In this episode, we’re going to tackle two Quora questions with none-other than Adi Pineapple, founder and senior growth hacker of: themilliondollarpineapple.com. Adi and I met in one of our shared private growth marketing groups and I have always had so much respect for what she’s accomplished.

Today, Adi and I are going to tackle two questions, which for this episode, will have the same answer:

As a B2B marketer, what are your most successful social media platforms?
What is the most effective Quora marketing strategy?


https://right2revenue.com/growth-strategies/the-complete-guide-to-b2b-growth-marketing-on-linkedin-quora/

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The name of the game for marketing on Quora is showing THOUGHT LEADERSHIP. This will result in: More credibility to whatever you promote anywhere. Recognition of your brand (it shows up next to your name if you edit your tagline correctly). Targeted and educated traffic to your landing pages. Here are the steps in this thought leadership strategy...

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Use cases: Customer service Lead generation Recruiting Serving content Main differences in use cases: Fully-chat-bot powered 24/7 Vs. A conversation starter… Vs. After-hours only with an option to schedule something with a human the next day or continue with the bot experience. A few big tools to checkout: Meya.ai - for creating and deploying custom bots into other applications (like Intercom) Manychat / Chatfuel - for Facebook Messenger chatbots. Drift.com - for converting web traffic. Landbot.io - for creating bot-based landing pages, or embedding bots into content.

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What are some good lead nurturing strategies and proven tools? Great question… In this answer, my colleagues Karan Sharma (from Hubsell.com) and Nolan Clemmons (Founder of Clemmons.io (https://clemmons.io/the-sales-stack/)) joined me to create a much-more robust answer than I could have come up with on my own… Enjoy! Here are the tried and tested 6 steps we recommend to execute a complete lead nurturing campaign for any audience.

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We were requested to answer this question on Quora: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-lead-generation-trends-in-2018/answer/Alex-Glenn-2

To ensure we stay true to our expertise and provide actionable value in this discussion, we will focus on these key trends:

Increased Regulations Force Higher Quality

A Shift From Bulk Data Providers To In-House Or Outsourced Data-Curation Providers

Sales Navigator Will Become More Necessary While LinkedIn Becomes Less Useful

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So, here is how I look at the dilemma of balancing sales efforts with inbound marketing in a B2B saas startup: First, I recommend always hedging sales efforts with marketing efforts, regardless of how well sales is working in its current state. Second, I have yet to see a SaaS startup where thought leadership and personal branding of the creators wasn’t (or wouldn’t be) enormously-beneficial to gaining PMF and their early growth. Finally, Treat any new marketing strategy as a proof of concept and wait until this marketing strategy is proven before you hire the team to scale it.

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Just me in this episode. Enjoy! I’ve been marketing B2B - including my personal services, platforms, marketplaces, saas products… for 11+ years now. It took me a long time to find lead generation strategy/routine which was compounding (creating more leads every month). When I found this routine, I try to practice it daily. The best part is, everything is at zero cost. I will preface with my belief that every B2B company needs at least one person in the company, preferably higher-up, to become thought leaders under the pain points your company solves. This requires at least one of you to be the ‘link-builder’ for your company. One of the responsibilities (if not the main responsibility) of this individual will be to publish valuable content and answers to these pain points as often and in as many formats as possible.

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The short answer is YES. But, not for all industries/products/price-points. Here are the criteria where you can/would succeed selling a saas product without a phone call: 1. Your audience is tech savvy and have purchased similar products (possibly your competitors) without talking to someone. 2. When the product has a lower price-points (less than $500/mo). 3. You have a free trial if not a free version of the tool. 4. Onboarding into your product is very robust - leveraging (at minimum) video tutorials, great documentation, and emails. 5. You’ve spent time creating a personal brand for yourself and shown thought leadership in your space. 6. Using a well-timed multi-touch approach to your cold outreach with very good copy.

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This is part 2 and 3 of the presentation I gave last month at the CMO Data Summit. For the full presentation, check out: https://right2revenue.com/growth-strategies/the-new-world-of-cold-outreach-automation-gdpr-and-leveraging-data/ Here's the synopsis: Data protection trends Opportunities for higher engagement.. What marketers need to know about the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Applicable on EU citizens personal data. Applies to you and your third party processors. The fines can be $20M or 4% of worldwide annual rev. Customers have rights: access, edit, erase and/or transfer. Redefine the scope and purpose of processing all data. What’s great about the GDPR? Increased consumers confidence. Less noise - fewer bad practices. Abiding to GDPR means you are forced to become a valuable and precise marketer.

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**Is LinkedIn useful for prospecting and personal branding?** Short answer = Yes. **How do I put LinkedIn to good Use?** 1. Thought leadership 2. Recruitment 3. Events 4. Biz/Dev 5. Channel Partnerships 6. But, no matter what you use it for, do not do it like this... (see examples below) 1. Try to sell/schedule a demo/ask them to register…. 2. Do not pretend your BFF’s… 3. Don’t lie… 4. Don’t embellish on your company or personal achievements… **How to do it correctly?** 1. Make it valuable and relevant! 2. Try not to send a message immediately 3. Start with something less invasive 4. Don't immediately send message after the connection request has been accepted but wait for a few days. 5. It’s ok to add a line about something you want them to check out, but do not make that the purpose of the message.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit marketingautomationfm.substack.com