Eric Schwartzman

Building a successful startup from the ground up will always involve some level of creative problem-solving and business savvy. But knowing how to build a startup that’s also an online marketplace comes with its own set of unique challenges.

When I asked how he engineered an online marketplace that fulfilled both supply and demand needs in the construction industry, Cofounder Jiyan Wei shared how he and his partner raised $25M for BuildZoom.

These are his most valuable tips for developing new technology platforms, what investors are asking and thinking when you pitch, and how to get into the world of tech startups in general and online marketplaces specifically.

The challenges of building an online marketplace

BuilZoom was born out of need. 

Jiyan and his cofounder had both had terrible experiences with past construction projects and came together to lament -- then solve -- their problems:

Quality identification and supply/demand matching.

However, before raising capital for their startup, they had to find a viable solution for this problem. And they initially built much of their online marketplace ecosystem themselves.

BuildZoom qualifies buyers with live sales development representatives.

They didn’t originally set out asking, “How do I build an online marketplace?” 

They started by creating a solution to the problems they encountered when doing their own construction projects.    

They intimately knew and understood where the gap was in the marketplace, and simply started by creating an index of licensed contractors in the United States.

Later, they expanded that to be a matching service.

Unlike other startups, an online marketplace needs to have a solution for both the supply and demand of a service or product in order to be successful. If that is executed well and works -- the concept will work.

You can build more sophisticated features and improve the user experience as your startup raises more capital and your team grows.

If your startup has already been through some funding rounds, one challenge might simply be remembering to go slow with development.

“There’s a temptation -- especially when you have engineers and capital -- to build everything out right away. But you can start with something very simple and see where your users are spending their time.”

And then there’s answering the question:

How does an online marketplace make money?

This is important to know not just when raising capital for a startup but also when knowing how and where to put your resources. All founders must make the decision of which features they want to spend time developing and which ones can wait for subsequent funding rounds or future product iterations.

For their online marketplace’s revenue model, BuildZoom focused on an important part of the construction process: pre-construction. 

BuildZoom has suppliers in most major US markets nationwide.

Being in their customers’ shoes themselves, they knew the value of having a project plan in place and a couple of very qualified contractors to choose from. 

They now have a paid service that delivers and manages this process. Their own in-house construction professionals work directly with building owners to manage the bidding process and vet contractors submitting bids.

How to build an online marketplace: Jiyan’s top tip

The best way to build an online marketplace -- or any tech startup -- is to start with a minimum viable product. 

“We built a strawman of what we thought people might use first and we still use that approach when developing new features. We don’t build off speculation. We validate first.”

Knowing how to build an online marketplace is less about knowing every minute detail and aspect of the supply and demand in your industry and more about having a team of engineers who are listening to the customer and watching their behaviors online. 

How to Raise Capital for a Startup

Jiyan and his cofounder successfully raised $25M for their online marketplace. And he gave us an inside look at what that process was like for them.

Any startup looking to raise capital first needs access to investors. 

They found that access via Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that connects investors to startups looking for funding. Successful online marketplaces and SAAS companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, Dropbox, Reddit and more have all been a part of Y Combinator.

Before getting into multiple funding rounds, they also tried to maintain minimal operating costs.

Then, they split up and started pitching.

“We met the VC’s in person, but it took us about 30 pitches and two weeks of constant meetings before we really understood how to tell our story. That’s when we hit our stride.”

Raising capital for a startup and online marketplace isn’t about your resume, it’s about mastering the art of brand storytelling -- for both your startup and you personally as a founder.

Here are some questions investors are thinking and asking:

What stage is your startup or marketplace at?Who else has invested in you?Do I personally like you?Are you credible and/or really capable of pulling this off?Do I like the market you’re in?What does your startup actually do?Can I see a 10x liquidity event happening?

You’ll notice all the personal questions that come before even asking about the nuts and bolts of your business.

“Most of the time, they don’t even get that far in the questions. But, if everything is a yes, and there’s a 20% change of that liquidity event, you probably have them.”

Conclusion

Before signing off, I asked Jiyan how someone can get into this world. How can someone work for a startup and online marketplace like BuildZoom? 

Not surprisingly, the answer varies based on the company it’s founders -- but not for the reasons you may think.

“When you look at a company and leader, learn what the top 2-3 things are for THEM and relate your role back to that. For me, that’s understanding how your salary translates to dollars for the company.”

You don’t build a successful online marketplace and raise $25M without learning some invaluable things along the way. For even more takeaways from our conversation, listen to this whole episode. 

And don’t forget to tune into the B2B Lead Gen Podcast for even more startup advice from the industry’s brightest marketers.

In the final episode of this 3-part series, you’ll hear how organizations can shift toward solution-based selling.

In part 1 we covered aligning goals. In part 2 we talked about a framework for approaching alignment. In this final episode, we discuss solution-based selling.

Most lost sales don’t go to the competitors, they go to no sale at all. That means the buyer was not able to effectively make a decision.

Jeff Davis, author of Create Togetherness shares actionable steps sales teams can take to help buyers make those purchasing decisions, moving from a scripted sales pitch to a strategic partner.

“They’ve already researched benefits and features by the time they’ve come to you. What they’re really asking is, “help me make a decision on how to move forward.” Don’t explain how your product gets them there, co-create a solution. Show the extreme value you’ll add and they’ll reward you with their business.”Jeff Davis

Make sure you listen to each episode in this 3-part series on the B2B Lead Gen Podcast, because we really delve into sales and marketing alignment. 

Jeff is a self-proclaimed “marketer with a soul of a sales guy” and has a lot to share with B2B organizations when it comes to transforming your sales and marketing teams from two arms of the same company into one revenue-generating machine.

And don’t forget to subscribe for more actionable tips like these from the best marketers in the B2B world.

In part 2 of this 3-part series, Jeff Davis, author of Create Togetherness acknowledges that sales alignment is an evolution.

In part 1, we discussed aligning sales and marketing by aligning KPIs.

Today, we discuss the four stages companies typically advance through on the road to alignment. 

Hidden Marketing - There may be a sales leader, but the CEO/Founder is often the marketing leader. Efforts are often reactionary and there is a tiny small team. 

Sales-driven marketing - The organization prioritizes and values sales, while marketing is seen as order takers, not strategic partners. The marketing team is often still small or made of up of mostly junior members. 

Living apart, together - There isn’t marketing and sales alignment, but they acknowledge each other. You often have to be siloed here before moving on to #4.

Proper sales alignment - Sales and marketing have shared resources and are communicating and learning from each other regularly.

In this episode of the B2B Lead Gen Podcast, we discuss how to develop the marketing maturity to move through the four stages of sales and marketing alignment and co-create a strategic vision for the organization.

In the final episode in this series, we talk about solution-based selling.

There’s a strategy in search engine optimization called the Skyscraper technique that basically says if you want to rank high for a search phrase like “best pinot noir”, “production music licensing” or “cybersecurity firms”, you just search those terms, check out the top results and write a better, more comprehensive article then the top-ranking ones.

So now you have a ton of these obnoxious 10,000-word Skyscraper posts that rank well in search for high-purchase intent, bottom-of-the-funnel search phrases.

But they aren’t really that useful cause you have to search through a long article for a simple answer, which is typically what you’re looking for before you dig deeper.

Now, artificial intelligence is beginning to neuter that approach. Which is a good thing.

Because if you search “what is doublespeak”, you don’t want 10,000 words. One of the ways Google improved the user experience in this regard was with rich snippets, those expandable Q&A kiosks that appear in search results, and cull short answers from longer articles.

A rich snippet kiosk for the phrase "SEO" in Google search results.

Nigel Stevens -- who was on our sister program the B2B Lead Gen Podcast -- is an SEO specialist who does for major players like Hotjar, Intercom, Unsplash, and Big Commerce says he’s starting to outrank skyscrapers ranking for shorter posts, that are more concise and succinct.

And Joe Romm, an MIT Ph.D. of Physics, argues stories are more compelling than facts, it’s all about the headlines. And if you want to master headlines study Shakespeare, the Greek philosophers, and Jesus Christ.

Dale Bertrand (@dbertrand), President at Fire&Spark, a Boston-based digital marketing agency specializing in SEO strategies for e-commerce companies, is a man on a mission, at the nexus of SEO and story.

His presentation at INBOUND was one of the most talked-about sessions. And he’s one of the rare birds who’s good at both arts and science.

I say that because marketing and PR people are overwhelmingly math haters, which is why so many are scared away from search engine optimization.

He runs a performance marketing agency called Fire&Spark in Cambridge, Mass that approaches SEO from a more purpose-driven, than technical standpoint.

But Dale devised a novel strategy that puts a brand’s mission front and center as a way of differentiating itself in the eyes of Google, essentially putting the message before the math, or the more technical aspects, of SEO.

What is Mission-Driven SEO?

What you’re doing to optimize canonical tags, sitemaps, crawl budgets is not going to get you the bang for the buck that it used to.

Google's getting a lot better at finding the most useful content for a query.

Why is it established brands out rank emerging brands?

It’s because they have authority from backlinks. People are linking to them from their websites. And Google sees those backlinks and treats them like endorsements. Backlinks are how Google measures authority.

SEO is so competitive nowadays that you need the authority to rank well in most markets. It used to be that you could just optimize for a keyword and you would rank but now you need to optimize for keyword and have some authority from backlinks.

Mission-driven SEO is about building authority. Mission-driven is a term that should resonate with cause related marketing professionals. By mission, Dale means cause.

So brands with a cause or purpose centered around their products, or a mission behind the company just naturally do better. Because their purpose gives them a reason to create content that resonates with their customers and influencers.

Brands that have a mission that is purposeful are going to get noticed more, and strike a chord with customers and influencers who are more likely to write about and link to them. And since Google measures those links, the brand builds rank through authority.

“We really want people to understand that in order to leverage this purpose-driven SEO strategy, you do need a purpose. And it does need to be authentic,” says Dale, whose approach fuses SEO with digital PR.

“It's really best if it's central to your branding, but it doesn't need to be a social mission. It can the purpose can be something like the craftsmanship of your products, or the quality of your products, or the backstory of the founders,” he continues.

https://youtu.be/Ik7Ii3kOpcw

Dale Bertrand on Mission-Driven SEO

Technical SEO is Dead

Dale studied brands that are doing really well with organic traffic and SEO, but that aren't doing any formal SEO.

These are brands that are doing great with organic visibility, but they're not actively optimizing for Google at all.

He found a lot of brands out there that aren't doing B2C or B2B SEO, but they still rank high and get a ton of traffic through organic search. And he found is it’s because they're generating the right content.

These are brands that are ranking for keywords that are relevant to problems they solve, that prospective customers are searching for answers to.

“If you stop and think about that for a second, like, there aren't a lot of fields out there where you can get the end result without doing the work, says Dale. “Google doesn't live to reward technical people for the correctness of their HTML code. That's not what Google is looking for. They’re looking for the most useful content,” says Dale.

https://youtu.be/ZV6BfCehPsw

Dale Bertrand on why message-driven SEO beats technical SEO every time.

SEO through Thought Leadership

Dale’s concept of “mission-driven SEO” is novel.

When you offer a new idea and back it up with substance, you’re leading with thought. You’re the first person to put this idea out there.

That’s what thought leadership is all about.

You're not repeating existing thoughts, or jumping on someone else’s bandwagon. You’re not a thought repeater. You’re a thought leader.

It’s like skating to where the puck is going to be, as opposed to skating to where it already it.

In mission-driven search engine optimization, thought leadership definitely helps, because you have a chance to rank for a unique concept or idea.

“We've partnered with law firms advocating for a position that relates to our purpose, and built content around that. The law, firm contributes to the content, links to it and helps us promote it,” says Dale, who advises clients to reach beyond the world of social media influencers and blogger’s for inbound links.

By creating mission-driven content that dovetails with the positions of other organizations, it’s possible to build authority by engaging with subject matter experts from outside the digital domain.

https://youtu.be/6Dnc5-6sans

Dale Bertrand on the advantage thought leaders have over technical SEOs.

Conclusion

If you're spending more than 20% of your time on the technical aspects of search engine optimization, it's time to reassess how you're allocating your energy.

Yes, the basic aspects of technical SEO still matter. But if you're using a modern content management system like WordPress, HubSpot, or Shopify, and you have a website with less than 10,000 pages, you don't necessarily need an SEO consultant to agonize over performance optimization. most of the technical stuff is handled automatically.

Rather than worry about minifying code or increasing load time a fraction of a second, you focused on creating mission-driven content.

The easiest way to get noticed is by creating purposeful content that resonates with people who are passionate about your cause.

And your cause need not be a social cause. It can be a business cause, a productivity cause or a customer service cause. Any of those are valid.

“I don’t want salespeople to be marketers or marketers to be salespeople. Instead, I want to help leverage each other to reach our goals. Jeff Davis

Learning how to master sales and marketing alignment is an ongoing process for many organizations. But, if you want to outperform your competitors and optimize your sales process, it’s essential.

You must first create aligned goals for your team, understand which sales and marketing configuration you currently have (and where you want to get to next), and transform your sales process from scripted calls to solution-based strategy sessions. 

To cover each of these steps in detail, I had a 3-part interview series with Jeff Davis, keynote speaker and author of Create Togetherness.

Death of MQLs and SQLs - Part 1

Marketing brings in leads and is celebrating a win, but sales can’t close those potential deals because they aren’t quality.

Why is this sales vs. marketing scenario so common -- and what can leadership do to change it?

In the first part of this series, Jeff explains how internal teams can stop the finger-pointing. He shares some steps leadership can take to establish incentivization that fosters sales and marketing alignment. 

Improve sales enablement by looking at sales and marketing as the same revenue-generating system.Make people feel like their work is connected to the overall success of the company.Create more empathy and connectivity between sales and marketing.Foster two-way communication that improves the entire sales process, with marketing offering the sales team customer buyer insights and the sales team offering marketing customer feedback.

Subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast to get all 3 episodes in this series.

In an always-on world, public relations firms with the ability to monitor broadcast media help clients stay current on how their brand, industry, and competitors are being covered in broadcast and cable television.

This gives you a huge advantage when it comes to defending your brand and managing your reputation, particularly in the event of crisis or news media backlash of some kind.

As part of the research I did for my Guide to News Media Monitoring, I spoke to TVEyes CEO David Ives about his platform and the state of the broadcast media monitoring industry.

This post summarizes our discussion about: 

Leveraging artificial intelligence to monitor conversations on multiple different channels

The difference between predicting viral marketing vs. tracking viral content

Features and options you should consider when shopping for broadcast media monitoring services   

What are broadcast media monitoring services

Broadcast media monitoring services record and archive local and national news programs -- on broadcast television, cable television, and radio --  to ensure that you have quick access to any news clips you may be interested in to protect the reputation of your company, brand, product or service. Many services monitor podcasts too.

News Media Monitoring vs. Social Media Monitoring vs. Broadcast Media Monitoring Services

If you want to monitor your Brand's reputation, you should be listening to coverage in the news media, what people are saying on social media, and what's being broadcast on television and cable news media.

That's a lot of ground to cover.  You need to monitor news, social and broadcasts because all three channels impact your reputation.

The news media monitoring industry is crowded with providers that claim to do all three, but the truth is each one of them comes from one of those three categories and typically resells the other two channels through some sort of partnership agreement.

So the major players in the news media monitoring category resell their feeds to the social media monitoring and the broadcast media monitoring services. The broadcast media monitoring services resale their feeds to the social media monitoring and the news media monitoring service providers.

Nearly all social media monitoring and news media monitoring service providers white label and resell the TVEyes service when it comes to monitoring video.

What they don’t tell you though is that none of the partners that offer broadcast media monitoring coverage through reseller agreements with TVEyes allow for downloading of broadcast coverage. 

So while you can view them inside their platform, the downloading of video clips is only available to clients with a TVEyes subscription.

How the TVEyes Media Monitoring Suite came to be

As one of the first broadcast media monitoring services, TVEyes maintains a searchable index of the stories broadcast and cable news media going back 90 days. They’re able to do this in a matter of minutes, delivering their clients access to the news media coverage so they can better manage corporate and brand reputation.

Growing from a bootstrapped business in the early 2000s to a B2B industry leader that’s currently offering broadcast media monitoring services in 16 countries and around 12 different languages, TVEyes has not just witnessed the digital transformation, it has effectively monitored and created an archive of the conversations we’ve been having online.

Today, David’s team is using AI to crawl the web, find relevant content for clients, and generate scannable text transcripts of broadcast news, radio shows, popular videos, and podcasts spoken word programming:

Broadcast and cable news media monitoring is possible due to close-captioning. They can strip that captioning from the broadcast to create a searchable transcript.

Podcast monitoring uses AI automatic ad insertion to know when a particular keyword is spoken and jump to the right place in a given episode. For many advertisers and podcasters, those placements are automatically done by podcast tech, not the podcasters themselves.

“Our goal is to follow eyeballs and ears. Wherever there is a meaningful conversation happening, we are monitoring that discussion. Our use of AI is on the backend, not the query. Our dictionaries update themselves automatically, doing speech-to-text transcription.” 

David Ives

When will AI replace Boolean queries?

It’s still too early for AI to replace Boolean queries, but TVEyes is using AI in their speech-to-text software to improve transcript accuracy through probabilistic analysis, which determines what word was likely to have been spoken by analyzing the surrounding words. This works well until you encounter a keyword that is not in the dictionary, such as new brands and elected officials.

When considering the criterion for which media to monitor, David said they are following the people. Right now, for example, podcasts are exploding in popularity. They allow hosts a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating something the consumer wants (as opposed to news or radio) and, as a result, audiences are generally very targeted.

This niched-down pool of potential leads can become a golden opportunity for brands to reach their exact target market through content creative.

Can broadcast media monitoring support viral content marketing?

As with other marketing tech, media monitoring tools are designed to help companies collect meaningful insights, spot patterns and analyze the results..

While it can help you evaluate the success of a campaign and identify what has gone viral, media monitoring services are not content creation tools or indicate how to create viral content.

“What makes something go viral? Well, we don’t really know, but we DO recognize when something has reached viral status. Then, we create and index the conversation. Our goal is to quickly identify what has taken off and make it searchable at the spoken word level.”

There still needs to be someone in the company putting the pieces together to create insights and take action. 

Keeping apprised of your media coverage is also valuable from an online reputation management standpoint. Because it serves as source material for Google's Knowledge Graph and can justify a Wikipedia entry as well.

Media monitoring services can be used to spot media bias

Understanding what the world is saying about your brand is an invaluable asset to have in your marketing arsenal.

TVEyes helps brands do this in a number of ways, including:

Requesting that specific podcasts or channels be monitored. 

Creating a standing watch list for keywords or phrases you care about that will give you an email alert within seconds of that keyword being spoken.

Using their powerful ad hoc search tool to filter by format.

But not all media monitoring services are created equal.

There are questions you need to ask as you look for traditional and social media monitoring services. It’s also important to bear in mind that qualifying data, fact-checking material, and editing is not a part of media monitoring. 

Rather, monitoring tools are there to provide a 24/7 comprehensive index of content on the internet. 

In my Guide to Media Monitoring, I reviewed the top 10 News, Social, and broadcast monitoring platforms. I created a features comparison chart so you can see which platforms have what features. And I included my own personal reviews of each media Monitoring Service, as well as user ratings so you can see how customers respond after using them for an extended period of time.

Download the guide and start protecting your reputation through media monitoring today.

AI, advanced algorithms, and big data have ushered us into a new era of marketing and consumption. 

Disruptive technology has impacted consumer behavior and revolutionized our capabilities as marketers.

But should we be skeptical -- or more cautious -- with how we implement the latest martech or use AI within the B2B customer journey?

And, as consumers ourselves, how do we live in a world of constant distraction without giving up these digital tools that monopolize our attention, but provide value at the same time? Is it an all-or-nothing game?

These are the questions Brian Solis sought to answer in his new book, Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life. 

These are questions more people are asking as a result of the overwhelming success of the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, which looks at the consequences of driving user engagement through so-called “bubble filter” algorithms that increase utilization by showing us more of what we’re already watching, insulating us from different points of view and contributing to today’s state of hyper-partisan political polarity.

According to Brian, the good news is that it’s possible to balance a life of purpose while taking advantage of social media and other transformative digital technologies. What’s more, when it comes to the future of digital marketing in 2021, artificial intelligence and ethics do not have to be mutually exclusive.

Brian is my longtime friend, the bestselling author of eight books, a keynote speaker, and a world-renowned futurist who always has fantastic insights to contribute to AI and the future of digital marketing. 

We unpacked a lot during this conversation so you won’t want to miss this podcast.

But if you’d rather read than listen, these are my favorite takeaways:

Don’t be scared of AI. Retrain the algorithm.

Many people say AI is the future of digital marketing. And we know AI can be powerful from a brand perspective. But is AI a risk as well? And what toll will it take on our livelihoods, mental health, politics and relationships as individuals? 

Is the current state of affairs simply a trailer for more of what’s in store?

Brian explained how AI, algorithms, and the companies that leverage them use our insecurities against us while simultaneously making us feel in control. He transferred the responsibility of how we engage, interact with, and react to that content back on our shoulders as consumers with three simple words: “personal accountability” and digital literacy.

“They [social networks] align content and advertising around what the algorithm deems important to us. They stoke our cognitive biases, said or unsaid vulnerabilities. And they create engagement and activity around those things because they are extremely charged. 

As you share, others share back.

And make no mistake, that’s all by design."

Brian Solis

There are many case studies that show how igniting people’s emotions or being opinionated lures clicks. And that’s simply what makes the money.

We can’t blame social media or the growth marketing campaigns that exploit it.

We need to become literate and honest about what’s happening.

Taking on some more accountability, you will remember that you don’t have to engage with everything. Nor do you have to give up social media and the digital media technology that can be really beneficial.

You can retrain the algorithm to show it what you want to consume by liking and engaging with the news stories, videos, profiles, and content that fills your life with value and purpose. 

This is the very thing Brian explores in his book. And it’s very much the idea of “you get back what you put out into the world,” applied to a digital world.

AI ethics are not universal. They’re based on personal beliefs.

Growth marketing is all about rapid-fire implementation and leveraging new technology to get us to the next level.

But with AI, we may not understand the repercussions until after it’s been applied. So Brian challenges us to take a step back and think about how we got where we are before thinking about where we want to go tomorrow.

The 2 questions he asks are:

What digital marketing tactics do you want to keep using?

How do you provide content that both evokes emotion and is credible?

In social media and other digital marketing channels, there’s often not just an erosion of truth but a delineation of what truth means. 

There’s your truth and my truth. And they may not align.

So, there’s no simple answer to what the future of digital marketing in 2021 holds. Just as everyone has their own truth, everyone -- and every company -- must define what is acceptable and what standards they will hold themselves to.

The future of digital marketing is innovative leadership

Moving away from social media to the customer experience, there’s an important question marketers should ask themselves.

How can we shift from rigid process and risk-averse cultures to agile, innovative cultures?

Innovation, diversity, agility -- these are all big change initiatives. And change and culture go hand in hand. 

Change is about people, and culture gives people the where and why. It becomes a leadership conversation about bringing people together and moving them in a new direction. Innovation and leadership go hand in hand.

“Remember that innovation is the outcome. It’s change and culture design that get that outcome,” says Brian.

In addition to cultivating a new culture, we can work to be more intuitive as digital marketers.

There are a lot of great companies that care about the customer -- or say they do -- but don't effectively communicate that in their digital experiences.

“Brands want to create a better customer experience. But we have to remember that connected customers are in a more chaotic world. You have to factor in their headspace they’re coming from when they reach the point of interacting with your brand’s messaging. It’s about being more intuitive and understanding this environment we are all in."

Brian Solis

Brian calls this the “customer’s experience” rather than the customer experience.

It’s an accumulation of experiences. Each one impacts how someone feels about you. Those emotions move into memories and that’s how brand affinity is born.

Conclusion

As you forge into the future of digital and growth marketing, evaluate whether your company is genuinely striving for innovation or simply iteration, and course correct accordingly.

Don’t lose sight of what it means to be a consumer in the age of digital media technology and take time to define your company's values and ethics within that world.

I highly recommend reading Brian’s book, Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life. Take notes. Give it to your employees. You will be more productive at work and begin to form more meaningful connections with your customers. 

This is just a part of the amazing conversation I had with Brian; for the rest of it – and to hear more insightful conversations coming from the world of PR and digital media technology – subscribe to the Earned Media Podcast.

When it comes to creating a niche marketing strategy for B2Bs, there are no off-the-shelf options.

It’s a blessing and a curse.

On the one hand, you can adapt the way you sell to match how customers like to buy.

But doing that involves anticipating how they'll want to buy before they're actually buying that way because it takes time to get systems in place that can deliver on their expectations.

This is particularly true at a time when B2C giants like Goole, Amazon and Apple are continuously lowering ease-of-use expectations, shortening B2B buyers patience thresholds for a cumbersome UX in stride.

Plus, with a finite B2B market, you can’t afford to invest in the types of solutions that B2Cs can. The market size doesn't justify it. It's a balancing act because you can't afford to solve all the issues that frustrate and alienate people, either.

So it's tough. 

The evolution of B2B digital marketing to music directors, a niche, a niche market is something Adam Taylor, President of APM Music, has been living and breathing for two decades. I breathed the first one with one. I was his PR guy.

He spoke with me for my book on digital marketing about what he’s learned from his experiences, walking me through his migration from analog to digital. It's compelling because he explains what it takes to pivot a digital based his 20-year experience.

In this post – written from the interview, which you can listen to at the top of this page – Adam discusses how digital technology changed the music industry and why there’s never a shortage of business opportunities, even in emerging or niche industries.

How APM used technology to fulfill customer demand

Digital pivot requires digital infrastructure, which takes time to specify and deploy. And the B2B lead generation strategies executed by those systems take even longer to get up and running. 

“Technology was a great way to serve our customers with a digital library. At first, that WAS the selling proposition.”

APM Music CEO Adam Taylor

At APM Music, it started by creating tech that helped customers find and download production music for use in film and television by making their production music library searchable and tracks downloadable online rather than shipping CDs. Then, it moved into translating the value of that music search engine to music directors, who were accustomed to getting and cataloging physical media with their systems themselves.

It may sound crazy today. But not everyone had broadband, and people were still getting comfortable with browser software. Despite the fact that it seems so obvious today that digital is a better, easier way to go, it wasn't back then.

So as Adam was migrating APM Music's B2B customer journey from analog to digital, he had to find ways to convince music directors that his online solution made sense for them, he had to help them make the pivot and he had to maintain digital and analog channels simultaneously for years while he pivoted.

Adam has the data analytics to prove the value and continuously improve and personalize the customer experience, but it wasn't always that way.

His pivot from a brick-and-mortar music library to a digital one took around six years.

Bringing together the tech and B2B marketing message

Everything about the supply chain of music, from discoverability and production to delivery, has changed. However APM has solidified its place in the market with a niche marketing strategy that uses technology to keep the customer’s needs at the forefront of everything they do.

“Our obligation is to bring in great music and deliver what our clients want when they want it. In between that is the search engine. But marketing is also very important because we need to understand our client and their wants.”

Here were the major challenges and digital transformations in their B2B growth marketing approach:

Having sales and marketing work together to create specific goals around customer acquisition helps marketing bring better MQLs to sales.

We use data to personalize customers' results when searching for production music. 

We are adapting to an omnipresent channel and messaging world to generate leads continually.

It was developing a proactive -- not just reactive -- niche marketing strategy that focused on customer success, retention, and customer lifetime value.

They are segmenting a niche industry into even smaller markets to serve different customers with the most personalized experience and messaging possible.

But APM has come a long way from the early days of martech when everyone was sending the same email blast to everyone and using PR to drive awareness instead of sales results.

Creating an effective niche marketing strategy

APM is a great case study of a B2B brand that’s come a long way with its marketing, using technology to fulfill demand and create a personalized customer experience.

And, though they are in a finite industry with limited prospects, Adam made a very good point all B2B marketers should remember.

Optimizing for market growth is as important as optimizing to grow market share.

APM Music CEO Adam Taylor

“You never have unlimited potential in any market. But when you are in a very niche, small market, it’s likely still growing much faster than you as a single company can service. Even in our emerging market, we can’t grab all the market share because it’s big enough, and it’s growing daily.”

That being said, here are his top recommendations for B2B marketers who want to create a successful niche marketing strategy for themselves:

Focus on account-based marketing that doesn’t just personalize based on the company but the individual contact’s behavior.

Get your entire team together to ensure everyone understands the messaging, goals, and available marketing content.

Use tech and data to evaluate objectively whether or not something is working.

Unite sales and marketing by creating a fully articulated business process that addresses lead qualification, nurturing, content, and analytics.

Remember to think in terms of lifetime customer value rather than simply acquisition.

Technology is undoubtedly transforming the way we engage with and serve our customers, but a niche marketing strategy -- like any marketing strategy -- needs to be about putting the customer first. 

Account, role, and individual personalization are what wins. 

And you can do this by collecting meaningful data and making rapid-fire changes that move you closer to your business. But be careful. Cause you can’t afford to alienate prospects with your niche marketing strategy.

Subscribe to the B2B Lead Gen Podcast for more from today’s most innovative digital marketers, entrepreneurs, and business leaders.

Check out my new Email Marketing Best Practices Guide.

If you’re wondering how to get the most out of PR firm, this post is for you.

Whether you're looking for personal PR, a B2B tech PR, or public relations outreach to promote your ecommerce website, hiring the right public relations practitioners to handle your account is always challenging.

Many public relations agencies will say they have the SEO, content marketing, digital PR, and social media marketing skills to handle your account. And some of them do. But just because an agency can provide a service doesn't mean they will. 

PR agencies represent clients nonexclusively, which means they're balancing a portfolio of clients. Inevitably, it's the client with the ability to stick around for the long haul that typically gets the best service.

So, how can clients maximize their PR budget? That's what this post is all about.

And here's a hint at the answer: instead of diving in all at once or hiring a team of PR and SEO consultants, it’s critical to prioritize marketing channels sequentially. 

Here to help you ask the right questions and hire the right agency is Jay Baer, Founder of Convince & Convert, hall of fame marketing and customer experience keynote speaker, and author of 6 best-selling books, including Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help, not Hype.

Jay has years of experience creating winning marketing strategies, much of which was spent in agencies. 

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In this post, which is based on an exclusive interview with Jay, we discuss why companies shouldn’t hire a one-stop-shop agency, the important things you need to know and have before hiring, and one major red flag to look out for before you hire a PR agency for your startup.

PR vs. Digital Marketing vs. PPC: Which is Most Important?

As a company, you need to determine the business objectives you want to achieve and ensure you seek the right partner. Jay provided some great explanations to help you match outcomes with the right type of content agency.

So, let’s look at the first question I often see when discussing PR for startups. Is it better to hire a digital marketing agency that can do some PR or to hire a PR agency that can do some digital marketing?

If you want an end-to-end solution, a digital agency may be the best bet.

However, if you accept the premise that public relations is about influencing the public and incentivizing behavior change -- which trails belief change -- an all-in-one approach probably won’t cut it.

Though there are digital marketing agencies that know digital public relations, there aren’t many digital firms that do it well.

Really, if you want to do both, you need to hire both.

You need to separate these efforts and hire for individual outcomes instead of thinking about PR and digital marketing as two sides of the same coin.

When looking for earned media, you are looking to hire external PR.

When you’re looking for shared media or an owned media strategy, you should be looking to hire a digital marketing consultant or agency.

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You may then be asking: Is it better to hire a PPC firm that does organic or an organic marketing agency that can do PPC?

Not surprisingly, Jay’s response was much the same here.

You don’t want to lose sight of the fact that PPC is a media buy. And organic content is not that.

“Are you looking to achieve your goals by spending money (PPC) or creating content (organic)? Both can get you there, but you have to choose. The idea that organic and paid are very closely related is also misguided,” said Jay.

How to know if an agency is worth the investment?

The questions you could ask an agency before hiring them run the gamut from, “Do you specialize only in PR for startups?” and “Can I see past case studies?” to “What’s your average contract length with a company?” and “Will you be creating a custom strategy for my company?”

While you should ask these questions and more before hiring a PR agency, they don’t all hold the same weight.

I asked Jay to prioritize the top three things startups should look for when hiring a PR agency:

A custom-tailored plan. It is better to have a PR agency that’s not niched down by industry but creates customs solutions than one that will serve you the same paint-by-numbers approach as the last client but knows your industry. 

Sector experience and testimonials from other companies in your industry. Customized solutions and industry experience are ideal.

Experience working with companies at the same stage. In addition to working with a PR agency that understands your industry, it’s also essential to find one that specializes in your company size. 

Context is essential when it comes to other factors like client retention and contract duration.

“Short relationships but a focus on start-ups or scale-ups could mean that they are growing the companies so well that their clients are able to move to the next stage quickly. In that situation, it means that the agency with shorter contracts is actually very effective.”

And when it comes to deal-breakers, Jay mentioned a big one.

You never want to be a PR agency’s smallest client. 

Agency relationships often end because an agency feels like another more prominent agency could serve them better or the client feels like they are getting the B team.

In both examples, there’s a mismatch between the agency's size and the company's budget.

What do I need to know to build a successful PR strategy for startups?

To have a successful go-to-market, go-to-media strategy -- and a successful relationship with the PR agency you’re going to hire -- it’s essential to have a few critical elements of your business dialed in before you hire external PR.

You should have a deep understanding of:

Building an online path to purchase.

Optimizing each stage in your marketing funnel.

Who your ideal customer is. This is the most challenging part for startups. Their insights are often anecdotal based on the gut feelings of the founder, but you need accurate customer data.

All the marketing and PR efforts that have happened already. What worked? What didn’t? Why?

Your customers’ opinions of your product or service offering, the thought processes of your prospective customers, and your own customer-facing employees’ insights.

If you are doing PR for startups, you might focus on your external efforts, overlooking a part of that last bullet point. 

But Jay pointed out that this is where you set the foundation of your efforts. 

You need to start with that internal marketing and get employee buy-in before you can expect influencers and customers to invest.

Conclusion

Just like there is no one-size-fits-all approach to PR for startups, there is no singular answer to “How do I hire a PR agency?”

You need to clarify your objectives related to owned, earned, and shared/social media. 

You need to adopt a process for vetting and researching an agency before hiring them. You need to have the data outlined in this post in place to be successful and evaluate PR results.

But Jay also pointed out that companies need to understand how to execute basic PR and marketing tactics before ever enlisting the help of an agency. 

Without this understanding, you are doing yourself a disservice. 

You will always need to rely on a PR agency for your needs.

This is the ideology behind much of what Jay’s team does. They don’t do contracts. They don’t do retainers. They see themselves as counselors, creating a PR strategy that startups and B2B brands can then take and execute on themselves.

“At Convince & Convert, we write a lot of recipes but we don’t cook a lot of meals. What I mean is we create strategic plans and operations plans. We tell startups exactly what to do, but we don’t do it for them. A lot of strategy firms don’t do that.”

Eric Schwartzman and Jay Baer speaking on a panel at the Worldcom PR conference in Memphis, Tennessee.

I’ll leave you with that. But, if you’re wondering how to hire a PR agency or do PR for startups, give this whole episode a listen, subscribe to the podcast, and download my guide on getting press coverage for your startup.

As a digital marketing consultant, I have an extensive background in the world of PR -- specifically in PR for startups and B2B brands. 

I take a sequential approach to B2B marketing, looking individually at your owned, shared, earned, and paid media opportunities to create a plan that is aligned with the business outcomes that matter most to you.

When it comes to delivering well-timed, relevant messages as a brand, it’s important to know what’s going on in the world, your industry, and consumers’ minds. And you need to know what’s happening right now.

We all talk about content marketing best practices. But it really starts with understanding the data around the types of topics and information your customers and prospects are looking for and suing to make purchasing decisions and utilize products and services.

Data-driven marketing starts with data, and that’s what this podcast is about. It’s about monitoring the data around what your audience is reading and discussion online, in the news media and on social networks.

Content may be king. But context is queen. And she controls the king’s schedule. So content is not the only thing that matters. Context tells you where, and why people consume content.

Brand monitoring, news media monitoring, social media monitoring, broadcast media monitoring, and online reputation management have evolved into a sophisticated specialty skill capable of correlating news media coverage to website goal conversions. But the insights are only as good as the inputs. Garbage in, garbage out.

Conversations move at a rapid pace online. Brands often have minutes to respond to trending items, news, and customer sentiment, lest they risk tarnishing their brand as tone deaf or out of touch.

I spoke with the industry’s top news and social media monitoring experts about how they track conversations, sentiment, and anticipate demand by analysing the data.

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In this podcast, they discuss the major challenges organizations face around news and social media monitoring to inform organizations on how their brands are perceived in the marketplace. 

This panel was recorded in association with the release of the 2020 Media Monitoring Buyer’s Guide, a FREE vendor-neutral report on the most popular media monitoring solutions available and includes: 

Discussion of the benefits and challengesIntro guides to the top 10 platforms The guide include a features comparison chartsUser ratings on the top platforms

This panel discussion features news, social media and brand monitoring experts featured in the report including:

Johna Burke, Global Managing Director of AMEC, The International Association for the Measurement and Evaluation of CommunicationsJonny Bentwood, Global Head of Data and Analytics at GolinEric Koefoot, President and CEO at PublicRelayKatie Paine, Measurement, Insights and Analytics Consultant at Paine Publishing

Our discussion was varied and nuanced, as you’ll hear if you listen to the full podcast episode. If you work in media monitoring, you don’t want to miss this episode!

For this post, I’m going to summarize 6 takeaways that came out of our panel discussion that you can employ when configuring a social media monitoring tool to track online conversations about brand.

It is by no means conclusive and can’t possibly cover in detail what’s in the report. But for the sake of a top-level overview, here they are.

1. Look for a partner, not just a vendor

When choosing a social media monitoring tool and service provider, you should be seeking out a partnership. Pick a vendor with a business model that offers you and your company the support you need to be effective.

That often means doing both social media monitoring and traditional media monitoring together. “Fishing where the fish are,” as they say, in order to get the valuable data and insights from the places where your customers are actually hanging out.

2. Qualify your data

Insights based on bad data are bad. The conclusions you draw are only as good as the keywords you monitor against.

You’ll never be able to draw actionable insights from data that is biased or is simply incorrect. 

Similarly, make sure your social media monitoring tools are getting you the numbers that matter. Insights that are based on data that’s not important to your stakeholders is, at best, not relevant or helpful. 

At worst, it’s a total waste of resources. So package the data in a way that your client can appreciate it.

3. Beware of vanity metrics

Just as we need to make sure the data we are looking at is clean, we also need to make sure we aren’t getting distracted by vanity metrics that may not have anything to do with our business objectives.

Unless you’re ad supported, traffic does not equal revenue. “One million impressions does not mean one million people were impressed.”

4. Use media monitoring to take fast action

Social media monitoring has the amazing ability to accelerate crisis response times from hours to minutes. And that’s good, because if your company can’t respond quickly to changing customer sentiment or world events, your brand is at risk. 

But, while media monitoring provides an early warning signal for crisis communications, knowing how to respond still requires human consideration and experience.

5. Use brand monitoring tools to collect data. But use people to provide context.

AI and social media monitoring tools aren’t going to replace PR and marketing teams any time soon. Which one of the reasons why there's no easy way to automate and remove fake news from the internet.

That’s because no CEO is going to blindly trust a computer to make business decisions during a crisis.

As marketers, we can use artificial intelligence to evaluate how long it took -- and what measures were required -- to solve a problem in the past. 

But we need to bring a human argument full of charts, graphs and data in order to influence change in a company.

Media monitoring tools can provide great data, but AI struggles to understand and appreciate topics and ideas.

6. Understand there are no crystal balls

Regardless of how robust the social media monitoring tool, machines don’t understand language and still can’t learn it fast enough to insulate you from risk.

Additionally, after the pandemic subsides, will it -- and your business -- go back to the pre-set norm or do you have a new data set?

What was good yesterday could be bad today because the world is changing. What was neutral yesterday could have a powerful, emotional connection today.

For example, #metoo meant nothing a few years ago. Now there’s a sentiment and movement associated with it.

AI can’t do that analysis. It’s good at relevancy. But the person telling the story and interpreting the data needs to decide what it means for the business.

At the end of the day, we can collect data on just about anything. 

Data driven marketers need to make sure the data we are collecting has context and aligns with the business objectives. 

It’s the difference between evaluating how well a given press release did, and measuring as a whole how well PR contributes to the strategic priorities of the business, whether that be bringing in more business, improving reputation, attracting talent, or another defined goal.

Brand monitoring, coupled with smart analysis, and strategies for how you intend to measure each business goal is how you can get the most out of your social media monitoring tools.

Download the 2020 Media Monitoring Buyer’s Guide, for a complete overview of state of news, social and brand media monitoring platforms available today.

And don’t forget to subscribe to Earned Media Hour, for even more organic marketing tips.