B2B Breakdown Series – Episode VIII: Improving As A B2B Marketer

We’re back with another edition of our B2B Breakdown series, where we take a deep dive into recent B2B messages we’ve received. As a business owner, you likely receive regular sales pitches, cold contacts, and informational emails. As a B2B marketer, there’s something to learn from every B2B communication you receive, whether it’s a new best practice to adapt for your own efforts or a poor strategy to avoid. Today we’re taking a look at an initial message from John Smith of Porter Capital, then examining his public LinkedIn profile, Porter Capital’s presence on LinkedIn, and this company’s stand-alone website.

Review of Initial Outreach

John’s email begins in a promising manner, using a simple and trouble-free message line of “Turn Your Invoices Into Funding.” This grabs my interest and would be a valuable promise to any company that’s looking for funding or struggling with its finances. 

Opening the email, we can see the message is brief and easy to read. We don’t need to spend more than about ten seconds on this email, which shows that John appreciates our time. You don’t want to overwhelm prospects in a cold email, so this is an ideal length for the first contact.

The body of the email uses pretty good copy that’s free of red flags. Nothing here stands out in a negative sense. John does a good job explaining his company’s proposition in the first two sentences. Essentially, Porter Capital helps you turn invoices into money in your accounts. They promise that this will free you up from worrying about payroll, unexpected dips, and those slow-paying customers. We can see that John is familiar with the pain points his customers face. 

In his third sentence, John is proactively overcoming common objections that business owners might hold. He explains a few scenarios where companies might think they don’t qualify for traditional funding options, stating that Porter Capital can work with you in these situations. 

The call-to-action is a decent summary of John’s message, but it does leave the next step entirely up to us. If we’re not interested in Porter Capital’s services, we wouldn’t follow up and might be lost as a prospect. John could have used a more conversational tone in his message to encourage us to open a discussion or ask questions in a reply. The CTA fits his overall tone, but this is the main opportunity to improve his message.

Section Highlights

• Speaks to client pain points
• Clear, up-front messaging
• Optimal email length

Areas for Improvement

• Less aggressive pitching
• Ask conversational questions to prompt a discussion

Review of LinkedIn Profile

After reading John’s email, we hopped over to LinkedIn to do some research on why he’s gotten in contact with us. At first glance, John’s profile is fairly empty. We can see basic details on what he does now and his previous experience, but little that tells us who John is and why we’d want to work with him specifically. He doesn’t have much page activity, nor a cover photo or other compelling details.

Section Highlights

• Some skills and endorsements are listed

Areas for Improvement

• Regularly engage on LinkedIn to show page activity
• Add cover image
• Explain details on his professional mission and promises

Review of LinkedIn Company Page

From John’s LinkedIn profile, we visited the Porter Capital LinkedIn page. Porter Capital’s company page is much more promising than John’s personal profile. The About section tells the story of Porter Capital, they regularly post to their page, and they see some engagement on their posts. We can also see that Porter Capital prioritizes LinkedIn as a tool for making connections. They have a Premium account, which shows that Porter Capital is willing to invest in useful tools for their company.

Section Highlights

• Useful About section
• Premium account

Areas for Improvement

• Make more frequent posts
• Connect with users to drive more engagement

Review of Website

Finally, we take a look at the Porter Capital website. This site is the strongest element we’ve seen so far in this deep dive. Their page is straightforward, attractive, and elegant, with clear CTAs throughout the page. Their page features big grey boxes that highlight some very attractive promises with high lines of credit, low rates, and rapid funding deadlines. We understand that not every client will qualify for these amenities, but these highlights help us understand what Porter Capital offers and why businesses want to work with them.

Overall, the page is easy to consume and understand. Porter Capital does a great job of pitching themselves, but they also help prospects understand the type of client they’re searching for. We can see Porter Capital’s target industries on their front page. If you don’t see yourself represented on their industry list, you immediately understand that you and Porter Capital may not be a good fit. On the other hand, if your industry is listed, you can click through to find valuable information about their services. Their page is upfront and shows continued respect for your time.

This website is a valuable tool that doesn’t have many negative aspects. Porter Capital’s front page uses clear CTAs. By including very general information as well as industry-specific details on the same page, they’re using a hybrid page model that combines aspects of both a standard home page and a targeted landing page. The industry section of their page is highly informative and helps visitors make a useful decision about working with Porter Capital.

Section Highlights

• In-depth industry information
• Clear CTAs
• Clean, useful page design

Areas for Improvement

• Offer options for other industries not listed

Keep Learning And Improving As A B2B Marketer

This contact from John at Porter Capital has both positive and negative elements. The initial cold email wasn’t bad, but did show opportunities for improvement. John’s LinkedIn profile needs some work as well, but the Porter Capital company account was more promising. Finally, Porter Capital’s webpage stood out as their strongest resource. We hope you’ve found some valuable insights through this B2B deep dive. Join us for the next edition of our B2B Breakdown so we can keep growing together and upgrade our skills as a B2B marketer.

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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