Do you ever feel like you could go hours talking about the technicalities of your business offerings, only to feel like you’re shouting into a black hole? Showcasing your value proposition and strengths isn’t about how much you say – it’s about how effectively you say it. Think about it: technical products are niche by nature, solving very specific problems. Marketing them demands the same level of precision to ensure your solutions are understood and valued.

Why We Believe in a Fractional Marketing Team (And Why We’re Biased)

At Switch, we’ve seen firsthand the power of fractional marketing teams for technical SMBs. It’s true – we’re biased because this is one of the core services we provide. But our belief in this approach isn’t based on what we do, it’s based on what we’ve seen work. We chose to focus on this service because we believe that it’s the best way to grow a business sustainably.

Too often, businesses tend to look for piecemeal solutions to solve an immediate need (or want): a one-off SEO audit, a standalone content strategy, some social media content, or sporadic ad campaigns. These services can help in the short term, but they rarely address the bigger picture. Marketing isn’t just a collection of tasks – it’s a cohesive, long-term effort that connects your brand with your audience, strengthens your positioning, and enables you to partner with clients at a strategic level. By aligning your marketing with your business objectives, you unlock the potential for more meaningful and sustainable growth.

When we work as a fractional marketing team we don’t commit to a certain number of tasks, but instead we promise to put a team of experts together to help you build, and run, a long-term marketing strategy for your brand. Since they’re not contractually beholden to a certain number of posts or efforts, they will do whatever it takes to help you grow your brand. 

With more traditional agreements, if you buy a set of services from an agency, it’s hard for them to come and tell you they’re not working, because the implication is that you’ll reduce their business. So while a long term contract for 8 posts a month might be a very comfortable thing to have for an agency, it’s absolutely not in the interest of the client to have something so rigid in this day and age.

Explore Our B2B Marketing Services

Discover how Switch’s fractional marketing team can help your business grow with tailored strategies designed for long-term success.

The Growth Bottleneck in Technical Companies

Technical businesses thrive on precision, innovation, and problem-solving. But marketing in this context is rarely straightforward. Business leaders often face three key challenges:

1. Complex Products Need Clear Narratives

Your audience doesn’t just need to know what you do, they need to understand:

• Why it matters,
• How it’s different,
• And why it’s better than the alternatives.

Communicating this effectively requires a mix of industry insight and creative storytelling, which is an uncommon combination that’s tough to maintain in-house.

2. Overloaded Teams and Leadership

Marketing often falls to internal teams who are already stretched thin or to C-suite executives whose focus should be elsewhere. This creates a bottleneck:

One of our early conversations with a now-client highlighted this challenge perfectly. Their issue wasn’t closing deals – once they got in the room with potential customers, their conversion rates were exceptional. The problem was getting into those rooms in the first place.

Inconsistent outreach and sporadic communication left their sales team struggling to secure those all-important initial conversations. Marketing gaps weren’t just frustrating, they were holding the business back, even though it was clear where the problem originated from.

3. Fragmented or Inconsistent Communication

When marketing becomes an afterthought, it shows. Inconsistent messaging:

• Confuses potential clients,
• Undermines trust,
• And ultimately reduces conversion rates.

The Case for Smarter B2B Marketing

Whether in-house or outsourced, effective B2B marketing is built on a few key principles:

• Clarity Over Complexity
  Technical products often address niche problems. Simplifying your messaging ensures that your audience understands your product while also seeing its relevance to their challenges.
• Consistency is Key
  The modern B2B buyer engages with brands across multiple touchpoints. A consistent voice and regular communication build trust and keep your company top of mind.
• Strategic Resource Allocation
  Marketing today requires expertise across a range of disciplines: SEO, content creation, paid media, analytics, and the ability to craft thought-leadership content that provokes meaningful conversations. 

Building an in-house team with this breadth of knowledge is a significant investment. Outsourcing gives you access to these capabilities without the overhead.

Why We Think This Works (And Why It’s Different)

Many agencies offer marketing services that feel templated: a fixed number of blog posts, a standard ad package, or off-the-shelf SEO recommendations. These services might fill a gap, but they don’t solve the problem.

What we’ve found works better is an approach that’s deeply tailored to the business. At Switch, this means starting with your business objectives, understanding your technical product, and building a narrative that aligns with your goals. This clarity forms the foundation for every piece of communication, ensuring all efforts – whether content, design, or lead generation – work together to move your business forward.

It’s not about quick fixes; it’s about creating a sustainable strategy that grows with you.

The Switch Way

We work with purpose-driven, innovative B2B companies in technical sectors, to align their marketing with their broader business objectives. From building unique narratives that capture your value, to creating marketing strategies that attract your ideal clients, and executing a plan that provides you with concrete and tangible results, we’re here to work side by side with you in the long term. And we’re committed to helping you grow in a sustainable way with all of the tools you need.

We know outsourcing isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. But for companies ready to focus on their core business while letting a dedicated team drive their marketing forward, it can be a game-changer. And, based on what our clients say about us, we don’t feel like an outsourced team. We feel like we’re part of your team, your favourite part, most of the time.

A Transparent Invitation

We’re upfront about it – this is what we do, and we’re passionate about it because we’ve seen it work. If you’re exploring how to make your marketing more impactful, let’s have a conversation. Whether or not working with a fractional team is the right step for you, we’re happy to share insights and help you think through your options.

The post Fractional Marketing:  B2B Marketing Teams for Technical Companies appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you didn’t join live and would like to access the recording, click the Access Recording button below.

This webinar explores what commoditisation is, why it’s a trap, and, most importantly, how to escape it.

It covers:

• Understanding commoditisation
• Recognising the symptoms
• Strategies for de-commoditisation
• Switch’s Journey & the CATALYST Framework
• Q&A

Presented by Richard Muscat Azzopardi, CEO at Switch

The post A Guide to De-commoditisation for B2B Businesses [Webinar] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

It also covers the common symptoms of being commoditised, so you can identify if you’re heading down that path (and hopefully correct your course early enough in the process).

The post A Deep-Dive into De-Commoditisation [eBook] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

If you’re in marketing, it’s what you know about marketing to businesses that sell to businesses. 

And that’s information that changes quickly, changes dramatically, and changes without warning. It’s information that moves on social media and through networks.

That’s just the nature of B2B, of marketing in general, and of what happens when businesses grow the way they do. It’s exciting. It’s difficult to keep up with. It’s hard to know what you don’t know. 

Fortunately, to learn what you don’t know there’s always courses. 

And here are 12 of the best to get you started (and no: we’re not affiliated with these. We’re just a fan).

Are B2B Marketing courses still important in 2024?

Definitely. 

Even if you’re prepared to put your money where your business is and attend every networking event, there’s going to be information you miss out on, or lessons learned that change as soon as you get the hang of it. A B2B marketing course fills in the gaps you don’t know of, letting you bridge the information barrier between what you understand and what you don’t. 

Who are B2B marketing courses even for?

Everyone who wants to learn a little more about B2B. 

Will they make you an expert in B2B communications? Sure, if you take enough of them – but if you don’t want to take too many courses, at least they can teach you what the best-in-class looks like across the industry.  

I don’t have time to take courses, I just want better B2B for my business. 

That’s fair. And to that, we say this: 

B2B marketing is an industry that relies on personal connection. Our advice to you if you don’t want to do your own B2B – find a business you can have a conversation with, a business who’ll tell you the way it is, and a business who’ll push back against your ideas if they don’t agree that they’re the most effective. 

You want better B2B. That means talking to people who understand your business, and want the best for you.

General B2B Marketing courses 

1. LinkedIn B2B Marketing

Bite-sized lessons on everything from writing a B2B marketing plan to working out a pricing strategy, in LinkedIn’s clean-cut video format. Courses are led by experts in their field and can be accessed from anywhere, and on pretty much any device. If you’re already familiar with LinkedIn, this would be our bet to start off with. 

2. Account-Based Marketing 2022 

Udemy has a lot of B2B marketing courses, but this one is one of the best-reviewed and the most comprehensive. If you’re looking to refine your account-based marketing strategy and to learn how to apply it to real-life cases, this course can teach you the basics and the steps to take to keep building on what you’ve learned. Buying the course grants you lifetime access, and if you’re not sold on the content, you can get your money back in 30 days with no hassle.

3. International B2B Marketing

If you’re looking to take your business operations international, this course can definitely help put you on the right path to cross-country marketing. Taught by Dae Ryun Chang, a professor of Marketing at Yonsei University in Korea, it’s one of the highest-rated courses on Coursera for good reason: the information you can get from it is invaluable. It’s 100% online, and you can take your time to complete it, so if you’re worried about not having enough time to finish up your course: don’t be.

Inbound B2B Marketing courses

4. Inbound Marketing Certification

Hubspot is an unmatched resource for any marketer: not only do they have a finger on the pulse of what’s happening in marketing, they also provide some very valuable resources from all over the internet, all for marketers of varying experiences. Their Hubspot Academy has dozens of courses, certified and not, that are taught by experts in their field and can be taken over the course of a few lunchbreaks – and it’s free. 

5. ImpactPlus Inbound Marketing Course

Run by inbound marketing experts Impact, what makes these courses unique is how easy it is to pick and choose which units you want to focus on: while they’re available as a complete learning experience, it’s up to you to decide if you want to undertake each and every lesson. There’s a lot of information packed into them, so you won’t be learning strictly inbound marketing, but that works out for the better: everything in marketing is interconnected, and the sooner you learn to see where they link, the easier it is to make connections that help your business grow. 

Google Analytics B2B Marketing courses

6. Google Analytics Academy

The best way to learn about Google Analytics is from the experts: Google themselves. Their Analytics Academy course walks you through everything from the first steps to take to start measuring your results to how to use Google Tag Manager and Data Studio. At the moment, the courses they have available are still based on Universal Analytics, which will stop processing data on July 1, but there is an outbound link that can take you to their free courses on Google Analytics 4, the successor to Universal Analytics. 

If you’re not sure why you need to know about Google Analytics, we’ve written a little about it here. 

There are other Google Analytics courses: at Udemy, Coursera, and LinkedIn, all of which are great if you prefer to go outside of the Googlesphere. However, for the most detailed understanding of Google Analytics, it’s hard to triumph over the company that created it. 

Social Media B2B Marketing courses

Caveat: social media marketing for B2B can tend to be a lot more trial and error than the previous categories we’ve spoken about. If you know your audience, you know what your audience wants to see, and you know how to talk to them, chances are that these courses can only really help you with understanding how to best leverage the platform you’re using. This doesn’t mean that you’re wasting your time; far from it. Understanding the platform can go a long way to making sure your message gets through. 

7. LinkedIn Marketing, Lead Generation & B2B Sales for LinkedIn

This is one of the most subscribed courses at Udemy, and with good reason: LinkedIn is a booming platform for B2B marketing, and can really help you connect with your audience, if your audience is primarily on LinkedIn. For B2B marketing agencies specifically: your audience is on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is also an underrated platform, especially for B2B, which gives you a little bit of an advantage when it comes to connecting with the kind of people who can bring in new business for your company. 

8. Grow and Convert’s Content Marketing Course

Social media is content. Good content on social media travels. Content that travels brings business back to you. 

The trick, then, is to make sure that all your content is good content – and to do that, you need to know what to talk about. Grow and Convert’s marketing course walks you through it all: from topics to choose to how to write your content in a way that reads well and ranks even better, and how to plan out your content to make sure that you’re never caught without something to talk about. 

9. Ahref’s Blogging for Business

A blog can do a lot for you – but it’s true that you can have a hard road ahead of you to get that blog off the ground. Ahrefs has a free course that can simplify the road for you. 

In 40 lessons, Ahrefs goes through the fundamentals of a blog, the way you can grow your blog, and how to then maintain and boost that growth. It’s one of the best resources online for blogging that demystifies and debunks old blogging practices that no longer work, such as keyword stuffing and writing blogs intended for machines instead of human readers, and it’s a course anyone struggling with their content should keep on the backburner for when they have the time to take it. 

SEO B2B Marketing courses

10. SEO for beginners

Even if you’re not a beginner, you can benefit from refreshing your memory with Yoast’s SEO course. SEO can be confusing, and it definitely impacts a lot of the way we form content today, so understanding it is a must for any business regardless of whether they’re B2B or B2C. Yoast’s free course goes through the technicalities of SEO with a fine-toothed comb and explains the concepts using easy to understand language and ideas – and they build on it in follow up courses that delve deeper into how to apply SEO for different purposes. 

Additionally, the Yoast SEO academy, of which this course forms a part, also has a practical element and templates that are free to use for all students. 

11. On-Page and Technical SEO Course

Semrush is a world-class authority on SEO, and any SEO course in their academy is worth taking – however, if you’re specifically interested in how to boost your website and optimise your business online, their on-page and technical SEO course will teach you everything you need to know. It’s free to enroll, and relatively ‘short’, so it does need a basic understanding of SEO, but if you’re a content creator or an SEO specialist, this course can definitely go a long way towards helping you refine your SEO skills. 

And you can even get certified by Semrush. 

12. SEO Training Masterclass: Beginner SEO to Advanced SEO

With over 70,000 students enrolled, this SEO training course consistently rates as one of the best SEO resources available on the internet – and while it is a paid course, it covers a lot of information all in one place. From WordPress SEO to link building SEO, if you’re truly a beginner and you want to get better faster, and learn how to take your SEO to the next level, this is the course we’d recommend. It evolves with the best-practice SEO methods, so even if you might have finished it already, we recommend keeping an eye on future updates. 

Are B2B marketing courses worth it?

Absolutely. 

B2B marketing courses aren’t going to make you a good B2B marketer – that’s going to be up to you. What these courses do provide is knowledge, and lots of it: knowledge about how to generate leads, knowledge about which social media platforms to pay attention to, knowledge about content, knowledge about SEO, knowledge about growth. What you choose to do with the information afterwards will determine if it’s worth it for you. 

We think they are. 

B2B marketing is a dense field, and it keeps growing. Having a little help along the way to understand the trickier parts of an industry that keeps changing faster than most can keep up with is an excellent way to make sure you’re not left behind, and that you know what’s going on. Information, especially in B2B, is powerful – and it can make a business. 

That said, you don’t need to take the courses if you don’t have the time or you don’t want to. 
If all you’re looking for is a B2B marketing agency to do the hard parts for you, that works too.

The post The 12 Best B2B Marketing Courses appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

In 2023, the big shakeup of generative AI, a growing dissatisfaction amongst consumers, and ongoing crises around the world have led to trends that we’ve already seen before, but given them newer, sharper importance.

2024 could be a year of diving profits, increasing dissatisfaction, and an impossible-to-overcome disconnect. Instead, the trends we’ve seen coming for this year leave a lot of room for hope: brands are still going strong, consumers still look to business as their guide into a more sustainable and supportive future, and small changes in the way we work have led to gigantic leaps for the better.

We’ve looked at BI. We’ve looked at consumer macro trends. We’ve looked at social media, marketing, brand and storytelling trends.

Now we’re handing it over to you. Everything we’ve researched, everything we’ve put together, everything you need to make sense of 2024 and start strengthening your business for the now, and the beyond-now.

May it serve you well!

P.S. Want more of this kind of content? Sign up to our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn!

The post The Big Book of Trends 2024 [Free eBook] appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Fortunately, you’ve already done part one of the work that comes with scaling up your tech business: you know your audience. To open up a tech business, knowing your audience is often the first fundamental step, the one that will dictate what will happen next in your business journey. Once you have that background ready, the next steps are figuring out what value you can add to their lives beyond the product.

This is where content marketing comes in. Content marketing adds value to your consumers by using your expertise to generate information for them. From blogs to customer insights to sector-specific expertise, content marketing showcases a side of your business to your audience that they might find difficult to see just through using your products.

Here are a few content marketing tactics that work to continue scaling up your business, no matter what business you’re in.

Know your content’s value proposition

There’s a hell of a lot of content out of there, and most of it is great content, and that opens up the next question: why should people read your content over anyone else’s? This is where your content needs to shine. So, before you actually get started producing that content, know what you’re going to deliver with it that makes it impossible for your intended audience to skip past it.

Bite-sized content

As we said: there’s a lot of really good content out there, and it can be difficult for your audience to decide which content they should focus on, especially if your content tends to be on the longer side. While we’re not saying you should shorten your content fully, a summary or a bite-sized piece of content that draws the most salient facts to the forefront is a good way of attracting attention and providing value while not taking up too much of their time.

Build a success template

If you already have an idea of what a successful piece of content does and delivers, this step will be easy. Once you’ve had a good, crafted piece of content already, recreating that success is a matter of understanding the formula you used to get to that Is it a combination of the colours that you used for a graphic, a certain structure for a blog? Whatever it is, identify and create templates based on what a successful piece of content looks like, and then strive to push past that limitation with every consecutive piece of work.

Identifying and setting KPIs will work well here. Additionally, knowing what results you want to strive for can help you build a successful pattern that is easy to replicate for future content.

Vary your content

It’s easy to just stick your content creation in one basket and hope for the best, however varying your content throughout the month has a much better chance of attracting the interest of your audiences. Your audiences might not read every blog post you put out, but varying your content between blogs, charts, polls, and personal opinions will give your consumers a much fuller view of the scope of your company’s capabilities.

Content marketing tactics can be tricky to get right to start with and then easy to replicate the success of once you do understand what sort of content works best, but until you get there, it’s just a matter of trial-and-error testing until you see results.

Using content to scale up your business isn’t quick, but providing content that adds value to your consumers’ lives with no necessary requirement for purchase is necessary for positioning your brand as an expert in its industry. It helps build a significant amount of trust – and it’s trust that will encourage your customers to work with you and to stick around for a long time.

The post Scaling Up Your Tech Company: Content Marketing Tactics that Work appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

As a business owner, you already know who that someone is, even if you haven’t put it into words yet. The reason your brand exists, the purpose that carries it, has to do with that someone that it’s speaking to, no matter who that someone is – whether it’s communicating with a younger audience and waiting for them to come into their own enough to purchase, or attracting the specific kind of niche that the products and services you offer deal with, your brand speaks for a reason. 

The people that listen are your audience, your potential customer, the people that keep your brand in business. 

Understanding who these people are is vital. A mismatch between your brand or product and the way your brand speaks is a problem; a mismatch between your brand and who it’s speaking to is an even bigger problem. Without someone listening at the end of your marketing, you’ll be speaking to no one. With no one listening, your brand’s in stasis. When your brand is in stasis, it doesn’t adapt or grow. 

And when your brand doesn’t grow, your brand doesn’t survive. 

When you create marketing personas, you’re creating who your brand is speaking to so it can survive and grow. These personas are your audience: the people that frequent your brand the most. 

Here’s how to build personas that you can market to. 

1. Talk to people. 

Your brand already has the audience in mind. Now you need to talk to them so you can see what they’re really like. Surveys, studies, product research, reaching out to members of your audience to find out what they’re like – it’s all information you can use, and more importantly, information you can adapt. If you have a dedicated audience already, great: use it. If not, it’s time to go digging into where your brand lives to see who’s using your products or services most often. 

2. Examine who reaches out to you first. 

Chances are, there have been people who’ve reached out to you before you’ve reached out to them, and that kind of cold outreach is critical to understanding both who’s most interested in your products and what led them to reach out to you in the first place. Talk to your sales team, go through your inbox, find out where the leads are coming from. Are they finding you on Google? Do they just see your ads on billboards? Where are they going when they do? Once you have those answers, you’ll have an idea of where your brand exists relative to your audience’s lives. 

3. Know what kind of persona won’t go for your services. 

Just as there’s a perfect persona that will reach out to you and be happy with your products, there’s audiences out there who will never use your business, and that’s fine – but you still need to know who those audiences are. Knowing what doesn’t, and who isn’t, interested in your products works the same as knowing who is: it’ll give you the context that your brand exists in. 

Your brand exists because it talks to other people and it listens. Knowing who those people are, and being able to adapt to the changing audiences as you go, is critical to growing and adapting your brand to new challenges, and if you need help figuring out the how and why, we’re happy to guide you through it.

The post 3 Tips for Building Great Personas to Market To appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

In an increasingly divisive world, where massive global issues are affecting consumers’ livelihoods, the last bastion of trust lies with businesses. Over 62% of global citizens consider businesses as the most worthy of trust – but this doesn’t mean that they’re going to trust your brand, especially if you haven’t put in the effort to generate that credibility. 

Building credibility and trust as a business should be one of your first priorities. This is especially true for tech businesses, an industry in which bad news travels uncannily fast. Tech has the problem of a sector which is both plagued by bad operators and also can be impenetrable to the outsider. One negative experience can quickly affect the way people think about all tech companies across the board, no matter if you have something to do with that aspect of the industry or not. Just think of what happened when the Cambridge Analytica scandal came to light, and you’ll understand how important generating trust for tech should be. 

However, there’s a caveat. 

Trust is not a value you can hard-code into your brand. Trust is earned. Trust takes time to build. Trust can be easily lost. Simply saying that your brand is trustworthy won’t make people trust you. 

It takes proof. 

Why do I care if my clients trust me or not if they still provide me with business?

If your clients provide you with business for now, it’s not necessarily a guarantee that they’ll stay with you. Businesses of any size are not infallible, and while it’s hopeful that your business won’t go through a scandal, the truth is this: businesses go through scandals. Something, no matter how big or small it is in the great scheme of things, will come to light that will affect the way that your consumers look at you, and that means that you need to prepare for the eventuality that you will lose business as a result of this. 

Trust mitigates a lot of the risk of losing business. 

Having clients that trust your business means having clients that understand that, sometimes, bad things just happen, and that you can take steps to rectify it and make sure this will not happen again. Clients who trust you will keep coming back to you, even if it’s a service you’re not strictly advertising. Clients who trust you will recommend your business to their friends. 

Consider the Net Promoter Score. 

The Net Promoter Score is a metric that measures customer loyalty. A high NPS is worth its weight in gold, and outweighs any money you spend on marketing – and earning trust will go a long way towards building high NPS. Having a high NPS also has other benefits: it’s not only cost-effective, it’s a growth strategy that pays indefinitely – provided you maintain that same level of trust for your consumers. 

Clients who trust you won’t look at the one negative review out of thousands and turn away from purchasing your products and services. Clients who trust you have the personal experience that they need to make that decision without relying on external factors or additional reviews. 

How do I build that trust and credibility?

It takes time to build up your company as one to trust, but it’s worth the effort and the time you take into making your company a trustworthy company. 

Bear in mind that trust is built, not bought. Trust is a result of your actions and the way you treat your consumers. Trust is what you value. If you understand that as a first point, the rest will become far easier to implement. 

Maintain consistent results.

This is true for every business, and it’s true for every tip on this list: you need to maintain the same results as when you started, or improve on them. This makes you reliable, which makes you more trustworthy, which makes clients more likely to sign on. 

Explain the way you work.

Tech is a business that has a tendency to be difficult to understand, and making sure your client understands and taking the extra time to really drive that understanding home will make a big difference in whether or not your client will come back for repeat services. 

Put testimonials on your site.

Tech is expensive to invest in, particularly for small businesses, and so having proof of the positive experiences your clients have is important. More importantly, reviews from other consumers matter – and it’s far more likely for your customers to go looking for other peoples’ opinions before they take the plunge and make a purchase from your business. 

Rectify mistakes immediately.

Listen, it happens: sometimes you plan for an outcome and the unintended happens. Tech has an undeserved reputation for being purposefully difficult to fix, so be the outlier and make sure any mistakes made, regardless of whose fault it is, are fixed immediately. 

Use your platform to showcase your thinking.

Clients might not fully understand what you’re talking about, but thought leadership is important: not only does it show that you’re up to date, but it also shows that you have opinions on what’s happening – you’re a thought leader. This is crucial in tech’s fast-changing environment, particularly if you know your clients will immediately want to try whatever new technology is coming to the market.

Have a professional, easy-to-navigate way to contact you.

Whether this is a business, an app, or a LinkedIn profile, you should have a place online where any potential client can see what you do, how you do it, and the way you do things differently. This will let the client get to know you before they’ve even formulated what they want out of your business, and might make it easier for them to take the final plunge into contacting you. 

Treat every client like a new client.

It happens to the best of us: once you get comfortable with a client, things can get a little more relaxed, which isn’t a bad thing – however, maintaining that professionalism in the face of friendliness is even more critical when you’re familiar and friendly with your client, as it limits the risk that things get pushed back unnecessarily. 

Building trust isn’t a race: it’s a process, a long one, that takes time and effort to get right – but the rewards are more than worth the initial work you put into it. 

The post Why Trust Matters: Insights for Tech Business Owners appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

So, why is this the case?

B2B companies tend to occupy niches very comfortably. Over time, they specialise in what they do best, and are known within the industry as a specific service provider in that area. And as long as the business leads keep coming in, they generally don’t feel the need to communicate externally much, if at all.

There are two problems with this.

• If the market is somehow disrupted (e.g. new competitor, new product, supply chain issue, economic collapse, global pandemic), then this company can suddenly find that its usual supply of leads has dried up, and has no alternatives.
• Unless the individuals in the company responsible for business development (usually the CEO or founder) is solely focused on creating business, then the supply of leads can be irregular, and is dependent on a single individual, which is inherently risky.

Using LinkedIn for B2B: An exchange of value

This is where a LinkedIn B2B strategy can help.

Most social media communication, be it from brands or otherwise, is a form of value exchange. The source of the content provides value through what they post, and the audience provides attention and engagement in return. If the value being provided by the content isn’t up to the audience’s expectations or needs, then attention and engagement will reflect that.

This absolutely applies for B2B companies on LinkedIn. Brands provide good content, and in return they will receive consideration of their service and hopefully a boost in reputation with their audience. 

However, a piece of content that basically says ‘We are great at this! You should trust your business’s needs to us!’ isn’t of much value to the audience. 

So what does great LinkedIn B2B content look like?

It addresses pain points

A piece of content that provides actionable insight or information that addresses a key pain point that your target audience experiences is of immense value. It may sound simple enough, but understanding exactly who your audience is and what their specific pain-points are is an exercise that may prove more extensive than you may initially think.

The more relatable content you can provide to your audience, the more likely your business will be considered the next time a member of your target market is looking to change suppliers.

It’s consistent 

Building a strong reputation takes time and patience. After starting to post for the first time, leads won’t start pouring in immediately. 

But don’t be discouraged.

In our experience it can take over 6 months to begin seeing the fruits of your labour in the form of business leads, as long as the effort is consistent. The upside is that the source of these leads is sustainable in the long run, and doesn’t rely on personal connections. 

It leads and participates in market conversation

You must be able to show that your team is innovating and actively thinking about the present and future of the market it operates in. By showing thought leadership in your field, any potential future clients would feel at ease knowing that you have all the bases covered, and that you’re already preparing for market changes. 

It’s self-improving

Through the engagement and results received from previous content, you must be able to adapt communication based on what your audience actively responds to and finds valuable. Remember, just because you think something is great doesn’t mean your audience shares your feelings. Don’t communicate to yourself.

Where do I start my LinkedIn journey?

First, you need to revisit your business. Analyse exactly what you do, why you do it, and who you do it for. Only with those elements clear in your mind can you develop a narrative that you can outwardly communicate with value and consistency. If you’ve never considered your business purpose and audiences in any sort of depth, now is the time to do so. 

If you’re not sure where to start, get in touch with us for a no-strings-attached chat with our CEO, Richard, by clicking here.

The post LinkedIn for B2B: How to Use Regular Posts to Boost Reputation & Trust appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.

Positive, recent testimonials showcase the best of your ability to please your clients and fulfill their business needs. They function as a high-speed word-of-mouth, telling prospective clients that you can be trusted and, more importantly, you can exceed their expectations.

Here are five ways you can get those great client testimonials right where you need them: online, where everyone can see. 

1. LinkedIn recommendations.

If you’re not on LinkedIn yet – or if you’re on LinkedIn, but you’re not using it to its fullest extent – this is step one to take into consideration. LinkedIn recommendations allow your clients to tag you personally, but those recommendations will be visible to everyone in their network, giving you a much bigger platform than your own website might provide. 

2. End-of-work survey. 

Put a little bit of effort into creating a survey that you can send out to your clients when you complete a job for them – and make sure to make it as easy and as painless to fill it out as possible. The best time to get the client testimonials you need is right after the work is complete, when the job is still fresh in your clients’ mind. While we’re sure you have a feedback form in mind, this is slightly different: it asks your client what the overall project experience was like, and it doesn’t need to be as complicated as a feedback form, making it much more likely that your client will fill it out fast. 

3. Showcase your projects. 

All the client testimonials in the world won’t help you generate business if you don’t show the proof of your work – but it goes deeper than that. It can’t just be a case of putting your favourite projects into a slideshow on your website and hoping for the best: you need a dedicated section where you can show your work, talk about the thinking behind it, and add in that client feedback that we mentioned above. The more detailed an explanation there is, the more insight a prospective client gains into the way you work – and the more your existing testimonials will be put into perspective. 

4. Give your clients somewhere to put their reviews. 

Building a good relationship with your clients aside, making their lives a lot easier is part and parcel of generating the kind of testimonials that you’d be proud to display on your website. If you’re in constant contact, you might want to provide them a link to somewhere they can leave feedback; if not, make sure your website is easy to navigate, and include a testimonial page as a matter of course. The easier you make it to leave reviews, the much more likely your clients will be happy to provide you with reviews – and to recommend you to their business partners, friends, and family. 

5. The personal touch is key. 

Beyond ease and convenience, there’s a single important factor you need to keep in mind: no client is going to review your work if they feel like a simple entry in your business process. While it’s going to take a little extra time on your end, building a relationship with your client isn’t just important – it’s becoming increasingly necessary just to do business, let alone to generate feedback on your work. Above everything else, a good relationship with your client will smooth the road for that testimonial you can put your company reputation behind – and open up new opportunities for growth. 

Testimonials are an effective and cost-effective way to build your brand reputation within the industry, and it can definitely lead to new work opportunities in the long run, but it can be complicated to navigate on your own. If you need help setting up your external communication as a B2B company, drop us a line, and let’s do this!

The post How to Generate Testimonials: B2B Tech Edition appeared first on Switch - Digital & Brand.