Abby shares her expertise on the crucial role of branding in B2B web development—helping streamline processes and enhancing client trust. Branding isn't just logos; it's about conveying trust and clarity in your product's value proposition.
Abby shares her expertise on the crucial role of branding in B2B web development—helping streamline processes and enhancing client trust. Branding isn't just logos; it's about conveying trust and clarity in your product's value proposition.
[Music] Welcome to the Solspace podcast. Thanks for listening.
Mitchell: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Solspace podcast. Today, I'm finally going to get some of my questions about LinkedIn and other social platforms answered and they're going to be answered by Abby Kelsey. So, Abby is with us from Always Social. Abby, welcome to the podcast.
Abby: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
Mitchell: Absolutely. I'm glad to have you because you have a lot of knowledge that I completely lack. I know nothing about the things that you sort of have expertise and mastery of. So, I'm excited to really quiz you and grill you for some answers and some insights. You and I know one another from Danielle Alexander Bailey.
So, this is a designer that I met in Austin at a conference back in early February, and Danielle and I have been talking at length. I just like her approach to how she runs her business and manages her practice. Her website does a really good job of selling her, making things clear like really lands well on the marketing level. And she recommended that I talk to you when I started complaining to her about LinkedIn. She said you need to talk to Abby because Abby's got the expertise you're looking for with regard to social platforms, especially LinkedIn. Let me set the stage real quick.
On Thursday this past week, I was talking to a prospective client. This client is actually in my part of California, and he owns a business that manufactures enclosures and other sort of systems that power and utility companies would need to use for their substations and their pad mount installs in the different regions that they serve. So, his company produces those and sells them into that market. This puts him squarely in the industrial manufacturing space, which is a space that Solspace is focusing a lot of attention. When you and I met and talked, you said you're not real clear on why, but you've been getting a lot of clients from the industrial manufacturing space too. And you've been interested to see some of the problems that they've been working on. I wonder if you could speak, just as we get started here, a little bit about what some of those problems that this particular vertical market is dealing with and how that affects their use of social media and so forth.
Abby: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think that there are a lot of shifts happening within the manufacturing space, especially from the marketing perspective. So, number one, I think organizations are starting to see the importance of branding is becoming more and more relevant where although this has been a relationship-driven sector for a long time, they're now seeing that we have to get our brand out there, right? We have to be more consistent. We have to be more creative. We have to have that branding out there so that people know who we are and why they should work with us. That's never really been there as heavy as it is now. So, I think that importance of branding is definitely one area that the manufacturing industry is starting to look into more. How do we do that? How do we take what we have now and what's been working, but how do we amplify that?
The other piece I think that we're seeing is businesses need to start being more authentic. Everyone knows when you go to a website you're going to get sold to because that's what they've put on their website. They're not going to put anything bad on there. It's all about them, right? And so how do you reach beyond your website to build that brand reputation to get those referrals? And that really all comes from that increased thought leadership and authority in the space. That's something that marketing has to come into.
So, they're starting to realize that as well. And then I think there's just this need for marketing to be more aligned in the organization. So that'd probably be the third shift that I'm seeing is rather than marketing be this to-do list, right? Of, oh, we should be doing this. We should put a blog out. We should post on social. It's become a more strategic partner in the organizational alignment. With those three changes, I think that's why we're seeing this demand for that manufacturing industry looking for help, looking for answers, looking to how do I get started to do this to really keep up with those demands of where we are from an online presence and the digital world, if you will.
Mitchell: Do you have any insight as to how to account for the change? Is it a change with who's in charge? Does it change with their mindset? Is it the same previous owners who are seeing that they really have to come into the year 2024 and start engaging with it? Do you have any idea why this change is happening?
Abby: Yeah, so this is, I mean, my personal opinion, so no, no studies or anything that I'm basing this off of, but from conversations I've had, I think it comes down to kind of who's in charge for the organization. We're starting to see maybe some of those baby boomers start to retire. Or even ownership, maybe take a step back and pass down the business, which is allowing for new visions, new ideas, new direction to come in at that employer level. So, I think that's one shift that we're seeing is just kind of that office space dynamic, organization dynamics, are starting to shift.
Second piece I'd say would be the customer, right? Our customers, no matter what industry you're in, they are expecting more. They're expecting more from our brands. They're expecting more from the way that they're being sold to, more transparency, more authenticity.
And you have to meet the demands of your customers, right? And so I think, and this is across all industries, this isn't just manufacturing, but the way that people are doing business and making decisions is changing. And if you don't meet your customers where they are and what they demand, then you're going to lose your business and competitors are going to go ahead.
So, I think that's another piece that we're seeing is just the buyer's journey is changing. And it has been for a while, but manufacturing is now starting to catch up to that as well.
Mitchell: There's a colleague I've been talking to that I met at the same place I met Danielle, Mark Vanderwarf's his name. And he, on a regular basis, will tell me a litany that people buy from those who they know, like, and trust. And he says, and he emphasizes that it's not his idea, like, that's just a known thing in marketing and sales, and it's been true for many decades, for a long time. And what you're reminding me is that translates in the age we're living in now, where the buyer wants even more of a relationship with that company that they're going to buy from. And because of the tools that are available and what they've grown accustomed to experiencing in other parts of their lives with the use of social media and Facebook, Twitter, and so forth, that they're also, that's not a creeping into the buying process and the relationship building process in the industrial space and the sense that in their work life, they also want to have those relationships with people that they know, like and trust. And what you're describing is that marketing and branding now means that you're much more intent on focusing on that. So, if I've understood you right and you help some of your clients with this problem, well first, let me ask you, you had really clear definitions of what you meant by marketing and branding. What's your definition of marketing?
Abby: Yes, marketing to me is how you get your message out there. The touch points that you have with your customers, with your audience, branding is the perception people have of your business, your employees, your products, your all of it, right? So branding is more perception.
Marketing is the influence of how you want people to think about you and then the touch points that you're able to guide them through that journey of what you want them to think about.
Mitchell: I'm thinking about when I was much younger, you know, 30, 40 years ago, what brand meant was how a business felt, like Coca-Cola or McDonald's. There's a feeling attached to the brand, but these days in the age of social media, it's feeling like brand means what is your opinion? What's your point of view?
For a given company that I'm interacting with, brand means what do they feel opinionated about? What are they willing to get up and start yelling in the middle of a restaurant about, that they feel strongly about? Is there anything to that or is that just my imagination?
Abby: No, I, I definitely agree with that. And especially when we think about the B2B space, you know, and that's basically focused on relationships. So, when we think about that, in order to stand out from that customer service and just those relationships, your brand has to have a unique perspective or a unique value proposition on what you're delivering on the industry or something that makes them stand out.
Brand is no longer just, oh, I love the Coca-Cola commercials. I love the polar bear. I'm going to drink Coca-Cola. You know, that's just that's kind of the traditional way and more of that B2C language. Yes, but B2B is, well, what have others experienced when working with you? Or what have others seen from a results perspective?
People want more of those tangible results and they want to understand what they're going to get. They're going to want to understand the process. All of that is still your brand because it's the perception of what it's like to work with you. If that makes sense.
Mitchell: Okay. No, that makes, that makes sense. And you bring me to another question, which is, let's remember the context. You are a social media practitioner for B2B companies. My company is Solspace, we're web developers. So, we build, and maintain, and develop websites as revenue-generating assets for our clients. Where does brand belong? For a website, the work that we do is we make sure that we sort of streamline the process for a customer to understand what the product is, what the problem and the solution are, they can see the complexities of a given solution, the specifications, they can see how things interact, how they might serve a given need and how they might not.
Branding can show up on the website in terms of here's proof that we've served clients like you in the past. Here are the numbers attached to our success. Here's proof in the form of us having and presenting clarity to you about the specifications of our product and how to meet your needs. Versus the opinion side, like the point of view side of branding. So in, in your discipline versus mine, which part do you own and which do I own and where is there overlap? Does that question make sense?
Abby: Yes, and my, my answer is it depends, because I truly believe that branding should be across the entire marketing funnel. The same way that when you develop a website, what do you think about? You know, you have different pages that explain who the company is, what their values are, how they got started.
That's the awareness stage, right? Then you bring them into, okay, how do people work with us? Here's what it's like to work with us. Why work with us? That's taking people into consideration, right? And all the way to demand where our Contact Us page. So really your website is a full marketing funnel within one place. And then the point of brand is to, and marketing together, is to attract people to that website to go through that experience, And what we don't know is where are they coming to? What, what stage of the funnel are they at when they're reaching your website? If they've never heard of you but they saw an ad that attracted them and thought, oh, I have that pain point. I'm going to check these people out. That website needs to showcase that brand. It needs to showcase who they are before they start selling anything.
But yet, if it's someone Google searching, and they're looking for a specific solution, and they click on that website, there also has to be a space on that website that then walks them through that piece of, if they're already considering they're already having this pain point, now they need to know, okay, who's the right partner for me? The website also does that. So, the same way that brand on the social side, we have multiple pieces of the funnel as well. We have awareness pieces, we have demand gen pieces. So I think really the important piece is that all of those pieces, so your awareness on your website is aligning with your awareness on your social media channels, your call to actions on your website is aligning with your call to action and what you're asking people to, um, how to contact you and get involved in and why, should align on your social channels or email marketing or any, any piece or tactic of marketing. Those, those pieces need to align, for what's happening under that specific area of the funnel.
Mitchell: With regard to the work that you do in the social space, well, let me get started with a little bit of overview question. For a manufacturing client, you know, what sort of percentage, what ratio are you using different social tools for to help them with their branding and their sales and their marketing work? Is it mostly LinkedIn? Is it LinkedIn plus Facebook? What, what's the distribution?
Abby: Yeah, I would say for the small to medium sized businesses, LinkedIn is the place, especially if you are a B2B business for building connections. Not only just having from your brand, but employee advocacy. And then also just a way to be able to identify your clients as well, right? And engage with their content compared to the other social platforms.
You know, some of our larger companies, yes, they're going to use Instagram. Typically, more from that employee engagement perspective, you know, showing different parts of the business and talent attraction. That's kind of the goal of more for Instagram for the industry. But when we think about LinkedIn, it has the biggest area of opportunity to really be able to incorporate again. Like I said, that full funnel content strategy, bringing in pieces of your brand in different areas. And it makes sense. I think what I see a lot of companies do is they try to do it all on all of the platforms and they waste so much energy and resources trying to be on Facebook, Instagram. Then they think they need a TikTok strategy. They're trying to post 20 times a day on X, you know, whatever it is. I think a lot of the struggle that I see is, is people try to be in all of the places when really you have to identify where is my target audience. Where are they spending the most time? And for the manufacturing space, that's typically LinkedIn.
Mitchell: Let's imagine that you have both my web development agency as a client and you have this prospective client I was speaking to last week, who, as I was saying, manufactures products that would be purchased by power and utility companies. If we both became clients, let's take him first, how would he start with you? Like, what, what's your process? What, what are the priorities to get him ramped up and using LinkedIn? Like, how does that work? The reason I ask is when we were on the call, he and I started talking about the usefulness of LinkedIn and how we had both been avoiding it for some time for a variety of reasons. And I looked at his profile. He hasn't posted anything. He's got 200-some-odd connections, but he hasn't posted any content, nothing at all. And he and I were both agreeing that, yeah, we need to, we need to fix this and take it seriously. How do you start?
Abby: Yes. So, I would say, I mean, first thing when you're figuring out how to use LinkedIn for your business, it's the who, right? So, are you trying to grow your brand? Are you trying to grow your executive team? If you're a solopreneur and you're in charge of it all, is it you, are you the face of the company? That's what you have to decide first. Where do you want to try to amplify? For many people, I see them put a lot of work into their brand and not growing their personal, but they're the main focus, they're the person doing the marketing and doing the sales and reaching out to customers and having that engagement.
So, at that point, I'm going to say, we need to focus on your personal LinkedIn presence, right? Not your brand. Your brand is going to be there. Your brand has your website to tell your story. You don't need to be creating as much content for your brand. We need to focus on you. Now, if it's a larger company, that maybe has a handful of executives and leadership team that maybe is kind of active, maybe they have a sales team as well.
They have an opportunity to actually build that brand. And so, then I kind of focus on let's start with the brand and determine that strategy. And then from there, we build the sales strategy, the executive strategy, employee advocacy strategy, all of that kind of then levels up to that brand. So, for someone like you were talking about, or even for yourself, to me, it would make sense to, to start with that personal brand.
So, I say step number one, define your why. Why do you want to use LinkedIn? Why, why do you want to be more active on LinkedIn? And if it's to get more sales, you're going to be very disappointed, because if you go into LinkedIn with just this mindset of I want to get more sales, you're not going to post valuable content.
People aren't going to want to connect with you. You're going to be seen as, as selfish on the platform, right? And that's not the point of the platform. So, it's really about that audience growth and connection. So, I say define your why. What is it? Why do you want to be on LinkedIn? Once you kind of do that, for example, maybe it's just to build your thought leadership from an executive perspective or a business owner.
Then it's what do you want to be known for. So, once you kind of figure out your why, you have to figure out what do you want to be known for. And what are the messages you want to share out to the world? What's your unique point of view? What do you love talking about? And sometimes that doesn't even have to be strictly about your business. It could be about the industry. It could be about, you know, if it's a business owner. It could be about their journey as a business owner. What's going to bring people in? And what do you really, what do you want to be known for? That's what you have to define. Once you get all that situated, then we go into step number one is revising your profile.
You have to, have to revise your profile. The, the better you have, I call it your LinkedIn authority score for your profile. So, you want to really focus on increasing that so that your profile can speak to your expertise, to what you want to be known for, to your company, and especially to your target audience. So, we'll stop there and just say that is kind of the first way to get started.
Mitchell: So if we start with the strategy of what do you wanna be known for and answering the question of why, why are you on LinkedIn? What are you doing there? And don't say sales because that's, you're gonna be disappointed. You're saying that the first thing you begin with is to revise the profile after you've answered those questions. What if I don't know and what if I don't trust my answers for why do I want to be on LinkedIn if the answer is not allowed to be sales? Do you have some guidelines for how we sort of unpack that or is that a larger marketing branding question that's a, that's a bigger thing?
Abby: I mean, it is a little bit larger of a question that should align with your marketing and your branding, but some simple things to think about. So let's simplify this. Let's say it's defining your objective, right? Your, your why, your objective. Is it, do you want to build your network?
Is that something that's important to you? Will that help your business grow? If you grow your network, will that help your business grow? So, I kind of reverse engineer it and start thinking about what's going to help my business the most and then working backward to understand what that means. So, for example, like I said, networking, is it thought leadership?
Do you need more people to understand your unique point of view on something? Is that something maybe that you just want? You want to share your thoughts, and opinions, and your experiences with others. If that brings you joy, that's thought leadership is an answer there.
Maybe it's just supporting the industry. Maybe it's bringing industry awareness to specific issues or topics that you want to talk about. So, when I say define your objective, it doesn't necessarily have to be set in stone, but what I want you to think about is, how does that align back up to your business and how will it help your business? If more people know who you are, is that going to help your business? If more people understand challenges happening in your industry, is that going to help your business? You know, and really kind of start to work it work through it that way. That's how I'd recommend kind of getting started.
Mitchell: I think you and I have a lot to talk about. Let's pause here and come back in a couple of weeks. And when we do, I want to, I want to pick up on this idea. I was trying to get you to help me tease out why I use LinkedIn. Why am I there? What am I doing, and what am I expecting to get from it? And you're going through a number of the different possibilities, and you landed on one which was, which would apply to me and also this other prospective client I was talking to who we had this overlap and wondering what we should do with LinkedIn. He would probably agree with me that I get fired up when I find out that marketing directors in particular, these are primary clients, marketing directors in the industrial space, they don't know what you could do with the website. And the CEOs they work for, they don't, you don't know all these great things you could do. You don't know how much you could offload sales to the website. And so, we can get into that in more detail. This client I was talking to, he would get pretty animated about what do you mean you don't care about the craftsmanship of the products that you're putting in the field. They're going to be out there for 30 or 40 years. What do you mean you don't care that it's handcrafted by expert veterans using the most state-of-the-art equipment? Like he got fired up about that. So, we, we can come back to that when we pick this back up in a couple of weeks, but for now, Abby, thank you for the time you've given so far.
Abby: Thank you.
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