0:13
Shanie Zimerman
Okay, great. So hi everyone. Welcome again to our from the Expert series. For those of you who don't know me yet in our tenth episode, I'm Shani. I manage the strategic partners over here at Oktopost. Joining me today are Colin Day, our Managing director in Amia, and we have a very special. This is where I always forget. I always remember at the last minute. Amy Kenningsberg. Amy is the co founder and COO over at K2 Global Communications. Today the three of us are going to be talking all about making sure that our messaging is getting to the right people at the right time. I also want to mention Amy was actually featured on our podcast series a couple of months back. Stuff youf Should Know About Our Changed World. She was speaking all about PR and how to coach B2B marketing teams to success. You can watch her well listen to her episode. We listen to podcasts so you can listen to her podcast episode anywhere. You listen to podcasts. Spotify anchor, itunes, have a listen. It's really fantastic. We love having Amy as a guest on our marketing series. Just as a very quick reminder, everyone is on mute if you have any questions at all. We have a Q and a box and a chat box. You can feel free to go ahead and drop your questions in there and we'll have time just at the end of the webinar to get to them. So without further ado, I would like to take this really from the get go, from the basics. Amy, why do we need a messaging strategy?
1:47
Amy Kenigsberg
Basically, you need a messaging strategy because nobody cares about what you do. You really, really need to focus on
1:57
Shanie Zimerman
why we love having Amy here.
2:00
Amy Kenigsberg
Nobody really cares about your products. Nobody cares about your technology. What they really want to know is what's in it for them for everything that you sell. So you really need to pinpoint what's in it for each member of your target audience. What's important to them, why they should care, why they should buy your product. And what it also does is it gets everybody in the organization on the same page because the last thing you want is the sales guy to be telling somebody something, the CEO to be telling someone something different. And then when they call tech support and they ask about the feature that the sales guy said that you already have and tech support says, oh, we won't have that feature for another six months. I don't know who told you that. So messaging is critical for both getting everybody internally on the same page so they can go external and really helping you target why people should care about what you do.
3:10
Shanie Zimerman
Definitely. It's really the foundation of your organization, not even marketing, it's the foundation of your organization being able to deliver that elevator pitch, what we do, making sure everyone is aligned with that bottom line of what it is that the company does. Colin, do you have anything that you want to add on top of this?
3:32
Colin Day
Yeah. I also think if we think about it from the marketers perspective, right. And we think about it from a modern day like a marketing engine and marketing ops perspective, having a well defined messaging strategy and content strategy to go along with that. Right. So you've got the messaging strategy, you've got the branding guidelines, et cetera, everything that goes into that packet. What you're then going to start to do is to build those marketing assets. Right. And as you build those assets you need to have that calendar and the strategy aligned with it so that you get a truly integrated campaign methodology and campaign flow. Because after all content is the key to the modern day marketing engine. You need good quality content and you need a good quantity of it in order to keep that pump primed. Sure.
4:34
Shanie Zimerman
And then when it comes down to implementing your messaging strategy, the company's messaging strategy, what are some of the, I guess the foundations or the key takeaways for being able to implement it successfully and drive its success throughout the content, throughout the sales, delivery through everything.
4:56
Amy Kenigsberg
Okay, so I'm going to build on what Colin was saying with the content strategy is what you need to do is you've got your messaging, you've got your targeted Personas, then you've got to determine, okay what channels and what messages are appropriate for each of the Personas. So for example, let's say you're selling an IT product, let's say it's a cybersecurity product. You're not only selling to the ciso, you're selling to the project manager, you're selling to the system administrator and you're selling to the lowly IT guy who's going to install the whole thing. So each of those people need to have specific messages targeted to their roles to ensure that you're generating the right content, that you're reaching them through the right channels. It's really now what we're focusing we're calling account based marketing which is who is touched during the entire sales process and what messages do they need to hear.
6:05
Colin Day
Can I add to that Shani as well please? In so much as Amy mentioned a couple of key points there, right. Channels or two words for me that stood out were channels and Personas. Right. So it's about knowing and I know we're gonna talk about like you know, knowing the audience in a little while, but it really is about knowing who is needing what at what point, you know, in their journey. Right. So you know, where are they in their discovery of your product or your service or your solution. Right. So where are they in that sales cycle? Because dependent upon whether they're top, middle, bottom or even if they're an ex customer, the message that you're going to want them to consume and the content that goes along with that is going to differ considerably. And if we think about the channel from a channel perspective, look, we're all hyper connected, we all carry multiple devices with us, whether it be your laptop, your multiple mobile phones, your iPads or those like other brands do exist to Apple just so that we're not doing a bit of Apple branding. But you know, whatever it is that you're carrying in your pocket or in your purse or on your person. Right. I'm hyper connected and I want to consume content when I want to consume content, not when you as a marketer want, want to push it to me. Right. So yeah, I may get, you know, an email dripped out to me through, through Marketo, Eloque Pardot, whatever your marketing automation platform of choice is. Yeah. But I may want to self serve some of that content at midnight when you're not like in the office, when you're, when you're tucked up in bed. Right. So you know, it's, it's about understanding, you know, having the right message for the Persona. Right. Like, but it's also having the right message for the channel and having that channel and that, and that content ready and consumable when me the consumer. Yeah, Even in the B2B world, I guess we're consumers, right. We're consumers of content. Right. When, when I want to consume it,
8:30
Shanie Zimerman
definitely. So I wanted to kind of lead into, with the foundation of why we need the strategy and how to implement it. Because really the point of this webinar, if you will, or the value of this webinar is how we can reach the right audience. I think it's pretty clear not everyone is a customer. So who is that customer? I want to give it to the two of you to kind of jumpstart this and really drive even that. That I think is the overall understanding here. Not everyone is going to be your customer. So really hone in on who those people are and who's going to find your product or your solution or whatever it is the most valuable.
9:15
Amy Kenigsberg
Amy, I'll start. Basically, even a general mass market consumer product needs to have a target audience. So, for example, statistically, most of the shopping in a household is done by women. So even if you're selling. Yeah, I know. That's shocking.
9:37
Colin Day
Shocking. Don't tell my wife. Yeah.
9:41
Amy Kenigsberg
Yes. So even statistically, if you're selling a men's deodorant, you also need to appeal to the woman in his life or the other man who does the shopping in his life if we're going to be politically correct, so that the person who's doing the buying will be inspired to purchase. So when you're defining your audiences, you really need to get inside their heads. You know, you really need to do the Persona exercises. It's what problems am I solving for them? What's important to them? You know, what do they need? So, for example, a B2B product, you know, it could be anything. You know, is it. Am I buying this because it will make me look good in front of my boss? Am I buying this because I know that it's going to save me 20 hours a week of hassle time? Am I buying this because all of my friends who are in the same industry have already bought it and I need to keep up with peer pressure? You know, you really, really need to get into the heads of the people and determine what their pains are, what their challenges are, and what they actually want. Because what people say they want and what people actually want are two different things. And you need to really target your messaging not just for the obvious, but also for the underlying issues.
11:22
Colin Day
And Shani, adding to that, right? Like that when in some of the companies that I've worked for in the past, and in case any of them are on the lines, like, their names will remain nameless, I promise. But when I looked after marketing operations, right, and worked with my colleagues in sales ops, we did a huge analysis back in 2012 about who the organization's customers were. And we started off just by asking the question of our sales teams. Who do you target? Who do you think we're selling to? And we asked the marketing team, who do you think our ideal customers are? And we went to finance and said, who's paying us money? And we bought all of that intelligence back together. And guess what? There was a huge disconnect across all three of those, and the lights have just gone out. So there's a huge disconnect here as well. That was ironic. But I can't, because I can't go far enough. But you're gonna have to sit with me in the dark, I'm afraid. But if you do that analysis, it can be quite shocking because you've got three different parts of the organization that all think the ideal customer, the ideal profile is something very different. So I'd actually encourage everyone to go away and think about who should we be targeting. And when I say the who, I don't just mean the Persona, right? The actual Persona. The actual person comes last in all of this equation. Right? Like it really starts off with what's the target addressable market, right? It's like, you know, what countries do we want to go after? Where do we want to invest our marketing dollar or our sales dollar to go and get the biggest return from a country perspective, right? Then what industries is it that we want to go after? Yeah. And then a case of, you know, what metrics do I have to apply to those industries in order to get the ideal firms? The firmographic information that I need in order to make sure that I'm going after the right companies. Right. And then it's okay, who within side those companies, right? Like the Personas that Amy spoken so eloquently about, is it the cmo, is it the, you know, information security officer, depending upon, you know, what it is the product and service that you're selling. And then what I, what I would do is actually say, okay, right, with inside my marketing automation platform or with inside my CRM system having this template, how market ready am I? How, how, how marketing ready am I in order to start to, to build yet my, my marketing campaigns, tactics and strategies in order to, to go after those. And when we did that exercises say we, we were totally shocked about how unprepared we were and how our sales team thought it was one thing, but the reality of who was actually paying us money was actually something very, very different.
14:45
Amy Kenigsberg
So actually I'm going to build on what you just said and take it back to what we discussed before.
14:50
Colin Day
And while you do that, I'm going to wave my arms and get my lights back on.
14:52
Amy Kenigsberg
Sorry to talking about the internal buy in when you're doing messaging. Messaging can be driven by marketing, but all the critical stakeholders within the organization need to be part of the process. You know, everybody in the C suite, the CEO, the cmo, the cfo, the vice president of sales, anybody who's a critical stakeholder in the organization needs to participate. As my example, before even the person who runs customer support, they're actually one of the most critical people in the messaging process because they're the ones talking to the customers every single day much, much more than the sales team. The sales team is the potential customers. But customer support is really talking to the people. And what even might be worthwhile, we recommend to our clients, is most of the customer support calls are recorded. Play some of the customer support calls for everybody in the meeting to really hear the voice of the customer. And people might be shocked about what their customers think about their products and what their real issues are.
16:13
Colin Day
Amy, I think you hit a great point there, right? The voice or a great phrase, the voice of the customer. Right. Putting the customer at the heart of everything you do. Right. Because at the end of the day, it's going to be the customer that engages with the content. And customer is going to mean different things to different people. Right. It's like even that target audience. Yeah. You could call it your customer, even though they're a prospect. Right. So, you know, different people are going to use that word interchangeably. Right. But it's about putting the customer at the heart of everything you do. The other thing, Amy, I mean, it's like you work with a number of organizations, right. How many of those do content audits or messaging audits? Because what I found in my past career as well is it's always amazed me. It's like marketing organizations, we're very, very good at producing content and churning out content. We can produce it much quicker than people can consume it. But is it the right content? Right. And is it. Is it something that's engaging on message, on brand? More often than not, it's. It's on message and it's on brand. But is it being used? Is it being used by the sales team? Is it being pulled down from the website? Is it. We're probably spending, you know, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. Right. Each year producing content that is just sitting on the virtual shelf. Yeah. That's not being consumed and we create more of it. Right. So, you know, what I'd say to you is, with the clients that you work with, how many of them typically do a content audit or a messaging audit? Is that something you see?
18:03
Amy Kenigsberg
A lot of what we do is we force all of our clients before they start with us, to do messaging, that's kind of. That is the very first thing we do with them. Because if they don't, we've run into so many companies who simply don't have it. So just forcing them through the process, you know, gives them an idea of, oh, wow, I can't believe that's happening. You know, we really were totally off the mark. And then once we do the messaging, then it's okay. What are the channels? Who are the people? And what content is going to drive them to take action? It's like when we're prompting people, you know, doing something as simple as generating their social media content, you know, we tell them it's got to be, you know, the Pareto 8020, 80% useful material that their clients will, clients and potential clients will want to use and learn from and then 20% promotional. You know, give people a reason to visit your social sites. Don't just, you know, keep generating. We did this and we did that and we did the other thing. You know, it's really trying to make yourself useful to the customer and that's what the content needs to do. Years ago, before, before content marketing got its name, we used to call it news. You can use, you know, what information can you give to your clients that they will find useful and reinforce your brand and reinforce your expertise so when they are ready to buy, you know, they know who you are and they know that you're the right, the, the right place for them to be.
19:52
Colin Day
Yeah, it's also, also slack. What I've seen and felt shocking slack, you know, over the years, right. Is, is that that talking of the, the amount of content that we create, right. Sometimes you can just create one asset, right? And that one asset you then that. So for example, we used to do a major industry survey every year and the results of that survey would bring back and we'd turn into this fantastic. Originally it's like a paper book or journal that we'd send out later. In later years it became an ebook because that's very fashionable these days, so I'm told. But that one piece of research actually formed the messaging and content strategy for the coming year. Because that one piece of research we could then chunk up into infographics and into PowerPoint presentations, into blog articles and off the back of that into bite sized chunks that could be used as social content to drive people to that ebook, to convert and download that material. But that doesn't seem to be industry standard practice, right? It's a cane of let's churn and churn and churn and churn out that content rather than let's think about how can we reuse or repurpose great content that we've created historically. And it may not be that historically, it may just be a month or two ago, but how can we take those assets and repurpose them and therefore free up marketing Dollars for us to realign and reposition into other tactics.
21:46
Amy Kenigsberg
Yeah, no, it's very funny because we do this, we tell our clients the same thing. It's like everything we create, we want to reuse, recycle. And we teach them the evergreen concept, which every year are the holidays. So every cybersecurity company needs to be writing about all the Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping threats. You know, it's the new year. There's predictions. If you've got some sort of product you can tie to Valentine's Day and
22:18
Colin Day
pass over my birthday, by the way, Amy. So don't, don't forget it now. Right.
22:22
Amy Kenigsberg
I'm two days after, so I won't.
22:24
Colin Day
You've just told everyone here, so, you know, I'm expecting those.
22:27
Shanie Zimerman
Everybody send Happy Birthday.
22:29
Colin Day
You've got it. Yeah.
22:32
Amy Kenigsberg
So, you know, we teach people is there are certain things that happen every year. You create the content once. Nobody's going to remember it from the previous year, just repost it with a new date. The other thing you hit on with those reports is another thing we focus on with our clients is most client. Most companies now are software. There are very few. You know, there are some people actually selling stuff. But in the B2B marketing space, most everyone is offering some sort of software product. And what we tell them at the very beginning, when they're building it, when they're planning it, is create some way to pull data out of it. So you have ongoing content that's always going to be useful industry information for your customers and for your potential customers. And use that in social and use it in the media for objective content and create, you know, the ebooks. And so we are totally on the same page as you, Collins. You know, you've got the messaging. Great. Now figure out what useful information you can impart over the year and then reuse the hell out of it every year after that.
23:53
Colin Day
Maybe you want to change the images, you know, maybe you pick it up and you dust it off a little bit. Right. But the content's the content.
24:02
Amy Kenigsberg
Yeah, exactly.
24:04
Colin Day
Yeah. Now I Wonder how many CMOs are listening. Shani. And it's like, ah, do you know what? My content budget's just now changed for 2021. I apologize. Right. If you're in content marketing and we've just messed up your 2021 budget for you,
24:23
Shanie Zimerman
great.
24:24
Amy Kenigsberg
Invest in more channels. Sorry, Shani. No, no, no.
24:27
Colin Day
Right. And that's, that's a key thing actually, Amy, as well, right. Is, is, you know, the as. As we think about the, the channel actually as we think about the content as well. Right. It's like, you know, it still puzzles me, you know, as an industry, if, if you asked, I mean, if you ask the three of us, right. What's a marketing campaign? I bet we'd probably all have a slightly different answer. Right. It's like if we talked about what's a lead. Right. We probably have a different answer. Right. It's almost as if we need to create a marketing dictionary. Right. And, you know, we've got these terms that we band around. Yeah. And it's a language. Right. We've got this language, but not everyone's talking the same. We're saying the same words, but we don't always mean the same things. Right. So, you know, to me, as I think about marketing strategies. Right. And as I think about campaign strategies, I think it's, you know, the coaching that I do with, with some of the marketing experts that, That I work with. It's all around, teach your teams to have the same common language and the same common understanding of what you're talking about. Right. What is a campaign? Is a webinar a campaign? No, to me, a webinar is a tactic with inside a campaign.
25:44
Amy Kenigsberg
It's a channel.
25:46
Colin Day
Right. So it's a case of think about what your campaign strategy is. Right. Think about how your content strategy and your messaging strategy aligns to that campaign or the campaign aligns to it. Right. Then think about what channels and what tactics you need to apply to service those channels and then yet draw from that, out of that content or build that content calendar. Right. In order to support that execution plan. And with all of that, take it, put it into your marketing automation platforms like Lead, Score it, segment it, attribute it, and guess what? I think we've just got an integrated campaign strategy. But it all starts with having the same language and the same common understanding of what it is. Yeah. That constitutes the marketing world. Yeah. And then into that, like, an important part of it, obviously, is the content and the data of who you're trying to put that content out to.
26:50
Amy Kenigsberg
So basically, the industry as a whole, we need a messaging document.
26:53
Colin Day
You've got it. Yeah. Hey, Amy, maybe that's something for you. Maybe that's how you get your Nobel Prize. Yeah, but, but the, the, the other thing there, right, is look, we can have the best message and the best content right? In. In the whole of the industry. But if we're not putting it out to the right people, what's the point of having it in the first place? Yeah. And if, if you Know if we are putting it out to the right people, but they're not consuming it because we're putting it out on the wrong channel, what's the point of having it in the first place?
27:32
Shanie Zimerman
I love that food for thought that we'll leave the audience with. We got a couple of questions in that I think we can certainly go ahead and address here. So I'll just move over to this screen so that anyone that's watching can jot down some emails. But we're also sending out this deck so you don't need to write anything down or memorize anything. Actually, you'll get this. Can a messaging strategy change? Can your messaging change?
28:01
Amy Kenigsberg
Oh, absolutely. It's a living, breathing document. It's not a one shot, let's do it and put it away and never use it. It's always ongoing. What we actually do for our clients is when we do messaging, our Messaging could be three pages, it could be 15 pages because it's a living, working, breathing document. So whenever they're going to write an email, I want them to open the messaging and say, okay, I need to pull this text or this has changed. Let me update it in the messaging document and you know, send it out. Just tell people, reshare it saying, hey, you know, we changed this and this because of that. No, the messaging document is a breathing thing. If you do it and put it away, then there's no point in doing it at all.
28:48
Colin Day
Prime example. Yeah. We're living through it at the moment. Right. So if you went back to the beginning of March. Yeah. The messaging that we all had as B2B marketers at the start of March was probably very different by the time we exited March. Yeah. And it's probably very different now to what it was at the end of March. Right. So I mean that's just one simple example. Right. But you know, there are many different challenges that hit an industry or a company across a 12 month period. Yeah. And yes, like as Amy says, it's got to be a living, breathing thing.
29:33
Shanie Zimerman
And another one that came in, I like this one is you're messaging your elevator pitch is. It
29:44
Amy Kenigsberg
needs to include your elevator pitch. So what I'm saying is your messaging should be, you know, a long and detailed document because what it needs to cover is what's in it for each member of the audience. What's member, what's in it for each different industry? You may be, may have a product that's for fintech but also for a hospital, the exact same product. But the two industries are Going to have different messages. So you may have one elevator pitch for one mess industry and elevator pitch for another. So the elevator pitch is just one of the paragraphs in your messaging document.
30:24
Colin Day
And your elevator pitch may not even be a paragraph. Right. It may just be a sentence or two. Depends on how big the elevator is.
30:32
Shanie Zimerman
Depends how long the ride is.
30:33
Colin Day
You got it right,
30:36
Amy Kenigsberg
Good.
30:37
Shanie Zimerman
So we. We're at the end of the episode already. Already. I know. See, Amy, I told you it's fun. We have a good time here.
30:50
Amy Kenigsberg
Well, no, I'm having fun. It just really. Time really does fly.
30:54
Shanie Zimerman
I know, but we can certainly. I mean, listen, if there's anything else that you guys want to cover that I didn't include, I mean, this is open conversation. We can certainly go for it.
31:05
Colin Day
Right, people? Right Time. Right, Shani? That's what you're saying.
31:08
Shanie Zimerman
That's exactly it. I also, you know, listen short and sweet and to the point. What more. More could we ask for? I mean, I think we. I think we managed to get all of the facts in here and luckily we're all available for anybody that wants to connect afterwards. If you have any questions or if there were questions that went unanswered or you have your middle of the night thoughts about your messaging strategy, Amy is your go to for that. So we're all happy to connect and, you know, this was a pleasure. Like I said, we love having Amy on our marketing shows, our podcasts, our webinars.
31:43
Colin Day
It's always, go check her out on the podcast. Go check her out on the podcast.
31:46
Shanie Zimerman
The podcast was really amazing. And yeah, I just want to, you know, again, thank you, Amy. Thank you, Colin. Thank you. Of course. This was, as always, very informative and very helpful, I hope, and I'm sure the rest of our audience found it as well. We will be sending out the recording as well as this deck. So again, you don't need to memorize everything that we went through today. You will have some resources. In the meantime, stay healthy, stay happy. We'll be here next month as well for another from the Experts series. Not with Amy this time, but Amy will bring her back because like I said, we love her. But yeah, please, if you have any questions at all, you know how to find us. We'd love to hear from you. So again, thank you both so much. I hope you have a great rest of the day. I hope our audience has a great rest of the day as well.
32:40
Amy Kenigsberg
Thank you.
32:41
Colin Day
Thanks, Amy.
32:42
Shanie Zimerman
Thank you. Bye, guys. Bye.
32:44
Colin Day
Bye.
32:45
Amy Kenigsberg
Bye.
