, which one of these individual products I maybe need a suggestion on, but I know what category I need to be buying it now. I just need some hand-holding in that last, that final touch. So I think that's where marketing and sales need to find ways to get those groups together.

If somebody needs to have a pizza party, I don't know what it needs to be, but a lot of organizations need to find ways to get those groups together. If somebody needs to have a pizza party, I don't know what it needs to be, but a lot of organizations need to find ways to break down those walls. And I think some ways you could bring the sales team into that marketing side of the house also. There's probably a great way to humanize your business is to build that informational content with your sales team, with those experts who are helping people with those common questions they get. And what if they, I think it'd be a fantastic opportunity for a lot of businesses to take their sales team,

if they created a video series with their sales team, and that somebody goes down the buyer journey of using that information to help them find a decision, and then, oh yeah, here's, the first time they get on a call, they're going to be like, oh, that's Adam. I know Adam. You were in those videos. I loved you in those videos.

And you could put a human face to a brand and you can put a, ideally make an influence on that end user. What's your thoughts on, I think it's highly related to this discussion, and to me it's almost the, metaphor is probably not the right word, the change of LinkedIn, what's going on with LinkedIn content, what's going on, if anyone's paying attention, I feel like is a prime example of the opportunity and the changing space of B2B. of the opportunity and the changing space of B2B. And you see now with LinkedIn, people are posting more regularly, obviously. There's definitely this cross of consumer content type objects,

I'll call them, whether it's videos, whether it's people are talking more about their kids' soccer games on LinkedIn and what they had for dinner last night and their favorite TV. And where 18 months ago, two years ago, 90% of it was just hard selling or here's what I did today at work or very specific to the business side of things. Download this white paper. Oh, God. the business side of things.

Download this white paper. Oh, God. Yeah. Oh, wait. I got like a little shake, you know, because of how many of those in-mails I got. Yeah, yeah. Just anybody using LinkedIn as a channel, please do not try and connect

and send a message right away that pitches your business. That's just the wrong way to approach it. Oh, God. Everyone does, though, still. I mean, I probably get 15 messages a day, you know, asking to connect. And I usually don't turn someone down unless it's just like, you know, Charles in another country, and it's so obvious that it's either fake

or spam or something. If it's not that, I'll probably connect with you. But, geez, Louise, do not message me the same day. It's usually within an hour. But the same day going, hey, we really want to sell you X. And no matter how, look, we're working in ad agents. We have copywriters. I know what you're doing.

You can word it however you want, but you're asking for a sale. When you don't know me, you haven't done any work or earned my respect or trust. Anyway. Jeremy Cash. Off the soft box. Jeremy Cash, T-shirt mogul of Sandusky, Ohio. I don't necessarily need to know you or have any interest in communicating on LinkedIn. But it's a space that's changing really fast.

People are spending more time there. It's less of that resume, I think, in a lot of ways for so many people because it was always a stuffy place that, oh, yeah, my parents were on LinkedIn. Great. It's the stuffy place that nobody spent a lot of time on. And now it's becoming a place where you're finding a little bit more rich connections. You're finding more information that you're consuming in a little bit longer form. People are going there once or twice a day as opposed to once or twice a month.

And it's becoming almost what Facebook was in the early days when the algorithm pushes things through a little bit farther. It's not so content saturated that content still moves pretty well. And the people that are doing it making are doing a killing on it because You have this beautiful network you've been cultivating over years and you can suddenly leverage it in a in a space in a little bit Different way and I love one thing the behavior isn't necessarily set in stone yet like you haven't had that Twitter on Twitter's Twitter is snarky and irreverent and it has a certain behavior. Facebook is baby photos and news stories in a certain way.

LinkedIn really hasn't had that set behavior yet, which makes it kind of a cool opportunity because it can be a little bit of both. You're going to have your more buttoned-up professional aspect of things going on, but you can also have the human side of things brought to the table that probably makes for a nice impact. And if people are spending time there, those are eyeballs that,

that's kind of the promise of social media. You have those organic eyeballs that you wish you had on Facebook or wish you still had on Instagram. And it's kind of that open field and that blue ocean that people are looking for from the social perspective. That's right. And it's funny you say that. And I think about the last few posts I've had, they've been on all different ends of the spectrum. Like, you know, one minute I'm talking about a client and, you know, showing it and the reach is just crazy. Like, you know, like 2000 people within a couple of days. And that just the algorithm alone alone if you aren't leveraging linkedin right now as a business and i might would even argue as a b2c company uh you're missing the boat because i don't know when that i don't know when that you hit scale of content because this is all about you know they've

got an active audience there's a certain number of content being posted. And so they can play the algorithm game. At a certain point, it tips over and the algorithm starts showing less because there's so much feeding going through the tube, so much content. But it's crazy. Yeah, I don't know. I almost wonder because I always think about this and the economics of the platform. And I know we're going down the rabbit hole of LinkedIn right here. But it's good. I think it's related, though, to the changing landscape of business and B2B. So it's owned by Microsoft. Microsoft has multiple streams of revenue. If this were Facebook, Facebook sells ads. Facebook makes most of their money from selling ads. They're

owned by Microsoft. They have a diversified advertising portfolio on there on LinkedIn too because you have the in-mail is kind of expensive you also have the recruiter tool which is really expensive for businesses that can afford it so you have a diversified pipeline of information coming in and revenue coming in they don't have to optimize for ads on the platform they have to optimize for content and engagement but they're not going to be forced to optimize for ads on the platform. They have to optimize for content and engagement, but they're not going to be forced to optimize for ads at the speed that Facebook or Instagram was. So the, I, I mean, I think it's a, I think it takes a little bit longer before that algorithm hits that tipping

point where it's content saturation. And I think people are still hard. It's hard to get people on board with it still. Like I speak at a million classes or undergraduate student undergraduate college students like you're never gonna be around this many people in your life ever again connect with the people around you because that's probably the most valuable resource you could ever have that's right and like what used to be somebody's rolodex is now your LinkedIn account and it's a lot bigger it's a lot it's a lot more efficient and if you need to reach through your network, it's a huge opportunity. Yeah.

And whatever you do, don't DM immediately if you're a salesperson. But what you can do if you're a brand, maybe to flip it back tactically for brands and business, you need to be telling your stories there. You need to be showing behind this, you need to be that both that human side and the business side, the products and services that you sell, the information and education of those products and services, but also the humanity of your company. Because people are researching you, they go to your website. Yes, they go to other sources, YouTube, depending on your business.

Maybe Facebook or business is still huge. But they're definitely going to LinkedIn, especially on that B2B side. And I think the more robust the stories and the depth of those stories that you can tell, it's a perfect place to be leveraging that and showing that level of humanity. Yeah. Like people, process and product. I mean, if you can show the people that are, the people that are making the donuts, the process they're going through, it's going to make for a lot more rich relationship in the long run. And I think if they, if a business is smart, they can get ideally on board with that and show behind the scenes what's going on, how their business functions, what the process they looked like, what the process looks like when they vet new products, or even if they're having a

vendor come visit them. How great is that to position themselves as an expert? Like, hey, we're having this vendor come in to visit our business because they want to show our team how their new products are run, or they want to do a training on these new products they have so we can help educate the market. There's so many easy things that they could do that just even just showing what's going on in the day-to-day doesn't even have to be exciting and sexy, just doing it. And that's a space that, truthfully, in full transparency,

I'm always horrible about. I don't do a better job of, and I need to hold my own feet to the fire a lot better on, but it's a way that they can probably, you can consistently create easy content that isn't going to take moving heaven and earth to publish. If you're big enough and you're starting, I would have said Facebook two years ago probably,

like if you're a big enough business, and I'm talking B2B right now, B2B marketing. Two or three years ago, I would have definitely just said your community manager, your social manager internally, focus on Facebook, definitely have a LinkedIn presence. But I would have someone, depending on the scale and size, I would have someone 100% focused on LinkedIn right now from your business standpoint.

From a recruiting standpoint, from telling your story, from leveraging your products and size, I would have someone 100% focused on LinkedIn right now from your business standpoint, from a recruiting standpoint, from a telling your story, from leveraging your products and services. And now, I mean, there's features coming out like LinkedIn Live. There's so many opportunities that it's becoming that hub. It's always kind of been there, but it's definitely becoming more a hub. It was, like you said, the resume and the connection kind of building, you know, networking of sorts, a networking platform, and it still is. But now it's so much more of that hub that you can leverage. I'd love to transition, Robbie, as we kind of maybe close out the final 10 minutes or so. And before we do, we want to shout out to our sponsor, LinkedIn,

for this podcast. Yes. if uh if you'd like to uh sponsor the next version of radical uh company podcast you can uh dial us at uh 1-800-linkedin um in all seriousness let's get tactical so b to h b to human business to human um let's maybe a little lightning round of maybe between the two of us, four to five tactics, and I'm going to throw it back to you first. Since I'm talking right now, you get to be thinking about practice one. We kicked a lot of these around before. But maybe let's come up with four to five granular tactics

for businesses listening for how they can leverage and operate and take advantage of being more human and leveraging some of the B2C opportunities that are out there. Work with, grab a sales team member. And again, I sound like a broken record so much of the time. Grab a sales team member, take your phone out and ask them, what's the question you get asked the most on every phone call? What's the question you answer on every single phone call? Record that and use it as, use it to upload to YouTube, transcribe that, add it as a blog post. And that's a great, easy piece of content you could possibly use. If that's a, if that's a common question that people are asking, make sure it's in the,

make sure it's worded the way that people are asking online. Use like a answer the public to make sure it's going to be worded in a proper context and maybe give some sub answers of people also ask this, this, and this maybe. But take some low-hanging fruit, humanize your sales team, but also use that in a way that you can find some benefit for the business and then give that to that sales team, but also use that in a way that you can find some benefit for the business and then give that to that sales team member and have them distribute it to their contact list of people who are their larger accounts or better accounts that would fit in line with this. Like take the account-based marketing approach of really focusing on individual accounts and really, hey, this fits in line with your business. I thought of you when we

made this and I thought you might find some value here. They're going to be able to, hey, this fits in line with your business. I thought of you when we made this, and I thought you might find some value here. They're going to be able to, again, humanize themselves, use content in the way that a business, that any other B2C business would in trying to help provide value beyond the transaction. And then it doesn't take moving heaven and earth either because it's pretty low-hanging fruit. And when it's not perfect, it doesn't matter because you're probably going to see a positive revenue coming from that really quickly. And that salesperson is going to hopefully get excited about it and on board with it. And hopefully they can grab more of the sales team to, to get more of them invested in, into this easy content that you can build. Love it. So I'm going to go back to one of the things we

talked about, leveraging digital marketing, true digital marketing as a B2B company. So what I mean by that, Google analytics, looking, setting up the proper tracking codes, doing all of these things, we're leveraging really this, we talked about this a little bit earlier, you know, the wall of sound notion because B2B people are just like B2C. You can do custom audiences based on your prospect lists or your customer lists. You can retarget the traffic that comes. This is like some of the 101 of digital marketing that a B2B company should be using. And some are out there not in their head, yeah, we're doing some of that. But you need to be using that first party data, not to follow them around and scare them, but if they're interested in your products and service, you can be adding value throughout that

purchase funnel. You can retarget them on Facebook, LinkedIn, like we talked about, other areas that are relevant, whether that's business websites and other things, you can be retargeting them or serving up some of the cookie crumbs, if you call them, or breadcrumbs of those solutions that Robbie was talking about. You know, a partial clip of a video that's leading them and helping them. Because they've been, again, they're already a partner or they're a prospect for a reason. You know they're interested in your products and services. This isn't selling spandex leggings to,ex leggings to a big buff guy that would never wear them or selling sunglasses to someone

that lives in the darkest place on earth. Again, this is relevant content at the right time at the right place and leveraging some of that one-on-one of digital marketing, whether that's SEO, whether that's retargeting, whether that's one-to-one marketing via these channels, but really leveraging the building blocks of traditional digital media. I mean, yeah, you take it from using digital marketing to build a relationship. Sales team isn't the only one who can build a relationship. Suddenly your digital team can be the ones that are doing that. And if you can walk them through, you're going to have more trust,

more authority, and it's going to be an easier transition for them to be making. And one thing I want to come back, I don't know, I keep thinking about everybody lives in a world where we use Amazon every day.

We use products like Amazon. We use, our expectations are set by that. That's how we make buying decisions. Why should B2B be any different? Think about that like we would be making a product decision because everybody makes hundreds of product decisions all the time. Whereas B2B takes a lot more time and effort. It's different, but it's no different than buying a car.

You want to be making the right decision. You probably need more sources of information, but you want to know that you're making the right decision at the end of the day. And for cars, you're probably doing more research than just going to a lot and letting a, letting a salesperson walk you through it.

Cause if you are, you're probably not doing yourself any favors. You're probably losing yourself a lot of, a lot of money. A lot. Yeah. But it's, it's using those channels in the way that they're most useful.

And it's, it's what, it's what marketers in the B2C space are doing every day. And it seems natural for them, but it's difficult for people to take that leap, I think, in some cases on the B2B side. That's right. A lot of this is just getting out of their comfort zone. I think you nailed it earlier talking about, I don't know if you use these exact words, but I think the B2B space has been known for being very calculated and quote-unquote perfect.

Like whatever we put out is this perfect example of the product, and it's exactly this, and it does exactly these four things. And like, you know, the mundane and just very product-focused or whatever. And I think you've got to break out of that perspective. And it's not about putting your company in a bad light or looking unprofessional. You're the experts. Otherwise, you shouldn't be in the business. If you're not the expert and you don't know what you're doing, then you're just moving widgets. And you're not adding any value and you're going to, somebody's going to, somebody's going to take that place. And that's kind of some of this

opportunity is to the B2B space. It's, it's a blue ocean. It's not, it's not consumer cosmetics. It's not like we talked about supplements. It's not a bloody red ocean because you don't have so many competitors. And honestly, in B2B, if, if you do it, okay, you're going to be, you're going to set yourself apart because very few people know what they're doing and that's probably going to change. But right now it it's the best time to be moving. You could have been doing it yesterday, but right now, today's the best time to start something new and trying something new. So that probably comes down to doing what a lot of B2C marketers are doing and taking more risks, finding ways to use that white space that's still available right now, because that's probably going to go away eventually.

But utilizing a platform like LinkedIn to use the platform when it's not necessarily oversaturated by content or other behavior. And we talked about this, finding, learning, growing, and experimenting. And it really comes back to how do they approach marketing? How do they approach the work they do? And can they keep moving that work forward? Yeah, exactly. And the last thing I would say, you know, one of the most common levers to pull is trade shows and experience, you know, like the trade show. Just think about the experience that you're delivering at your trade show or your booth.

You know, make it more human. Make it more interesting. make it more human, make it more interesting. I think it's leveraging whether it's leveraging the power of social media and doing live streams when that becomes available on LinkedIn. But I think that's always going to be a big tactic and a big medium, the experience side at trade shows and events and networking and those kind of things. But I think businesses need to really be thinking through

how to make that experience more human as well. We could probably do a whole podcast on this. How do you take that trade show and make it from a, hey, you can have this here. You give me your email, you get the stress ball. Make it from this awkward transaction to, hey, I want to be part of what you guys are doing because I think your brand's exciting.

I think the way you approach this business is exciting and I want to be part of this. And if you can find ways to get them on board and excited about your brand, excited about the work you do, then you can win that experience because they're going to be walking through and having lots of stress ball transactions.

But if you can get them on board and finding you on a digital space without this awkward stuffy transaction, then you can really win. And there's lots of ways that people can do that ahead of time. And even finding ways to prime that trade show beforehand and, hey, why don't we work on targeting any attendees

who may be coming from these businesses you can get in the weeds and granular and tactical and targeting people with certain job titles in certain industries on linkedin to saying hey if you're going to this conference come see us here so positioning positioning on the front end using data the way you should well i know b know B2B is a passion for you. It's becoming a bigger niche for Radical. I know we'll have more sessions. I know we talked about getting down the account-based marketing

and the channel marketing side. There's a whole other rabbit hole we can go down. Yeah, these are fun, honestly. It's stuff that we live in exciting times and and that's one one of the best parts about this is there's still the wild wild west and so much of marketing and b2b a little bit more so than than the b2c but if you can take the learnings we're seeing in people that are doing b2c really well those just apply so well and it's it's pretty fun at the end of the day because you get to do stuff that works well

and you get to make an impact for the businesses you're working with. Totally agree. Well, I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Radical Company podcast. You can find us online at radical.company. Yes, radical.company is the web address. You can find us on Instagram at radical underscore results.

And we are on LinkedIn. Please follow along, like, and share this podcast. Hope you have a great day. See you guys later.