Unlocking B2B Marketing: Insights from 15 Years of Expertise

Let's be honest, AI has creeped into every tool that we use, right?

So I think that business owners really have to look at how is it going to affect everything that they do.

Mmm.

That's good.

And welcome to a new episode of Digital Coffee Marketing Brew.

And I'm your host Brett Dyson.

Please just subscribe to this podcast and all your favorite podcasting apps and leave a five star review.

It really does help, but this week we're going to be, we're going to be talking about b two b and mostly just the ads and b two b and all that other fun stuff that goes on with it.

But I have Dave here and he has experienced marketing of over 15 years, expanding his creative thinker and has been designing advertising and creative messages for over 15 years working with clientele in all industries with a long list of over 500 clients annually.

He understands me struggles and organizations to understand digital advertising impact it can have on your bottom line.

But welcome to the show, Dave.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

And the question I always ask my guests or the first question I asked my guests is are you a coffee or tea drinker?

I drink energy drinks.

I'm actually one of the only people in marketing you'll find that doesn't drink coffee.

Interesting.

Do you have a specific favorite energy drink that you like?

I guess we're going to get some free brand promotion here for all the big brands.

But no, I'm a loyal rock star drinker.

I actually really enjoy the Celsius drinks now.

It's a new brand that's come to Canada and I was down in Chicago, see it in the US as well and yeah, I just, I like to explore things.

I like a Red Bull now and again, but I find that just different flavors.

You gotta try something new.

Yes, I always try new coffee brands, but same thing with energy drinks.

You always gotta try something new if you don't know, if you don't like it.

Yeah, yeah.

I hear we have really great coffee here in the office.

That's what everybody says.

And my business partner is big into exploring different coffees.

We have some amazing local coffee brewers here in Calgary.

That's just not.

I'm just not a hot drink guy.

I'm a cold, refreshing energy drink.

It's beers.

I like a good scotch, but coffee just never got to me.

You can always try the cold brew side.

That's your cold version of an energy drink.

Yeah, yeah.

You never know.

Anyways, I gave a brief some of your expertise.

Can you give our listeners a little bit more about what you do.

Yeah, 100%.

I run a full service ad agency here in Calgary, Alberta.

My business partner John and I started the company here almost ten years ago.

We have about twelve people working in our space at any given time.

We work with clients across all different industries, anything from sports marketing, tourism, industrial technology, software, retail, e.com.

there isn't much that we don't touch, really.

For us it's about just helping businesses identify the gap in their marketing and then utilizing both digital and traditional solutions to gain market share and visibility.

And we like to look at it from the customer perspective.

How are they engaging with businesses?

How are they finding products?

What type of noise are they seeing in the marketplace?

And really what's it going to take for our customer to not only stand out, but gain trust, gain engagement and ultimately turn that into revenue?

All right, so digital ads and b, two b businesses.

Does it work well?

Do they understand it?

What's the disconnect?

If there's anything with that?

Yeah, 100%.

I think there's so many businesses that just continue to say, I know everybody in the industry, it's just referrals.

They're looking for big companies.

None of that's done online.

And we know that in a lot of cases it's not true.

I think business owners do research in the same way that a lot of just companies do.

Whether you're trying to buy a pair of shoes or a big piece of industrial equipment or a service provider, on the technical side, you're going to compare businesses.

You're going to look for the way that they're positioning the company.

They're going to look for their mission statement and their values.

And then what's going to happen when they start performing research is other companies are going to appear in the conversation that are targeting those specific interests.

And for us, if you're not building a funnel or building a way to stay in touch with people who are showing interest and behaviors online, then really you're taking yourself out of the conversation.

B, two b businesses.

What does it take to get a business owner engaged?

It's upwards of 25 different touch points.

And those are going to be a mix of salespeople reaching out, seeing the trucks and the job site, submitting rfps.

But then it's going to come down to email communications, videos, digital touch points with display ads, LinkedIn outreach and consistent connection with content.

And then also your SEO strategy and how you're positioning your blog content and your on page content to become a leader in the space.

Those 25 touch points don't happen all at once.

It's a long, slow trickle.

But as you begin to build them, it's about ensuring that once that connection gets into your funnel, they continue to see your brand, they continue to hear from your business, they continue to see your content.

And it's really just opening the door so that when you do submit an RFP on a multimillion dollar project, your logo, your name, it stands out, there's a connection.

And really it's just, yeah, it's great to go and sit down and meet people at the job site or whatever, but they're going to be inundated with information digitally from other companies and they're going to do research in the same way that we do when we're looking to buy a home or a pair of shoes or whatever it is.

It's very similar.

So how do they get started?

Maybe they don't have.

Maybe they have a few touch points or maybe they have no touch points whatsoever.

How do they get started with this process for doing the digital push?

Because im pretty sure a lot of them, at least marketers in the b two B maybe want to do this.

They may just not know how because if its going to be a long push, you got to start somewhere.

I think its a gap analysis.

And again, similar to way you would approach B two C.

It's about taking the steps to really develop a relationship with our customers to understand how are they currently interacting with these businesses.

Who is your target audience.

We do a number of different research projects that include outreach to large scale oil and gas companies and we determine who's the project manager?

How are they utilizing specific forms of software.

If that's one of our clients, then we're going to want to understand what's their journey been like to bring these softwares or these technologies into their business or these service providers.

How are they relating with other service providers and then what is it going to take for them to bring or onboard somebody new and what does that process look like?

There's heavy research in b two B.

There's outreach within the industry.

People are willing to take a phone call and give a little bit of insight into their journey.

And I think marketers, we can't just sit behind the computer and expect that we can develop a banner ad or a social media asset and that's going to get attention.

We have to look at it from, okay, who is our customer?

Who's their customer?

How are they communicating with them?

How are they communicating with other service providers and technologies in their space and then how do we just bring light to somebody who's maybe new or maybe experienced and have a bit of a brand?

But you're going to find in that gap analysis a lot of missing pieces that they're not doing email communication, that they're not doing videos, and they're not doing social media outreach, or they're not talking about the quality of their employees, the quality of the projects that they're doing.

They're really just letting that information sit within the four walls of their company.

And as you begin to find and identify ways to utilize it, there's a lot of ways to prop up not just business owners, but project managers and business development people and help them gain visibility for themselves in the marketplace, as well as help them build connections online with the sales process and with the business.

And then also it's about what do you want a salesperson reaching out to you all the time, or do you simply just want to build a connection with the business?

And that again, what are those touch points?

Are there ways to increase those communication tools so that it's not just always on the sales staff to just go out and keep calling and banging down doors when you're chasing down large multimillion dollar projects and people aren't answering the phones, there's got to be a different way to get in and build those relationships.

And that's where we really try to leverage the research.

Have you seen a lot of b, two b businesses actually start to utilize video content?

Because it feels, because the age old thing is b two b is always behind, b, two c, or even like content creators and stuff.

Have you seen a push, maybe until posting videos on their LinkedIn page or their business profile page on LinkedIn or their personal page.

Have you seen more of that?

Or is it still lagging behind?

It's lagging behind, but I think that's the case.

And I think the larger the company, I think marketers need to get it a little out of their head that just because they're a big company, that the price needs to increase.

Like, we see lots of people who take a seven or $8,000 website and put a $25,000, $30,000, $50,000 sticker on it because they feel like the business can afford to pay those fees.

And when they are constantly inundated with high costs for producing videos or producing pieces of content, I think that's where the frustration lies.

When you show somebody how to create a strategy for ongoing content creation and ongoing services that isn't just increased in value because of the industry that they're in.

I think they're a lot more open to that conversation as well as if you're transparent to them as to how you're pricing and what you're doing, then they're going to be a lot more open to the relationship as well.

And we're very much in a b two b business ourselves.

And we have to look at as marketers, what are the tools that we're utilizing and how are they connecting us to business owners and why are we not taking those to other businesses and saying, hey, you're talking to somebody who does this every day for our business, we are utilizing digital tools, we are creating podcasts, we are creating videos, we are creating our own narratives.

What is it taking for you to reach out to me?

And how can I take that learning and apply it directly to your business?

So yes, they're lagging behind western Canada as a whole.

We're often three to five years behind just in terms of the way that we action digital tools.

A lot of it is just because we do have smaller networks.

We're talking about smaller groups of people within these roles.

And there are strong, long standing relationships both in the marketing side and in just all across all business.

A lot of the times you have to break down a relationship in order to understand how you can insert yourself into helping build and create one.

But without a doubt, I think the more you can peel back the curtains and you can leverage your experience to create videos and to create a narrative, not just the hey, we're a company and this is what we do.

It's the sit down interview style.

Find the project managers, find the management team, learn about what their strengths are and then communicate those through video.

And again, it doesn't have to be just that one super expensive, fancy video.

We have to find ways to consistently create content and just show off what we're doing and leverage our experience.

And business owners who start to get it are absolutely starting to get it.

Anybody who wants to reach out to me, I can provide lots of different examples of people who are doing this the right way, who are looking at their industry and just providing insights, tips, tools, tricks, in order to understand what is the progress of that industry, what is the future outlook of that industry, because ultimately it comes down to trust.

And the more you can create a funnel of people following you and learning from you and seeing you as a leader in that space, that's what's going to generate those really good long term relationships and that new business coming in.

The door and so has there been any impact with AI with b?

Two B, because we've all said it's a little behind.

Has you seen any movement towards using that whatsoever?

Because AI is taking over every facet of marketing to a certain extent, yes and no.

I think for sure, let's be honest, AI has creeped into every tool that we use, right.

So I think that business owners really have to look at how is it going to affect everything that they do.

There's lots of different softwares that are leveraging AI better than others.

There's lots of different ways that we have communication tools that we can leverage AI.

There's.

I don't, I'm not the kind of guy that uses AI to create videos.

I'm not the kind of guy that, yes, we use chat GTP to, to do some blog writing and do some content creation, but it's manually edited, reviewed, and we're making it specific to industries and you have to look at it and go, okay, yeah, there's access to tools here.

Some of them are great, some of them are not.

But just like anything else, you're going to review it, figure out what the value is for the business.

And yeah, there's going to be so many advancements that are going to take jobs away.

There's going to be so many advancements in the tools and the communication.

There's advancements in the way that they create content.

They're good, they need an education.

I think here's the thing.

When we're talking b, two b, a lot of the times we're going to be talking to the boomers, we're going to be talking to people who have been in these roles for a long period of time, who have never utilized AI, who still use the phone, who still have, again, these direct relationships with certain things.

But what they need to understand is whatever's happening within their business.

There are, there's a youth movement, there's a youth movement of people who are moving into these executive level positions, who are potentially looking into moving into there, and they're going to prop up their youth into their executive level positions.

They don't have to be AI adopters to understand how it can grow and affect their business.

They just need to be open minded to what it can do for them.

And there's a lot of handholding that goes into that and a lot of trust that goes into that.

But the key for us is just not to push it, it's to introduce it and then just help them understand that there's value and it's, it's in everything.

It really is.

What you're saying is if you're the person going to a b, two b person, do the old school personal touches, but like gradually introduce like new technologies or AI for that important, you got.

To stay up with what's going on in your industry.

And I don't like to be so vague, but at the end of the day, it's like this is going to be a different conversation for every business, for every industry.

And I think that's, as marketers, that's our strengthen is that we don't look at this across one platform works for everybody, one situation works for everybody, one tool works for everybody.

We have to look at it from that specific business perspective.

And are there tools that are missing in the business?

But yeah, 100%.

It has to be introduced in some way.

And sometimes you got to put the kid gloves on and just that there's people in these executive roles who haven't been introduced to it.

And it's going to take time for them to adopt to it.

But once they start to see how quickly AI can increase workflows, increase productivity, better use of budgets, there's a ton of good reasons that they're going to look at it and go, okay, I'm open now to this conversation, and I wasn't before.

It's nothing.

It's no different than we had to convince all these people to stop buying newspaper ads.

Like, we had to convince them that regardless, you might think that B two B.

All I had to do is advertise in the newspaper, and I know that my executive audience is reading it.

It's not the same.

Everybody consumes news in a different way.

We have the ability to create audiences based on specific actions, both digital and physical.

You want to talk to industrial clients who are have guys on the road back and forth from job sites, and you want to collect data.

And not only leverage that data to advertise to them on site, but also in the downtown offices, in the urban centers, in digital billboards, elevator screensh, there's all like restaurant ads, whatever it is, they're all connected to data and it's connected to audiences.

We can determine how these people are engaging in the field and what type of things that they're doing that drive their actions from a business perspective, but then also connect to that through their day to day activities.

The things that they're watching on a smart tv or a connected device, the podcasts that they might be listening to or the digital radio assets that they might be listening to, or again, that the digital billboard or the digital screens that they see that are connecting to the device that's sitting in their pocket, that understands their LinkedIn profiles and understands their data and is releasing that to advertising networks.

At the end of the day, it sounds a little creepy sometimes when people start to understand the technology that's in advertising, but as you start to understand how to leverage the audiences that you can create, you can understand that it impacts all businesses.

B, two c, b, two b.

There's so many ways that you can leverage data now and capture different audience interests that it affects everything.

So it's almost like data could be actually, if we want to push b two b into it is for collating and understanding the data around advertising, since that might be the main bread and butter for how to reach out to their perspective.

Customers is figuring out a way of merging the AI and the data collecting of ads, because that's a lot of data that most people are like, I have no idea what I'm looking at.

Yeah.

And we again, as marketers, don't expect business owners to understand data and how to use it, but if we can help them understand how to collect it, and then there are people that we can utilize the data in a correct way that allows them to target specific audiences.

And again, we're not like, data, for the most part, is free.

It's the advertising that you pay for.

So you're leveraging the data that you can collect from a website level, from a social social media platform, and from an advertising network to create unique audiences.

It's about the media buy, where you're investing, and then the asset, and the asset being the video, the static banner ad, the billboard.

So you have to understand from a brand level, how do you want to represent yourself.

But a lot of people make the mistake of creating the asset without a plan to do anything with it.

Lots of people say, we're a big company, we need to create some video.

And they do, and they invest in the video.

And then where does that go?

It ends up being seen by the staff and going through the office and friends and family, but it never ultimately makes it to the decision maker on the other side.

And we're often not even arming salespeople with the ability to deliver those assets.

And then if they do, and they invite people to engage further on a website or on a social media platform, or through email, we're not taking the steps to automate what happens to next with additional ad delivery, with automated email funnels, with communication tools, with other assets, so there's just a lot of missed opportunities, I think, for business owners when they look at just communicating to other decision makers.

And again, this gets all wrapped up into, if you're trying to, you're trying to essentially reach out and communicate with somebody one time or two, three times through a sales call protocol to effectively help a decision maker do business with you.

It's 25 different touch points.

And you want to talk about salespeople getting burned out.

If they're consistently responsible for those 25 touch points, they're going to feel like they're not getting anywhere.

So how do we amplify those communication tools?

Through data, through ad delivery, through multiple platforms, through assets.

That's where marketing comes to play.

So it seems like a lot of times it's just not just the ad creation, but like the delivery service is where a lot of them get stuck on.

It's like, where do I put this?

Because before, like you said, olden days, I just advertise on the newspaper and one of the executives will actually read it.

Now you have email, you have finding the right ad.

Maybe it's LinkedIn for the most part, because LinkedIn is a very professional, mostly B two B.

But it seems like the ad placement and the ad delivery seems to be the hiccup for a lot of b two B businesses.

Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, 100%.

And again, it's leveraging the right platforms because sure, these guys spend time on LinkedIn, but they're going to spend time on Yahoo.

Finance, they're going to spend time on CNN, they're going to spend time on MSNBC, they're going to spend time consuming, consuming content.

They're going to spend time on technology based websites.

They're going to be looking for in market trends.

They might be spending time on real estate investment sites.

And the key is, like you as a business owner, can't say, I've got this piece of technology that's really great in this industry, and I'm going to go to a real estate investment site and I'm going to buy ad space because all of my guys seem to own lots of real estate.

It doesn't work right.

But if you go and you flip it and you go, I want this specific audience, I want these guys with these types of job roles, with these type of interests working within these industries who consume this type of content.

Your ad may appear now on a real estate investment site because your audience has made his way there.

So that's the key is to take the, sometimes you take the platform out of it.

LinkedIn's great.

It is really expensive.

It is a relationship tool.

It is not always a.

People don't engage really great with ads on it.

You can get some good delivery of content on there at times.

People want that.

They want to learn about stuff, they want to look at the future, they want to find ways to build trust.

But just a banner ad introducing a software or whatever generally won't do that.

But again, if this is a tool that's going to impact their business and they start seeing it everywhere that they start spending their time, then there starts to be a relationship between the brand and the business that grows, which is again, not a touch point that you've been leveraging for the most part.

And it's also like maybe some of your clients actually listen to real estate podcasts.

So now you have to do like audio ad and then make sure you're getting to the right audio podcasts that do the right one.

So it feels like a lot of the research part is what's to me is what hindering a lot of people because you really have to research where is everybody going?

As you said, 25 Touch Points podcast, LinkedIn.

And you're right, I think I have an ad blocker on my browser, so I never see those banner ads anymore.

And so you have that issue too.

So how does the team collate all that stuff and do effectively for the right people?

Is it using AI?

Is it just doing like a broad base, like you said, 25 touch points, like is it doing at the right time type of a thing as well?

Like your ads at the right time, right place, is it all that all coming together?

Because it seems like a lot for getting people to like find your technology is the way you think.

It's consistency, right?

I think not like anything else.

If you're building a brand, if you're building a relationship, like it's consistent efforts to identify your audience.

And again, it's taking out the I want that podcast.

It's the I recognize that my audience listens to podcasts, so I'm going to make that a part of my, a part of my media buy.

And the way that agencies can buy media now, again, it encompasses all of these things into a media buy.

So it's not yet.

You can be selective if you just want smart tvs.

You can be selective if you just want digital radio.

You can be selective if you just want the NHL playoffs or March Madness.

But at the end of the day, again, you take many of those factors out of it and you go directly to if I want this audience and I'm going to utilize all these tools.

Because just because you have an ad blocker on doesn't mean that you're not going to see ads on your smart tv.

It doesn't mean you're not going to hear ads on digital radio, doesn't mean you're not going to see billboards.

And it certainly doesn't mean you're not going to see ads when you go in the elevator and you look up and you see the weather or the local traffic and you see an ad on that screen.

So again, we need to understand that there are so many of these opportunities for ads to be placed utilizing data and utilizing audiences as opposed to going to the platform directly and just saying, I saw these screens in the elevators down at the big oil and gas company downtown.

I want to get to that elevator.

That's great, but how many times are you going to advertise to the FedEx guy who's dropping something off in the building?

Let's make sure that we're advertising to the executive level or the executive assistants or people with specific industries in a very select use of technology.

That's what I mean.

When it comes down to it, advertising can have an effect for businesses, regardless of what you're selling.

The biggest, I'd say two of the biggest things that b, two B businesses do is they turn a blind eye to it or they just trial and trial and error, but they never get past the error stage because they just picked a platform advertised on it for 30 days that said it didn't work and then shut it off and you're like, that's great, but what does this do now?

If you do this for twelve months and you're consistently advertising to people who you're trying to get brand recognition with, and what's the buying cycle?

Right?

Is the buying cycle of your executive, is it a six month journey from the time he starts his research to the time he makes his decision?

Is it a twelve month journey?

Is it a 24 month journey?

Is he consistently making these decisions in 15 days?

Probably not.

And then what layers does he need to go through to get approvals when he uncovers a new technology or uncovers a new service provider and he wants to integrate those into the business, are there board members, are there vps that need approval?

Are there stakeholders and investors?

So if you don't understand all of these things, then it's easy to say advertising doesn't work or digital doesn't impact our business or b, two, b I just need to go down to the petroleum club and I need to meet a guy that's working in oil and gas and get an introduction and shake his and hand and yeah, that's going to work.

Right.

Any good business, 80% of any good business is referrals.

It's relationships, it's sales.

20% of business is marketing.

But that could be a massive amount of money that's being left on the table simply because we're thinking that it's, there's no value.

So what is it going to take for b two B business to be effective for digital ads in 2024?

We're about halfway ish in 2024.

So we're seeing like, what's happening.

So how are they going to be effective and what obstacles do they need to overcome?

Yeah, again, I think it's a bit of an education and that's going to take a little bit of time and, yeah, partway through the year.

Sure, you can turn on ad campaigns tomorrow.

If we have the assets, there is some we need to develop the asset.

We need to understand the audience, we need to understand the branding.

Your website might need to some adjustments.

Your social tone of voice or your content is going to maybe need some adjustments so that you're consistently sending the right message.

The ability to collect data is something that you can start immediately.

The ability to leverage that data to create audiences, you can start immediately.

You can utilize different ad networks to start understanding where you're going to start placing ads and start creating assets.

It's a 30 day process of onboarding in a lot of ways just to make sure that we have the asset, we have the audience, we have the data.

And it's, are we matching this up to a timeline of are we at the point where this is hot season, all the business is happening now, this is slow season.

We have to have that discussion about just the in market impact that we're expecting.

It's great to advertise in a slow season because you can get a lot of the learning of the platform out of the way because that's the other part of it, too.

When you talk about running ad campaigns is those ad campaigns need to connect to some sort of a conversion point, an email, a phone call, whatever it is.

There needs to be a final conversion.

And then each of those networks need to understand what that conversion is and the data from the individual who performed that conversion and then use that data to find more people who are going to perform similar actions.

So if you're trying to turn on ad campaigns and expect them to work.

They haven't learned enough about your final conversion, about your audience to be effective.

Advertising in a slow season sometimes solves that because you get a few conversions along the way, you get some data, and then you have that ability to leverage and action that data when it does get busier and you're in full control of budgets.

With agencies like us, we're flexible.

We can move budgets up and down based on what's going on in the market or expectations for conversions.

We can scale campaigns based on our total cost per acquisition or our cost per conversion.

So you have a little more budgetary control, but there's some parameters, some bottom lines you got to meet to run these campaigns.

But at the end of the day, you get a lot of control over what you want to do.

And we got to understand, outside of just this ad campaign, what are you doing to build awareness within the market and make sure it's all communicating to together and it's all working together.

Like I said, you can get campaigns up and running right away.

It's just a matter of making sure that these are very purposeful and there's purpose behind whatever you choose to do.

All right.

People listening to the episode are like, you've got a lot of great advice.

Where can people find you online to learn more?

Yeah, it's pretty simple.

We are in front marketing ca.

You can look up Dave Taylor in front marketing on LinkedIn.

Pretty easy to find if you put the business in.

We are in front YYC on Instagram and you can reach out through there.

And quite simply, it's just Dave infrontmarketing CA if you want to hit me up with an email.

All right, any final thoughts for listeners?

Yeah, I think it's just as far along as we are in advertising, there's a lot of great opportunities to test out new things and learn and see what data can do to impact your business.

Any agency that's having a conversation with you about marketing or advertising without leveraging or understanding data is just as far behind as the company themselves.

Right?

We are in a world where data is plenty.

It should be used.

It can be used.

And you as a business owner should own all of your data.

Agencies shouldn't own your data.

You should have access to your own analytics accounts.

You can spin up your own server to collect first party data.

You should make sure that everything that is done, regardless of who does it, you maintain ownership of it.

And again, these are very basic questions from the beginning.

Who's going to own this when we're done?

Because you're going to want to leverage it long term.

So yeah, that's all I can say.

There's a ton of good stuff happening in marketing.

It really is impactful for everything.

B two B and B two C and just be open.

Be open to having some conversations.

Be open to getting in front of a camera and talking about your business.

Be open to introducing people to different layers of your business and the expertise that you have.

You're running a really great business for a reason.

It's time to leverage that and it will impact the bottom line positively.

Be guests on podcasts, too.

It's always a great thing.

100%.

Yeah.

And again, I truly appreciate you having me.

This is always something that we look to do to just get our name out there, and it always helps.

And just appreciate you taking the time to sit with me today.

You're welcome.

And also, thank you for joining and sharing your knowledge on B two B and digital ads anytime.

And thank you as always.

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