Hi there! It’s Matt with MessageUp.
I love to take what I’ve learned and share it with other people for whom it might be helpful.
It’s incredibly rewarding to hear someone say, “Your advice made the difference,” whether it has impacted their marketing, their company’s growth trajectory, their fundraising efforts, or something else.
However, there’s a limit to how much advice I can give out for free.
If I answered every unsolicited email or call for help, I’d never get anything else done (and wouldn’t even have time to give very good answers).
This is especially true when the person asking for advice is a startup founder or early-stage business leader.
They’re often setting things in motion for the first time, don’t know what they don’t know, and are trying to manage everything on a shoestring budget.
I’m a sucker for helping startups but none of that advice is actually free. It might not cost the founder anything but it carries an opportunity cost to me.
Founder: “Can I buy you coffee and pick your brain for half an hour?”
Advisor: “Do you only value my time at two coffees per hour?”
That’s about $11, given my penchant for skinny peppermint mochas, which is less than the average Starbucks barista makes in Houston ($13.07 per hour, according to Indeed).
If I politely decline, I can invest that time in revenue-generating client work or—harder to accurately value—work for MessageUp itself.
So why do I spend a few hours each week offering advice to people for free?
Because paying it forward ends up paying you back in different ways.
Too many consultants and coaches focus on maximizing their billable hours, generating immediate revenue for themselves or their business.
I understand the appeal. Make hay while the sun shines, is a valid proverb for someone whose expertise is valuable today but won’t remain so for ever.
But perhaps a barnful of hay isn’t the only thing we can make?
I like hay. Hay pays the bills (metaphorically speaking).
I also like having an extensive, supportive, future-business-generating network.
I also like having a reputation for being generous and helpful.
A network to which you have given generously of your time has the potential to pay you back many times over, in hay and other, tastier ways.
Which brings me to the question I find myself answering most frequently.
“I know you’re busy but can you just point me toward the tactics you see working best in B2B content marketing today?”
Oof. If I had a bale of hay for every time I’ve heard some variation of that one.
It’s a tough question because marketing tactics should be driven by customer needs, which makes them business-specific.
Nevertheless, there are some tactics that seem to work effectively, irrespective of the business type or market into which it is selling.
In this week’s post on the Framework blog, I dish up Our 8 Favorite Tactics for B2B Content Marketing, some of which should appear in any B2B company’s content marketing mix.
Absent any company-specific information on which to base a recommendation, I’m going to point future inquirers to this post and suggest they make hay from the ideas it contains.
Operational Updates
In between startup meetings and client work, we continue making solid progress toward the launch of our community for B2B growth professionals, which we’re calling “B2B Builders”.
A near-final draft of the prospectus is in my inbox for review, and the online application has passed its first round of testing.
We will open the membership waitlist and begin sending the prospectus out to an initial group of invitees within the next week.
All being well, I will be sharing a priority link with you in next week’s newsletter, before we begin promoting the community on the MessageUp website and social media.
After that, we will see how quickly the waitlist grows. Our aspiration is to launch the community with its first 100 members by May 1st. (In an ambitious scenario, it will happen much sooner than that…🙂)
Reading and Taking Action
This week, our What We’ve Been Reading collection includes articles on:
Emphasizing content that removes friction from the buyer’s journey.
Marketing-as-a-Service compared to a traditional marketing agency.
Front line employee engagement on social media.
How aspirational content inspires action.
It’s tough to pick a favorite from this week’s foursome. Domenic Colasante’s exposition on marketing-as-a-service really made me think about how different marketing functions should be staffed and handled, while Renae Gregoire’s piece on aspirational content made me realize that the buyer’s journey isn’t just about solving problems and removing pain points. Read them all, then you be the judge!
To round out this week’s edition, my One Step actionable tip is about as short and simple as they get…
Have fun with that, and I’ll see you back here next Wednesday…
Cheers!
~ Matt
Our Latest Posts on The Framework Blog
Feb 21, 2024 - Our 8 Favorite Tactics for B2B Content Marketing
Feb 14, 2024 - 7 Ways to Tell a B2B Buyer That You’re Lazy
What We’ve Been Reading
Here are some articles we’ve been reading this week that we hope you will enjoy and find valuable:
The B2B Buying Journey: 4 Ways to Speed Things Up
We love to see B2B marketers talking about content from the buyer's point of view, emphasizing the importance of content that enables and removes friction from the buyer's journey. In this piece for CMS Wire, Jason Ball, founder of Considered Content, offers tips on optimizing your B2B marketing approach to meet B2B buyers where they are today.
Martech Interview with Domenic Colasante, CEO at 2X
It's great to hear about Marketing-as-a-Service (MaaS) directly from one of its leading practitioners, and this Martech article made us think deeply about which marketing functions should be core and handled in house, and which ought to be outsourced for greater efficiency. We also applaud the way Domenic Colasante differentiates between MaaS and a traditional marketing agency approach.
The Power of Frontline Employee Engagement on Social Media
While this piece by Aubree Smith for Sprout Social is more B2C than B2B, the demand for more authentic marketing from brands is growing on both sides of the house. Her recommendations on—and examples of—different ways to approach front line employee involvement on social media (and elsewhere in your marketing) are worthy of consideration.
Turning Dreams Into Sales: How Aspirational Content Inspires Action
As Renae Gregoire highlights in this piece for Forbes Small Business, too much B2B content focuses on problem-solving and pain points, overlooking the aspirational side of a customer's journey. Aspirational content aligns with the buyer's vision of success and the state they want to achieve by overcoming their challenge. This type of content can be potent because it goes beyond the buyer's immediate problems to connect with their longer-term goals.
Books on B2B Content Marketing
Secure yourself a copy of Content Marketing: Mission Critical, a guide for B2B CEOs, and Content Marketing: Making the Magic Happen, a guide for B2B marketing leaders, in paperback, e-book, or audiobook format, by visiting www.messageup.com/books. There you’ll find discount codes as well as details on limited edition boxed sets that include copies signed by the author.
One Step…
Today’s One Step actionable tip ties back to my comment in the introduction about “paying it forward”.
There are a couple of ways to think about this expression:
Taking kindness and generosity that has been shown to you and behaving similarly toward someone else—i.e., passing along something that you have been given.
Showing kindness and generosity to someone without having been asked (or even having a specific reason) in the belief that someone will behave kindly toward you in the future—i.e., giving something without first having received anything.
They’re both admirable and worthwhile, but I find the second definition slightly more altruistic and challenging.
Why wait for someone to be nice to you before giving generously to someone else?
In fact, why not “pay it forward” even when people haven’t been treating you nicely?
So, here’s today’s straightforward prompt:
Pay it forward, without waiting for anything nice to happen to you.
If you would like to develop the practice further, set yourself a goal of paying it forward—in whatever form or fashion—a certain number of times each week.
If you can make it a daily habit, so much the better—and I’m confident your life will become far richer in the long run.
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