B2B Breakdown Series – Episode V

Welcome to another B2B Breakdown, our blog series taking a deep dive on B2B marketing strategies we’ve seen in the real world. We choose a different B2B message that we’ve received each week and examine the copy, the marketer’s profile, and the company profile or site. We hope to uncover tips and tricks for B2B marketers using best practices from the field, as well as find areas for improvement. Today, we’re talking about John Doe from MarTech Outlook. 

Review Of Initial Outreach

Let’s a look at a series of two messages from John. John reached out to me previously with a cold email to give me more information on his company, MarTech Outlook. He’s also sent a follow-up to this first message.

When he first reached out, the initial email was pretty lengthy. John’s trying to tell me that he’s shortlisted my company as one of the top SEO companies in 2021. For a fee, he can include me in one of his magazine’s upcoming articles. 

John’s starting this initial email with some praise, so while this is a long message for a first outreach, we’re off on the right foot. He’s also letting me know within the first two sentences of his email why he’s getting in touch. That’s followed up with information about why I should be interested in his product. 

However, in trying to give me information about his services, John is going overboard. There’s almost too much information in this email. I can see a lot about his company and his service—enough information that I might not be interested in hopping on a call after I’ve seen this summary. I may have talked myself out of his service already. A better strategy would have been stopping with the initial information and pushing for a call, instead of including so many written details.

Taking a look at the follow-up email, John is talking about third-party recognition and how this will find me qualified leads. He’s praising my company again and asking to discuss their upcoming tech special on a call. 

The overall tone of both messages is great. The main problem is that the first email has too much information. A better outreach method would have been sticking with John’s first informative sentences and then driving towards a call.

Best Practices

• Valuable introduction 
• Praising my company
• Friendly tone

Areas To Improve

• Too much information
• Add a clear call to action in the initial email

Review of LinkedIn Profile

When I get one of these cold marketing emails, my typical next step is seeing what I can find about the marketer through LinkedIn. However, I had a hard time finding John on LinkedIn. His email did include some basic contact information including a phone number, but he didn’t have his LinkedIn profile included. When I went directly to LinkedIn, I couldn’t find either John or the company he named in his emails, MarTech Outlook.

It’s a major deterrent that I can’t find John on LinkedIn. Whenever I can’t find a professional on LinkedIn, I wonder who they are, why they don’t have a profile, and in this case, why I can’t find their company. Moving forward, John has an opportunity to connect with his cold leads by reaching out to them on LinkedIn.

Areas To Improve

• John should have a LinkedIn account
• The company name should be used correctly

Review Of LinkedIn Company Page

It took some digging to find the Marketing Tech Outlook company, which is the full name of the magazine John contacted me about. This LinkedIn page isn’t very optimized. They have some publications and a cover image that’s nice to look at, but their cover banner doesn’t tell me how Marketing Tech Outlook can help me. Their logo and other graphics are also lower quality images, which is troublesome for a marketing publication.

Scrolling down, their tag line and description don’t fit my needs. They’re an enterprise technology magazine, but none of my projects fit that description. Instantly I can see that their product isn’t for me.

Their profile states they have 11 to 50 employees, but just like John isn’t connected to this company through LinkedIn, I can only find two of their current staff listed on LinkedIn. This gives me the idea that this company is either new or not very reputable.

Looking at this LinkedIn profile, I’m not sure why would I spend time on a meeting with this company. John’s already told me in his emails that it can be pricey to work with Marketing Tech, and their LinkedIn page doesn’t explain why that cost is worth it. LinkedIn is a great opportunity to explain your brand promise. Marketing Tech Outlook has missed that opportunity.

Best practices

• Canvas image looks nice

Areas to Improve

• Optimize profile
• Share their story through images and tag line
• Connect with employees through LinkedIn

Review Of Website

When I move to the Marketing Tech Outlook website, it’s pretty confusing. The company drives traffic from email and LinkedIn to their webpage, but when I go to their site, I don’t see any immediate call to action that speaks to me. Their front page functions as a generic news feed and it simply has too many CTAs to read individual articles and smaller pages.

The site is also pretty bare. Compared to other marketing companies, I wouldn’t trust this webpage to drive traffic to me. John could have warmed me up for this by sharing some of their web statistics. If I knew how many visits they received, for example, I might be more interested in their interface. However, without that information, I can’t see Marketing Tech Outlook as a viable option for generating leads. 

At this point, I’m not interested in getting on a call with this company. John’s initial email had promise, but since then, I haven’t seen anything to make me think I’ll be getting my money’s worth. 

Areas to Improve

• Refresh dated site design and UI
• Create robust, targetted landing pages

Keep Learning and Growing as a B2B Marketer

We can always keep an eye on other B2B marketers to develop new strategies and learn best practices. Whether you see your marketing wins in this breakdown, or have discovered areas where your brand can improve, we hope you’ve learned something valuable. Check all our B2B Breakdown series to keep growing.

We get it. There are a million ways to improve your outreach to be more effective with your prospects, and sometimes it’s hard to figure out the next move. If you find yourself in this situation, click here to hop on a call with us. We’ll be able to talk about the details of your business and give you some advice on where to take your content and more.

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