Hey, Ryan here with this week's Marketing Breadcrumbs.

Here's what I've got this week:

• Two useful B2B marketing tactics;

• A B2B marketing case study from a global packaging company;

• A creative ad placement for targeting golfers; and

• My favorite quotes from a famous copywriter.

Useful B2B Marketing Tactics

Publish thought leadership content to get in front of more decision makers

Thought leadership marketing is especially important for B2B because business is often based on relationships. Also, it helps a business get in front of more decision makers.

Here’s why:

B2B purchasing processes are becoming more fragmented and less predictable for suppliers, making it difficult to get in front of decision makers at the right time. Thought leadership helps with this problem by attracting buyers at the beginning of their buying process, improving the probability your company will be considered.

Start by identifying your customers and the specific decision makers within their organizations. Then, deploy a content strategy that is based on solving problems for this audience.

Your goal is to demonstrate a willingness to share valuable information to help your audience make more informed decisions.

Source: Magno, F., & Cassia, F. (2019). Establishing thought leadership through social media in B2B settings: effects on customer relationship performance. Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.

Develop visible experts in your field

Visible experts are individuals who have strong reputations and specific knowledge in an industry. They publish content to demonstrate their expertise, provide value and build industry contacts.

It’s essentially an influencer who represents your brand. They might publish blogs, create social media posts, speak at events, host webinars, attend trade shows, appear on podcasts, or even write a book.

Visible experts benefit their firms via the halo effect, whereby the individual’s positive reputation will have a positive impact on the company. It is also believed that an individual expert might be more effective at establishing relationships compared to a corporate account.

Gary Vaynerchuk is a visible expert who represents Vaynermedia.

Source: Akbari, M., Hakimpour, H., Branch, B., & Birjand, I. (2018). Branding in B2B marketing. International Journal of Industrial Marketing, 3(1), 1.

How Dongwon Systems Won Big With a Brilliant B2B Marketing Strategy

First, a little context

Dongwon Systems is a B2B packaging company that was founded in 1977 to supply tuna can packaging materials for Dongwon Tuna, its parent company.

Despite stable management and profits from its parent company, Dongwon Systems sought to expand its product line and enter new markets. By 2017, only 19% of its billions in revenue came from its parent company.

And here’s the strategy that got them there:

They planned a logical and systematic expansion strategy

They understood that immediately expanding into the saturated North American market would be difficult and expensive. So they decided to focus first on the Southeast Asian market which was experiencing growth and had less competition.

At first, they pursued new customers in the food and beverage industry, which allowed them to leverage their expertise while minimizing risk.

It wasn’t until more than 20 years after being founded that they moved into non-food related products. This gave the company time to perfect their craft and establish a strong foundation.

But here is where the brilliant marketing strategy came into play:

B2C customers have different motivations than B2B customers

B2C companies tend to make buying decisions based on the needs and satisfaction of their customers. B2B companies tend to make buying decisions based on increasing profitability, reducing costs and enhancing productivity.

Understanding your audience’s motivations will help you craft a message that is more likely to promote action.

Source: Maechler, N., Sahni, S., & van Oostrum, M. (2016). Improving the business-to-business customer experience. McKinsey & Company.

Dongwon Systems adopted a B2C approach

Surprisingly, Dongwon Systems decided to adopt a more B2C strategy for their B2B growth.

They started by conducting consumer research on both their clients and their clients’ customers. This is likely not something that all B2B businesses do and is possibly a missing ingredient for B2B businesses to consider.

Many B2B businesses simply produce the products their customers desire, without innovation. But Dongwon Systems proactively developed their products because they believed their product (packaging) contributed to their customers’ own product quality.

Oftentimes a B2B manufacturer will only develop a new product when a customer contracts them to do so. But Dongwon Systems created new products based on their own research of the inconveniences their clients’ customers were experiencing.

An excellent example of this is the Stick-Type Spout Pouch for pharmaceuticals. It's a flexible tube shaped packaging that allows consumers to more easily open and consume their medication without it spilling.

To market this product, Dongwon Systems visited large pharmacies in the area and asked pharmacists which pharmaceutical companies they thought would benefit most from this new product packaging.

They then reached out directly to these recommended companies and signed their first big contract. The Spout Pouch was then expanded to spout pouch wine, among other products, and would become a substantial source of revenue for the packaging company.

Source: Jun, M., Kim, S. Y., & Lee, J. (2018). Differentiated B2B marketing strategy of Dongwon Systems, the No. 1 packaging solution company in Korea. Asia Marketing Journal, 20(3), 1.

Here’s the formula:

1. Identify an inconvenience of your customers’ customers;

2. Create an innovation that solves this problem;

3. Ask retailers (subject matter experts) which of your customer companies would benefit from this most; and

4. Reach out to these companies directly with your new product that helps them solve a problem they didn’t know they had.

Golf Course GPS Advertising

I went golfing this week and discovered an interesting placement for ads - the digital screen on the golf cart GPS.

Here's the thing:

Most marketers are familiar with the big advertising channels, such as Facebook and Google. But I'm always curious to find lesser known advertising placements that might be underpriced.

I dug a little deeper into GPS ads and learned that there is an interesting opportunity for the right business (and especially for the golfing crowd out there).

As an example, White Deer Golf offers a $1,500 package that allows your ad to be shown on one hole throughout the season. This works out to about $57.69 CPM for the estimated 26k golfers who are exposed to the ads.

You can definitely find lower CPM placements elsewhere but golfers tend to have higher disposable income than the average person, which might justify a higher CPM. Plus, golfers tend to use their phones while sitting in the cart. I think a business could create an interesting conversion-based campaign with a QR code, a unique offer and a simple landing page.

As a bonus, all of the sponsorship packages I looked into include unrestricted green fees. White Deer includes 12 green fees ($1,128 value) with the ad placement.

Steeple Chase Golf Club in Illinois has a package for $1,500, with a $75 CPM, 20k views, and 4 green fees at $74 each ($296 value).

River's Edge Golf Club in Okotoks has a package for $695, with a $34.75 CPM, 20k views, and 4 green fees at $80 ($320 value).

My 4 Favorite Claude Hopkins Copywriting Tactics

“The purpose of [the] headline is to pick out people you can interest.”

As Hopkins describes it in his book, Scientific Advertising, your headline is like standing in a crowded room and saying “Hey there, Bill Jones!”. Anyone named Bill Jones will perk up and look in your direction.

The purpose of this tactic is to capture the attention of just your target audience.

Take this Xero ad for example, which calls out creatives in the headline:

“Those who are entitled to any seeming advantage will go a long way not to lose that advantage.”

This has to do with a familiar concept called loss aversion, whereby people will go to great lengths (or pay more money) to keep something they already have.

One way to take advantage of this idea is by positioning your product as something that will prevent your customers from losing something, rather than as something that helps them gain something.

It’s also important to consider loss aversion when entering a new market. If your product is similar or lower quality than the incumbent brands, it’s going to be difficult to win market share even if you offer lower pricing.

A more effective strategy is to introduce a new product feature to differentiate your business and consider a premium pricing strategy.

“An identical offer made in a different way may bring multiplied returns.”

Most people would agree that if you said something 5 different ways, one of them would likely get a better response than the rest. Yet, many marketers choose to launch campaigns with a single ad variation, or a single creative, or a single offer.

The lesson is that testing multiple variations will often produce better results. Or at least allow you to identify a winning combination that can be profitably scaled. In my experience, the winning message tends to be the one I least expected.

“What cannot be done on a large scale profitably cannot be done on a small scale.”

It’s difficult and expensive to change someone’s habits. So it’s best to position your product towards a segment that is already sold on your product category instead of trying to convert someone from a different category.

For example, target people who enjoy oat milk to try your oat milk brand. It’s much more difficult to convince someone to switch from dairy milk to oat milk.

Source: Hopkins, C. C. (1968). Scientific advertising. New Line Publishing.