Let’s talk about what you should talk about to get noticed if you are in B2B, ergo, where the unfulfilled content demand is.

This applies to all media you might be using or considering: blogs, social media including LinkedIn, video, speaking engagements, webinars, ebooks, newsletters, books, and more.

This opportunity will be the core of your content or social media strategy.

So let's get going.

Attention is the scarcest resource in modern times.

The world is full of content (blog posts, videos, social media posts), and more is produced every day. It gets harder to get attention every day.

However, for the last 10 years, the same opportunity has remained, and will likely remain. It's huge and remains to be huge.

Following Simon Sinek’s Why—How—What framework, which he explains in his book Start with Why, we could categorize content into three main categories, which I will cover in reverse order of importance. This categorization applies to most content.

What-content: what you do, how great you are, what your product is

You are most likely talking, writing, and posting about what. That is, what you do, what your company does, and what your product does.

I call these “me/we-content.” You talk about yourself.

People and companies like to talk about themselves, yet few like to listen. Supply exceeds demand by a factor of 100.

Check your LinkedIn feed: mostly me/we content. Check the average corporate blog: mostly me/we content.

Finnish #SaaS companies have great solutions and potential, yet many take ages to reach 1 M ARR and another age to find a scalable growth model to reach the success they deserve. Here is why.

Having helped dozens of them in various roles, interviewed 60+ SaaS entrepreneurs in my Menestystä Etsimässä #podcast, and hosted 100+ events for SaaS Finland, a club of Software Finland ry, over the years, there seems to be a clear pattern that leads to slow success.

When it takes 8 to 15 years or more to reach 1-3 M ARR, the size required for the next major push towards 10 M and beyond, the founders are often tired of grinding, ending up selling the company too early, never reaching its full potential.

This is a huge problem for Finland and founders alike.

The IT industry is Finland's fourth-largest export sector and fastest growing, while SaaS is the strongest grower within the sector. We are now building great SaaS products for foreign buyers to cash in on.

The long shaft in our hockey sticks means it takes ages to reach the blade, the high growth phase. This is bad for all parties, from investors and founders to employees and society. The quicker we/you could grow our/your SaaS company, the bigger and more successful it would become, allowing it to grow by acquiring, bringing bigger payoffs earlier (exits/IPOs/dividends), enabling investors and founders to invest in new starts, and freeing up experienced growth specialists to take another company from one level to another.

#1. Starting from Finland. The small home market means no niche is big enough, so one has to broaden the targeting, which leads to losing focus. So most are targeting too many segments, in too many price points, through various channels without properly making it in any. Finding the focus again when going abroad takes ages.

Yet, starting from Finland is easy; thus, everybody is doing it.

Is your software any good? And is it right for us?

When selling enterprise software, such as SaaS-products, customers are looking for social proof that the product is any good and fits their needs. They want to know what others are saying about it, and whether the others are similar and are using the product to solve similar needs.

The same buyers and decision makers have accustomed to look for ratings and reviews when online shopping and are expecting the same also in business context.

Ratings and Reviews are thus essential for showing social proof: that you have customers, that your product is any good, and that the customers are using it in similar cases.

How to get and use reviews for your SaaS-product, a podcast with Dylan Woodham, Gartner Digital Markets

In this podcast episode, I have the honor to get Dylan Woodham from Gartner Digital Markets to discuss with me about customer reviews: how to get them, what to ask and e.g. should you fear bad reviews.

Loyal customers buy more, buy premium (with higher margins), cost less to serve, and bring new customers by referring to friends, so it really pays to invest into retaining clients. However, most ways you see companies using are ineffective and/or expensive, thus not providing any true and long-lasting competitive advantage. 

#1: Provide unique value (they can't get elsewhere) 

The most important thing has nothing to do with marketing, loyalty, or any sort of tricks. The companies with the most loyal customers don’t actually shine on any of these fronts. They don’t need loyalty programs, great customer experiences (on all fronts), long guarantees, high reliability… But oh boy do they build products that their customers love.

B2B Marketing is not just about generating lead, nor is it something you need a marketer for. 

In this article, you’ll find where marketing can help sales and why it is often better not to leave it for marketing professionals.

Your Marketing is not a Funnel

You have probably seen your fair share of marketing funnels like below (or google  “B2B marketing funnel” and switch to image search).

B2B sales funnel is not much different.

In it's simplest form, it can be divided into 3 segments:

1. Top of Funnel (TOFU)
2. Middle of Funnel (MOFU) and
3. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) activities.

Top of funnel to attract prospects, middle of funnel to educate them and bottom of funnel to make you trustworthy, to put it simply. The marketing funnel is mostly about generating leads.

This is ok, if you focus heavily on new customer acquisition. In that scenario, your marketing (and sales) won't be that far from the funnel model.

But focusing too much on new customer acquisition is usually bad business.

However for most B2Bs the money really comes from repeat sales to existing customers, not from acquiring disposable customers (which is often bad business).