Our colleague, Elena Iordache-Stoica, was invited to Secretele Succesului (Secrets of Success) Podcast, hosted by Elena Badea, Managing Director at Valoria. The conversation was focused on how B2B companies can grow sustainably through content and an inbound approach and you can watch & listen to the conversation in Romanian here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WJNMonMPp0
We also summarized the main points of the conversation in English.
”My career started almost 12 years ago with an IT outsourcing company and I came to realise that I am passionate about marketing and sales. After working with both a multinational company and a tech startup, I took a 2 years maternity leave (and you can read about my experience of returning to the office, on my LinkedIn account). I then joined STOICA, a B2B growth marketing agency my husband launched in 2013.
After exploring and working with various clients and industries, we realized that for us as an agency working with Tech B2B companies is the right choice. Finding your right clients is vital and it’s a recommendation we make to all businesses we collaborate with because this will help you grow sustainably. We can all cater to a broad range of clients, but identifying and working with the good-fit ones will help you grow and scale.
Besides figuring out who their ideal clients are and what buyer journey they go through, we help B2B companies improve their website and turn it into a real conversion machine that ignites conversations and converts visitors to customers. We help our clients create a content strategy, and develop and promote that content, having a clear rule in mind: always talk in terms that your clients understand.
Because we eat our own “food” we also create educational content for our blog, guest publications and other media channels, in order to help our future clients and our larger community understand the best options for them when it comes to online marketing.
Going back to the importance of a website, in order to attract future clients, it is essential to understand why and how would they use your website and answer these needs in their own words.
Before building or relaunching your website, it’s important to figure out the jobs your potential clients are trying to achieve (whether they need more information about a pain point, the solutions available to that pain point, or trying to compare you with your competition) and structure in a way that enables them to solve those jobs.
Consider what the right call to action or conversion point is for every web page and diversify your calls to action (too many websites feature only a “let’s talk” CTA, but less than 4% of your visitors are ready to talk, so give them the option to sign up for a newsletter or download a relevant guide).
Personally, I believe that inbound is one of the best approaches for any B2B company. B2B buying cycles are longer, involve several levels of decision, so going only for paid advertising won’t pay off. Furthermore, building content won’t just help you build a long-term, trust-based relationship with potential clients, but also help you qualify potential buyers and prioritize the good fit ones.
At the same time, inbound is an approach that takes time. Its results become visible in time after you find your rhythm, your style, the best questions to answer, and the best channels to promote your content on, and after you have key people in your company promote that content regularly.
I really think there are no recipes or magic solutions in marketing. When we start working with a new client, we start with an audit: identifying their ideal customers and the buyer journey, their goals and only after that we build a plan – a plan that is always flexible because what this pandemic taught us is that being adaptable can make or break a business.
Also, it is useful to take a step back before starting any marketing campaign. My recommendation for any manager or entrepreneur is to take their time and identify the clients they’ve worked well with and see what those clients have in common. This will give them a better understanding of their ideal clients, the ones they love working with and they can start addressing them with the right strategy.
Future clients need to understand your processes and services, so allocate time for education, for questions, for clarifying talks. Results will come, in time.
Last but not least, if I were to define success, I would say that this concept has changed its signification lately. Now, as a professional, I want to add value and work closely with our clients in order to build their business together. I also strive for have a personal – professional life balance, so I try to make enough time for my dear ones. Balance, continuous learning and adding value through my work – these are the words that best describe success in my opinion.”
Listen to the whole podcast in Romanian here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WJNMonMPp0
