Bill sits down with George Coudounaris, co-founder of The B2B Playbook. George shares his journey from being a corporate lawyer to becoming a B2B marketing expert, and delves into the intricacies of demand generation. Discover how to create and capture demand, the importance of understanding your ideal customer profile, and practical tips for implementing a successful demand generation strategy. This episode is a must-listen for marketing managers in the manufacturing and B2B sectors looking to elevate their demand gen game.
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today, my guest is George Coudounaris from The B2B Playbook. George, thank you for joining us.
George: Bill, thank you for having me on and for pronouncing my last name correctly. You absolutely nailed it.
Bill: So I practiced for hours. I stood in front of the mirror. I did it. Like I just want to make sure I get it. So that's funny. Well, George, good evening to you or good morning to you and good evening to us, right? Cause we're in different time zones. You're in Australia and I'm here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania here in the States. And I just want to say I spent five weeks in Australia. We talked about this a little bit and just such a lovely place. And talking with you brings back a lot of memories from that time and just hearing your accent and which isn't an accent to you, but is to me. It's just lovely. So thank you for that trip down memory lane.
George: Excited to be here and you know what it's like to live in the future then. So if you want any stock tips, if you want, if you want to know who wins the big game, just ask me and put a bit of money on it for me as well.
Bill: That's right. Yeah, we'll split the winnings. With George, I'd like to start these with a little bit of a background. And I know a little bit about your background, but maybe talk about how you started as a solicitor or as we call it here in the States, an attorney, and then how you've ended up as a marketer. Give us a little bit of that backstory.
George: For sure. So yeah, for those who don't know before I was a very happy B2B marketer, I was a very sad corporate lawyer. And that happened because to be honest, just, I suppose I did, you know, well enough to get into something at school. And at the school I was at, a lot of people were trying to go down that route, you know, ethnic parents as well. There was pressure to go and do something like that. And, so I was fortunate to get that degree and then managed to land a job that a lot of people would probably have liked coming out of university too, but I absolutely hated it. Being a lawyer to me was like being the fun police. You stopped everyone from having fun. You were either before the fun thing happened or after the fun thing happened and no one really wanted you there. And I really just didn't enjoy it. And to be honest, while I was at university, I discovered SEO and the fun of SEO just kind of in my own time. And, ranked a few Amazon affiliate sites. We were selling roller derby gear. Didn't make a ton of money, but made a little bit, which, you know, it was really, really fun. And then ended up getting a few clients on the side and just thought how incredible that within like kind of six months of learning this skill, that you can have a real impact on a business and generate some money. And then I think I was hooked, but you know, went down the, the, pressured route of taking up that law job.
And fortunately hated it enough to just quit, go and join an agency, learn everything that I felt like I needed to before, going out, working in-house and, then eventually on my own.
Bill: That's great. Well, and certainly that journey that you've been on kind of of self education and self ideation to create what you guys have created at The B2B Playbook is just amazing. I want to commend you and Kevin. What a tremendous job you guys are doing on the demand gen topic. I'm a fan and a follower of the podcast and your content. You guys are doing an amazing job. And one of the goals of Missing Half podcast is we're trying to bring educational resources to our audiences, to marketing managers of manufacturing and B2B companies here in our region. And your team is doing an amazing job of really owning demand gen and talking about that. And what I feel is probably the most practical and down to earth approach that I've seen in the marketplace. So I just want to congratulate you guys on what you've accomplished.
George: That means a lot coming from an expert like yourself, Bill. So really appreciate that. Thank you so much. And, yeah, hopefully we're out there doing our bit to educate on what we feel B2B marketing is really missing.
Bill: So if you want, let's just jump right into some of the content and what you're, I know, passionate about, because you guys are 140 some episodes into your podcast. You have the 12 week playbook cohort school that you guys sponsor. You guys do some private coaching. You guys have a lot going on in this space. But I want to just jump right into, and we're only going to be here for a little less than an hour. So we're only going to be able to get a 50,000 foot view. But I think there's a lot of people in our space who still have no idea what demand gen is. And they just, they don't understand the pivot that's needed, why it's important. So maybe George, if you would first, maybe could you provide a definition of demand generation for our audience?
George: Yeah, for sure. I think it's probably worth noting Bill that before we started speaking about all of this in terms of demand generation, we were originally talking about our framework and what we do as just good, sustainable B2B marketing strategy, but that wasn't very sexy. And, guess what? Not many people paid that much attention to it. And then all of a sudden this, this category of marketing called demand generation was emerging and we saw that it wasn't really that well-defined and then we went, well, what we're doing is demand generation, except I felt like we had a very clear plan for it and we felt like that's what was missing. And so we started sharing that. And so look, some define demand generation as lead generation activities, others as branding efforts, but for us, it's really a go-to-market strategy. It builds an intense desire in your dream customers to purchase from you. We feel it's comprised of two key parts. Demand creation and demand capture. Demand capture focuses on that 3% of the market that's ready to buy right now. So if you're a hundred percent of the market, research shows that only 3 to 5% are actively looking to buy something from you right now. The problem with just focusing on that 3 to 5% alone is it's kind of like jumping into a swimming pool full of sharks, right? It's full of competitors. They're all chomping at the bits for the same handful of customers which makes it incredibly difficult to scale because over time, as your business grows, you're trying to grab a bigger share of that pool or a bigger slice of that pie and your competitors are too. More often than not, that pie isn't really growing at a faster rate than the number of competitors jumping in, which is why companies really, really struggled to scale their marketing efforts when they're just capturing demand. So that's why we've got to also look to creating demand. Which is looking at the other 95 to 97% of the market that isn't in buy mode right now. They're people who aren't necessarily a problem aware yet, and they're not aware of the solution that your product or solution or service provides. And your job with demand creation is to really win their trust, to make them prioritize that problem and lead them to the logical conclusion that you are the best people to fix that problem for them. And so they're the two key parts of demand gen.
Bill: See, and the way you lay that out is so very clear. And I've been studying demand gen for whatever variations of that that's been called over the past several years. And so many people, and I don't know if they just try to overcomplicate it to charge higher fees or whatever it is, but you really just break it down into a succinct explanation that is easily digestible. And I think that can be very clear because you've been in the marketing space long enough and after your law career to recognize that most marketing managers of B2B companies and manufacturing companies, they're so busy with their internal work. They're so resource strapped that they really can't take the time that maybe you and I can to study these things and really evaluate, how do I compare lead gen to demand gen? How do I look at what's the difference in branding, right? They have to go find somebody or find something really quickly that they can adopt and move forward with to help their business. So I really appreciate the way you define that. When you look at that, I think that's a great overall strategic description. When we think about the two folks that we really worry about as our core ICP, our core ideal client profile is we've got the C-suite that's making the decisions. We've got the marketing manager who's actually going to have to implement and do the work. Right. So whenever you think about defining demand generation for a marketing manager, when it gets more like into the weeds and the actual tactics that they're going to employ, do you have any alternative or add on definitions without going through the whole five B's framework and every, because we could be here for a long, long time. Right. But do you have an additional like add on that you would provide for marketing managers? And this is a tough ask George. So I know, but it's early in the morning, you haven't had your third cuppa, right? So I don't wanna put you on the spot.
George: No, I do. And I think we can try and simplify things as much as possible. And that's what we've tried to do with our five base framework, but marketing at its core is fundamentally about getting your future customers to trust you. Right? Like that whole saying, nobody got fired for, for hiring or buying IBM. And the reason people say that is if, if you are that person who is in charge of finding a new product or service, the expectation is you will go with the incumbent, the one that everyone knows, the one that is really well reviewed. And if you hire them, there's an expectation things will go well, but if things don't go well, how are you to know? Everyone else use them. The case studies were great, right? Everyone in your industry uses them. So what you have to realize is if you're trying to sell your product or service to someone and you're not that big incumbent, you're actually asking that person to take a risk. There's a professional risk. There's a reputational risk that if what you're promising doesn't work out, that could be addressed in a performance review. That person could look silly in front, right? That person could look silly to their colleagues. It could affect their own ambitions. It could keep them up at night because they're not hitting their own KPIs because your services didn't hit the mark. And that's what we're dealing with. So it's all about actually making people feel comfortable. Getting them to trust you. And that's what marketing really needs to do is we have to really deeply understand that person that we're trying to sell to understand what keeps them up at night, understand how we're going to help them understand how they evaluate what makes you someone that's trustworthy or not. Then we got to figure out all the objections that they might have along that journey. You know, why they wouldn't buy from you. And then we have to answer all those questions. And then your job as a marketer, once you've understood what could make someone a great customer of yours, and then you've built that content to answer those questions, to build those relationships of trust, it becomes about how do we get that information in front of people? Well, you can do it one to many in groups, like, you know, you can use paid advertising, you can use organic social, you reach a lot of people at once. You can do it on a one to few basis, which is where you're targeting smaller groups at one time. It might be conferences, it might be round tables, might be LinkedIn groups, whatever it is. And then there's one to one, which is, you know, email, text calls. Marketing happens to be really well equipped to deal with the one to many, one to few. Sales really good at the one to one. But we should all be saying the same thing, right? It's just like, as we go further down and we get more narrow. We're able to target our message a little bit more and personalize it a bit more. But that is what I believe like at its most simple form, what our job is.
Bill: George, I think one of the things you hit on there, which very few people in the marketing agency industry get is, and this may be so fundamental, I tell our team, one of our core jobs is to get the marketing managers who deal with us every day that we have the relationship with at the company, is to get them promoted. Get them a raise, get them to that next, make them look really good. Because I mean, ultimately our work has to accomplish the goals of the organization and help them grow. Ultimately, we have to do a good job by the company. But the person who, you know, takes us in and says, hey, let's renew with these guys next year. They need to look good and they need to be promoted. And when you talk about that person who's in the buyer's chair and taking whatever proposal to the buyer's committee, and you want them to step out of like not buying the industry leader, not buying the, you know, the incumbent that takes a lot. And for us to chip away at the momentum that that industry leader has, it doesn't, it isn't going to happen with a lead gen ad. Buy from us. We have a solution, fill out this form. We'll call you, right, and the sales person will figure it out. Like, yeah, we solve for everything. Call us and we'll help you a better price to be revealed on the call. So no, I think that that's so critical what you've just said and also fundamentally understanding that ultimately we're dealing with a human who has a lot at risk whenever they're taking whatever product or service we're promoting through demand generation to get them to activate and promote us within that organization to get that sale. So that's a fundamental understanding I think so many people miss.
George: Yeah, absolutely. And to use sort of like a more extreme example from the enterprise space on really working out what that person's internal motivations are, like your champion's internal motivations. Good friend of mine works at a big telecommunications company here. LinkedIn approached them and wanted to sell LinkedIn Sales Navigator to all their sales team. It would have been a really, really big deal. And he was really one of the key decision makers in that process. And what LinkedIn did when they approached him is they mapped out the org chart. They looked at his role and they said, look, if you go ahead and you purchase Sales Navigator, this is your path to progress upward within your organization. It's going to make you achieve XYZ KPIs. It's going to elevate you here and it's going to help you make a great case to get to that next step in your career. And so like that's how the best at doing it at the enterprise level. And we can always look at how things are done on the enterprise level to just, yeah, try and take those concepts and apply it to what we're doing.
Bill: No, that's great. And that's a pretty large incentive when you can see that path laid out for you, right? Because I'm sure there were a number of financial and other incentives for him to consider what they were laying down in front of him as a path forward, right? So …
George: And that's, sorry Bill, I was just going to add that's, sorry Bill, I was just going to add like that's the, that's the power of appealing to people's internal motivations. For him, that might've meant, you know, a 5, 10% increase in his salary. For LinkedIn, that deal was probably worth a million dollars. And so, you know, just by, you know, appealing to someone's internal motivations, you make it a win-win situation. And it can be a huge outcome for your company. So make sure you keep that in mind of who's your champion, who's your decision maker, what's important to them internally.
Bill: Absolutely. One of the interviews you did, which I really enjoyed, you interviewed Rand Fishkin a while back. And one of the biggest takeaways I had from that conversation was you and he discussed the mental shift, the mental shift that has to occur if you're going to move from your traditional, I don't even want to say traditional, from a lead gen or an otherwise non-demand gen strategy. Is that the biggest hurdle you see for making the change is truly the mental approach because a lot of the tactics are not dramatically different once you get into like the approaches, but you have to think differently. You have to talk differently and ask questions differently. Is that one of the biggest hurdles you see in progressing into a successful demand gen approach?
George: Absolutely. Yeah. And it comes down to kind of like an organizational approach as well. So very often the reason that we're doing lead generation is because companies started out with the sales led growth model where they were spraying and praying the market, trying to get as many meetings as possible without a thought as to is this person an ideal customer? Are they going to get a really good outcome with us? Are they going to stay on as a customer or are they just going to turn like crazy? And so then when marketing is brought on, we're just trying to feed that overarching mission of like book the meeting, book the meeting, book the meeting.
Well, the way that we try and do that is then when we break down, okay, if we have meetings, what's the step before that? Well, we got to get the contact details of those people to get the meetings. So then marketing is forced into this system of trying to create these MQLs. Hand them over to sales, sales is looking for that needle in a haystack approach, calling them, people aren't picking up. Hopefully they're booking some meetings. And so what happens is you have a really bloated team trying to find that needle in a haystack and acquire that limited number of customers. And if we're shifting from lead generation to demand generation, we can't go cold turkey because if you're an organization and you try and say, Hey, look, we're now going to shift to a demand generation model where we're not going to be generating all of these leads. That's a really scary look on your dashboard. You're now going to have all these sales folks, right?
Who are now twiddling their thumbs being like, well, I don't feel busy. And we actually had this Bill with, someone who went through our program and in our program, we teach you to build a demand engine. And they were largely a sales led organization. After going through the program, marketing started generating 80% of the pipeline for the business. And the CMO told me they had to change sales’s role because sales all of a sudden weren't just there mindlessly sifting through these MQLs and dialing, but they had to take like a much more strategic approach to what they were doing. They could now nurture a lot more. They could use their time much more effectively. And so if you're going to shift all at once, that has a very real impact on the organization. Like there are people whose, you know, jobs are at stake. You can't just cut a whole lot of salespeople. It needs to be a gradual shift. So that's why we recommend people start with demand generation targeting one segment. Normally one product, prove it out, get people used to the different way of reporting, measuring. And then once that's done, move to the next segment until ideally it's driving the majority of the business.
Bill: Yeah. When you mentioned that, all of a sudden the dashboard's empty. I almost broke into a cold sweat because I can imagine the phone ringing from the clients. Like, what are you guys doing? Right? Like we've all lived that in some way, shape or form. One of the things that we focus on is we focus on, companies that if, if, if you kind of describe, a company's digital marketing maturity and their transition, if, if 100 is enterprise and everything's humming, And one to 10 is we have a website that was updated 7 to 10 years ago, right? In that space, we look for companies that are in that 15 to 20 range who want to really get to 60%, 70% really, really quickly. And we feel that we can take them to a demand gen model immediately or to a more aggressive approach, a very similar approach to what you're promoting in the playbook because they don't have a lot built in that we're going to like change that will inherently scare them. At the same time, we deal with some companies that are much more mature. And yet if all of a sudden their salespeople weren't busy dialing for dollars, everybody would panic, right?
Everybody would just like, I don't wanna be on those calls. I don't wanna be on the apology tour for six months, walking them through it, like being their priest, bartender and rabbi all in the same person trying to talk them down from like, the sky is not falling. But when you see the market and so this pivots to my next question, because you have the 5B framework and I wrote it down here, be ready, be helpful, be seen, be better, be the best. I want to ask you about another B that I think we all struggle with and demand gen I think could be a part of that or it could be a challenge in demand gen is be patient. Whenever, and maybe this is just like an epidemic that digital marketers have to face, but whether it's to lead gen or demand gen or inbound or whatever, we all spend, it seems to me, an inordinate amount of time with clients telling them we have to be patient. Do you see that as also as a challenge of the demand generation model?
George: Absolutely. But it just comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what marketing is and what it can achieve for those who understand what it can achieve, then yeah, you understand that marketing absolutely does work, but it takes time. If you think about it, what we're trying to do is we're trying to influence people. So when they come and they have a need for our product or service, they see us as the number one option for that. But for that to work, we're going to have to be in front of people for a couple of sales cycles, right? Like we have to do this consistent activity to get in front of them. So then enough people have seen us for long enough that when they come in market, they go, great. Like you guys have been all over my feed. I've seen you everywhere. You're the one who's educated me and now I'm going to come to you. But people start demand generation and they go, well, it's been a month and we haven't seen anything. And you go, well, then how long is your average sales cycle? Oh, you know, it's 6 to 12 months. Well, I mean, what, what do you expect? And there's so much research to back this up to write like dream data did some good research. They showed that the efforts that you do now, you know, you won't see the impact on that on your pipeline for 6 to 12 months later.
And the very real reason for that is you just have to wait for those people to come into market because the ones who are in market right now, they haven't heard of you. Eight out of 10 people, when they make a short list of who it is that they're going to go with when they need a product or service, they pick someone from that short list that they make before they start looking. So day one, they start looking, they've got a short list. Guess what? If you're not on it, eight out of 10 aren't going to choose you. And so when you put this to people, I was going to say, when you put this to people, it's only logical, but no one, you're right. Be patient is a great one. No one is patient enough, probably because no one understands what marketing really is.
Bill: So one of the things I think that there's a controversial conversation that I think is kind of having an upswell right now. And maybe it's just that I wasn't aware, and there are other people who've really been having it. But when we see what's happening in the SaaS space and with paid lead generation, there's a lot of accomplishment that can occur for SaaS companies with very low cost products. And I feel like what happens is CEOs read these headlines in the Wall Street Journal or in Forbes or wherever they see it, right? And then they come back around and then they like beat us over the head in this B2B space. Well, they did that in SaaS. Why can't you do that for my manufacturing company that has a 12 to 18 month sales cycle plus an engineering design phase plus a order install implement phase that could be three years? In two months, look what they generated for the SaaS. And I feel like there's a better conversation that's starting to happen where we're not comparing ourselves to the SaaS companies in our space as much. But have you seen that unfair comparison play out in your experience?
George: All the time, all the time. And we came at it from the other end where like, I initially cut my teeth in the marketing world in performance marketing with really large B2C accounts where you had that model of you put a dollar in, you got a dollar 75 back and you just kept churning and kept putting it through the system and trying to scale to the moon. And then you get to B2B. And that became a little less true even for SaaS companies because, Hey, like, unless you're selling a really cheap, product, like it still needs approval from some kind of committee, right? Not everyone just gets to use their funds as they please. And then the more expensive that solution gets, the more people are involved, the more trust needs to be built, the longer that decision takes to make. And then you go to the manufacturing world where you're dealing with really large contracts with really serious outcomes if things don't go to plan. And of course that's going to take so much longer, but you're right. I come across the same thing. People compare apples with oranges. It just doesn't work.
Bill: So one of the other things you guys talk about, and this was early on, so I'm going to go way back, George, in the database to 2021, episode 17 of your podcast. And you guys talked about, are you ready for an agency and providing a framework for that situation? And one of the things I wanted to ask you about, has your thinking changed on this subject? And let me provide a little bit more color to this because you probably being at episode 141 don't have immediate recall of episode 17. I'm at episode 19 on our podcast. We just launched in February. I have no idea what I talked about in episode two, three, and four. One of the things that you and Kevin talked about, which I completely agree with, is you said when you're going to hire an agency to amplify, you have to make sure you have the foundation. I guess I would say in your case, in your framework, the be ready. You have to have that sorted out internally. What we're finding, though, as we approach the market and our core ideal client profile in our market, which is manufacturers and B2B companies from 10 million to 150 million dollars in sales, they don't have the personnel with the expertise to even execute the be ready. They don't have the ability to do or the resources to do the client interviews. They don't have the vocabulary. So we've tried in some ways, and it's a little different than what you guys are doing, but we've tried to have that conversation and actually sell a discovery and planning process where we develop the be ready for the client. And I agree with you guys' premise that we're not as good as they would be, but progress is better than perfect. So how has it, do you still hold that position? Has that changed? And I like to ask these type of questions because I want to get into it. Like, if we disagree on this, I love it. It's all good, right? But I like to get other perspectives to see what's missing in my thinking and how that can be improved as we move forward.
George: Yeah, I think, I probably still largely hold true on that. I think the way that we view our framework is it's more of a flywheel than getting every stage perfect and then executing what you're doing, because that's not the reality of business. If we waited to do that and have everything perfect, nothing would get done and the market would lose their job. Right. That's just the reality. They're not adding value and that's, that's what would happen. So we say, as you go through each stage and like at least know what you don't know and go through each stage. Do your deep understanding of the customer, create that helpful content, accelerate that demand as much as you can. But then in three to six months, as you do that, try again to reinvest your resources into getting another deeper understanding of that customer. And every time you go through this process and it's kind of more like a flywheel, you will get closer and closer to them. So if your agency side, hopefully you've been able to prove out some value in, in what you've done initially, and then maybe you start to justify some more investment from the manufacturer's side to say, you know what? This stuff can work even better if we get a customer research expert in. And so maybe you guys do that. Maybe you bring in someone external to come in and conduct those interviews for them who has those expertise, which creates you a whole lot of amazing insights. And then you say, now we can create all these actions off the back of them and it's going to make what we're doing even better. So yeah, look, ideal scenario. Obviously we want everything to be perfect, but like when we were going through and doing this process for ourselves, we weren't perfect. Like we thought we understood a B2B market as well, but you know, we probably didn't compared to how we do now. It's really, really different. So you just keep running through the process and you get closer and closer every time.
Bill: One of the other things I want to ask you about, and I think this is a pitfall that I want to encourage our clients to avoid and put this into a question. Whenever we look at demand gen content, one of the things you guys talk about is any content that solves pain points for our clients. Right. That was one of the statements. Are we as marketers and as marketing managers at companies, are we over complicating content creation sometimes because we have like we're trying to create the next magnum opus or some, you know, War and Peace when it's just like, I can solve your problems. Here's how. Boom, boom, boom. Done. Are we over complicating that in? Are you seeing that being over complicated by your clients and by others in the space?
George: Yeah, definitely. And I think simple frameworks for us work really, really well in our experience. They work so much better because you can commit to them and stick to them. So our favorite one for content and mapping content to pain points and the buying journey is the five stages of awareness. It's the five stages that your customer will go through from being unaware that they even have a problem you can help them with to being problem aware where they're exploring all those different problems, to looking at different solutions, to solving that problem, to then looking at different products, we call it product aware. And then finally being most aware where they're kind of on the brink of making that decision. And we just say, from the point of view of your customer, map out the questions that they have at every single stage of awareness and then create content to answer those. And when you're deciding which steps should I tackle first, take a bottom up approach, target those who are more in market now, create content for those that are most aware, product aware and solution aware. So that's going to be stuff like your case studies, your testimonials, your comparisons, you know, making sure you have all that product information correct, because we want to see a return from this information is, you know, and this work that we're doing as much as possible. And then once you've done that. Work your way up till you hit those that are problem aware and then unaware. And it's a really simple framework. Every single piece of content we create, we're just making sure it's aligned with one of those five stages, whether it's LinkedIn posts, articles, podcasts, anytime we speak, we're addressing one of those.
Bill: One of the reasons why I believe this is so fundamental and so important is we're developing a lot of content now. And the content that I think is going to resonate with our audience and get the most views and shares and comments is usually very detailed and technical and something I nerd out on and get excited about. And it falls flat on its face. And we say something very straightforward, like, here's a problem. Here's a straightforward solution.
And here's how we do it. And it goes to the moon. And it just time and time again, I mean, the beauty of social media, the beauty of the internet is you get instant feedback and you can kind of test those things. But I agree that we can't, we need to not overcomplicate content because people are just looking for answers, right? They're just looking for solutions that make sense and are simpler. And even if, and even if that's a front of house answer and the back of the house is a little bit more complex to actually execute it in its final form, that's okay because when they're in that awareness stage or that problem aware stage, they don't need to know every answer and every question that goes the whole way through the process. So I really like you guys' framework on that. I really enjoyed that and see how you're overlaying that with the funnel and with the creating demand, capturing demand and accelerating demand. So that's a really interesting concept. One of the things I wanted to ask you about, and George, you have a ton of experience in LinkedIn ads and the paid ad generation space. Do you have a recommendation or what have you seen in promoting content to basically cold audiences that you've seen to be effective? Is the boost or the ad or like what do you feel is a good starting point for people with modest budgets? So these aren't SaaS companies are going to spend $20 million a year. These are companies are going to spend $2,500, $5,000 a month on pushing content out to their market. What do you feel is the first step that anybody doing a demand gen test should do to accelerate that content into the market?
George: Hmm. Typically people would start with, remarketing. So targeting people who have engaged with your website or your assets in some way, shape or form, and then putting together that content that's more solution aware, product aware, most aware and getting that in front of people. So comparing yourself to other solutions out there, why is solving this problem the way you solve it the right way to do it? Who are the other people that you've dealt with that have been through you know, your service and have fantastic outcomes and good, strong call to actions. Like that's where we would typically start. But my guess is for a lot of the manufacturers you're dealing with, they probably don't even have that base layer of warm audiences. They probably don't have enough people. And so for them, we say, look, there's a limited number of potential companies that you can work with for most manufacturers. especially if you do your work on who are your ideal customers. Who are they? Who's the best potential fit for your business? Pull a list of those companies. You can upload those to LinkedIn. And the beauty of that is then you can now start to target the key people in those companies with your marketing messages. And what we like to put in front of them is that content for that five stages of awareness. If the manufacturer is dealing with a company that already, you know, has another supplier, whatever it is, like already has another manufacturer. You probably in your unaware content want to be highlighting how do you even know if the manufacturer that you're using is doing a good job? Or like trying to call their attention to the fact that there might be something wrong with the status quo. And that's what you would do in your unaware content. And the problem aware content would be going, well, what are all the potential negative downstream consequences of that for the business? For yourself as that person who works in that company, like what are all the bad things that can happen? So then leading them to, well, these are the different ways you can go about solving that problem. And then leading them to the logical conclusion that you guys are the perfect fit for them. And for us, like we just like to keep it incredibly simple, but it's just basically answering questions that people have at different stages in their journey and leading them logically from one step to the next. The only other thing I'll add there is most marketers will try and tell you that, marketing is all about targeting the right people with the right message at the right time. Okay. Yeah, that's true. But the right timing part is, I'm sorry to say it. I don't know if I can swear, but it's b*******, right? The right timing is b*******. We don't know what the right time is for that person. That person has so many things going on in their day. Sometimes, you know, you feel like god, that couch is disgusting in my living room. I need to change that today and I will do a ton of research on that couch and I'll be like almost ready to buy. And then something else comes up and I'll just have forgotten about it. And then it's all of a sudden not a priority anymore. We're dealing with people, we're fickle.
Bill: Well and that's right, when I think when you look at marketing managers and the competing priorities that they have, they're reporting to the C-suite, the sales team, the product managers. There's a trade show. There's all these things going on. Right. And when they're trying to deal with all of the noise that's coming in, just look at that as a target audience. Right. Let alone the buyers at companies that are keeping the factories running and keeping supply chains moving. So everybody has those distractions and that traffic and noise that is keeping them. Yeah, and I agree with you. If we can figure out that timing, George, we are not going to be doing podcasts. We are just going to be vacationing in the south of France and we'll let our people's people do all the work, right? I mean, that's needle in a haystack. That's, you know, castles in the sky that we'll never see. And the reality is the right time is all the time. You have to be in front of them with the message because you don't know when that time's going to be. One of the other things I want to, go ahead.
George: And also I was just going to add and look, I mean, over time, of course, there will be certain things that, that trigger that marketing manager, that business to start actively looking for a solution. And you want to tease those out in your customer interviews, like what happened in your company when you were like, you know what, we really need to change manufacturer. We really need to change supplier. Like what happened? And it might be key dates. It might be into financial reports. It might be certain events that happened in the company and that gives you a better idea, but you're right. Like we've just got to get that material in front of people, do it for a sustained period of time. So when they're ready, they come to us.
Bill: I'm shocked at how many companies come to us in Q4 and say, hey, I haven't spent most of my marketing budget for the year and I want to get some projects done. Who would think that professionally managed huge manufacturing and B2B companies set aside a million dollars or whatever it is, and then they come to us and it's like October. They're like, yeah, we didn't spend any of this and it's use it or lose it. So let's go. And so how am I supposed to predict that timing? Right. You just stay in front of them and hope whenever they have that money left over that they're willing to talk to us and consider us as a recipient for Christmas. So one of the other things I want to ask you about, George, is you guys in you have a 10 question framework and you really lean into in question four, recommending that SMEs subject matter experts are absolutely critical to a demand gen strategy that they have to be part of that communication. We deal with some very technical companies and you guys even have it in your literature where you talk about engineers, talking to engineers may be the answer, right? How much trouble do you see with companies getting those engineers to be willing to communicate? Because you know, we're doing podcasts, we do them all the time. This is natural to us. We're in our environment stages, whatever, that's fine. For some folks who aren't on that side of it, this is a very uncomfortable space, but especially video is where it's at.
George: Yeah, absolutely. I think one that, technical person, the SME, they have to be incentivized to do this because they've already got, they've already got a job, right? They don't want more jobs, especially given to them from the marketer. And so you really need some buy-in from them on this is why you should do that. And you can point to things like, you know, it can be great for your career. You can help become a revenue generating asset. Makes you much more hireable as well. And maybe point to other people in the industry who are kind of hate the word influencer, but you know, influential people in that space, and point out all the amazing benefits that go along with that. But then also I think the B2B market has to realize that their job is to make themselves the dot connector and make your subject matter expert as comfortable as possible and help them dip their toes into this process, into helping with marketing. And so a lot of that comes down to very good preparation from the marketer's point of view to really respecting the subject matter expert's time. We don't need them twice a week. We need them maybe once a month. We might need them once a month for 45 minutes or an hour. Like book that in on the calendar, get them to commit to it, make sure that they know what the, you know, podcast notes or the blog notes are going to be before they do that. Make sure they have the background on the person that they're going to be speaking with if they're doing an interview with them. And then make sure there's just a really set process around the followup and then make sure that there's a really great feedback system. So they feel the benefit of the work that they're doing too, because if you don't do that, you know, they're just going to go, you know what, this is too hard. I can't commit to it. It's taking up too much of my time and they won't do it.
Bill: Those are great points. We've seen it on both ends of the spectrum going well and going poorly. One of the things we've come up with for our clients as a way to deal with this is what we call the podcast experience, where we take our remote podcast group because obviously we're doing this over the internet, but we actually will go to facilities and record podcasts on site. The other thing we'll do is we'll send our podcast crew in with anywhere from four to eight mics and cameras and let them sit around and just everybody have a conversation and really work hard on developing scripts and conversation topics to just let their people talk about their topics. And that has been we've done our third one. So three in a row prove something. But that process is what we feel may be part of the future that allows us to capture a ton of content and make everybody really comfortable. Because one of the outcomes of that process has been to a person, they're like, well, that was really easy. It was just like having a conversation. I wasn't looking directly at a camera trying to remember what I was supposed to say. wait, I can't remember that, right? Because everybody struggles with green screen or looking at a camera. It's like you become catatonic. But have you heard of anybody else do anything like that? Or do you have any thoughts or tips or guidance from your perspective as we try that podcast experience process?
George: To kind of go into people's physical space and like hold their hand and guide them through that process. Is that right?
Bill: Yes, yes.
George: I haven't, no, I haven't thought about that a lot, to be honest. actually, sorry, no, I haven't really done a lot of that in -person work myself. I think it's a really, really great approach. cause you're probably able to make people feel a lot more comfortable and you're able to be there and give them tips and guide them through it. I did have one idea a while ago where I thought there's all these subject matter experts who, you know, aren't great on camera. They might not be great at writing or they're just not good at doing these more kind of marketing things. Should there be like a training service for them to upskill them in like basic presentation skills and you know, how to deal with when a camera lens is looking at you and how should you speak into the microphone and how should you refine your process and get better? But I love that you're doing that Bill. I think that's so good that you're going in. Getting people familiar with the process to kickstart that. How have you found it working so far?
Bill: So a couple of things, one, we get a ton of content, two, they feel really comfortable. And now it's a lot of work because our copywriters interview them and prep these things. So it's not just like we show up, stick a mic in their face and start going, but the insights we're gaining from those interviews and the content, and even though we're not committing like to launch a podcast for those clients, it's just that organic content like we're developing right here today and like you guys have been so popular with your 140 some episodes, etc. That seems to be what people are ingesting. The more polished it is, like if it's over polished, people aren't responding to it because it's not as authentic. So we were just getting into the distribution part of that. So I don't have any analytics on how that's going to interact with the market because we're just getting out of the production phase. But it seems that everybody I know who, not everybody, but most people who stay committed to good content that really answers customers' questions and problems, just like you're talking about in demand gen, does better than if you just do produced or ads, right? And you're just looking for lead generation. So we're hope, like we'll see over the next several months how it actually interacts with the market. But it feels to me like a way we can get good content. And video, of course, outperforms all written. And the written content that we look at from some of these very technical people, it's not readable because nobody wants to read that stuff because it's just so, so technical. I mean, it's just, here's a 27 page white paper that you need to read to understand this. Now, get on the camera and tell me it's going to work and give me the like the the real high level overview. That's what's going to get them in the door. So I guess as you would say, the jury is still out on this one, right?
George: Yeah. Look, this stuff definitely works because, you know, I suppose content is becoming very commoditized, like in every industry, especially with like ChatGPT and other AI writing tools. It's very easy to cobble together information that you'd find on the first two pages of Google. So then it becomes, then it becomes like, how do you differentiate that? And that comes down to like, who is delivering that message? What stories do they have to tell around it and what experiences can they share around it? Cause that's stuff that those AI tools can't do.
They can't make up or they shouldn't be making it up. And if they are making it up, you shouldn't be using it. And that's where the value is. That's where the real gold is. And that's what sets your content apart from everyone else.
Bill: That's right. So that's what we're aiming towards. And thank you for feedback on that. I'd like to ask questions on things we're developing and just get other voices on it. Another question I have is when you look at your voice of customer research, and one of the things that I'm concerned with, and this is across the industry, when we think of voice of customer research, and we don't want to only sample people who are dealing with us who love us, and who have a jaded perspective because it's like they're already committed, so they have to love us, right?
They have to be committed to that. Do you feel there needs to be a balance between our current customers and then outside research to others who are not dealing with us to make sure we get a really good view of that audience, like the entire market or a larger swath of the market to make sure we're identifying opportunities and problems?
George: I think, yeah, that, that definitely helps. I mean, you've got your current best customers also looking at your current worst customers, which is scary, but speaking to them as well. And really nailing down why it's just not a great fit. Because that's probably what it's going to come down to, right? If you've got best customers and you're doing a lot of stuff right. And then for the worst customers, something's not quite clicking and working out what that is. And then those that have churned as well. You know, finding out like what went wrong, why have we stopped working together? And then I would say it's really only once you start to see a limitation in the market for that, that next best set of customers. If you feel like you're going to outgrow that really quickly, would I start looking for other opportunities? I think when you cast the net too wide, you start to lose focus. If you have a bunch of best customers, you know what works really well for them. And then there's a whole market there, that you haven't tapped into. I'd be focusing on that.
Bill: That's a great point because we don't want to start chasing shiny objects. In a prior life, my family owned a company and I had 40 road salespeople that reported to me. I always had this joke that I would go into my dad's office and say, hey, by the way, a salesperson just told me a story. They want us to change our entire go-to-market strategy based off the one conversation they had with someone who didn't buy from us. Right. And you can get caught in that trap, right. Of, well, this customer didn't buy from us because of this. So let's go change our pricing and let's go change our distribution or positioning and like, you know, the entire shooting match. And we have to make sure that we aren't reacting to noise, but that we're recognizing trends and that we're recognizing what's really important to the ideal or dream customer that matters the most to us. Because if we start interviewing a lot of these people we don't know, they might not be dream customers. And they might give us feedback that helps us chase more people we don't want. So no, I appreciate that feedback.
George: No, that's, that's, that's such a great example. I love that. I really love that. Yeah. Look, go deep and narrow on those best customers. And, yeah, chances are there's still a lot more of them out there like that. If that market is limited, then it might be time to start exploring. But also when you really focus on one set of customers, it becomes so easier, so much easier to stay on top of those trends. Right. And what's important to them, it's less to keep track of. You start to see what other services we could be offering because we have such a narrow focus on the marketers that we serve. Like I got so many different ideas as to how else we could be helping them. And once we get the resources, you know, we'll, we'll probably do it if it's something that I find really interesting. But that only came about because we've really understood a narrow segment of the market.
Bill: So George, this is the time in the podcast where I would love to let you just promote what you guys do and your services because 50 Marketing is not an educational resource per se. We're an execution agency. And your space in the market with The B2B Playbook is about educating people on demand generation and the Playbook. And what I would like you to do, if you're willing, is share how people in our audience could get involved with your organization to learn demand gen and implement it in their business. So if you would just run through that, please, the different ways they could get involved.
George: Yeah. Thanks so much, Bill. So we've got what I say, the, the slow free way and the fast paid way, the slow free way heads of the b2bplaybook.com and we lay out our five B's framework for demand generation. It took us like 120 episodes to share pretty much step-by-step how to do it. So if you've got a lot of time and you love taking notes and then you like creating your own templates and resources off the back of it to actually action it, please go through and do that. That's what it's there for. It's there to be taken. If you want the fast paid way, we have a program called The B2B Incubator, which is where we take B2B marketing managers, sometimes business owners into the program and they get all these fundamentals in place that you need to have in place to execute a demand generation engine or then to then put the fundamentals in place and then go to someone like Bill and say, I've got everything you need to really amplify the work that we're doing. And so over those 12 weeks, we get you to do all the exercises you need to do to deeply understand your best customers, to create content all around those five stages of awareness and map that buying journey to then connecting that with accelerating that demand with account-based marketing and paid media. And you document it all very, very nicely over the 12 weeks. We force you to do it all. And then you have something really neat and tidy and you take it to Bill and you say, Bill, we've got the answers you need.
Bill: That's one of the things that has excited me about this relationship and our conversation is what would our dream client be? Graduates of The B2B Playbook who then need help executing, right? Because we do strategy for our clients whenever, so if a client calls us and says, okay, we want to do what they're saying, but we can't do any of it, yeah, will we get in the trenches with them and help them? Sure. But what's really great is when we have a marketing manager who understands what we're trying to do and then just really needs us to help them execute it. Hey, we need videos. Hey, we need content. Hey, we need to have our paid ads handled. Hey, how are we going to distribute and what hooks are we going to use to make sure that this really is amplified in our social media strategy, all of those areas. And so I'm really excited about if any of our listeners would apply to the B2B school, we'll work out some type of arrangement with them where we'll give them a discount on our services if they also use your services or something, because that would help us do our jobs better. And so that's really exciting. George, we'll make sure that our team puts a link in all of the promos and all of the production values that come from this so that they can immediately find you guys. And I have watched your podcast and all of those resources. But I think my recommendation is the slow hard free way is really out of reach for most marketing managers because they need to buy the program and get the resources and go through the process because they will be derailed. They will not stick with it. It will take too much time. And so I think that that would be my recommendation if anybody wants my 20 years of experience. What my advice would be if you find someone who has a playbook, who is a guru, which George and Kevin are gurus on this space, I have looked around, I have watched a lot of other people in this space, and these guys know what they're doing. I would recommend you buy the playbook and get involved. And for full disclosure, I have no financial incentive to say that. We're not affiliates here, we're friends, we're colleagues. So for full disclosure, that is a plug because I believe in these guys and I think they're just doing amazing work. So, George, yeah, no, appreciate you guys coming on, you coming on and sharing with us and just being willing to be open about some of the challenges of demand gen, all the different things our people need to be looking for. And yeah, so George, this has been great. I think we could sit here and talk for probably about 20 hours straight because you and I would get really excited and probably geek out on a lot of the very minute details of your framework. I mean, I jumped around a lot into different areas and asked you questions that I was looking for interesting answers to, which you did a great job and provided a lot of value. So I just want to thank you for coming on and joining us today.
George: Thank you so much for giving me the time and the space to share with your listeners. Awesome to hear more about that. The great work that you guys are doing with your own agency too. And, yeah, thank you so much for having me.
Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Have a great day.