10 tips to transform how you work with subject matter experts

Are you realising your experts’ full potential as ambassadors of your industry expertise?

By capturing their insight, you are close to having everything you need to be able to provide valuable content to your customers. But often, a torrent of unfiltered advice and knowledge can be hard to decipher, especially when it’s full of industry jargon and technical terminology.

You need to be able to know how to distil a specialist subject matter into engaging content that is easily accessible for your customers.

Using over 16 years of experience in this area, we’ve put together our ten most useful tips to get the best from your experts.

Download it by clicking the image below. Afterwards, if you’d like to find out more about how we can help your business, please feel free to get in touch.

10 steps to success: How to run a marketing campaign

When you want to get the word out about a product, service, event or re-brand, what you need is an integrated marketing campaign.

But where do you start? And how do you make sure it’s a success?

A marketing campaign is a huge commitment and a lot of work. From asking all the right questions during your strategic planning stage, to brainstorming the big idea that your campaign will centre around, there’s a lot to get right. That’s why we’ve put together a 10-step guide — to walk you through the main milestones and help you create a campaign to be proud of.

Download it now by clicking the image below and get in touch if you’d like more info on how we put together successful campaigns for our clients.

Marketing insight: making the most of LinkedIn

Your personal LinkedIn account is the perfect place to start building your individual brand in a professional setting. With over 300 million members, it’s a fantastic place to grow your network and harness new opportunities.

That doesn’t mean it’s a revolving door of prospects, though. Like any other social media platform, a solid strategy and dedication to building your following and brand are vital. That’s why we’ve put together a handy LinkedIn guide to walk you through the key areas that contribute to LinkedIn success: Purpose. Profile. Presence.

To find out more about these and how they can help you increase sales, build a platform as a thought leader or even find your next role, download the guide now!

Marketing insight: animations

It’s a crowded marketplace out there, and it’s getting tougher to get your messages across. Increasingly, B2B businesses are choosing animations as a way to bypass pages of static text, using the fact that the brain can process visuals 60,000 times faster than the written word.
But it can be confusing if you’re new to it, so we’ve put together a guide to producing amazing animations. Have a read and get up to speed on all the hints and tips that will help you through the animation process.

Download the guide now by clicking on the image below and get your messages moving.

Sales enablement for the win(ning of new business).

You might be wondering what sales enablement actually is. Well, put simply, it’s your ticket to boosting sales. But behind this is a collection of marketing resources that help your salespeople seal the deal.

The sales call is only one part of getting a new client to sign on the dotted line. It’s a rare prospect who buys from you during their first contact with your organisation.

That’s why you need to build a wider sales-enablement campaign — including sales emails, cheat sheets and organised calling days — to bring that new revenue through the door.

Supporting your sales superheroes.

It can often be hard to convince sales professionals that marketing materials really can help them. But we’ve run more than a few campaigns in our time that show sales enablement is totally a thing.

Take, for instance, when one of our clients tasked its sales teams with winning back 60 accounts from competitors in 60 days. Sounds like a tall order, right? Well, our ‘Heroes’ collateral helped the salespeople smash their targets — and saw the campaign extended way beyond its original remit.

To do this, we created a company superhero — along with flyers, posters and cardboard cut-outs. Oh, and chocolates made an appearance too (followed by a swift disappearance once eaten).

When people met their targets, they got to become their favourite superhero — as we created framed photos and awarded certificates.

It might all sound daft without seeing it in action. But the salespeople all bought into the campaign, and made it a huge success. A superhero theme might also seem frivolous when budgets are tight. However, for relatively little investment, you can seriously boost your bottom line.

Three ways to enable sales.

So, how do you go about creating your own super-successful sales-enablement campaign?

Well, here are three steps you need to follow to get your sales team selling as they’ve never sold before:

1. Share best practice.
   
   How does your top seller tackle a difficult sale? Find out, and share their knowledge. There’s no to reason to keep the things you do successfully a secret. And collateral like cheat sheets give you simple ways to make sure everyone in your sales teams has access to best practice.
   
2. Own the customer conversation.
   
   Two-thirds of sales teams struggle with not being able to find content to send to prospects. Create emails, presentations, data sheets and more, and you’ll have plenty of useful info to seal the deal.
   
3. Upskill your people.
   
   You can’t expect your people to all work the same way. But you can encourage them to adopt best practices by providing training materials such as internal emails and intranet campaign pages. This gives your people the helping hand they need to turn prospects into customers.

Play by your own rules, and get results.

There are so many ways to give your sales teams the edge when they talk to prospects. It all depends on what’ll work best for your people.

Sales enablement allows you to win business by making sure everyone has the tools to share your message and work together.

Give us a call to find out more about how we can help you shape your team into a room full of sales-target-busting superheroes.

How to write a great case study in 4 easy steps

A good case study is like sales gold dust. It’s the closest thing you’ll get to one of your satisfied customers going around and telling all your prospects how great you are. In just one short document, you can evidence that you understand your customers’ issues AND know how to fix them.

So why do so many case studies end up as dry, underwhelming documents that do nothing to win business?

A case study that lacks impact is often the result of poor planning and execution. The good news is that there is a winning formula: follow our four key steps to make sure your case study brings in the business.

1. Find the story

Creating an effective case study is all about telling a story, complete with a plot that sees the hero facing and triumphing over a challenge. Ideally, there’ll be some element of struggle in it before moving on to a happy ending. If you find what you intend to write about doesn’t have a story to tell, cut your losses and find a different topic for your case study.

Your customer must be the hero of the story. Make your customer’s main challenge the villain of the piece and remember that your company, product or solution must only ever be a supporting character. As with any good story, your plot will centre around your hero, and will take them on a clear journey. And maximise the reality, believability and relatability of your story by mentioning any hitches that you and your customer had to overcome along the way. Making your customer the hero has three main benefits:

1. A customer is more likely to sign off a case study that shows them in a good light.
2. It creates a story experience that the reader is most likely to identify with.
3. It stops you focusing the piece on your product or service. This means you’re less likely to get side-tracked into listing features that detract from the story and are better suited to a datasheet.

Wondering how we could tell your customers’ stories? Take a look at some of our case study examples.

2. Let your customer’s voice shine through

Wherever possible, conduct interviews with key players in your customer’s company to capture the human angle for your case study and let the personality of your customer’s business shine through. By talking through their experiences you’re more likely to extract genuine responses that your reader can relate to; written inputs tend to be more clinical and can slip into industry jargon that sound stilted, significantly reducing readability.

Prepare thoroughly for your interviews by speaking to the person that has the closest relationship with them in your company:

• Get the background to the events you’ll be exploring and your colleague’s side of the story so you can make sure you cover every aspect in your interview.
• Prepare open questions beforehand and work logically through the story journey.
• Seek out the transformation story. Explore the position of your customer’s company before and after your actions so you can draw out the contrast.

Listen out for good quotes to incorporate into your writing and use them liberally. The way your customer expresses themselves will be far more effective than your reportage of what they said. Don’t be afraid of a natural-sounding quote; think of it as one peer talking directly to another.

3. Maximise layout and design to make your messages easy to absorb

Boost your chances of your messages coming across loud and clear by making the most of imagery in your case study. The right images embody your customer’s industry and help to draw your reader into the story. Images also create more of a magazine feel, so reading the piece feels light and easy.

Design your case study with the skim reader in mind:

• Include call out boxes containing headline results and key benefits.
• Use subheadings to signpost the main points of the story.
• Consider including graphics to illustrate products or services mentioned, or design mini infographics to draw attention to key stats.

Need a hand to make your case study look good? Take a look at some of our examples for a taste of what we could achieve for you.

4. Work your case study hard

Creating a great case study is not enough — you need to get it noticed by the right people, and that can take some work. Start by customising your core story into the right formats to suit a variety of channels. Begin by creating a short, two-sided version for a quick read, and a succinct couple of paragraphs to get across the key points in presentations. Could it work as a video case study?

Plan how you’re going to promote your case study:

• Consider promoting it across your social channels using custom-designed images.
• Think about how you can feature it on your website with a call-to-action banner.
• Make sure your sales teams know about it and have strategies for using it to best effect.

Once your case study is up and running, keep an eye on its performance. Check back in with your sales teams to get feedback on how your case study has been performing so you can incorporate their opinions into your ongoing case study strategy. Find out the reach of your case study on social media, and website views, too. All measures of effectiveness will support your overall case study programme.

Sell your success with a story

Never underestimate the power of a good case study. Sharing your customers’ stories is a sure-fire way to convince prospects to choose your business. By explaining their journey, your satisfied customers help others to visualise how they could achieve a successful outcome with you, too.

At asabell, we create case studies that win business. To talk through how we can help you share your customers’ stories, get in touch.

Five reasons to say ‘yes’ to social media in B2B

Deciding to include social media in your B2B marketing mix can feel counter-intuitive: surely it’s more of a B2C tool? In fact, 83 per cent of B2B marketers use social media, making it the most common B2B marketing tactic. To help you take the plunge, here are five golden reasons to embrace social media.

1. Make the most of your content.
   Social media is a simple and effective way to sweat your resources further. If you have great content, why not share it as widely as possible? From your company blog through to your latest white paper or case study, social media increases the chances of getting your content noticed. Plus, it can increase awareness of your brand, too. Overall, it increases the visibility of everything you do and, used wisely, this can help you reach new heights of presence amongst a broad audience.
   
2. Keep your costs down.
   With social media you can promote your business at a fraction of the cost of traditional forms of marketing. Paid promotion offers a relatively low cost way to target your audience based on age, industry, job title, location, interests, income, and much more. Results are rapid, too, allowing you to take stock and adjust where necessary, making sure your budget is working as hard as possible.
   
3. Global reach no matter what your size.
   Social media is one of the few areas where a smaller organisation can compete on a par with an international player. To a certain extent, it’s a level playing field. Via social media, you can easily reach customers and prospects all around the world, giving you a global presence.
   
4. Achieve thought leadership.
   Bring knowledgeable opinions to social media, and you have the opportunity to grow your thought leadership position — no matter what the size of your company. Even as a single expert, you can join debates and share your expertise to build up a reputation people will listen to.
   
5. Maximise website traffic and conversions.
   A consistent and engaging social media strategy brings with it increased website traffic and conversion rates. Social media gives you the opportunity to appeal to an audience beyond your regular website visitors, opening the door to encouraging leads that would otherwise not have come your way. Every post, tweet, image or video comes with the chance of being seen by a prospective customer beyond your loyal customer base.

If you’d like to talk through how social media can benefit your business, then get in touch.

Not sure where to start when writing the copy for your new website? Got a website that’s not getting your messages across?

Follow our four top tips to get your website copy working hard for your business.

1. Talk to a person, don’t lecture an audience

It comes as a shock to some businesses, but your website isn’t about you, it’s about the people who use it. And, to make sure your copy is as effective as possible, you need a clear picture of your target user. Working out who you’re writing for will keep your copy sounding natural, helping you to avoid overly formal phrases that turn people off. It’ll also make sure you’re giving your website visitors the information they’re looking for.

Boost your chances of grabbing attention and fulfilling a need by creating a list of product/solution benefits your website covers. All too often, customer websites focus on features (what a product can do) rather than benefits (how a product can help the user or provide something of value to them). Use these benefits as main messaging throughout your website copy.

Determine your benefits-led messaging by asking these key questions about your target reader:

• What are their priorities?
• What problems do you help them avoid or solve?
• What do they want to know about you?

2. Make ‘easy’ your priority

With your messaging centred firmly on the benefits of working with you, focus on creating a reading experience that makes things as easy as possible for your reader.

Start by getting your level right: work out the gap between your expertise and your reader’s knowledge. Tell them what they already know, and you risk patronising them. Make things too complicated, and you’ll only achieve confusion. Clear communication depends on pitching what you’re saying at your reader’s level of comprehension, so they understand with minimal effort.

Next, make sure you write clearly, using simple language in short, active sentences. Basically, talk like a human being, using ‘you’ and ‘we’, rather than the third person. Remember, your aim is to make it as easy as possible for your reader to absorb your messages (and sounding like an academic paper really won’t help).

Keep the problems your business can solve in mind when writing and describe the positive actions your products or services deliver. This will give your website a dynamic, problem-solving feel that’s attractive to business prospects. Save any negative language for describing the pain points your products or services will solve.

Make it easy for your reader to trust you by avoiding overblown claims. Instead, make clear statements and back them up with proof, such as stats, case studies or testimonials. And remember that using jargon isn’t a shortcut to authority. If anything, it’ll turn your reader off, lacking the conviction and authenticity of direct statements.

Finally, include plenty of opportunities for your readers to convert their interest into action. Incorporate a clear call to action at least once on every page, making it easy for them to take the next step.

Deliver an easy experience for your readers:

• Talk to your reader’s likely level of expertise, without jargon.
• Use simple, active language that focuses on problem solving.
• Offer plenty of opportunities to progress working with you.

3. Write for skim reading

No one reads every word of every web page on a site, so don’t write your copy as though this is what your visitors will do. On average, users spend less than 15 seconds on a web page, scanning for something relevant and picking out what they want to know more about. With limited time to grab their attention, you need to opt for a journalistic approach. Don’t hide your main messages in lengthy explanations; invert your writing structure and start with what’s most important — in case that’s all they read — then go on to offer more detail.

Write for scanners to get your messages across loud and clear:

• Headline your key point in simple language.
• Use subheadings to signpost key content.
• Break messages up into subpoints using numbered lists or bullets.

4. Think SEO

Once you’re happy that your website copy is clearly communicating your benefits, think about how you can optimise it for search purposes. This isn’t an excuse to stuff your copy with keywords, because that will make it sound unnatural and unappealing — and can have a negative effect on SEO. Instead, read through your copy to see where you can add a keyword without adversely affecting the flow or the meaning.

Try to use your most important keyword in your page title and use your primary keywords in the first sentence if possible, to signal to search engines what your page is about. At the very least, use your primary keywords in the first paragraph. Subheadings, alt tags, meta descriptions and the file names of any images are all helpful places to feature keywords.

Once you’ve covered off these prime areas, try and weave in your keywords and common alternatives naturally throughout the body of your copy to help search engines validate that your page should rank for your keyword(s) and related search terms.

Balance SEO requirements with delivering an effective reading experience:

• Write for your reader first and SEO second.
• Incorporate keywords carefully into your page structure.
• Use keywords as naturally as possible.

5. Win business with effective website copy

You know your customers and prospects better than anyone, so use that insight to create web copy that really speaks to them and tackles their problems head on. Make every word on your site work hard to build relationships and win you business.

If you’d like a hand, at asabell we help businesses with their web copy all the time — from new enterprises starting from scratch, through to existing businesses who want to bring their copy in line with their latest strategies.

We’re expert at interviewing you to get all the information we need to create effective website copy that gets the job done. Get in touch to talk about what we could do for your business.

Not sure what to say when things start going awry?
Here are a few tips we’re using in the asabell team.

1. Why you need to say something

The most important thing in times of significant change or crisis is to keep talking to your customers. Most people are seeking security, reassurance and a glimmer of hope that things will return to normal soon. That’s something you can provide. Whether you’re continuing as business as usual, or hoping to be back up and running shortly, share that information and stay front of mind for customers.

2. Start with a personal message

If you have a few key clients, why not send them an email? If your customer base is much larger than that, social media could be the way to go. Either way, a personal, reassuring message letting them know how you and the team are adapting is a good way to stay in-touch. Customers can see right through companies that communicate using spin, so be honest, and explain where you’re at. (But watch your language, more on that below!)

3. Don’t overshare

While it’s important to keep your customers in the loop, don’t use your marketing as a space to vent. While it’s good to be honest, customers don’t need a blow-by-blow of everything you’re finding difficult, or to hear from you all the time (unless you’re updating them as a situation develops). Remember that your customers are potentially struggling too, so keep your communications regular without spamming, and stick to channels that are appropriate.

4. Stay calm and keep it consistent

This one’s probably a no-brainer, but it’s really important not to encourage panic or hysteria. Keep your messages calm and stick to the tone of voice you’ve already developed and are comfortable with. Like your tone of voice, the channels you use to communicate should also remain consistent — so that your customers know where to find you. Simple, subtle messaging often works; call a spade a spade but don’t feel the need to reiterate details of the crisis or situation if it’s already common knowledge.

5. Keep communication focused

As we’ve outlined, it’s important your messages are honest and calm, and a good way to achieve this is to try to focus on positive messages, solutions you can offer or important call to actions. For example, perhaps there are products and services you provide that will be important for people during the crisis or once it’s over. Or maybe you’ve weathered storms before and have some insights and wisdom to share with others about how your business coped and bounced back. If you have something that’s positive to share, do it — a little good news can go a long way!

If you want some help to get your messaging right during the current Coronavirus measures, and once things start getting back to normal, get in touch to discuss how we can help.

Searching for a new way to make your marketing stand out? A short animation could be just the job.

Why choose an animation?

In today’s digitally saturated, always-on world you need to cut through the noise and get your message across quickly and clearly. Images do that: we process visual information a whopping 60,000 times faster than text. This instant uptake may be why we love the pace and action of videos so much — and this includes your business audience, too: 92 per cent of B2B customers watch videos online. And an animation is a flexible way to tap into this market and create whatever you want to visualise.

A good animation will turn your complex messages into a short sequence that’s eye-catching, perfect for sharing and easy to understand. And a strong understanding boosts effectiveness, increasing your conversion rate by up to 75 per cent. Plus, if at any point you want to tailor your animation to increase its appeal to a specific audience, it’s quick and easy to adapt sections of your visuals, so you can change your messages in a matter of hours.

Talk to us about an animation for your business.

5 steps to a successful 2D animation

Creating a cost-effective animation that gets your messages across in seconds requires an integrated planning approach. There’s a clear pathway to follow, but each step doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s an interlinked process and success depends on holding all steps in mind as you work your way through.

1. Develop your core idea

It’s unlikely the idea for your animation will spring, fully fledged, into your mind. Luckily, you can work up a strong idea using a brainstorming process.

Start by establishing your parameters with the following questions:

• What core messages would you like to get across?
• What information MUST be included, and what are your nice-to-haves?
• Who’s your target audience?
• How long would you like your animation to be?
• What brand and tone of voice guidance will apply?

If you can’t come up with an idea that meets all your criteria, this information will form the basis of a comprehensive brief to your animation agency.

2. Develop your script and voice over

In an animation, every word counts, whether that’s your voiceover or the copy that appears on screen. As a rough rule of thumb you can only fit 130 unhurried words of voiceover during one minute of animation, so think about the number and complexity of messages you want to get across when deciding your animation length. And, if you intend to slice up your animation into short clips to share on social media, think about creating your script to suit this, writing several small chunks rather than one larger whole.

There’s a world of difference between the visual expectations set up by a script that says: ‘Company X took the plunge…’ and one that settles for ‘Company X began…’. Let your words spark your creativity and reflect any visual ideas you already have in the language you choose for your script.

Invest time in getting your script right, and make sure you include all stakeholders in the sign-off process. The script needs to be locked down before you commission a voiceover, or you’re looking at expensive re-recordings that will delay your project. Remember, too, that the animation will be customised to fit perfectly with the script/voiceover, so any changes to the script after sign-off will bring extra costs for animation amends. You’ll need the voiceover completed before animation can start, because the animated elements will be timed to match its pace.

If you’re using a voiceover, explore all the options, getting a range of samples sent to you so you can find the one that best reflects your brand and the spirit of your animation, ready to move on to the next stage of development — the storyboard.

3. Work up your storyboard

A storyboard is where the look and feel of your animation starts to emerge through a sequence of illustrations that outline all the visual elements, with accompanying notes. A good storyboard clarifies the style your animation will use, how you’ll bring in your branding and how you’ll transition from one story element to another. You can break this process down further, starting with drawn sketches and then, once they’re agreed, working them up into designed illustrations. This two-step process can work well if you’ve got ideas to share with your agency, but don’t have the design skills in-house to create the illustrations.

The storyboard stage is also when you work out the transition effects you’re going to use in your animation. Think beyond creating a series of stills and try to specify how these transitions will look. Start by developing just the first thirty seconds of the script as a taster. Sharing this with your stakeholders at this stage will save you time and money in the end; you’ll get an early steer on style, colours, backgrounds, graphics, and the way people are represented before too much time and budget are used up. Once agreed, you can then progress to storyboarding the full script, confident you’re heading in the right direction.

4. Create the first 30 seconds of your animation

As with your storyboard, start by developing just the first part of your animation and sharing this with your stakeholders to get feedback that will then inform the rest of the process. Even if you think that the first 30 seconds match the storyboard exactly, others may not agree, so it’s prudent to check early on.

5. Complete your full animation

With the feedback on the first 30 seconds to guide you, developing the rest of the animation should be relatively straightforward (and consequently cost effective). Upon completion, compile one set of comments for a single round of amends, then proceed to sign-off.

While your animation is in this final stage of development, work out how you can get the most mileage from this long-lasting piece of content. Consider using it on exhibition stands, in presentations and on your website. Bring it to the attention of your audience through all your marketing channels: make sure your sales teams have access to it, include it in an email campaign, or use clips from it on your social media accounts.

Delivering stand-out animations

At asabell, we have all the expertise you need to bring your animation to life. We offer an end-to-end service that takes you from developing your core messages through to a slick animation. Our team has a strong track record of script writing, storyboarding and animating with a wraparound of friendly and supportive management. From the quirky to the complex, we’re skilled in creating animations that perfectly suit your brand and purpose.