Unleashing the Potential of Your Business
Have you ever wondered why some businesses seem to attract and retain their ideal clients while others struggle effortlessly? The answer often lies in understanding and implementing a few fundamental principles of B2B marketing. In this blog post, we’ll explore key insights that can transform how you approach your marketing strategy and ultimately drive your business towards success. Let’s dive into these essential concepts and see how they can work for you.
The Core of Effective Marketing: Define Your ‘Why’
Understanding why your business exists is the cornerstone of effective marketing. It’s not just about what you do, but why you do it. This clarity helps communicate your purpose to your audience, making your message resonate more deeply. When your ‘why’ is clear, it guides every decision and ensures consistency in your marketing efforts. This foundational step can often be overlooked but is crucial for long-term success.
The Significance of Knowing Your Top Customers
Identifying and focusing on your top customers is a game-changer. The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto Principle, states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. By identifying the top 20% of your customers who bring in the most value, you can tailor your marketing strategies to meet their needs more effectively. This approach not only maximizes your resources but also builds stronger relationships with your most valuable clients.
Deep Understanding of Customer Motivations
Knowing your customers on a deeper level is essential. It’s about more than just demographics; it’s understanding their motivations, goals, and pain points. This deep understanding allows you to create marketing messages that truly resonate and build trust. Documenting these insights and using them to guide your marketing efforts ensures that you’re always speaking directly to the needs and desires of your best customers.
Applying the Core Desires to Your Marketing Strategy
Every customer decision is driven by a desire to improve their health, wealth, or relationships. By focusing on how your product or service fulfills one of these core desires, you can craft compelling messages that drive action. Whether it’s moving away from pain or towards pleasure, understanding these motivators helps in creating marketing campaigns that connect on a personal level and inspire your audience to act.
Making the Dream 100 Work for You
The Dream 100 concept involves identifying the top 100 places where your dream customers hang out, both online and offline. These are the spaces where you need to be visible. By engaging in these communities or investing in advertising within these spaces, you can reach a larger audience who are already interested in what you offer. This targeted approach ensures your marketing efforts are efficient and effective, bringing in more of your ideal customers.
Bringing It All Together
Implementing these key principles can revolutionize your B2B marketing strategy. Start by defining your ‘why,’ focus on your top customers, understand their deeper motivations, appeal to their core desires, and make yourself visible in their preferred spaces. By integrating these elements, you can create a powerful, cohesive marketing strategy that drives growth and success for your business.
Adopting these strategies not only enhances your marketing efforts but also strengthens your overall business foundation. Ready to take your marketing to the next level? Start implementing these insights today and watch your business thrive.
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- The B2B Playbook with George & Kev
00:01.979 Have you ever thought about why your business even exists? What value is your business bringing to the world, and more importantly, to your customers and clients? While these seem to be existential questions, they are necessary ones. Find out the right questions to ask your business and help you identify the right customers and clients on this episode on This Week in Marketing. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake, and welcome to This Week in Marketing, another podcast by MetaGee. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short, and concise, because we’ve all got a business to run. We’ve got our friends Kevin George from the B2B Playbook podcast to take over the next few episodes. Kevin Chen and George Koudenaris are a unique team. They are both ex-lawyers turned digital marketing wizards. And with over 10 years of experience between them, their main objective is to help business owners with proven, detailed strategies to drive demand and grow. Their podcast is the holy grail playbook that any business owner or marketer can use, no matter how early or advanced they are in their marketing journey. Make sure you go and check it out anywhere you can get podcasts or the show notes description.
01:19.215 Very, very pumped to be here, Kev. And I want to kick off with a little bit of a story. Did I ever tell you about the time that I started an iPad app with my cousin and my brother, actually? I don’t think you have. OK, it was kind of like Canva. You could design your own business cards, letterheads, invitations, envelopes, and you could do it all on the iPad. It was back when the iPad was meant to replace desktops, laptops, and we’re all very, very excited.
01:45.188 Sounds like Canva, mate.
01:47.302 I mean, look, I was 20 years old, so we were like neck and neck when that was coming out. Actually, remember, I remember when I first saw Canva announced they were coming out and I was like, oh dear, this is terrible. Anyway, needless to say, Canva is a huge unicorn and I’m sitting here in this gazebo with you. But we flopped it was a massive flop and it ate away at me for ages And I just didn’t know like why was this thing a huge failure? Why didn’t it take off? Why am I not, you know a big unicorn like miss Melanie Perkins and I I realized that when we were building it, the people that we were targeting for to use these business cards, letterheads, invitations, we were targeting really just anyone with an iPad. And that’s where we went wrong, because it’s far too broad, right? So when we were building out the products, the feature set that we thought was really, really cool, We weren’t really building it for anyone in particular. Everyone had an iPad. My grandma had an iPad. You had an iPad. So I didn’t have a very clear vision as to who I was serving.
02:50.982 Yeah, it didn’t sound like you had a very clear idea of why your business existed or at least your co-founders and yourself didn’t. And I think that is the focus of this mini-series with MetaGees podcast. We’re really talking about that first B we talked about in the first series, be ready. And that’s all about getting the foundations right for your B2B marketing. And that really starts with defining your why.
03:14.860 And it’s something that 20-year-old George really wishes that he had, Kevin. And defining a why is so, so important. And why is it so important to a business?
03:24.152 Well, business is big and small, George. They often lose focus as they grow, as they evolve as a business, their why becomes maybe blurry over time, even forgotten. And so they start making decisions that are maybe not in line with where they really want to go. And that’s why it’s important for any business to really come back and really define why the business exists and what they’re trying to do.
03:45.788 So when you nail that down, it makes life so much easier, doesn’t it? Because all of a sudden, you can get your elevator pitch right. Your marketing decisions become much easier because you know why your business exists, you know who it is that you exist to serve, and everything just flows so much easier for you from there.
04:03.540 And George, what’s most important there is when it comes to making business decisions, it’s much easier to make the right ones without too much stress because if you have your why really clear in mind, you’ll always go towards that in your decision making.
04:17.331 So it’s the best place to start. It’s where I wish I started 10 years ago. Please start with why. Kevin and I dive really deep into how you can start with why and exactly the steps that you need to take to put in place for your business. And we do that on our podcast, The B2B Playbook.
04:34.006 While you’re there listeners and viewers, make sure to check out the early episodes where we run through the whole framework as a quick overview and then dive deep into the details of how to do it as well. Beautiful.
04:45.204 Put pace. Stop. Stop being so efficient and productive. And instead, choose to be effective. And when you do this, you’re using the Pareto Principle or the 80-20 rule. Find out why choosing the right customers and clients usually beats finding any and all customers and clients on this episode on This Week in Marketing. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake, and welcome to This Week in Marketing, another podcast by MetaGee. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short, and concise, because we’ve all got a business to run. We’ve got our friends Kevin George from the B2B Playbook podcast to take over the next few episodes. Kevin Chen and George Koudenaris are a unique team. They are both ex-lawyers turned digital marketing wizards. And with over 10 years of experience between them, their main objective is to help business owners with proven, detailed strategies to drive demand and grow. Their podcast is the holy grail playbook that any business owner or marketer can use, no matter how early or advanced they are, in their marketing journey. Make sure you go and check it out anywhere you can get podcasts or the show notes description.
06:01.707 All right, George, we’re back for episode two of the mini series with This Week in Marketing. And this week, it’s all about knowing your best customers.
06:09.070 Kev, I wish I knew who my best customers were. Remember how miserable I was in like December, January? Yeah, you were pretty miserable. Which is unusual for me, right? I’m normally pretty happy chappy. I think I told you why, right? It was my customer, my biggest customer, right? They were so… demanding of my time. They had really unrealistic expectations of what they wanted me to do. They wanted phone calls after hours and it was just exhausting. Yes, they were paying me the most, but I had clients paying me half as much and they never bothered me. They didn’t even want to talk to me, which is an issue because I love attention, but I want that happy balance of being left alone and also attention.
06:47.646 Yeah, listeners, he really needs the attention.
06:50.174 Yeah, well, they lighten the load on you. They lighten the burden. So what did I do? Why am I such a happy chappy again now, Kev? Well, I took inspiration from Tim Ferriss, who said that to really focus on what matters and to grow your business, you have to get rid of the people and the customers that are really weighing you down, even if they’re your biggest customers. So I put my big boy pants on and I fired my biggest client. And yes, it was a hit in terms of revenue. But since then, I’ve had so much more time to focus on getting more of those customers which actually fit my business like a glove that do leave me alone and do talk to me every now and then.
07:27.798 But I’ll tell you what, George, you are a lot happier these days.
07:30.881 Yeah, I’m much, much happier. And it came down to really focusing on the clients that matter.
07:36.986 George, this sounds like a great practical application of the 80-20 principle. For listeners and viewers out there, 80-20 principle really quickly is that 80% of your results come from 20% of the effort or clients or whatever it might be and that principle can be applied anywhere whether that’s life or business. Actually, the guy that founded the principle was planting peas at the time and he found that 20% of his plants were yielding 80% of the crop.
08:03.698 Yes, our Italian friend Vilfredo Pareto. So he was actually an Italian economist. And yes, once he applied it to the peapods and finding that 80% of the healthy peapods came from just 20% of the plants, well, he then applied it to land ownership in Italy. And he found that 80% of the land was owned by 20% of the people. And it just became a really well-founded principle. And if you don’t believe us, if you don’t believe Vilfredo Pareto, see if you can apply it to your own life. I don’t know about you Kev, but I wear 20% of my clothes 80% of the time.
08:39.619 Listeners and viewers, the reason why we’re talking about George’s wardrobe habits is because you can apply that same principle to businesses with limited resources. Every business has its constraints and to get the most out of those limited resources, you need to focus in on the 20% of your best clients, 20% of your efforts that’s yielding 80% of the results.
08:59.393 Yeah. And your best clients, Kevin, they’re not the ones that bring you the most revenue. Like my client that I fired, they brought me the most revenue, but they tied me up and I couldn’t progress as a business. So don’t just look at things like revenue. Think about things like their potential for growth. Do they keep you there after hours? Do they need a lot of customer support? Just see what’s most important to your business and do they fit that? And that is really where you get the 80-20 rule working.
09:24.912 And the tip here is also to look at your why. So we just defined in the last episode what your why is. So you can start to put that in mind as you make these business decisions because they’re really going to drive where you push your business efforts.
09:38.442 Yeah, so I mean, look, I did it. It allowed me more time to find more of those best fit clients, the ones that don’t bother me so much. I got to launch another product, which was awesome. So I really encourage the listeners and viewers out there to apply that 80-20 rule to your business. Give it a go. You’re sure to find some Easter eggs out there.
09:58.287 Footpace. Question. What do detectives and small business marketers have in common? They deep dive and research exactly what makes the customers tick. Find out why you should know your customers and clients better than they know themselves and more on this episode on This Week in Marketing. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake, and welcome to This Week in Marketing, another podcast by Medici. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short, and concise, because we’ve all got a business to run. We’ve got our friends Kevin George from the B2B Playbook podcast to take over the next few episodes. Kevin Chen and George Koudenaris are a unique team. They are both ex-lawyers turned digital marketing wizards. And with over 10 years of experience between them, their main objective is to help business owners with proven, detailed strategies to drive demand and grow. Their podcast is the holy grail playbook that any business owner or marketer can use, no matter how early or advanced they are, in their marketing journey. Make sure you go and check it out anywhere you can get podcasts or the show notes description.
11:12.052 Episode three, George, do you really know your customers?
11:15.314 Kev, did I tell you? You know how I’m a massive fiend for Facebook groups. I snuck into a new one. Not another one, George. Another one. It’s actually, you know, I don’t DJ. I don’t have DJ equipment. I don’t even listen to like that much deep house or just anything that DJs do a lot in. But I joined a DJ group recently and there are people who discuss really high end DJ equipment. And there are also a bunch of people who are trying to turn like part time DJing into full time DJ roles.
11:44.325 It sounds like they need a better admin to filter out people like you. Yeah.
11:48.647 I snuck in. I don’t know how I got in, but I find these communities so fascinating, which is why I joined them. I’m not just a huge stalker freak. I just really enjoy looking at these communities because they have such an interesting shared language, a shared dialogue. When I enter these groups, it’s almost as if they’re speaking a foreign language that I don’t understand because especially in this one, right, it was so niche about high-tech equipment that I have no idea. They talk about shared pain points of part-time DJs, like, you know, when people come up to DJs and they request songs and the pain that they feel when someone requests, um, this is how we do it, you know, Montel Jordan. Darren, can we sing into these? This is how we do it. And Kev, it made me really think as a marketer that if I were to try and sell DJing equipment to this group of people, they would so quickly see that I’m an outsider and they would never ever buy from me. Why would they buy from me over someone else that’s inside that community that they know and they trust? Because I have no idea what pain points it is that they’re suffering. I can’t empathize with them, so I can’t build any trust with them.
13:03.170 And that is the topic of this week’s episode. Great story, George. I think it really exemplifies why you really need to get to know your dream customers. You’ve got that 20% down. You’ve got to know who your best dream customers are. Now, it’s time to really get to know them so that you know them well enough to be able to market to them effectively.
13:22.258 That’s in the best way to get to know them is to actually talk to them, to literally interview your best customers and find out what it is that they’re struggling with, what it is that motivates them, what goals do they have. So then you can have a really good idea as to how your product or how your service can actually help those people achieve what they want to.
13:43.814 And make sure to put down some quotes from them directly. What are they actually saying to describe their pain points? What are they describing and the things that they’re doing day-to-day in their business?
13:54.884 And that’s it. Actually recording quotes is so important because then you understand the language that they’re using. So then when you speak to them, it actually resonates.
14:03.687 George, part of it is documenting things that they say, the quotes that we’ve been talking about, but it’s going beyond that as well. It’s getting to know what their business objectives are, what their motivations are, and even just their point of view within that business of the world.
14:19.968 That’s it, Kev. It’s really just like getting to know your best friend, isn’t it? So get to know your customers as if they’re your best friends.
14:30.170 In most games, it’s pretty well known that if you can think like your opponent, then you usually will end up having the upper hand. Business is a similar game. If you can think like them, then you’ll be there for their next move and then be able to provide value. Find out how you can think like your dream customers and clients to drive sales and more on this episode on This Week in Marketing. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake, and welcome to This Week in Marketing, another podcast by Medici. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short, and concise, because we’ve all got a business to run. We’ve got our friends Kevin George from the B2B Playbook podcast to take over the next few episodes. Kevin Chen and George Koudenaris are a unique team. They are both ex-lawyers turned digital marketing wizards. And with over 10 years of experience between them, their main objective is to help business owners with proven, detailed strategies to drive demand and grow. Their podcast is the holy grail playbook that any business owner or marketer can use, no matter how early or advanced they are in their marketing journey. Make sure you go and check it out anywhere you can get podcasts or the show notes description.
15:47.224 George, episode four, we’re here to talk about two concepts that will help our listeners and viewers nail down how to talk to their customers.
15:54.336 Kev, I want to kick off with, remember when we worked at the agency together and there was one day that you came in and you just bought a brand new jacket. Actually, the one that you’re wearing now.
16:04.780 I was going to say, this jacket.
16:06.941 And you walked in, you had your chest out, you were strutting a little bit. Actually, the first time that I’ve never seen you stooped over, or maybe that’s because you’re talking to me and I’m always having to look up at you and you’re looking down. But I want to ask you, Kevin, why did you buy that jacket?
16:21.923 George, I want to look good for you. No, no. Seriously though, I want to look better for everyone. I think we were meeting more clients at the time and I kept turning up in hoodies and I probably needed a slightly nicer jacket just to look a bit more professional in front of the clients.
16:38.228 I’m gonna ask you one more time, Kevin. I don’t really believe you. I don’t think you actually care about that stuff. Why did you actually buy that jacket?
16:44.592 That’s it, George.
16:45.413 That’s it. It can’t be it. That’s not it. Why did you really buy it? You wanted to impress people, but you don’t really care. You don’t really care about looking good to other people. There’s only one person in this world who you really care about looking good for. Who’s that? Well, you tell me, Kevin. It better be your fiancée, Christine.
17:02.965 Yes, yes. I guess it would be her, but you know, you’re off the list, George.
17:06.587 Oh, that’s very kind of you. So Kevin, the reason that you bought that jacket is really not to impress everyone else. It’s to actually impact your relationship. You want it to look good for Christine.
17:16.775 That’s right, George. Relationships, very important. And that brings us nicely onto principle one that’s going to help you talk better to your customers. And that’s all about which human desire is your product or service going to affect? Is it going to improve your customers’ wealth, health, or relationships?
17:34.357 So they’re the three core desires that every single human has, isn’t it? And anytime we make a decision, whether it’s purchasing a jacket or something else, we’re actually trying to get an improvement in one of those. We’re trying to elevate our status in one of those health, wealth or relationships.
17:49.543 And you have to impact one of those things because if you don’t, if the customer doesn’t feel like they’re improving in one of those three aspects, they’re not going to make that buying decision.
17:58.904 That’s it, Kev. So when you think about which of these three core desires applies to your customers, just focus on one. Because when you focus on more than one, the effectiveness of your message really gets diluted.
18:10.391 All right, everyone. The second principle that’s going to help you really get in the heads of your dream customers after you’ve got that one benefit that you’re focusing on is coming up with some moving away from pain and moving towards pleasure statements.
18:23.438 Right. So let’s try and do that, Kevin, for your jacket. A moving away from pain statement is probably you going, God, I better get a new jacket before my fiance, Christine, you know, dumps me because I look so frumpy. And a moving towards pleasure statement is kind of the inverse of that and be like, I’m going to get a new jacket because I want to look damn good in front of Christine.
18:48.955 I think that’s a pretty good example George and maybe a more helpful tip for everyone is you don’t have to start from scratch. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel here. You can start from those quotes that you recorded from those conversations with your dream customers. What do they say were their pain points? That’s a great starting point.
19:05.999 That’s right. Truly getting inside your customers’ heads is going to make a much bigger impact when it comes to doing your marketing messaging. So take those two principles, find out which core desire it is that is really motivating your customer to take action, get in their head by finding out what the pleasure and pain statements are, and then put those into your messaging.
19:26.374 As kids, we’re all taught to dream big. And then you get older and it’s more like, be realistic. Let’s go back to when we were kids and make a dream list of where our dream customers are actually hanging out. Find out how to do this and why it’s so important for small business growth and more on this episode on This Week in Marketing. Hey everyone, I’m Darren Lake, and welcome to This Week in Marketing, another podcast by MediGee. Each episode, we answer questions or talk about one specific idea to help you market and operate your small to medium enterprise better. And we do that by making them easy to digest, short, and concise, because we’ve all got a business to run. We’ve got our friends Kevin George from the B2B Playbook podcast to take over the next few episodes. Kevin Chen and George Koudenaris are a unique team. They are both ex-lawyers turned digital marketing wizards. And with over 10 years of experience between them, their main objective is to help business owners with proven, detailed strategies to drive demand and grow. Their podcast is the holy grail playbook that any business owner or marketer can use, no matter how early or advanced they are in their marketing journey. Make sure you go and check it out anywhere you can get podcasts or the show notes description.
20:41.933 George, episode five, the Dream 100. This is one of your favorite concepts.
20:45.994 Oh, it’s one that I can’t shut up about. And actually, just the other day, I had a listener from the B2B Playbook come out and message me on LinkedIn. And she said that she works for a tech company. And she actually has a podcast up and running for them, which is, I think, awesome. And she said, where should she promote the podcast? What channel is best? I can see where this is going. You know what I said to her, Kevin? Dream 100? Dream 100. I said to her, figure out where it is that your best customers are already hanging out online and that’s where you should promote it.
21:19.297 And that’s such a common scenario, isn’t it, George? No matter how well you know your dream customers, sooner or later, the question becomes, well, how do I get more of them?
21:27.904 That’s it. And the Dream 100, Kevin, it is the roadmap to that. It is the answer to it. So what is the Dream 100? Well, the Dream 100 is… I’m going to start with what it’s not actually, Kevin. It is not a list of your top 100 dream clients. It’s actually a list of the top 100 places that your dream customers are hanging out online already. Everyone’s always worried about where do we get more customers? How do we generate more traffic to our website? Well, the truth is your customers are already out there gathering in certain places already online and offline, right? They’re going to certain industry events, they’re going to certain websites, to blogs, they’re listening to podcasts, they’re subscribing to newsletters. So they’re already congregating in certain places online. So the Dream 100, Kev, is really about being more visible in those places, in those places that people are already gathering. And how to be more visible? Well, we can either work our way in with that community or we can buy our way into it.
22:27.496 Let’s dig a little bit deeper into working your way in, buying your way in. So working your way in.
22:32.819 Yeah, working your way in is actually getting into that community and making yourself known. If it’s a social platform like LinkedIn and someone from your Dream 100 is a LinkedIn group where your dream customers are gathering, it’s about going in there, being visible and helping people solve problems. And then buying your way in? Well, buying your way in is just using paid advertising dollars to buy the eyeballs of the people that are in that Dream 100.
22:58.985 Well George, I think for everyone that really takes the pressure off. With this Dream 100 concept, you don’t have to find every single new customer and find them and bring them in the door one at a time. You can actually just find where they’re already congregating and make sure you’re visible in those spaces because that will allow you to maximize your marketing efforts and get your dream customers to come find you.
23:20.031 Oh, it fundamentally changed how I think about marketing, Kevin. Dream 100, it’s everything.
23:25.215 All right, everyone. That brings us to the end of this mini-series. Thanks for joining us and we hope that you’ve picked up some helpful tips and principles to level up your B2B marketing.
23:36.657 From Medi-G, you’ve listened to This Week in Marketing. Again, I’m Darren, and Medi-G hopes we helped you find more insights and tips into your business. If you like what you heard, please share a link to another business owner or marketer who you think could get something from this. Also, to help us out, it would be great if you left a five-star review on your favorite podcast app. Last, never miss another episode by following or subscribing to us on your favorite podcast player. See you on the next episode.