Featuring Bill Odartei
Feeling stuck in your B2B digital marketing strategy? This episode is your key to levelling up! Join Enoch as he dives deep into the world of #B2Bdigitalmarketingmastery with William "Bill" Odartei. They'll be uncovering insider secrets and actionable tips to help you:
[0:01] From the best deals, this is Colours of Social Media, the podcast for budding digital marketers and small business owners. You can't only believe in digital marketing, but actually access it.
[0:13] I'm your host, Enoch the Bot Boy, Appiah Jr. Bill Odartei. Thank you so much for deciding to join me on Colours of Social Media. I truly, truly appreciate your presence.
[0:26] It's also an honor to be here. Because the moment I thought about this episode, you were the first person that came in mind. Currently, you are Tech 8, right?
[0:38] Yes. Because it's also a business and definitely your activity is B2B. So when I thought about an episode for B2B brands, I thought, ah, Mr. Odartei is the right person to talk to.
[0:52] So once again, thank you so much for deciding to join me. Thank you too for having me. Awesome. Now for Colours of Social Media podcast, we have a tradition.
[1:02] It's actually a tradition made up of two questions. The first question, I asked them at the beginning of the episode, which I'm about to do. And the last question comes when I'm done talking to you, when I'm done listening to your wonderful insights and all that.
[1:18] So let's start with the first question. What do you want to come out of this episode? Why did you decide to come? Okay, so I would say for this episode, I want business owners to be able to make informed decisions and also to help B2B businesses to be able to know the key insights and be able to implement certain strategies that are, you know, not far fetched from them.
[1:57] Now that I know your objective, I know how to, you know, ask the questions in order for us to, you know, arrive at the objectives. Okay. Yeah.
[2:05] So let's start with the first question. Obviously, it will be the landscape, the digital landscape of B2B businesses. What is the difference?
[2:17] You know, when you started working with a B2B brand, what were you doing? Was it working? And currently, what are you doing? What, you know, the overall landscape of B2B business?
[2:31] Well, B2B has changed tremendously over the years. And like people who I still normally see, marketers ruin everything. Yeah. So if you look at, even just look at social media.
[2:50] Social media was calm. Yeah. Before Facebook was calm, before Facebook business came, and then marketers abused it. Everywhere you go, there are ads.
[3:03] Look at YouTube. YouTube was calm for creators. You watch creator videos. And all of a sudden, you start seeing ads. And if you go to the point now, you have to watch the ads before you watch the video, you know.
[3:15] So it has influenced a lot of things. And anywhere digital, marketers who are in the B2B space tend to find a crack through that door to be able to, you know, get their products or businesses in.
[3:36] Yeah. So yeah, it's I would say B2B is possible, has been made possible in every marketing sphere. I think we'll be doing our listeners a huge disservice if I don't ask this question.
[3:55] Okay. B2B and B2C. First, what is B2B? Secondly, what is B2C? And thirdly, what is the difference between these letters and numbers? B2B and B2C.
[4:09] What is the difference? Okay. So I'll start for B2C. All right. B2C is basically business to customers. B2C, I would say, is where a business is marketing or doing business or doing a transaction with just a single customer.
[4:38] For example, the Coca-Cola factory or the Coca-Cola company, they build up their Coca-Cola and then they sell to you the customer. You bought one bottle of Coca-Cola from the Coca-Cola factory.
[4:55] Even though you didn't buy it directly, maybe you bought it from a shop or something, yeah. The marketing stems from the company because they own that responsibility and they own that brand.
[5:07] So B2C is business to customers. Now B2B is business to business. For instance, assuming you have a company, a security company, and Microsoft has, I'm sure you know about Microsoft 365, and they have a business or enterprise suite that is selling only to businesses.
[5:42] With that, it's a different dynamic because they are dealing with you and your business. So that's B2B. Right. So B2B, business to business, B2C is business to customers.
[5:59] Now that we have the foundation of these letters and numbers, let's bring our focus back on B2B. So what are some of the key strategies that B2B companies can utilize effectively when it comes to digital marketing?
[6:20] When it comes to digital marketing, they first have to start with the foundation of it. And that's where knowing who your customer is or knowing who you are selling to is very important.
[6:38] And when it comes to B2B, it's kind of complex. I would say complex in a way because since you are talking to a business, you have to look at all the corners of it which will make sale possible for you.
[6:57] And developing a customer persona for B2B in that sense is very, very, very not straightforward. As compared to B2C. So a key strategy is setting your foundation right.
[7:15] And when I say that, again, I mean, knowing that you are talking to a decision maker because decision makers are the people who make decisions on behalf of the companies.
[7:29] And you also have to have at the back of your mind that the decision maker is surrounded by some people, they are not always alone. So you have to look out who the gatekeepers are, who the influencers of these decision makers are.
[7:48] And so that when you are doing a digital marketing strategy, you know that it's going to bring you results. So that's the foundation. Now once you get the foundation right, based on that, then you can start building on that to create your own strategy and the campaigns that you want to run.
[8:20] So from the foundation, then you can look at platforms, social media platforms where these people are. And that's where LinkedIn comes in. Yeah, LinkedIn is known as a professional platform.
[8:36] Yeah. So with that, you have to leverage on using LinkedIn. Can the LinkedIn use this? It's more like how Facebook was five years ago. I'm saying that because some five years ago, organic reach on Facebook was high, was higher compared to today.
[9:00] And now the platform, which is giving you that form of reach, is LinkedIn. And interestingly, if you are to be a company, then like in Ghana, they say, where do you look to?
[9:18] Yeah, LinkedIn is there, you can leverage it, you can easily identify the people you are trying to target. Let's say you are looking at like CEOs, even looking at industry.
[9:36] So let's say you are looking at selling something to the big four companies, the NST, Young, PwC, and stuff like that. You go to LinkedIn, you type the name of the company, and then you are able to see even the employees and even going through them, you can see who is the gatekeeper.
[9:59] Who is the CEO? Exactly. You can see that that's one way to personally engage with them and feed them more. So one of the ways is if you want to generate leads, you can do that.
[10:16] And then based on that, once you reach out to them, you start creating content geared towards something that would be of interest to them. And then you'll be sharing with them.
[10:27] So gradually, they get to trust you because when it comes to B2B, even though there are huge money involved, you have to make sure your digital marketing likely makes them comfortable to make a decision or to file for you.
[10:44] So once you create a rapport, it's easy for you to get your foot into the door. You can get a meeting with a CEO once you ask those gatekeepers and all that.
[10:56] Another way too is using, creating your own company profile on LinkedIn, just as other companies are doing something here. So when you do that, you create, you couch your messaging or your campaigns around targeting these people.
[11:20] You can even go as director saying, okay, for CEOs, this is the best enterprise service tool for you to use so that whenever they see, oh, okay, they are talking to me.
[11:35] And add on to that is with those posts, you can create, you can promote them actually. Yeah. Put money on it and actually with the targets and you can say, I want to only see level.
[11:52] Right. Okay. And it will just fly. Yeah. Even though when you look at the rates in terms of promoting on LinkedIn, compared to the rest, LinkedIn is higher.
[12:06] LinkedIn, LinkedIn rates are higher because they know the target. They are premium audience on there. And they know they are targeting, you know.
[12:14] An example, of course. So that's just one platform. Yeah. Another platform you can think about is the email marketing. Right. Yeah. And with the email marketing, it's also a way of developing trust because the people have to trust you before they make a decision.
[12:35] So you leverage on email marketing and make sure that they get enough information about you that they cannot still know if you have to. How can you build a trust through email?
[12:50] By giving them enough value and enough information about your product. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So once they start receiving the messages that you send through your email marketing platforms, they get to know more and at some point they'll say, oh, let me just check them out.
[13:16] Yeah. Yeah. And then that's where they go to your website. Ah. Your website is your real estate, where everywhere is living, where your master bedroom, where your everything is there.
[13:28] I was about to ask you about website. Is it relevant? Now that you are talking about it, I'm not going to ask. Website is the most important to me, that's the most important because all other platforms belongs to other people.
[13:45] They can do anything, they can change the rules, they can't do anything at any time. But with website, it belongs to you and it sits on the web.
[13:58] So whichever shape or form and whichever way you want it to even look like. You have the control over it. Exactly. Cool. So Bill, you've made mention of social media and email marketing as one of the digital marketing channels you are recommending to B2B companies.
[14:20] Now let's focus on social media. Thank you sort of alluded to LinkedIn, but I want us to focus on social media. How can B2B companies utilize social media when it comes to marketing to their preferred audience?
[14:36] I would say clearly to even before you then start, you have to know your buyer persona. Right. Yeah. You have to know your buyer persona and that way that's what we inform with social media platform to use.
[14:53] But once you are able to establish that you know what's the context and what they use that particular social media platform to use, for instance, if I ask you personally, if you go to LinkedIn, if you long go to LinkedIn, I'm sure your mind automatically switches for you to act professionally.
[15:17] Oh, yes. Start typing your English. That's where the grab star English comes. That's where my website English comes. But if you go to Facebook, Facebook is freestyle.
[15:32] Facebook is free. Twitter is a different person. Yeah. So that's the exact way. If you establish your buyer persona, you should know what they do at a particular point.
[15:45] So you know how to talk. Yeah. Even though I mentioned LinkedIn, you should know that Instagram has a growing audience who are also very, very old.
[15:58] And these people are also likely to be managers and CEOs. So you should know what your target audience does over there. And you have to do things around that maybe your messaging shouldn't be too professional.
[16:15] Yeah. Yeah. I was even about to ask you, you know, as a B2B company, must I always go to LinkedIn if I want to market to my target audience? Is LinkedIn the only social media platforms to go?
[16:31] I would say focus on LinkedIn if you don't have enough resources in terms of time and budgets. Right. But if you have the liberty, you can decide not to focus on only LinkedIn.
[16:47] You can do other platforms. For instance, let's take General Electric, GE, as a typical example. When you go to their LinkedIn, they have a lot of campaigns about what they are doing, that they are engineers and all that.
[17:06] When you go to Instagram, General Electric can typically run a campaign on Instagram saying we want photographers to come and take pictures of our huge, huge engines in our factories.
[17:25] Factories. So they run a campaign around that select a photographer. And the photographer just talks and they are called factories, take pictures, and then they post it and then they tag the photographer.
[17:38] So it's more like a collabo with a photographer. And these things, you think, oh, it's not going to bring in sales. But at the end of the day, you should know that creating a brand is even more important than just making a sale.
[17:57] Creating a brand makes it easier for a customer to come back again. So customers can see this. They're like, oh, the photography is nice. Look at the G engines and stuff like that.
[18:11] Next day, that same customer is sitting in their boardroom and they are talking about, oh, we have to buy these huge engine turbines. And the person in the boardroom will say, oh, I recently was scrolling through.
[18:26] Instagram and I saw this. Why don't we check them out? Interesting. Interesting. Yeah, so if you have the resources and time budget, you can go all out looking based on what your target audience does.
[18:46] But if you don't, I would say stick to LinkedIn. Stick to LinkedIn. Right. I mean, not if you're one of them. The main drivers of all the social media platform is content.
[18:59] Yeah. Right. So what role does content play when it comes to B2B marketing on the social media platforms? Content is very, very important. And I'm saying that because when it comes to B2B, you are not riding on a short, a short thin emotion just to make a sale.
[19:29] And for a decision maker to make a decision on behalf of his office company, maybe making a purchase of, let's say, a $20,000 service or $20,000 product from your company, they have to make sure they are making the right decision because they know if they made the wrong decision, it's going to go against the company.
[19:59] Some companies or some decision makers find themselves in a situation where they have to make a decision to purchase a service or a product that if they make the wrong decision, it can close down the company.
[20:14] So when content is involved, content enables the decision maker to know more about your services, they get to trust you more. So you blur everything in their mind, make everything clearer.
[20:33] They know where to find you. They know if they are key people before they even decide to buy from you. Talking about content, let's still stay on content.
[20:43] As a B2B company, and since you've been in the game since, what sort of content would you recommend for someone who runs a B2B to be able to reach their target audience?
[20:59] Don't be specific, but then you can just give an overarching content. What sort of content would you recommend? Let's say if I'm running a B2B company, I can post on my social media platforms.
[21:16] So like I mentioned earlier on, your website is very important. So putting out blogs are hugely important. So articles on my website? Your website. That's one.
[21:37] And also guest blogging. Other people having their platforms, but you write and place it there. Yeah, maybe in the same industry as you are, you know, maybe it's a news or media agency.
[21:57] But wouldn't it be counterproductive because right now I want to drive people to my website. But here's the case, I should write on other people's website.
[22:07] Wouldn't it be counterproductive? No. Okay, tell me. Because other platforms have their own set of audience. Your website has its own set of audience.
[22:18] Yeah, writing on other people's platforms, you get the opportunity to link. Ah, the link building. Back to your website. Exactly. And to really, really hit the nail on the head, you were asking what sort of content.
[22:37] You can look at a content around maybe a day in the life of your target audience. So let's say if my target audience, they are CEOs, mid-level managers, I should couch my content around the day.
[23:01] Yeah. A day in the life of a CEO in this industry. When they chance upon such a thing, they will read. Ah, right. Or you can also look at their pain points. What keeps CEOs out of it?
[23:16] I would comment. Interesting. Is it not making money? So, yeah, you tackle their pain points also. Interesting. So, I'm still sticking to you being in the game, same thing.
[23:35] And you made mention of email marketing at the end of the episode as one of the marketing channels. So I want to focus on email marketing as a marketing channel for B2B campaign.
[23:49] Okay. What are some of the benefits? And you can follow up with the challenges and how you overcame those one if you ever encountered it. Yeah. So what are the benefits and the challenges when it comes to email marketing?
[24:03] Okay. The benefits, one that really comes up on top of my head is the fact that you get the opportunity to send a message to a potential buyer.
[24:21] Someone who has already bought from you, like an existing client. The potential one, the existing one. And another thing that comes with it is you're able to get analytics based on who's reading.
[24:43] Are they actually reading? Are they even opening your emails? You're able to see all those things. Do you have to make changes? Do you have to, you know, you'll do a lot of testing.
[24:55] If this doesn't work, you have to change that. So you get all those, you know, metrics and opportunity to effect changes. And the challenges if you ask me would be, if you don't do it right, people who receive your emails, they can unsubscribe.
[25:25] Yeah. Maybe it's becoming too much. That's one. Maybe it's getting too boring. That's two. Or maybe talking about too much. When is too much, too much?
[25:36] When it comes to email back. I keep on hearing people don't send emails too much. So I want to ask you, when is too much, too much? Too much, too much.
[25:52] It's all boils down to the value that you have. If you are giving them a lot of value, they don't mind. But if, for instance, I'll sign up to Mackenzie, the email market list.
[26:07] I receive about four emails a day from Mackenzie. But each email I receive is based on a different set of topic. And before I signed up for that email list, they gave me like the name of the topic and the description of it.
[26:23] So each email I receive, I know it's about something different. And if it's something that is really important to me or value to me, I keep it.
[26:34] So apart from what you call LinkedIn and social media marketing, email marketing is really dear to my heart. So I'll be asking a lot of questions when it comes to email marketing.
[26:46] Right on. So the next one is, what is the measure of value? Because you may mention that if you are giving them value, they wouldn't mind receiving like you getting four emails from Mackenzie in a day.
[27:01] So what is the measure of value here? When will I see that? Oh, how much are they giving values to my email subscribers? How will I see it? Okay, first, the metrics.
[27:15] If you can see that they are opening, that's one. If also your email messages have links in them and they are clicking on the links, going to where you want them to go.
[27:30] That's another thing. So you've made mention of, let's stick to the metrics. What are some of the metrics for me to look out for? Because I'm sure these email marketing platforms, they do provide these metrics.
[27:47] So what are some of the metrics I should look out for in order for me to measure the value I'm giving to my subscribers? Look out for the opening rates.
[27:58] The rates at which they open the email I send to them. You also look out for the link they click from your email that you send to them. I think you are good to go.
[28:14] Let me ask you this question about analytics. What role do you think analytics and tracking play in measuring the success of B2B digital marketing companies?
[28:31] Well, basically, analytics are, I would say, the blessing back in for digital marketing. In the past, you can't quite clearly measure who listens to your radio ads or who watches your television.
[28:51] But B2B offers you results that you can't actually measure. So in terms of analytics, the way it helps is the fact that it's able to inform you whether you are doing the right thing based on, let's say, people seeing the content you are putting out or the messaging you are putting out.
[29:24] That's one. This also tells you the level of sentiments of the people you are targeting. Are they liking what you are doing or they are not liking you?
[29:37] You can't tell. You can't be able to measure the sentiment. That's another one. Another one, too, is you are able to get to know whether they are actually engaging.
[29:55] You caught their attention with what you are putting out as a business. So your engagement is also really, really important. And these social media platforms, they provide these analytics, and I'm sure MailChimp, too, does that.
[30:17] Yeah. Yeah. All right. This is actually my last question. Okay. Yes. So I want to talk about the emerging trends that digital marketers should look out for when it comes to B2B marketing.
[30:34] What are some of the emerging trends we should look out for since you've been in the game and you are still in it? Okay. One thing that everybody should be aware of is the big body in the room.
[30:54] Everywhere you pass is AI. And if you are into digital marketing, a sure way of using AI is having an AI chatbot on your website. You can even have an AI chatbot on WhatsApp.
[31:19] So just leveraging on AI in your existing marketing efforts as a B2B marketer will send you a long way. Because even on social media, you can even use an AI model like chatgpt to create your own messaging as you chatgpt to give you five different variations of that same messaging within a few seconds.
[31:53] Yeah. So AI is key. AI is key. Very, very important to businesses. Yeah. So that's an emerging trend that we should talk about. Interesting. Bill, thank you so much for coming.
[32:12] Thanks for having me. Remember at the top of the episode, I made mention that we have two traditions. Whatever. Exactly. Like a sandwich. Exactly.
[32:22] So we are coming. I mean, my next question will be about the last tradition. Sure. Which will be, which of your friends in the industry would you recommend to come on this episode?
[32:37] A friend of mine in the industry. Yeah. I've put it in a tight corner. Yeah. Enjoy. I'm from the marketing point. I'm only allowed to name one person.
[32:58] Yes. Or maybe you can do me another and give me two. Okay. One person. The first person I'll say is Bernard Khafri Sope. Bernard Khafri Sope.
[33:21] Yes. Okay. He's on LinkedIn. He's on LinkedIn. Yes. But he's mostly popular on Twitter. Yeah. Most people on Twitter are on Twitter. Ah. Oh, okay.
[33:36] Oh. Ah. Interesting. I didn't know him to be Bernard. Oh. Interesting. Yeah. All right. Two. The Spear of Markets. Mm-hmm. Khafri Iyime. Khafri Iyime.
[34:07] Yes. Yes. The two is on LinkedIn. It's on LinkedIn. Yeah. And on X. It's on X as well. All right. He's the one behind a crab goose market. Ah.
[34:23] Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Awesome. Thank you my friend. Thank you too. I appreciate your presence. Yes. I'm glad to be here. Also. Nani. Awesome.
[34:36] Great. Go Daddy.