Hey everybody! Welcome to "You Know Ted," where I share marketing tips I learned over the last two decades. Today, we're talking about the top seven marketing mistakes B2B companies make and thus waste a lot of time and money. The last two are actually universal for most companies we come across, so be sure to stay until the end. Before we begin, remember to like, subscribe, and share this video. This really helps me create better content for you in the future. Okay, let's do this.

Mistake number one is that people think word of mouth is the only way B2B marketing can happen, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. We get a lot of clients that say, "You know what, Ted, 90% of our business comes through word of mouth, so why should I try something else?" Well, no, of course, 90% comes from word of mouth if you haven't tried anything else. And a lot of the times, competitors of theirs don't do anything either, so it's actually really easy. Basic things like improving your Google reviews and writing more content is going to do wonders when your competitors are sitting there doing nothing.

Mistake number two is thinking digital marketing can't connect with large B2B companies, and again, that is wrong. People think, "Oh, I'm marketing my business to another business, so they're not going to be on Facebook and YouTube, and they're not going to be on social media or Google." People think that when you're doing marketing for businesses, that there's no people behind it, but we gotta change the way of thinking that it's not actually B2B, it's B2P, it's business to people. You're still, at the end of the day, communicating to people. You gotta think, what are their likes, what are their desires, their aspirations? Connect with them in the human way because ultimately, people buy with emotions. Sure, they might initially think about you logically, but when they're going to make the final decision, it is always an emotional purchase. Pro tip here: Speak in industry jargon to improve your conversion. I know in sales, you're not supposed to speak in industry jargon, however, when you're doing ads and you're speaking specifically to someone's pain with industry jargon, only those people will care and pause and engage with that ad, so that will actually increase your ad relevancy score and therefore reduce your cost per click.

Mistake number three is people tend to still sell on needs and benefits and not pain. One thing you have to realize, once you're starting to sell and market to people, you have to think about the pain. What's keeping them up at night? Think about painkillers and vitamins. Painkillers, like aspirin and Tylenol, they're recession-proof. Vitamins, on the other hand, when budgets are tight, people stop spending. And if your business can address that pain, I want you to blast that out because that is going to be your marketing message.

Mistake number four is looking for that one silver bullet, thinking that there's one thing that's going to solve all the marketing woes that you have. I have clients that come to us and they think, "Oh Ted, is it, uh, you do LinkedIn messaging, you do Facebook ads, is it a lot of blog writing?" They think there's one magic silver bullet that's going to solve their marketing, and that's not it. You gotta think about a marathon runner or like a Tom Brady, right? You hear, oh, maybe they drink kale smoothies, or with Tom Brady, he eats avocado ice cream, and all of a sudden, you're thinking, "Oh man, to win the Super Bowl or to win that marathon, maybe I just gotta drink kale smoothies or I gotta eat this avocado ice cream." No, you know that doesn't work because ultimately, it's holistic. In that example of the marathon runner, sure, nutrition, but you also gotta think about sleep, performance, flexibility, endurance. All those things holistically make success, and that's the thing that you need to think about when it comes to your marketing. You gotta think from a holistic standpoint.

Mistake number five is thinking because you've been in the industry for so long that your opinion matters, and yes, I know your opinion matters. You've been in the industry for some time, however, without data to back up your opinion, it's just your opinion, and that's a subjective thing that we don't want to have when we're making decisions on advertising. So, for example, I had this client that was selling a high-end product, but rather than talking about the product itself and how it was going to solve someone's problems, they wanted to insert a very abstract image into the advertising. Rather than arguing with this client, what we did was take that abstract image and put it in as one of the images in our entire ad campaign. And with that data, we were able to show them that this subjective opinion that you have, though you've been in the industry for a long time, is not working. By having the data, we can all make decisions without pulling our hair out.

Okay, so these last two I've seen everyone do, be it B2B, B2C, doesn't really matter.

Mistake number six: Do what everyone else does. The number one website we get asked to duplicate, can you guess what it is? It's the Apple website. "I want to replicate the Apple website," because I think that's all they know. Or I've had clients come to us saying that they want to do a podcast because their competitor did it, or even a few years ago, people wanted to do whiteboard videos. And just because they saw someone else do it, especially a competitor, they want to replicate that, thinking that's going to be success. And that is wrong. Where I think you can have success is doing a competitive analysis of you versus your competitors, seeing where they hang out, what they've done, finding their strengths and their weaknesses, and then you exploit their weaknesses. And that's where you get the ideas for your campaign.

Mistake number seven, which I've seen a lot of people do, is just go ahead with the marketing without any financial goal in mind. Because if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there. So what I advise you to do is reverse engineer what you want. Go back and think, "If I'm going to create this marketing campaign, how much money do I want to make?" So let's say, for example, for your business, you want to add another $1.2 million. So, average every month, that's $100,000 a month. And the average size of your deal, let's say, it's $20,000. So that's basically, you need five new deals a month. So what's your close rate? If it's say like 20%, or one in five, what you need is 25 qualified calls. And that's your goal. And now, everything you do should have only that goal in mind; everything else is fluff.

So those are the seven most common mistakes that I've seen B2B companies make. What do you think? Are there other ones? Do you have any questions? Put them in the comment section, and I'll answer them. And remember, please like, subscribe, and share. Thanks for watching. I'm Ted Lau, and this has been "You Know Ted." Bye.