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Reputation Management Begins With Credibility

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Information moves faster and its reach is more widespread than at any time in history. Audiences—your clients, competitors, business colleagues and community in which you operate—participate in the 24/7 news cycle and expect transparency in real time. The lightning-fast movement will also include stories that involve your brand. Whether those stories posted by your organization and its supporters and are intended to build and celebrate your brand, or are negative and, for some unfortunate reason meant to undermine the perception and value of your brand, it is imperative that business owners and leaders take a proactive stance and manage information related to your entity as well as potential audience reactions to that information.

Staying out in front of the buzz about your business that’s pinging through the echoverse is essential, primarily because the potential for the appearance of unflattering information, that may or may not be true, is possible. The last thing you want is for a public relations crisis to land in your lap and create a five-alarm fire that forces you into a reactive rescue mission that can only leave you in a position of weakness, no matter how quickly and expertly you quash it. You will no doubt agree that having the luxury of shaping your brand stories and eliminating the need to control a crisis is the best defense? You may already have guessed that creating and presenting relevant and timely information is how the war can be won.

Online search and social listening

The potential for attacks on a business entity is worrisome and the aggression can be persistent. Arguably, the expansion of Artificial Intelligence powered automation has intensified the ability for bad actors to launch dirty tricks campaigns: some may originate from a particularly vicious competitor, or an unknown hacker may enjoy bringing trouble to the life of another human being. The first pillar of reputation management is maintaining consistent awareness. Business owners and leaders who fail to regularly monitor what is being said about their entity and note the prevailing tone of opinions expressed could be doing their brand reputation a disservice. Monitoring the prevailing sentiment is ideally an ongoing practice that informs you of what your customers and other stakeholders say about your brand. About every three months, it will be useful to search your name and the company name, plus your city, in engines such as Bing, Google and Yahoo and read what the AI summary or other search mechanisms reveal about you and your brand.

Quick response to customer complaints found on social media platforms must express empathy and offer a practical solution; apologize and offer your side of the story and make amends when possible. If a customer offers criticism (that might be constructive, BTW), address the matter. Disparaging rumors directed at your business must be met with a polite but firm, discreetly phrased but truthful, clarification. If you see that your business has been reviewed in an excessively negative and/or inaccurate way, contact the reviewing site and request that the offending post be removed.

Brands are also turning to social media user comments for market and consumer info when trends and other marketplace developments evolve too quickly for traditional research methods to keep up. Social listening tools like Talkwalker use AI to pull specific brand insights from the vast quantities of data available on social media platforms, in real time. Social listening, another manifestation of that practice, tracks online comments made about your brand, industry and competitors across social media platforms. From an analysis of those comments, a the big picture will emerge of the unfiltered perceptions that your customers, prospects and others have about your brand. Social listening can also capture developing trends that are bubbling up and indicate where opportunities (or risks) that impact your entity are hiding. In short, social listening data can assist all facets of your brand.

Informative and timely content

The second component of your reputation management strategy is investing in your strengths before an emergency develops. Build genuine, search-visible assets steadily, so that when a difficult moment arrives, your reputation has the depth to absorb it. A company that has consistently shown who it is can take a hit that would flatten a competitor with nothing in reserve. That reserve is built in the quiet quarters before a crisis, not during one.

By positioning yourself as a go-to source of useful insights and info, you’ll win audience trust—and that is vital. The quality and timeliness of the information you deliver, whether by text, video, or audio, will enhance your value. Distributing your thought leader content on social media platforms favored by your target audience maximize distribution and help you build a following. You’ll benefit from increased name recognition, eventually acquire trust and influence and, ultimately, you’ll create for yourself a solid brand reputation. Linking your blog and/or newsletter to one or more social media platforms when you publish is a great way to share your compelling content with a wide audience (readers will find my weekly blog at LinkedIn activity/posts.)

Because you cannot manage what you are not watching, those who pay attention to narratives that appear in the digital space or print, whether friendly or unfriendly, are getting reputation management right. A concern caught early on is a conversation; that same concern, if ignored and allowed to fester, is a headline. An effective business leader’s goal is not to respond well to incidents, but to anticipate that, unfortunately, occasional headwinds are inevitable. Building up credibility, which could be expressed as thought leader expertise, client, nurturing colleague or peer relationships and being responsive to any concerns, or participation in community organizations and/or events are the invisible yet powerful and sustainable pillars of reputation management

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Vlada Karpovich

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Why Leaders Use EQ to Harness the Disruptive Power of AI

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The arrival of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered software tools has dramatically changed how many businesses operate, revolutionizing the way we work, communicate, make decisions and solve problems. AI excels at analyzing and interpreting often complex information and recommending actions that can successfully guide business owners and leaders as they make decisions that will shape their organization’s future. As the integration of AI expands, however, it has become apparent that human oversight of the technology’s implementation is sometimes necessary, in particular when privacy and maintaining ethical business practices is a potential concern.

Will EQ make AI feel trustworthy?

AI delivers many tangible gifts via digital computers and robots, and the software systems they support, but regarding intangible qualities, not so much. One can only expect technology to be soulless, but it is possible to program your chatbot to display “empathy” to a frustrated customer who has a problem to solve, but your AI tools have no genuine understanding of emotions. AI-powered technology tools are unable to navigate complex human behaviors, such as developing trust, understanding the value of integrity, or building relationships. While AI has the capability to optimize the efficiency and performance of your business systems, it cannot simulate cognitive processes such as judgment, adaptability, or principled decision-making.

An awareness of those limitations points to a solid case for the need of human oversight to monitor AI implementation in your organization. It falls on business owners and leaders to put guardrails in place to direct and enhance AI outcomes. Incorporating Emotional Intelligence (EQ) behavioral principles can provide useful assistance to business owners and leaders as they attempt to harness AI-powered technology and produce benefits that are effective and also ethical.

What is EQ and why does AI need it?

As AI becomes more widely adopted, establishing ethical business practices, such as safeguarding the privacy of those with whom one does business, and decision-making that prioritizes not only the interests of business leaders but is also humane, is becoming standard operating procedure. Achieving mission-critical goals without compromising the trust of customers, employees and community is becoming recognized as a brand enhancement.

Behaviors and actions attributed to Emotional Intelligence, often called EQ (Emotional Quotient), refer to the ability to recognize, understand and manage emotions in oneself and others. The introduction of EQ-based perspectives is becoming more prominent as business owners and leaders become more accepting of AI technology and increasingly aware that AI cannot replicate cognitive processes, like empathy, creative problem-solving and effective communication.

AI and the value of EQ soft skills

AI has only a limited ability to mirror and respond in kind to human empathy. Yes, it can process natural language and recognize patterns that signal it is the appropriate time to respond with an empathetic reply such as, “Your problem sounds challenging and I’m here to assist you,” as the tool aims to resolve a customer service issue. But AI technology can only respond with empathy according to predefined algorithms; and those replies and conversations often lack emotional depth and nuance.

As AI becomes part of everyday work, soft skills such as communication, adaptability and relationship-building remind business leaders of their place at the table. EQ is recognized as a core leadership skill and it maintains that status in the AI era. Leaders who are competent in EQ are are better able to connect with customers or colleagues on a deeper level and understand their motivations or misgivings. The possession of soft skills can nurture trust and create a resilient, adaptive and ultimately productive work environment.

The ability to blend other standard hallmarks of leadership, such as good judgment, adaptability and resourcefulness—and are foundational to the agile business practices that are crucial to achieving success in rapidly shifting economic and political currents—while simultaneously navigating through an AI-powered workplace, presents an unambiguous case for the introduction of EQ associated business practices. AI can provide data-driven insights and predictions, but it takes a human leader to apply that information in the context of broader organizational goals, ethical considerations, and long-term strategies. Decisions often require that leaders use their judgment to weigh risks, navigate uncertainties, assess team dynamics and then make informed decisions that reflect the values of their organization.

Ethical leadership is a critical component in the AI era. As AI takes on more responsibility for decision-making processes, leaders must ensure that its use aligns with ethical standards and is not compromised by biases. Leaders must remain vigilant about how AI technology is applied, to ensure that it serves the best interests of people, and not just the bottom line. The most successful leaders will not be those who resist change but rather those eager to learn how AI can enhance business operations and the workplace, all the while providing new opportunities for collaboration and innovation. As organizations invest more heavily in AI tools, those who stand out will be able to combine AI capabilities with behaviors associated with EQ, such as empathy, communication, judgment, adaptability and agility and they will carry the day.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © MorphCast

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Remedies to Stimulate Sluggish Cash-Flow

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There are several ways to evaluate the financial health of a business entity and an examination of cash-flow is a reliable method. Cash-flow, the amount of money that flows through your business—on the plus side is the income generated by revenue derived from sales of your products and services, earnings accrued from interest and dividends, or loans or investments that have been obtained. On the outbound side, cash-flow consists of what is spent on expenses such as office rent and utilities, product inventory, employee wages (1099 NEC and W-2), or business promotion activities, such as advertising or public relations. Cash-flow generated from normal business operations is known as operating cash-flow.

Learning how to control, and ideally enhance, cash-flow in your business is a risk management lesson that has direct impact on the success and longevity of your entity. It would not be a stretch to consider the necessity for prudent cash-flow management an emergency for Freelance solopreneurs, as the B2B sales process becomes more complex and now averages 11 stakeholders and/or decision-makers and continues to lengthen (121 days). Rising consumer prices present yet another worry.

So what can you do to more effectively control your business cash-flow? The short answer is to increase sales revenue and other income and decrease the spend on expenses—if only! Fortunately, there are a number of potentially effective cash-flow maintenance tactics you might implement to strengthen the viability of your entity:

Operating expenses

Generating sales revenue and other income is the most obvious cash-flow engine, but keep in mind that expenses and other spending commitments can quickly empty your coffers and leave you in the red. Let us begin the cash-flow improvement process by reviewing your fixed and operating (selling) expenses and look to see what you can trim.

  • Negotiate better terms with vendors and suppliers. Can payment schedules slow down, or payments due become smaller? Inventory and operational goods and services provided by suppliers and vendors are essential line items expenses, but if you just accept their presence in your accounts payable obligations each month without question or exploration, you may be spending more than necessary. Cultivate cooperative relationships with vendors and other suppliers and seek their advice and support if it appears you need to renegotiate prices or credit terms, and/or secure discounts for bulk orders, both of which can cut costs.
  • Reevaluate spending. Are you paying for goods or services—like subscriptions, for example—that you don’t use? Can you eliminate some of the line items out of your monthly budget? Over time, small yet unnecessary, expenses have a way of adding up. Rethink your resource allocation, meaning, take a look at where your money is going and confirm that every item has a Return on Investment that justifies the expenditure. It’s easy to forget about or overlook trivial expenses, they can often leave you paying hundreds of dollars, if not more, in unnecessary bills and fees over a year. It’s always a good idea to work to improve your cash-flow management. Take a hard look at accounts payable items and determine where you might cut back.

Invoicing and payments

  • Collect payment upfront. The faster your business gets paid, the more cash your business will have to pay expenses, invest in growth, or even to park in a savings account for future needs. Consider charging 10-15% up front as a deposit and don’t commence work until you have it.
  • Invoice often. When you are busy doing client work, it’s easy to get behind on administrative tasks—but don’t let invoicing take a back seat. Send invoices on time every month and keep due dates consistent. Doing so will set clear expectations about the financial arrangement between you and your clients and can help you meet your financial obligations and goals. Follow up on invoices that aren’t paid on time when the due date reaches or exceeds 45 days.
  • Make it easy to pay. Give your customers options that make it easy to pay. Sign up with a credit card processing company so you can accept credit and debit cards. B2B customers may prefer to pay via ACH, while other customers may prefer payment options like Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App. You want to speed up payments, which are your revenue.
  • Charge for late payments. A penalty for late payments that exceed a certain number of days (for example, 60+ days) can urge clients to prioritize your invoices and avoid extra fees. In extreme cases, you can even set a system for collections. Consider debt collection services to get past due invoices paid. This is touchy, however, and you don’t want a client to get angry about a demand for payment and refuse to pay in retaliation. If you decide to introduce a charge for late payments, make sure you give your clients adequate notice in writing and a telephone call first could soften the blow. Maybe the client is waiting to be paid by his/her client?

Increase revenue

  • Sell more products or services. Are you relying heavily on email marketing but not really seeing profit from your efforts? Have you become complacent about your social media followers and lost sight of how maintaining their engagement can contribute to future sales and word-of-mouth referrals that bring in new business? Sometimes marketing efforts can become stale and predictable, leaving your customers uninspired and going elsewhere with their business. Audit your current marketing campaigns and determine where you may be able to make changes to jump-start your existing tactics and engage new customers.
  • Identify and target new markets. In some cases, this may be as simple as some thoughtful and creative brainstorming that results in new ways you can market your product or service to other consumers based on their needs (e.g., problem/solution marketing). In others, you may need to do some significant consumer research and examine the efforts of your competitors or potential competitors. One great way to identify new markets is to, as noted above, actively engage social media accounts. Doing so can raise the profile of your brand, services and products by expanding visibility that gets your name in front of more potential customers. You’ll also be likely to re-engage lapsed customers as well.
  • Raise your prices. Flat or decreasing revenue may be a result of outdated or inefficient pricing. Have you been under-pricing and sabotaging your revenue potential? There are a number of reasons that your pricing may be inefficient, but before you jump into a pricing overhaul, take the time to review all factors and how they’ve changed over the last month, quarter, or year. As part of your evaluation, it’s essential to account for payroll; equipment, vendor and supplier fees; and competitor prices.
  • Improve customer service. Excellent customer service can increase customer loyalty and repeat sales, ultimately bringing in more revenue. You may also profit from devising after-sale support to clients, such as training and other follow-up support that will serve the customer. Poor customer service increases churn rates and increases customer acquisition costs.

Administrative

  • Forecast your cash-flow. A cash-flow forecast is very useful for multiple reasons. It will help the business owner identify cash-flow shortfalls before they become major problems. It can help the business make decisions about key purchases or investments, and to plan for growth. 
  • Set financial goals. Identifying an attainable revenue target is a big part of how a business gets where it wants to go. Your business plan will help you figure out what those goals are, the milestones you need to reach, and how you plan to achieve them. If you don’t have clear goals for your business, this should be at the top of your to do list. 

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Reuters/Leonhard Foeger. British Pound Sterling banknotes (November 16, 2017)

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Audit: Is Your Marketing Content Doing the Job?

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Relevant, actionable even, marketing content is the engine that pushes a business entity forward. Marketing (and its tactical sibling, sales) is enshrined as one of the three pillars of a business, along with operations and finance. A range of marketing content can be developed and employed to carry out strategies and tactics that promote the company’s business solutions—its products and/or services—by addressing the pain points, goals and challenges that prospective customers who make purchases on behalf of their organization must resolve.

That content is used to advance defining story narratives that communicate how your company’s products or services produce returns on investment for customers—commonly, financial gain, operational efficiencies, risk management, or achieving a mission-critical goal. B2B marketing content is meant to create conditions that persuade prospects to green-light the sale:

  • Expand the customer list by introducing the business entity and its solutions to prospects who have a problem to solve or goal to reach
  • Generate viable sales leads
  • Establish trust in the perception of the solutions that the business provides
  • Promote the company’s visibility and credibility
  • Distinguish the business from competitors
  • Enhance the brand reputation
  • Position the company to survive and thrive by growing sales revenue and profit

We approach 2027 with the knowledge that for Freelance business owners, implementing a powerful marketing content strategy that is carried out by credible, useful content that is timely and able to address the needs of prospects at every stage of the buyer’s journey has never been more important. Now that B2B decision-makers have made it known that 67% prefer to self-direct their buyer’s journey and only contacting the vendor until they approach the comparative evaluation of solutions that have made it to the short list. Because it is often not possible to add your input to the buyer’s journey until a decision is about to be made, it is imperative that your marketing content is persuasive enough to carry your solution through the vetting obstacle course with a good chance to emerge as the winner.

Adjust to the B2B buying reality

The sales cycles in B2B has become long and perilous, and prospects are known to be demanding. The communication formats you have in place, e.g. presentations, links to webinars or podcasts and case studies, too, exist to show prospects why your solution makes sense. During the buyer’s journey, marketing content must satisfy the priorities of influential stakeholders, gatekeepers and, finally, the decision-making committee. Before any campaign launches, your organizations needs alignment in three areas:

1. Content availability: right time, right place

Ask yourself—when you’re looking for something, whether it’s your keys or some useful information, you need whatever it is to be there when you need it, in a place where you can find it. This basic fact of human nature unfortunately prevents lots of informative marketing content from being noticed and receiving serious consideration by the parties for whom it is intended. So much useful marketing content is created and subsequently clicked out of existence, unable to fulfill its purpose, because the recipient decided it wasn’t worth the time and energy to deal with it when it landed in the inbox. Unfortunate timing condemns good content to suffer the delete button. In other words, good content does not automatically become visible content. Prospects tend to rank what they read:

  • What looks relevant
  • What looks important
  • What looks familiar
  • What can be ignored

Another scenario that drains the power of content is putting a story that could be effective in front of the prospect at the wrong time. Keep in mind that your job is to nurture the buyer’s journey and organically move it forward, toward a successful conclusion—the sale. You cannot force the process. It is imperative to have at the ready informative and persuasive marketing content that informs each stage of the buyer’s journey—awareness, research, decision and post-sale. If you only produce early awareness stage, “top-of-funnel” content, it’s likely you’ll get window shopper prospects who never convert. If you only produce “bottom-of-funnel” content that’s intended to encourage prospects who are evaluating short list candidates so they can finalize the sale, it’s likely you’ll get many prospects to take the journey in the first place. Oh, and your content must not only address each stage of the buyer’s journey, but also stand out and capture attention. B2B buyers keep a trigger finger on the delete button and they’re ready to click.

2. Audience attention

You already know to define your audience and confirm factors that incent them to seek out your type of service or product and what they want to achieve when your solution is implemented. Once you’ve confirmed your prospect’s agenda for doing business with you (or one of your competitors, but we don’t want that to happen!), you must ensure that your marketing content makes viewers stop, read and look. B2B marketing is no longer about competing against other businesses anymore—it’s competing against multiple distractions, sensory overload, fatigue, or doing nothing at all. When a prospect eyeballs your content, here’s the time frame you’re up against:

  • 3 seconds to grab their attention.
  • 30 seconds for a glance.
  • 3 minutes for a full read

Eye-catching

An arresting visual, an unexpected revelation, humor, or emotional honesty are among the hooks you might use to bring audience attention that causes them to engage with your content and read on. Providing a contrarian or surprising fact or statistic that challenges a common belief can likewise be compelling.

Call-to-action

A call-to-action asks the reader to do something — learn, win, sign up, give feedback, for example. Many emails that drop into the average inbox lack an interesting, appealing subject line. It’s so easy for the eye to slide over much that is sent. Devise an amusing, novel, or practical call-to-action that will both grab attention and either inspire or dare your intended reader to read on.

Emotional relevance

You will be mistaken if you think that the decision-makers for your sale are ruled by the logic of facts, figures and potential outcomes. most decisions are emotional first and rationalized second. Humans naturally pay more attention to things connected to:

  • Identity
  • Safety
  • Status
  • Belonging
  • Aspiration
  • Fear
  • Pleasure

Humans remember what we feel and this is why emotionally relevant marketing consistently tends to outperform purely informational marketing. Facts matter but feelings determine whether those facts are noticed.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Liquoricelegs

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Bring Visibility to the Value You Deliver

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Is the value of your B2B products and/or services fully recognized and acknowledged by your customers and prospects? You may assume that if sales get within striking distance of your annual revenue target, the answer is yes—yes, prospects trust that your solutions will resolve their pain point or achieve an important goal. It’s great when customers understand their need for what you sell and they’re willing to pay to use it. However, there may be a hidden negative action that has the potential to undermine your sales. Yes, you have a roster of paying customers, but some may have a casual attitude toward your offering. These customers fail to fully appreciate the significance of the outcomes derived from using your service or product. The failure to grasp the good stuff your service or product brings to the table is called a value gap; although customers improve the position of their company in one way or another when they use your offering, they don’t exactly count their blessings for being able to do so. Those customers do not objectively measure, document, or communicate to their company leaders and stakeholders the user case that explains why doing business with you is good business.

You might suspect a value gap if it appears the enthusiasm customers once expressed for the results produced when using your service or product diminish and leave your solution to fade like a wallflower, instead of sparkling like the belle of the ball. Maybe social media engagement is drifting downward and few customers are singing your praises and making referrals?

The existence of a value gap typically weakens future sales (including repeat business), shrinks the number of customer Word-of-Mouth referrals you receive and some customers may even find it acceptable to bargain down the selling price for your solution. Meaning, a value gap kills growth opportunities and you’ve got to reverse it. Doug May, founder and managing partner of Value Sherpas, a go-to-market advisory firm, and Wendy Wise, founder and CEO of Profitwise, which provides pricing and go-to-market services, are co-authors of Bridging the Value Gap (2015) and they can show you how to climb out of the quicksand.

Based on their experience, May and Wise recommend that companies make demonstrating customer value foundational in all relevant customer touchpoints across the organization to successfully when looking to overturn the value gap. Business owners and leaders should research, evaluate, confirm and integrate value that matters into customer-facing business operations to receive the greatest reward from interactions that are visible, and therefore memorable, to customers. In this way, the business owner will have the best opportunities to create competitive advantages that are unique to your organization. 

Your job is to discover what motivates prospects and customers to seek out products or services in your category, and then determine what customers and prospects value most highly about the solution they intend to purchase. Finally, you must decide how your company can consistently deliver highly impactful value and simultaneously enable customers and prospects to see and appreciate that value. The authors define the process as a sequence—research and understand, verify, operationalize and scale.

May and Wise point out that addressing the value gap is most efficiently managed when you align the benefits and outcomes associated with your solutions with quickly recognizable, easy to explain and highly valued business outcomes such as increased annual revenue, cost reduction and risk management. You do this by clearly identifying how customers capture value when they implement your solutions.

In your marketing messages and sales pitch, articulate and reinforce those defining, problem-solving, goal achieving outcomes to ensure that recognition of the value you bring to customers is the foundation of the sales journey. In all aspects of your sales and marketing functions, emphasize and explain the value that a customer will receive when s/he buys from your company, from implementation, to outcomes, to pricing and after-sale customer service. Organizations that make customer value not only visible, but also measurable, will make the value memorable and therefore better positioned to sustain growth and strengthen the competitive advantage.

Research, verify and understand

You can begin building a customer-value focus almost anywhere in the organization. Be advised, however, that this work cannot be done with surveys, or casual conversations that focus on “What do you value about doing business with us?” To understand the wins, losses, pain points and the use case, it will be necessary to identify a subset of customers who represent these varied contexts—and conduct deep, one-on-one conversations to understand how your solution affects their costs, revenues and risks and how it aligns with their strategic priorities. Document the most common benefits and begin to build a model to enable sales.

Operationalize it—starting with sales

 According to the authors, sales is the place to begin, because the impact is fastest and most visible (pricing is a close second). Apply the customer-value approach directly to live, in-progress sales opportunities. Embed value that is recognizable, measurable and coveted by the prospect into the sales process itself. Value messages must be woven into sales presentations and sales content. Develop business-case models—a good case study could work—that will allow the sales team or specialist to measure the customer’s current challenge or pain point and project the future value your solution can deliver—grounded in real customer data and benchmarks. One step is essential: the customer champion must be involved in building the business case that will ultimately land with senior leadership. Without that co-creation, the case will lack the internal credibility it needs.

Cascade the perception of value throughout the organization

Once the foundational models are in place, extend the customer-value mindset beyond sales to achieve a holistic approach—embedded across customer success, product, pricing and the C-suite—needed to drive higher margins and a sustainable competitive advantage.

  • Marketing: Ensure that messaging conveys customer impact for primary use cases and that demand generation focuses on outcomes, not just product capabilities.
  • Post-sale: Guide a meaningful portion of your customers to deepen their use of the capabilities and products you offer that are most differentiated—and that they are aware and can articulate the business value they are capturing.
  • Service/Product: Eventually embed customer business value thinking into product planning, using it to drive innovation priorities and feature sequencing.
  • Pricing: Evaluate your pricing against your use cases and the business value they deliver. Ensure that you are incentivizing the right customer behaviors such as adoption and retention of adjacent products while capturing appropriate revenue.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: EgolenaHK/Bigstock.com

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How Much Is Too Much to Pay for AI?

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You were so proud of yourself (deservedly so) and excited to get started. You did your homework—assessed needs, researched options, demonstrated strategic thinking and believed that if you incorporate artificial technology powered software into your business processes, you’d enable your organization to take a leap forward and achieve important wins. So you brought in AI powered tools that can be expected to implement your goals. But unfortunately, there was a glitch—you would soon realize that your understanding of operating costs was incomplete. What?? You expected to pay some sort of a premium for enhanced services; it’s just that you were under the impression that soon after AI tech capabilities were optimized, the return on investment would overtake user expenses. But uh, oh—you’ve been running AI-powered software for nearly a year and ROI has not yet caught up. What’s going on?

A survey from KPMG finds that many business owners are taken aback by their AI operating expenses and that is especially true for enterprise companies that decided to employ a usage-based pricing model. The accounting firm interviewed 2,145 executives around the world and one-third reported that they had a limited understanding of the real-time price of employing a usage costs pricing model. Freelancers and small business owners are singing the same song. Like the pacesetters who lead enterprise companies, many Freelance business owners intended to save money over the long term by deploying AI instead of paying for hired help, whether W-2 full-time or 1099NEC out-sourced talent. The assumption was that AI can do the job at a lower cost than staff members. But a new report has issued the sobering warning that such as expectation is not necessarily accurate.  AI technology was supposed to make human labor almost obsolete but the reality is, AI enhancement is often more expensive than the humans it was meant to replace. 

Artificial intelligence has become an essential business tool. Yet, with dozens of AI platforms available in the market, understanding AI software pricing models, and also determining the right solutions for your company, is now recognized as a tall order. Whether your business entity is a Freelance one-person entity whose leader must watch every dollar, or you are the Chief Financial Officer of a prominent global or national enterprise company that has you managing substantial budgets, the cost of AI software can range from a free tier plan for small entities to six-figure annual pricing contracts that serve multi-nationals. The business leader’s challenge is to balance the AI-powered solutions that will support desired growth strategies with an affordable price (as you define it). But then again, isn’t that the story of all business expenses?

So when you’re thinking about an AI-powered chatbot, customer relations management platform, content creation and/or virtual assistant, it is imperative that you reach a crystal clear understanding of which systems you must have in place before bringing in AI tools, as well as a very good estimate of the monthly operating costs you’ll likely incur. You also need to obtain a credible expectation for the ROI that will accrue to your monthly or quarterly Income Statement, in terms of enhanced productivity, operational efficiencies, repeat business, or value of your customer list.

To help you get your arms around the real-time costs of operating AI, I turned to AI sales and automation agency The Crunch to view a sampling of typical pricing plans. Moreover, be ready for hidden expenses that might affect total ownership costs—implementation and integration fees can add 20-30% to initial costs. Training costs and ongoing maintenance expenses must also be factored in.

AI pricing plans 

  • Subscription-based pricing is the most popular option. Costs are predictable and regular service updates are guaranteed. Monthly or annual fees are typically $10 to $500+ per user.
  • Usage-based pricing costs are based on how your business consumes your AI services. Like water and electricity consumption in residential or commercial dwellings are tracked and priced, you are billed for the processing hours or data volume that requires AI power. While this offers flexibility for variable workloads, costs can escalate quickly during peak usage periods. Also, you don’t know what you’ve spent util you see the monthly statement, so you’re vulnerable to sticker shock.
  • Freemium models provide basic features at no cost, but premium services are accessible only from behind the paywall. These payment options work well for testing and small-scale projects but will require that you pay as usage grows.
  • Enterprise licensing offers custom pricing for large organizations, typically including dedicated support, enhanced security and unlimited users. These contracts usually start at $50,000 annually.

Budgeting AI services for your needs

  • Define how you’ll deploy AI. To access AI software while on a budget, list your must-have features and match them to the cheapest pricing tier that provides them. You might have more control over costs by choosing usage-based pricing if your demand is low or spiky and intermittent. Start with a freemium tier and upgrade when your activity volume makes it wise to do so. Start by identifying the specific problems you want AI to solve. Is your goal to automate customer service processes, generate various types of marketing content, analyze data whose conclusions will be the foundation of strategies, or enhance productivity? Clear objectives discourage overspending on unnecessary features. Document must-have features versus nice-to-have capabilities. This distinction helps you evaluate whether premium pricing will deliver corresponding value.
  • Calculate total cost of ownership. Look beyond monthly subscription fees and remember to calculate implementation costs, training expenses, integration requirements and the potential to rack up usage overages. A seemingly affordable AI software price can balloon when factoring in these additional expenses. For example, a $50 monthly tool requiring $5,000 in custom integration may cost more over two years than a $200 monthly solution with native integrations.
  • Start with free trials and Freemium plans. Most AI platforms offer trial periods or free tiers. Test multiple solutions before committing. Evaluate user experience, integration ease, output quality and customer support responsiveness during trials. Consider functionality, ease of use, integration capabilities, support quality, and total cost.
  • Potential scalability. Choose platforms that grow with your business. Switching AI tools later often involves a migration cost, maybe also retraining and, at minimum, workflow and productivity disruption. Investigate to the best of your ability whether pricing reasonably reflects any usage increases. However, some platforms offer volume discounts or flexible plans that accommodate growth without dramatic price increases.
  • Evaluate ROI potential. Calculate your expected ROI. If an AI tool saves 10 hours weekly at a $50 hourly rate, it justifies $2,000 monthly in value. Compare this against the actual cost to determine ROI. According to McKinsey’s 2026 AI Impact Study, businesses implementing AI tools see average productivity gains of 25-40%, with payback periods typically under 12 months for well-chosen solutions.
  • Invest in AI training. Allocate budget and time for comprehensive team training. Most vendors offer onboarding resources, webinars and documentation—use them.
  • Monitor AI usage and ROI. Establish relevant KPIs before AI implementation. Based on your deployment of AI, document metrics before AI and then monthly or quarterly readings to validate the ROI that is received once AI processes are in motion.
  • Track actual usage against projections. Are you actively using AI tools you’re paying for? Is your AI tools delivering the expected productivity gains? Underutilized features waste money; regular monitoring identifies any underperforming investments before you spend more money than you should.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Royalty free digital illustration

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Transform Your Brand’s Customer Experience

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Have you figured out that bringing a new customer into your business and keeping that customer as an active member of your roster are two different marketing functions? I’m sure you have! Freelance professionals must build and guide the entire arc of the sales process, from reassuring prospects who’d like to discuss follow-up questions about the capabilities of your service or product, to developing an efficient and welcoming onboarding procedure for new customers, to devising post-sale services or training that anticipates the type of support that will be helpful. Really, B2B selling is about presenting a positive customer experience at relevant (but not necessarily every) touchpoint.

It is well-known that B2B customer expectations are rising as they become more selective about vendors they trust and where they spend their highly scrutinized budgets. It may be too harsh to say that B2B customers have become jaded, demanding and fickle, but many are confronted with dozens of sales pitches in an average week as vendors compete for attention. But there is good news: 1.) You know that a well-designed and implemented customer experience matters to those with whom you do business; and 2.) It’s possible to distinguish your brand from competitors by delivering an exceptional customer experience (CX). In fact, a first-rate CX, as your market segment defines it, is one of the most powerful business growth accelerators and brand builders available today.

As products and services become more indistinguishable, and proliferate into a mass of “me, too” offerings, Freelancers and other business owners are in search of meaningful competitive advantages and CX has emerged as a potential deciding factor that can impact either customer loyalty or customer churn. Freelancers will do well to examine how your customer experience operates in real time, so that you can identify any lapses, improve efficiencies and create a consistently reliable and seamless experience that represents the best of your brand. Read on to learn the steps you’ll take to devise a successful CX transformation.

Planning: strategy and blueprint

Break down the steps of your typical buyer’s journey as lived by a prospect, starting with determining how most prospects find you. A Word-of-Mouth referral from a colleague has been revealed as the beginning of most B2B buyer journeys—have you determined who are your most enthusiastic referral sources?

It’s also been revealed that B2B prospective buyers prefer to avoid interacting with vendors until a particular service or product appears emerges as a strong candidate. At that point, the prospect will contact chosen vendors and confirm impressions about the product or service, Finally, a decision will be made about which brands will be added to a short list for an assessment by the decision team. CX marketing experts say that in the planning phase of your CX transformation, you should answer three questions:

  • What do you want customers to feel or how do you want them to react at the most important moments in their buyer’s journey your brand?
  • What behaviors or decisions influence those feelings or reactions?
  • How can you amplify or reinforce those factors that positively impact how a prospect feels or reacts to pivotal moments in your buyer’s journey?

Finally, as you devise an implementation plan blueprint for your CX transformation, keep at top-of-mind the following objectives:

  • Attract: Win more customers through distinctive value propositions and smarter targeting.
  • Serve: Deliver seamless, experiences.
  • Retain: Engage customers meaningfully at moments of genuine need to promote loyalty, repeat business and Word-of-Mouth referrals.
  • Grow: Drive sustained growth by meeting more customer needs that stimulate repeat business and referrals.

CRM Platform: the foundation

Using a Customer Relations Management platform provides many benefits, such as the ability to effectively and efficiently manage decisive aspects of customer behavior— which can reveal a better understanding of customers and give you insights into which buyer journey factors are most relevant to prospects, so that you can upgrade and transformed those experiences. With CRM, you can manage customer relationships more effectively and build a more customer-centric business. The primary benefits of using CRM include improved customer satisfaction, enhanced customer retention, increased sales efficiency, streamlined business processes and better data insights.

CRMs with AI capabilities include intelligent automation, predictive insights and AI agents that can take autonomous actions to further amplify these benefits. That data will show you a 360-degree, comprehensive view of your customers and guide you to build a personalized customer experience that will resonate. You’ll also can be positioned to develop stronger customer relationships and drive business growth—repeat business, enhanced customer lifetime value and brand advocacy that promotes loyalty.

Process: the operational aspects

What process transformation actually requires is an operating rhythm that’s advantageously timed to support each phase of the CX transformation rollout. You’ll verify the timing with performance outcome metrics, that are ideally powered by AI, so that you can evaluate customer responses. Weekly monitoring of key touchpoints such as customer engagement and drop-out rates will keep you on top of the process. When an effective process is in place, CX transformation benefits multiply. When it isn’t, you can quickly make the correcting adjustments.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Disney Food Blog. Riding the teacups at The Mad Tea Party in The Magic Kingdom Walt Disney theme park, Lake Buena Vista, FL

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How To Encourage B2B Referrals

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When it comes to influencing B2B buying decisions, few marketing resources are as powerful as a referral made by a customer who had a good experience working with your organization and is happy to recommend those in his/her business network to investigate your brand if there is need of a service or product that matches yours. Customer endorsements, also known as Word-of-Mouth referrals, are a crucial ingredient of an effective customer acquisition strategy. It’s been documented that Word-of-Mouth referrals positively affect 20% to 50% of purchasing decisions and 84% of B2B buying decision-makers report that their buyer’s journey typically begins with a referral. Foundational to Word-of-Mouth referrals are good customer experiences and good relationships.

The term Word-of-Mouth marketing refers to an informal sharing of opinions, experiences and recommendations about a brand, product, or service between colleagues and friends. Whenever people speak about a business, they are participating in Word-of-Mouth marketing. Long before social media marketing existed, business owners and sales professionals relied on the trusted opinions of business colleagues and other reliable sources to guide their purchasing decisions. Word-of-Mouth endorsements continue to be sought after and trusted, even as business (and personal) communication has gone beyond telephone or face2face conversations to encompass digital formats, including social media, online review sites, webinars and podcasts and/or online professional communities.

There are few marketing strategies that are as potent or as cost-effective as endorsements made by satisfied customers and the power of Word-of-Mouth referrals is supported by metrics. According to data published by ThinkImpact, a platform that provides business and career related information, 78% of B2B referrals create viable customer leads for the business and 63% of B2B revenue comes from existing clients and referrals combined.

Credible, verifiable and sharable

In the increasingly complex B2B marketing landscape, Word-of-Mouth referrals are considered credible and verifiable business intelligence. In spite of, or maybe even because of, the dominance of professionally produced marketing materials and campaigns, prospective buyers are acquiring a growing respect for boots-on-the-ground, real world user experiences—and that evolving perspective has caused some to look skeptically at corporate-concocted marketing messages.

In stark contrast, Word-of-Mouth referrals are seen as unquestionably real and born of bona fide knowledge and/or experience and they have the power to significantly amplify your brand reputation and annual revenue. The problem is they are an unpredictable gift. Waiting for personal endorsements made by satisfied customers to materialize leaves too much to chance in a hyper-competitive marketplace. It should come as no surprise that a Freelancer must take charge and devise a strategy that will keep positive Word-of-Mouth opinions circulating through your networks.

The key driver of B2B Word-of-Mouth customer referrals is trust that is the outcome of consistently providing an excellent customer experience, encouraging customer engagement and inspiring brand loyalty that advances into advocacy and culminates in Word-of-Mouth referrals. Encouraging customer feedback through various channels and touchpoints, such as surveys, polls and calls-to-action that invite customers to produce a testimonial that describes an example of customer service or customer experience that they found especially meaningful—can put your customers on the pathway to making Word-of-Mouth referrals on your behalf.

You will find it useful to expand your Word-of-Mouth referral network to include professional colleagues. Cultivating a reputation as a thought leader by developing relevant educational marketing content, combined with taking an active role in local business associations, can become a launching pad for establishing thought leader credibility. Devise a strategy that thoughtfully showcases your subject expertise and capabilities as it subtly promotes your unique value effectively and generates a positive buzz that results in Word-of-Mouth referrals. See below to find possibilities to expand your visibility to customers and colleagues who can become your brand cheerleaders and reward you with Word-of-Mouth referrals.

  • Social media and online review sites and communities.  Social networks are ubiquitous and enable participants to make many business and social connections. Invite your happy customers to share their enthusiasm for your product or service by posting user generated content that explains how your product or service made their life easier, enabled the company to achieve an important goal and what factors motivated them to choose your company instead of a competitor.
  • Case studies. Particularly if your service or product resolved a particularly vexing pain point for a customer, invite him/her to tell the story in a written or video format case study. A good case study allows prospects who are making final selections to envision the problem-solving capacity of your product or service and demonstrate thought leadership.
  • Webinars and podcasts. Laying the Groundwork for Word-of-Mouth Success for your webinar or podcast appearance by developing content that listeners will consider to be valuable. Address and offer effective solutions to problems that your listeners are likely to encounter—identify themes that your audience already has problems with and is searching for better ways to solve them. If you are the program host, your speakers should be someone who has proven credentials in developing valuable content. Finally, like an email subject line, create a catchy title for your webinar or podcast, it’s important to both communicate the benefit while creating curiosity.
  • Speaking engagements. Getting involved with local business associations such as the chamber of commerce, is a great resource to help you build your way to thought leader status and receiving Word-of-Mouth endorsements. If you haven’t done so already, get to know the leadership and membership by volunteering to manage programs. Volunteering to introduce a featured speaker or moderating a panel are pathways to an invitation to present a workshop that you’ve developed. An incubator for testing the reaction to a topic you’ve developed, or to polish your public speaking ability, is to explore speaking opportunities at your local library (where you may find a less demanding audience).

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Deposit Photos

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Content Gets Competitive

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Freelance friend, you are a working professional who knows the environment in which you work. You know all too well that the B2B marketplace continues to become more saturated and, as one would expect, more competitive, as the years go by. B2B buying decision-makers, who are your prospects, have also become more demanding. The 2026 B2B Global Pulse Survey by McKinsey found that today’s buyers expect …consistent information and immediate access to expertise. When those expectations are not met, research shows, they move on.

In order to reach the planned revenue target, Freelance professionals, as well as small business owners and other marketers, must keep up with the growing expectations of prospective customers and get smarter about the strategies devised to promote and explain the case for using your product or service. As you do, keep in mind that your prospects have begun to consult B2B influencers to guide their buyer’s journey, as posts in this diary have recently indicated. The influencers are perceived to be both highly knowledgeable and independent. That’s a trend that will no doubt inspire you to create more authoritative content. Memorable and impactful will be your guiding stars.

B2B brands are investing more in editorial excellences, in-depth guides, and contributions from subject matter experts to provide real value.

Thought leader level content

Buyers want substantive proof of the business case that supports your service or product; enthusiastically delivered promises are not enough. Buyers are in search of informational marketing resources that ensure they’ll be able to make informed decisions when evaluating potential purchases. As a result, expectations continue to rise, making it more difficult for Freelancers to stand out as a professional who has a solution that has the potential to solve the problem or facilitate reaching the goal. Measurable outcomes and Return on Investment are prioritized, making case studies, industry reports, and original research the drivers of engagement and trust in your marketing content. Letting the quality of your supporting data confer to you thought leader style expertise is now a must-do for B2B Freelancers, because your prospects are being seduced by influencers. However, the research you quote is most likely to have been sponsored by a well-respected marketing research platform. As long as the data refers to the point you’re making, you’ll be taken as credible.

Interactive

Here’s the blistering truth—B2B buyers don’t want to talk with salespeople, as confirmed in a 2025 sales survey conducted by the business and technology research platform Gartner; 67% of B2B buyers indicated that they prefer a rep‑free experience. They’re up to here aggravated by avalanches of cold -calling mass marketing emails. Prospects on a buyer’s journey do like the opportunity to evaluate products or services anonymously by using digital tools before they engage with a vendor. Interactive explainer videos that include embedded clickable hotspots that adapt to the prospect’s learning path are a favorite resource, as are webinars that facilitate live chat and interactive infographics.

As the buyer’s journey heats up, prospects are happy to speak with a vendor (maybe you!), to confirm the self-guided research and discuss negotiable matters, such as the possibility of customization and price. To help reel in your sale, Gartner recommends the following:

  • Provide content that demonstrates your brand understands the pain points, goals, priorities, concerns and questions that prospective buyers need to make the right decision—
  • Help buyers quantify the benefits of your product or service for their organization (e.g., including solution performance data and other details). Consider creating free DIY interactive digital tools, such as interactive images, infographics, or surveys, that will help you present a memorable user experience for prospects who are on a self-guided buyer’s journey.
  • Help prospects feel confident and in control of the purchase decision (e.g., by providing a choice of tailored recommendations based on prospect input).
  • Encourage prospects to advance step by step as appropriate through their buyer’s journey by including compelling calls-to-action.

Brand storytelling

Humanizing your organization by inviting customers and prospects to get to know you is the reason to develop a brand narrative. Sharing customer success stories, divulging your motivation to become a founder and other mission-driven details can make your brand feel more relatable and relevant to current and prospective customers. Sharing relevant backstory details about your company—starting with what inspired you to launch your entity—can have enormous benefits for your business, including capturing consumers’ attention and helping you truly connect with customers. Ultimately, a strong customer relationship can help drive growth and increase sales. Brand storytelling is a marketing strategy that involves using authentic narratives to connect with your audience and build genuine emotional connections. It’s more than just promoting what you sell — it’s a way to share your values, purpose and background in a way that resonates and sticks. A company’s brand story should include certain key factors: 

  • Company mission statement: Your company mission and vision statements must be included in the telling of your brand story. You want people to support and feel connected to your company and what it stands for; not just the products or services you sell, but for your values. Ensure your company’s vision and mission statements are visibly accessible on your company website. 
  • Specifics: Include customer testimonials to verify how highly customers think of your brand. All-purpose, generic statements such “many people love our products” are just empty platitudes. Your storytelling will ring true when you mention a customer’s (first) name and describe their review in specific terms, such as, “This product saved me money and made my life easier.”
  • Simple and meaningful language: Potential customers should be able to easily read and understand your brand story in all its forms. Don’t exclude your audience by using words or phrases that are buzzwords or jargon that may not be understood and therefore will not resonate or show your authenticity. Instead, use meaningful language designed to evoke emotion and build brand intimacy.

Redesign/ reuse

Marketing experts call this “recycle-repurpose,” but I think redesign – reuse illustrates the task better. You might like to think of content creation like a traditional Sunday dinner that many American households probably still adhere to. When I was growing up, most American mothers would put a roast of some sort into the oven, peel potatoes or cook macaroni or rice, trim the spinach, shell the peas, or whatever and if energy allowed, or if guests were expected later in the afternoon, a cake or another dessert would be baked—from scratch. The kitchen would have a hunger-inducing aroma!

Like content creation, a big, traditional Sunday dinner is expensive to produce in terms of creativity, time and money. To maximize ROI, my mom cooked extra food on Sundays so that leftovers would be available for our Monday night supper. The Sunday dinner strategy can also be used to maximize the ROI of the marketing content that you create. For example, take a look at at the case studies you’ve developed. It’s almost certain that some clever editing will give you two or three sentences that can be dropped into your next newsletter or email marketing letter or become a social media post on its own. Effective repurposing of your long form content. Meaningful quotes that were first heard in a podcast, webinar, or panel that you participated in can be included in a video that gives an overview of one of those appearances. Recognize that your content is a valuable resource is an important aspect of your marketing strategy that is worthy of repackaging and is an enabler of the consistent publishing that prospects expect.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: © Breya Jones. Bridge tournament in Louisville, KY (2024)

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Spice It Up In September and Beyond

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Happy August! I hope you are enjoying summer, whether the season is a busy or slow one for your business entity. If taking a vacation is on your wish list, I hope that it has, or will, achieve its purpose, and allow you to see new sights or return to familiar places, have fun, recharge your energy, and lower your stress level. I also hope that you’re finding time to read at least one business book that’s helping you to sharpen your business acumen.

September and the fourth quarter will soon arrive and now is the time to consider how you can successfully position your organization to achieve a strong year-end finish. Selling a product or service is usually a challenge, especially for Freelance professionals and small business owners. B2B marketplaces are nearly always crowded, typically consisting of a handful of market leaders that are trailed by a passel of “me, too” offerings. Unless your company has a sizeable marketing budget, it can be a struggle to build and sustain marketing or branding campaigns that will heighten the perception of your value and make your product or service appear more appealing to prospects. In short, today you can begin thinking about how to identify for your business a new competitive advantage.

The time is now to assess potential strategies that can position your entity to generate higher sales revenue in the coming months and it’s entirely possible that your preferred strategy can be carried out at a comparatively modest expense. Listed below are strategy possibilities that are accessible to Freelancers and SMB owners. Keep in mind that your promotional messaging must address urgent buyer pain points. You must do more than merely being clever as a way to get attention. The purpose of whatever new strategy you implement now is to leverage the competitive advantages you plan to highlight will result in customer roster that has a higher value, increased sales revenue and an enhanced customer lifetime value.

Read on and consider what you might have the means to do to fulfill the important goal of optimizing your brand visibility and image and maximizing sales revenue and profit as we look forward to the waning days of 2026.

I. Dare to be different

How can you clearly communicate to current and potential customers that your product or service will effectively address worrisome pain points and solve problems, enable them to achieve mission-critical goals without expressing those very important strengths in boring and predictable text? Useful information should not be ignored but…brands that are competing for the same target customer group can all sound alike. Target eyeballs cannot help but glaze over. The curse of commodification can creep in as prospects wade through sound-alike sales funnels that echo chamber repeat the same sales pitch. Isn’t it time for you to dare to be different and take a brave step forward?

Caution must be exercised and controversy is to be avoided for sure. You cannot afford to turn off the potential or current customers. But by choosing the right product attribute to showcase and then creating a cheeky tagline—or short video, or catchy image—that cleverly and succinctly describes your lead attribute, you can steal the thunder of competitors and propel your brand to the head of the class. If the Boston Red Sox can win 15 games in a row during July and escape an early death that had fans and sports announcers talking about “next year” sometime around Memorial Day, you can claim the spotlight for your brand and leap to the front of the pack. The suggestions below can stir up your creativity. Just do it.

  • Use humor to reframe the perception of your offering and your entity and escape the constraints of commodification
  • Align with a cause, such as climate change or animal rights (but avoid getting preach-y)  
  • Choose a unique visual branding style. Think 1950s retro, or find inspiration in the work of well-known artists such as Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Max, or Yayoi Kusama.

II. B2B influencer marketing

Another strategy that has the potential to help you separate your entity from the congested marketplace is to align with a B2B Influencer. While originally a strategy used by your B2C counterparts, competition for billable hours in the B2B sector has stimulated the acceptance of influencer marketing by those in the B2B sector, including Freelancers.

B2B influencer marketing is not a means to showcase your services or products—that’s a B2C strategy. Freelancers and SMB owners work with B2B influencer marketing specialists to increase the stature of their brand and use that professional capital to build credibility that facilitates trust and relationship-building with potential customers who, if all goes according to plan, will become paying customers. The goal of B2B influencer marketing strategies is to align your organization with recognized and respected industry thought leaders—the influencers— whose industry knowledge, reputation and loyal followers can be leveraged in your target market sectors.

The most effective B2B influencers are well-known and respected experts and regarded as thought leaders in their field. B2B influencers aren’t celebrities, but they are trusted members of influential online communities. They are also respected speakers who are regularly on podiums at industry conferences and other business events. The knowledge and experience they’ve acquired gives the influencers great authority and credibility that’s enabled them to build a sizeable, loyal and often activist following.

Based on that authority and credibility, the best B2B influencers are able to build trust and enthusiasm for brands within their community of followers. They are also known to make endorsements that can stimulate purchases made by decision-makers within the community. A brand endorsement can result in a significant number of positive reviews posted on social media platforms that are capable of creating a word-of-mouth campaign that can spread to the general public and stimulate still more purchases of your brand’s services or products.

The influencer phenomenon is a growing trend in B2B marketing. Apparently fueled by the entry of Millennial and Generation Z into stakeholder and decision-making positions, prospective buyers are increasingly more trusting of the recommendations of independent thought leaders, that is, influencers, than in the marketing content you provide. Millennials and Gen-Z are comfortable with influencers and that preference is starting to impact purchasing.

  • Increase brand awareness. By aligning with a B2B influencer with a large following in your target market, your brand will have access to a new audience of highly-engaged prospects.
  • Enhance credibility. B2B decision-makers increasingly trust industry thought leaders, sometimes more than marketing content. This trend is becoming more common as Millennial and Gen Z buyers move into stakeholder and decision-maker positions that impact purchases. Millennial and Gen-Z stakeholders and decision committee members are comfortable with influencers
  • Increase leadgen and sales. Selecting an influencer who is closely aligned with your brand values can help you reach specific groups of prospects who are highly likely to become your customers.

III. Get strategic about social media

You may not have the bandwidth to undertake a major overhaul of your presence on social media platforms, but if you take just three steps, your social media ROI will become more significant for your business.

  •  Define prospects: Successful B2B social media speaks to specific customer personae and post content that addresses their specific pain points and how your service or product will solve the problem or help achieve the goals. Enhance your leadgen and site engagement by posting content that helps decision-makers for your service or product. Make your marketing content speak to their pain points, goals
  • Meaningful messages: Create content that speaks to the value that prospective customers are looking for. Clarify your understanding of why prospects feel they need your product or service? How does your offering make their life easier?
  • .Create a content calendar. This will solve two problems for you: 1.) If there are specific times of the year that you want to post, you’ll remember to do so; and 2.) You will post consistently and give your audience fresh content that drives engagement.

Thanks for reading,

Kim

Image: Stock AI image