Satisfy your craving for better B2B marketing results.

#1
21 positioning statements... rewritten

"Laser-focused positioning statement” (LFPS) is Jonathan Stark’s ideal customer/client focused statement defining a brand’s unique value, target audience and market niche. You can learn how to write one here, but what I think is really fun is the follow up article of rewrites to 21 statements sent to him.

Read through them, get inspired, and see where your own might benefit from an update. Which is super common by the way! You do not need to be stuck with your positioning statement forever (and you may have different ones for different situations... it really never ends, eh?)

My question to you: what came up for you when you read these rewrites?

#2
Examples of effective post-event engagement strategies

Events are having a resurgence as folk want to connect in more meaningful ways in the B2B landscape. And this doesn’t have to be big industry conferences and summits. There are all sorts of event types and sizes you can run to connect your ecosystem (and prospects) together. What’s why it’s important to squeeze all you can out of the event… even after it has concluded.

'Examples of effective post-event engagement strategies' covers solid ideas for QR codes (of course, this article is written by Bit.ly!), email marketing and social media.

My question to you: how could you use these strategies to work to your advantage as an attendee at an industry event?

#3
AI optimization is mostly just good marketing

This article by Amanda Natividad resonated deeply with me. In the quest to answer the new shiny question of "what does AI search want", she claps back with it’s what people have always wanted (and what marketers have always advised to give ‘em).

As she puts it: "The visibility stakes are changing. The mechanics are changing. But a lot of the “new” advice keeps arriving at suspiciously familiar destinations: clear structure, specific answers, credible evidence, useful formats, and content people can actually understand."

She shows the connection between AI/LLMO/AEO/GEO/EIEIO layering to that of human needs, broken into:

• Extractability: can it be easily understood?
   
• Credibility: does it have a reason to ‘trust it’?
   
• Public evidence: is it robust, recent, and relevant?
   
• Retrievability: can it be accessed? (she admits this one remains specifically technical)

'Make the old seem new and novel' is a suuuuuuuper duper old trick of the marketing trade. I’m not a total curmudgeon: I’m all for recontextualizing something to help it resonate in current culture. I just caution giving 'AI' the marketing employee of the month award when all it did was plagiarize the handbook.

My question to you: what content could you tweak to add depth, relevance, and clout?

#4
Why do we get our best ideas in the shower?

When we allow ourselves the time, inspiration comes in odd spaces. Christine Y of Headspace explains why we get our best ideas in the shower… which I always just took for granted. We have two paths to deal with problem solving: 'analytical' and 'insight'. The second uses a part of the brain that "makes connection s or associations between different ideas or sensations… and also associated with our understanding of jokes and metaphors".

At a time where we feel stretched reallllly think in all directions, tempted to reach for shortcut solutions and templates, leaning into the insight might be just the thing we need to produce truly interesting ideas and solutions.

Also, bizarre thing I learned from this article: right before you have an 'aha! Moment', your brain… blinks. It friggin blinks. 👁️👁️

My question to you: how can you carve out more space for insight to happen?

Teeeehehehe. Source.

I gave the finger at a marketing workshop I ran

Seriously. I put this slide on (2!) screens and flipped the bird. But I was in good company: attendees of the workshop also made various sounds of annoyance and discontent when the phrase "Do more with less" popped up.

The room at The Pier was made up of various companies and orgs, all looking to market themselves better on small (or nonexistent) budgets. It wasn't a negative vibe at all, though! There was laughter and curiosity and conversation because I created space to slow down.

Folk got to map out what they really wanted to achieve with their marketing. Who they really wanted to reach. And how they could go about it with what they already had.

See, I believe we over complicate marketing because we're too attached to "more"... without knowing what it's supposed to mean to us. So we turn "more" into an endless busywork machine. A burnout machine.

But when you slow down to both plan ahead and look back at what you've already done... you'd be surprised how much "more" you can squeeze out of your marketing bag of tricks.

Here’s what I had to say about that specific slide:

Do more…

• Planning: so you have a clear ‘why’ and ‘who’ before you start the ‘how’ of creating for the sake of creating.
   
• Managing expectations: because often we want outcomes that are unrealistic for our industry or offer, or misaligned with how our ideal audience actually actual behaves.
   
• Tweaking: because marketing is an endless experiment where often you don’t need to throw everything away. Change a few things, try again, and note results.

With less…

• Distractions: if you plan, things that don’t fit into it are harder to pull you away from it.
   
• Decisions: less input, less output. You’ve got a whole-ass business to run on top of this marketing nonsense. Reduce what you’re doing so there’s less decision making envolved.
• Giving up: Joel Kelly of Kelford Labs says “Marketing rarely fails, it just stops.” You are probably giving up to soon, when really you could go back to the ‘Do more’ section and jam a bit more.

My question to you, Darlin': which of these could you hold in you heart and head today?

Recent topics I helped folk figure out:

• How to get other members of the company to help with content assets.
   
• How to turn a trend you are noticing into a rich blog post.
   
• Who you need to bring in for more marketing support, and how to set them up for success.
   
• Following up in the DMs (yes, you should go follow up, too!)

Want to feel more confident about how you show up and engage with your prospects?

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