A damn good guide to B2B digital marketing

A damn good guide to
b2b digital marketing
10 steps to Making an impact
and attracting new leads online

You don’t have to spend a fortune (or
work the weekends) to see a huge
return on digital marketing
Digital marketing can be hugely exciting. Getting
comments on your blogposts, welcoming new
Twitter followers and seeing your email
subscribers soar. It can also be frustrating -
there’s so much potential there to grow your
client base, but no time and no definitive
place to start.

However you feel about it, digital marketing is
THE best, most efficient way to regularly reach
out to your customers and generate new leads.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is anything online that
promotes your business. Your website, blog and
videos. It also includes social media platforms
such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Digital
adverts fall under this heading too but they work
much better for B2C than they do for B2B, so we’ll
leave them on the backburner for now.

What is content marketing?

Content marketing is any type of digital marketing
that allows you to tell a story. People can learn
from content, interact with it and share it. A
blogpost is a good example, you can explore ideas
through it and share your opinions. Content
marketing doesn’t feel like advertising. It feels
useful and inspiring – because it is.
Through content marketing, you can establish
yourself as a HR thought leader.
3 things we want you to take away from this
guide:
1. Great results don’t cost a fortune

Marketing agencies don’t want you to know this,
but you can make a massive impact with a modest
budget. Large enterprises have the cash-flow and
time to wait for long-term, highly customised
strategies to pay off - SMEs don’t.
There are a lot of non-essential investments
people will try to convince you to make. For
example, you do not need a custom-built website.
A WordPress site is free and easy to use. You know
who has a WordPress site? The New York Times.
2. You can achieve three impressive results in
just 10 steps
The results you should be aiming for are:
•  4,000 unique visitors to your website a month
•  2,000 email subscribers
•  1% conversion rate for website visitors to email
subscribers
We call this the ‘4/2/1’ strategy. These 10 steps
should get you there in 12 months (although we’ve
seen clients get there in anything from 6 – 18
months).
3. Get out there and start!
The beauty of digital marketing is that it’s all
about constant optimisation. Don’t worry about
getting things wrong, just test them. You can
over-invest in strategy as a small business, when
you could be out there attracting new business.
Once you’ve ticked off your 10 steps, you’ll be
operating a great, best-practise digital marketing
strategy. Only then will you need a more
customised approach.
2
Until you hit a certain scale,
there’s no cost/benefit return
in breaking away from best-
practice digital marketing
This guide will get you there

3

A quick health check
If you answered “not yet” to any
question (or you don’t know), the
4/2/1 strategy will provide the
foundation you need right now
If you answered “yes” to all
three questions, then you’re
ready for more custom B2B
marketing strategy
Do you have more than 4,000
unique monthly visitors to your
website?
Do you have an email
distribution list with more than
2,000 prospects?
Do you convert visitors from
your website onto your email list
at >1%?
Yes Not yet
Yes Not yet
Yes Not yet

Your 10-step roadmap
4
Get a great looking
Wordpress website and
activate Google Analytics2
Activate your existing
contacts through a weekly
newsletter3Capture leads on your
website with a well written
pop-up, offering valuable
content
4
Build website content
to support your
expert positioning5
Pick one theme and five
keywords to build weekly
content around.6
Publish one piece of
original content each week.
Consistency is critical7
Engage with
influencers on
Twitter and
LinkedIn to drive
traffic
8
Turn existing content into a
valuable resource pack.
Build a simple landing page
to collect email addresses
in return for this download
9
Repeat and optimise until
you’ve got 4000 unique
visitors per month and
2000 email subscribers
converting at >1%
10
Define your expert
positioning1
Congratulations, YOU’VE ARRIVED
You’ve got a solid traffic base and the foundations for strong thought leadership.
You’re ready to look at more advanced and custom marketing strategy.

5
1. positioning
Nothing kills a bad company faster than
good marketing”
It’s critical to make sure your market positioning is right first.
Be clear and be specific.

Stage 1: Define your expert positioning
Why it’s important to do it now
Thought leadership gets returns because
your prospects remember you as the go-to
expert. So when they have a problem, you’re
the first person they call.
This means that getting a return is pinned
on your positioning. The way you describe
your expertise and the problems you help
solve defines the kind of clients you will
attract.
Getting your expert positioning right is a
critical piece of every stage of this strategy,
because ultimately it’s essential to the
return that you’ll achieve.
Getting your positioning right here is the
foundation that everything else builds upon.
Thought leadership (or inbound marketing
as it’s sometimes alternatively known) is
only as good as your ability to match your
content with what you’re ultimately going
to be selling.
What you need to do at this stage
•  Take some time to describe the problems
that you solve (from a client perspective).
It’s worth a few minutes of thinking
because these small pieces of copy will
get used so many times over the coming
months.
•  It’s important to get out of your head.
How do your clients describe your
expertise? It’s worth asking for third
party validation.
•  Write a fantastic ‘about’ page and your
elevator pitch. How should people
describe you? “[Name] is an expert in …”
You can use the TLP thought leadership
framework to get started. This is a great
step-by-step resource in defining how you
want people to remember you. Find the
framework here:
thoughtleadershippartners.com/one-page-
tl-framework
What it’s not worth doing
•  Don’t spread your expertise too thin..
This is an often fatal mistake for small
businesses. People will only think about
you as an expert in one field. So make
sure they remember you as their go-to
expert in a field aligned to the products
you want to sell.
6
•  What do you want people to remember you as an expert in?
•  Your expert positioning is the foundation for digital marketing success
•  You can only be remembered as an expert in one area (so be specific)

WORDPRESS GIVES YOU HUGE FLEXIBILITY TO
MOVE FAST LATER. IT’S A DECISION YOU
WON’T REGRET.
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2. Website

Stage 2: Get a great-looking
wordpress website (with analytics)
Your website is your virtual shopfront. It’s
where you attract and sell your prospects.
It’s the basis for all your digital marketing
efforts. So it’s important that you’ve got a
great-looking and functional website.
But it’s also important that you’ve got a
highly flexible website that will allow for
fast and frequent changes at a later stage.
•  Use Wordpress. The Wordpress
framework makes sure that you’ll always
be using a cutting-edge content
management system. There’s a bunch of
great-looking templates that you can
find using Themeforest.
•  Install Google Analytics to track visitors
(and where they came from). There’s also
a range of more advanced measures you
can track at a later stage.
•  Professional appearance is important,
but don’t overinvest. Your site will
change frequently as you trial a range of
plug-ins.
•  Don’t build too many pages right now,
keep it simple. Make sure you’ve got a
great-looking and professional
homepage, about page, contact page and
some detail on your current product
offers. Using WordPress means you can
add more pages quickly at any stage.
•  Don’t let a developer talk you into a
custom site. It’s not worth it and will
slow you down longer term. You need
the flexibility of WordPress to add
plugins that will manage lead capture
and acquisition.
If someone is trying to talk you out of
WordPress, we’d encourage you to go
and have a look at all the brand name
sites that use the platform here
https://wordpress.org/showcase/ (Hint:
the New York Times, CNN and Time
Magazine)

8
•  Your website is your virtual shopfront. So make sure it sells!
•  Using WordPress now will save significant time and money later
•  Web analytics are easy and important in tracking success
Recommended tools:

9
3. Existing contacts
EVERY TIME WE SEND THE NEWSLETTER I HAVE TO
BLOCK OUT HALF A DAY IN THE DIARY FOR CALLS FROM
MY CUSTOMER BASE.
IT'S AMAZING HOW MUCH BUSINESS WE'VE DRIVEN BY
STAYING FRONT OF MIND ON A FREQUENT BASIS.”
- GILLIAN FOX (TLP CLIENT)

Stage 3: Activate your existing contacts
To get started it’s important to take
advantage of the marketing resources that
you already have. One resource you most
likely have is a list of email contacts that
you never touch base with.
Because these people are already familiar
with you at some level, they’re the easiest
prospects to engage. Once they’re highly
engaged, these people will provide a great
base to share your content and broaden the
reach of your subsequent content.
But first, it’s critical to get these latent
contacts engaged. As we talk about
throughout this guide, you build
engagement by being genuinely helpful, and
doing this frequently. The easiest way to
start providing value is through a curated
thought leadership newsletter. In a world of
so much content and so little time, you’re
helping your prospects figure out what’s
really worth reading (and at the same time
reinforcing your expert positioning).
Thought leadership relies on you being
front of mind. Getting to this position
requires frequent contact. And thought
leadership newsletters are one of the
easiest ways to get into the habit of hitting
the inbox on a weekly basis.
Don’t underestimate just how many of your
contacts will call you just because you’ve
popped up in their inbox again.
•  Build a mailing list of all your current
contacts. Make sure you use LinkedIn as
well to identify contacts who you might
not have email addresses for (make sure
you get marketing permission).
•  Sign up for MailChimp and use this to
manage your weekly email distribution.
MailChimp is the market leading
platform and is incredibly easy to use.
•  MailChimp has professional looking
templates that you can update with your
logo, but we recommend spending a few
extra dollars to get a custom template
matching your corporate theme
•  Collect 5-7 articles each week that you
know professionals in your space will
find valuable. It’s critical that you
distribute every week – you want your
prospects to rely on you for their weekly
expert update
•  Focus on adding value before you start
spamming your contacts with any
“special offers”. We recommend valuable
content : sales content ratio never
exceed 4:1
10
•  The cheapest prospects are the contacts that you already have
•  Front-of-mind expert awareness comes from being helpful, every week
•  Positioning and frequent contact will drive thought leadership
Recommended tools:

11
4. New leads
EVERYTHING YOU DO IN B2B DIGITAL MARKETING
STRATEGY IS FOCUSED ON CAPTURING THE EMAIL.
EMAIL ADDRESSES ARE BY FAR THE MOST
VALUABLE B2B MARKETING ASSET.

Stage 4: Start capturing leads with an
email sign up form and pop up
Almost everything we do in B2B Digital
marketing strategy is focused on capturing
the email address of the prospect. Email
addresses are by far the most valuable B2B
marketing asset.
Once we’ve got the email address, we build
an ongoing relationship through frequent,
valuable content. But all of that comes to
nothing if we don’t get the email address to
start with.
There’s two ways to capture the email
address that we’re going to focus on at this
stage (and then one more in stage 9). We do
the pop-up and sign-up form at this stage
because they’re quick and easy.
The aim here isn’t to force every visitor to
sign up – it’s to make sure that every visitor
is aware of your newsletter and the benefits
that they’ll get from subscribing.
•  Write a brief pitch for your weekly
newsletter. Why should people sign up?
Save some of the great pieces of
feedback you’ve had about the
newsletter and use these as testimonials.
•  Because you’re using WordPress, it’s easy
to install a simple email sign up form and
pop-up. We recommend you install and
activate MailChimp Signup and
PopupAlly. Both are free (PopupAlly also
has a pro version) and have simple step
by step guides for activation.
•  Take your pitch and include this in both
the sign-up form and pop-up. Make sure
it’s clear what benefit they’ll receive on a
weekly basis.
•  Make sure you include a call to action,
such as “Subscribe now” or “Click here to
subscribe”. This language can
dramatically boost sign-up rates.
•  New subscribers will receive an email
from MailChimp asking them to confirm
their subscription. Do write a nice
thankyou note that tells them about
some of the great content they’ll be
receiving soon.
•  Make sure you use a pop-up that
remembers your visitors. We want to
give them a nudge, rather than an
aggressive push every time they enter
the site. Your pop-up should reappear
for each visitor once every 10-14 days.
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•  Now that you’ve got a thought leadership mailing list, make it easy for
prospects to sign up
•  Make sure you clearly state the value proposition (with a call to action)
Recommended tools:

CONTENT = CREDIBILITY
13
5. Write content

Stage 5: Build content to support your
expert positioning
Content is time consuming and does take
real effort. But it’s also the way that you’ll
build most expert credibility with people
you’ve never met or worked with before.
Content doesn’t make an appearance in this
strategy until stage 5, because we needed to
get some fundamentals in place first
(positioning, mailing list, sign-ups).
At this stage it’s time to start putting some
of your expert positioning down on the
page. In this stage it’s important you build
some base pieces that really set out your
core opinions on your professional space.
These pieces should focus on your
differentiating opinions. What is it that you
believe that other people in your industry
don’t? Over time, you’re going to link back
to these key pieces time and time again.
•  Write in the first person. Write the way
you talk – keep it conversational and
interesting. Write in the first person, use
'we' to refer to your company, or even 'I',
and use 'you' rather than 'our clients' or
'HR professionals'
•  Write three pieces. Don’t worry about
writing on keywords, or writing around
any core theme. Write three pieces and
try to make them as distinct as possible.
Crossover of ideas between the pieces
will confuse you and your reader..
•  Do focus on visual readability. Use
images and headings to break up your
copy and make it friendly for a reader to
scan.
•  Don’t try and sound academic, or too
professional. Let your expertise come
through in your content, not in your
language. Your readers just won’t persist
if you write like it’s a textbook.
•  Keep each piece to 500 words. This is
often a key challenge, given that this is a
space you know deeply. Resist the urge
to include more that one key opinion per
piece.
•  Don’t worry about perfection. Worry
about clarity. You can always come back
and tweak later.
14
•  Content = credibility
•  Write down your three most powerful, differentiating opinions
•  Write the way that you speak. Keep it conversational

15
BUILD YOUR CONTENT AROUND A THEME AND IT WILL BE
EASIER TO OPTIMISE IT FOR SEARCH ENGINES AND TO
CREATE AN E-BOOK FROM IT
5. Categorise content

Stage 6: pick one theme and five
keywords
A few hours of structured planning at this
stage can mean you get a 10x better return
from your content down the track.
By planning around themes and keywords,
you make sure that you can recompile all of
your developed content into an e-book (that
will act as a strong acquisition driver) and
you will naturally build articles that are
optimised for SEO.
Because you’ve already deployed the
thought leadership newsletter, you’re not
guessing blind at this stage. We have serious
analytics from MailChimp on what your
prospects find the most valuable (it’s one of
the reasons that we wait until stage 6 to do
content planning).
•  Define one core theme. This is what your
content will be built around. This theme
will become the title of your “e-book”
compilation in stage 9. Make sure it’s a
great and attractive title for an e-book
that YOU would want to download and
pay for.
•  Consider these four criteria for creating
a great and topical core themes:
1. Is there a broad interest in the space?
(can it be purposed into mainstream
media)
2. Is it valuable as a compilation (such as
a newsletter or e-book)?
3. Can it be controversial?
4. Is it useable across multiple platforms?
(themes that are too complex won’t work
on social media)
•  Within this theme define up to five
keywords. These are keywords where
you’d ideally like to come up in the #1
position on Google when a prospect
searches.
•  Use the analytics from MailChimp to
understand what your list finds most
valuable. Make a note of what type of
articles get the strongest click through
rates. Feel free to test topics and
keywords in your weekly subject line.
•  Write at least 10 headlines upfront that
build on this theme and your five
keywords. It’s important you think
practically about the kind of articles
you’ll be writing
•  Don’t try and plan all of your content
upfront. Once you start developing a few
articles more ideas will come.
•  Don’t worry too much about search
engine optimisation right now. We’re
building a bunch of the basics into this
strategy (and you can worry about more
advanced techniques at a later stage).
16
•  Build all your content around one theme and 5 keywords
•  One theme means you can repurpose later (and get 10x leverage)
•  Use MailChimp analytics to identify topics that your prospects love

17
7. Deliver regular content
THERE ARE THREE KEYS TO MAKING CONTENT
WORK FOR YOU:
CONSISTENCY, CONSISTENCY, CONSISTENCY

Stage 7: Deliver original content, every
week
It’s time to start producing your own
content every week. This is the content
base that will really make you a thought
leader (and you’ve now got all the
fundamentals in place to make it
worthwhile).
Content is the core of your strategy, it does
the heavy lifting by making your leads come
to you. When they’re looking for an answer,
your content is ready and available to help
them out.
Over time, your content will become more
valuable, as search engines direct more and
more traffic to your most valuable pieces.
The key to making content pay is to deliver
it consistently over an extended period of
time.
•  Write conversationally. Don’t fall into the
trap of writing in a manner that is
different to the way that you speak.
•  Do draw on personal experience. Your
product is your experience. So don’t be
afraid to talk about stories and
experiences that highlight this.
•  Test good headlines by watching your
open rates on MailChimp, and trying a
variety of headlines on Twitter (see stage
8).
•  Be consistent. When you say you’re going
to publish a blogpost every week, make
sure you do it. Before you hit the 4/2/1
threshold a weekly frequency is the best
balance of attention and effort.
•  Link MailChimp to your blog. As soon as
you publish a new piece, it should be
mailed to your subscribers (make sure
you use “RSS to mail” to make this
happen)
•  Keep a Trello list of new content ideas
(Trello is a great and free lists app). It’s
an easy way to make sure you’ve always
got things to write about.
•  Don’t give up. It takes time and effort to
generate attention. Most blogs don’t last
past 6 months (which is just when people
are starting to pay attention).
•  Don’t fall into the trap of generating
familiar opinion pieces (that everyone’s
read before). To build a following you
need to offer different and sometimes
controversial perspectives.
•  Don’t feel you need to write content
that’s too long. What you need to do is
build additive content. For B2B this may
be longer or shorter. Target 500 words
per blogpost (but don’t worry if you end
up producing at 1000 words). It’s most
important to make sure you’re
consistently producing content that your
clients are finding valuable – not of any
specific length.
18
•  Consistency delivers results
•  Your existing email list is the most important distribution channel
•  Your content is a long term asset (with increasing search engine value
over time)

19
8. Social media
TWITTER AND LINKEDIN ARE POWERFUL
TOOLS FOR DRIVING TRAFFIC TO YOUR
CONTENT

Stage 8: Engage with influencers to
drive traffic
Social media is a fantastic way to boost your
reach once you’re producing content. You
will not see return on social media unless
you’re actively producing content - it’s
critical to support and add depth to your
opinions.
For B2B businesses, you should focus your
attention on Twitter and LinkedIn. You’re
unlikely to see a return using other
platforms (at least at an early stage).
There’s also real search engine benefits to
having active conversation around your
content. We’ve seen articles move from the
third or forth page to #1 on Google just
based on strong social media conversation.
•  Set up your Twitter and LinkedIn
accounts. Make sure these are personal
accounts rather than for your business
(people prefer interacting with people
rather than an anonymous logo).
•  Include friendly but professional
headshots (again, people prefer
interacting with people rather than an
anonymous logo).
•  Share the content of other influencers.
It’s a compliment and will encourage
them to share yours. We recommend you
adopt a 80:20 ratio of other’s content :
your content
•  Start by targeting local influencers. It’s
much easier to get attention, and they
can still have a big impact on sharing of
your content.
•  Do use a social media management tool
(such as Buffer) to program some regular
posts about your content (both new and
old).
•  Do be part of the conversation. Add
comments and add value.
•  You need to be consistent and persistent
with social media. It may feel like
banging your head against a wall early
on, but over time your profile will build.
And so will your traffic as a result.
•  Don’t talk about your own content
exclusively. If you want others to share
your content, you’ve got to start by
sharing theirs.
20
•  Twitter and LinkedIn can quickly boost your expert credibility and
community standing
•  Twitter and LinkedIn are great traffic drivers – but don’t expect to go
viral
Recommended tools:

REPACKAGING CONTENT INTO AN E-RESOURCE
INCREASES YOUR MARKETING LEVERAGE 10X
WITHOUT REALISING IT AFTER SIX MONTHS YOU’RE A
PUBLISHED AUTHOR
21
9. Collate content
REPACKAGING CONTENT INTO AN E-RESOURCE
INCREASES YOUR MARKETING LEVERAGE 10X
WITHOUT REALISING IT AFTER SIX MONTHS YOU’RE A
PUBLISHED AUTHOR

Stage 9: Turn content into a valuable
resource pack and landing page
Landing pages are guaranteed to boost your
signups. It’s a page with only one purpose –
and that’s to get your prospects to sign up
for your list. But it’s also important that
you’ve got something to give away in
exchange that’s worthwhile and valuable.
This is one of the core reasons that it makes
sense to plan your content around a core
theme. Because when you reach stage 9, it’s
as simple as packaging up all of this content
into an e-book and giving it a professional
title.
The massive benefit of this approach is
you’ve written a book without even trying!
And all just through your weekly blog
efforts.
•  Use Unbounce to create a simple landing
page that describes your e-book, and the
benefits that the prospect will get from
reading (you should be able to pull from
your existing blog articles)
•  You don’t want to be creating any new
content for this compilation. It’s all about
repurposing existing content that you’ve
written. But you will need to write a
great introduction and potentially add
some graphics.
•  Make sure the pack looks professional (it
should be a pack that you can get
professionally printed and give to your
clients as a present)
•  Make sure you make it clear that people
are consenting to get more helpful
resources and blogposts from you on
your area of expertise. You’re not trying
to hide this (it’s a valuable thing that
they’re getting). But also make it clear
that they can unsubscribe at any time.
•  Set up an brief autoresponder using
MailChimp to welcome them to the list.
•  Link to your new landing page from
across your website. Use HelloBar as a
tool to drive traffic to your landing page.
•  Don’t think that your resource pack
needs to be too long. Remember that
you’re giving this away. So anything that
feels weighty (from c.50 pages up) is
enough to be substantial.
•  Don’t fret about making it overly pretty
(professional is enough). People care
about your expertise, not your graphic
design.
22
•  Use your existing content to develop a quick resource pack around your
core theme (and dramatically boost sign up)
•  Prospects give their email in return for a valuable e-book
Recommended tools:

23
THE 4/2/1 STRATEGY ENSURES YOU’VE BUILT
AN EFFECTIVE LEAD ACQUISITION AND
CONVERSION ENGINE BEFORE YOU
ACCELERATE MARKETING SPEND
10. Repeat Optimise

Stage 10: Repeat and optimise
At this stage you’ve got all the fundamentals
of the strategy in place. Now it’s about
tuning the process to make sure results are
starting to accelerate .
Focus incessantly on the three metrics,
keeping your targets in mind:
•  Monthly page views (greater than 4,000
unique monthly visitors)
•  Email subscribers (over 2,000 email
subscribers)
•  Website conversion rate (greater that 1%)
We focus on these metrics because they
make sure you’ve built a real client magnet,
that will attract, capture and convert.
As long as all the pieces in your funnel are
working together, slowly but surely you’ll
see an exponential effect and growth on all
of the critical metrics.
•  Maintain consistency. Remember that
content is an asset that builds in value
over time. Getting to the scale point is all
about consistency, and giving your
content the ability to do the hard work in
client acquisition over time.
•  Keep these three metrics on a
dashboard, and track them each week. By
watching the week to week changes,
you’ll start to notice what’s working (and
what isn’t).
•  Try different wording on your opt-in
forms and landing pages. It’s funny how
small changes to text can make big
changes in human behaviour (focus on
headlines and your call to action for
biggest results).
•  It’s important not to get impatient. Focus
on making constant improvements in the
three core metrics. This is an
optimisation process, where you’re
working out what the right intersection
is between your content and your target
market. It can take time to perfect and
build attention.
•  Don’t fall prey to short term thinking and
try advertising before you’ve optimised.
Advertising (either search engine or
display) pre-optimisation is a waste of
money if you haven’t optimised for
conversion.
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•  You’ve got all the fundamentals
•  Now it’s time to study the analytics and figure out what’s working and
what needs further tuning

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+61 3 9111 5659 | www.thoughtleadershippartners.com | Level 17 / 31 Queen St, Melbourne

A damn good guide to B2B digital marketing

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A damn good guide to B2B digital marketing