"When companies gradually build their brand through social media and short videos, they approach the customer in a non-violent way. The first strategy that has proven successful is in- depth case studies. These always resonate with clients. The second strategy is educational content, either in the form of videos that analyze a specific case study or discuss the solution with another client."
Those who don't have it, it's as if they don't exist. They say it has miraculous powers. To build you a strong brand. Attract customers. Educate your clients. You just need to break boundaries and stir in a little controversy.
Marketing.
Now we just need to know how to do it. Ideally the right way. When to use branding? And when to use performance? Yeah, it's a mess. Everybody says something different. And it's different for every company.
I've tried to put some order into it. And so I invited Martin Jiras, co-founder and CEO of WeBetter s.r.o., which deals with marketing from the position of a creative agency. What did we talk about?
🔸 Is there a need for boundary breaking and controversy in marketing?
🔸 How should a B2B company build brand marketing?
🔸 When does it make sense to start performance marketing?
🔸 How to measure the benefits of brand marketing?
🔸 How to choose communication channels?
Invest in branding or performance marketing when you're a smaller company? That's the crux of the question. Even after this episode. And it always will be.
HOW TO AVOID COMMON MISTAKES IN B2B MARKETING (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT)
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Today's Ignition will be about marketing again and today we're going to look at how to ideally split performance marketing and brand marketing for B2B companies with a marketing agency. For this topic, I've invited Martin Jiras, CEO and co-founder of WeBetter. Hello Martin.
Martin Jiras
Hello, Martin.
Where does he like and where would he like to live?
Martin Hurych
It'll be easy today, we won't get it wrong. I'd like to start a little bit on a personal level, you like to travel, as you've snitched on yourself in preparation, so I'd be interested to know where it took you by the heart the most, what led you to it and where you might be able to live in the long term.
Martin Jiras
Overall, I think I was most interested in Central and South America. I've been drawn there for some unfathomable reason since I studied English in America for a while and my greatest friends were from Brazil. I've been gravitating towards it ever since, so I've gone there a couple of times and I really like it. As far as where I'd like to live other than the Czech Republic, I guess Spain. I've been thinking very strongly about it for about a year and a half.
Martin Hurych
We're filming at the end of August, it's hot outside, so you're in the water now.
Martin Jiras
You can't quite say that. I was just in Spain last week and it was actually exactly the same as here, but the sea breeze does something a bit different to you than in Prague.
Martin Hurych
What is it about the Southern mood that you find so interesting?
Martin Jiras
I guess what I like about those countries is the way of life, which is a bit more relaxed, you live more in the evening and I like the sea. So mostly I look for those destinations near the sea, seaside towns and generally the food suits me more. That's what I go there for a lot, the food, the drink and the culture.
How did get into WeBetter and what does it do?
Martin Hurych
That's what I thought, a bottle of red, tapas and looking out to sea. How did you get into WeBetter, what drew you there? Come give us a little life story so we know from what position we'll be discussing the topics I promised.
Martin Jiras
I came to WeBetter quite naturally. I started in agencies, of course, mostly as a social media manager or copywriter. But I've always wanted to do something of my own, because even before the agency world, I was organising events, music events and festivals in college. Plus, my family has always been entrepreneurs, even if they were small business owners, more just icers, freelancers, but somehow that led me to it. So after a few years in agencies, I thought it was probably time to start something of my own. After a few years I wondered if it was too soon, but it has been ever since, and that's how WeBetter came about, because I just wanted to do something of my own, to create my own thing and go my own way.
Martin Hurych
What do you do at WeBetter?
Martin Jiras
That's also a good question. Primarily these days it's about trying to co-create some creative concepts with my colleagues, pushing them somehow, asking them and getting them to come up with the best possible. Then, of course, I take care of the business side of it, the sales and managing all the stuff that those colleagues aren't doing anymore.
Martin Hurych
What does WeBetter do?
Martin Jiras
We primarily do creative campaigns. Mostly everything we do goes online, here and there we do some offline stuff for some clients, but that's primarily stuff that's related to the online stuff. It's a lot about content creation, it's about comprehensive campaigns, we do a lot of video because we have our own production. So we're very much in that creative world in terms of video, social media, YouTube.
What do they do better than others?
Martin Hurych
Referring to the name of the company, what do you do better than others?
Martin Jiras
That's another good question. I've been looking specifically at it with our regular clients now and it's really interesting because every client appreciates something different about us. What our clients love is that we're trying to break down myths in these campaigns, some of the ruts, that we're not afraid to turn some of the ruts upside down and go into the campaign completely the opposite way that everybody would go. Of course it's also about those clients allowing it, that's a very important thing because not everybody allows it. The other thing is that we try to prevent fuck-ups and we stand a lot on some retrospective, when the collaboration is long term, we prevent some problems or some decline in quality. I sew a lot into that. Then they appreciate some friendly human touch about us, because I think that's missing in a lot of agencies. I'm often told by clients that the approach is very cold, very financially driven, and we don't have that at all. We definitely try to go for those results, of course we keep an eye on the finances as well, but we usually come up with something a little bit extra and that's one of the things that a lot of clients have told us they like as well.
Is boundary breaking and controversy in marketing necessary?
Martin Hurych
Breaking down segment boundaries, does it mean controversy and is controversy important in marketing?
Martin Jiras
A slight controversy, but not necessarily a negative controversy. I have an example of this that I like to give. For example, we had a company, it's EKO diapers, Czech production, and we did an advertising campaign. When you think of a diaper commercial, you probably think of a mom, blonde, pink environment, and that's exactly what we don't want to do. We thought we're going to put a hunky guy in there, tall, beard, tresses, and that's going to be the main character that's taking care of the baby and it's based on that. That's already breaking down the boundaries like that a little bit, and it was a great success because the mothers loved it, they loved the guy, they loved the way he takes care of the baby in the commercial, the way he plays with the baby. So that's what sticks in those people's minds, that it's different, that's what gets them.
How should a B2B company build brand marketing?
Martin Hurych
Let us now come to the topic I have prepared for you today. My bubble is often not as far along in marketing as say B2C or e-commerce. A lot of small manufacturing or IT companies are starting out with marketing and because they are very technical, numbers oriented, it's hard for them to grasp the basics of marketing. Often I have to try things, the results are ambiguous and so on. At the moment there is a lot of talk about some brand campaigns and performance campaigns. How does a B2B company that sells something expensive long term, typically my clients sell a year, year and a half after the first client contact, how can they even do marketing?
Martin Jiras
You've hit on the subject of brand marketing. I think it's also gradually creeping into that B2B segment and it's important to the fact that, as you said, most of the time these companies close those deals after maybe a year, a year and a half. If they build the brand gradually through social media, some short-form content, short videos and so on, they get to that customer in a non-violent way. A simple example is that a B2B company has a salesperson, he gets into the company and presents something to them. But then what happens is that they stumble across that person through some social networking site, and they're telling them something about that particular topic, and that salesperson basically keeps in touch with them even though they're not in those meetings. Those potential customers can then learn something interesting that they may have missed in that meeting. Plus, if a new video from that company or that individual jumps out at me every week, maybe I'll find out that the person is interesting, they're smart, they know what they're talking about, so I'll reach out to them again and say I'd like to address that. I think that's just terribly important in the long run. I understand that it's not as easily measurable, but I'm convinced that if that salesperson does some content like that, which maybe they can even email to that client, that closing success rate is going to be much higher.
What if I'm not promoting a product, but a service?
Martin Hurych
I can imagine if I have the product. A lot of these companies do custom work, typically IT studios do custom development. In those cases, what would WeBetter recommend as the type of content, the type of content that I should present? Because a lot of those clients say they have a company like every other, they have no competitive advantage and they're not specific, different, better.
Martin Jiras
The first thing that definitely works is case studies. When the case study really breaks down a specific problem in detail, it always works for clients and I think it helps the business. The second thing is the educational content. It can be videos where we break down even specifically that case study in just a video format, for example, or take a topic that we're working on with another client. We don't have to name it, but we'll talk about what we're solving there and how we solved it, how we were able to accomplish something because of something that we created. The other thing that works is some ebooks, which again ties in with the educational content, that we explain an issue there. For example, ChatGPT, artificial intelligence, is going around the world right now, so we can do some ebook, it could be 10 pages, 5 pages, on how to use it for a given segment. We can explain there how to implement it for a website, how we did it somewhere and what it did. That can work well, because then it gives that particular segment, in turn, marketers will send it to, and if I send it to that segment and write about that segment, that customer will connect better and there's a higher likelihood of success.
Martin Hurych
When was the last time you downloaded and read any ebook?
Martin Jiras
Specifically last week.
Martin Hurych
I observe people around me who download ebooks massively and nobody reads them. Most people don't have time to do it because it's too long.
Martin Jiras
I call it an ebook, but it's more like a carousel that you can quickly browse through on LinkedIn. There's 5, 6 slides, but there's already enough information and there might be some call to action. What I do, for example, is I save this stuff all the time, I don't go back to it very much, but once in a while I do, once in a while I look for it.
What else would you recommend in brand marketing?
Martin Hurych
If you saw what I have in front of me here in reMarkable, you'd be amazed at how much is downloaded. Is there anything else we're missing on the branding part?
Martin Jiras
I would just add that overall, the brand should be addressed more by purely B2B companies, because then they will do performance marketing a bit better. Of course, it's not about a B2B company doing classic advertising like a chocolate bar does. It has to be done a little bit differently just with that content, conferences and so on. It's important not to be afraid to send those people out into the world to present for themselves and present that company and be seen, to let people get a glimpse of that company, maybe even on those social networks.
When does it make sense to start performance marketing?
Martin Hurych
Now that we have a sale in the bag, we need to get it up and running quickly, so I don't have time for that, I hear that a lot too. Then the first attempt with marketing is that we do some kind of performance campaign and send out to the world that we are the coolest IT studio that does everything the best, or we are a digital supplier across companies from small to the biggest. We expect a miracle and nothing happens. So how to proceed here with the performance part so that it actually bears some fruit for me? We're still in a state where hardly anyone knows about me.
Martin Jiras
Here I would say that if we need some business results quickly, it's good to focus on the sales itself. Even from our point of view, when we were doing that, to focus on that sales, to prepare some materials, ideally those case studies, because without that it's much harder to sell something, and to go out into the world, to write, to call. But if we have at least some business cases, we've already
somehow works a little bit, so it's good to start creating some content and gradually build that relationship with that potential customer.
Martin Hurych
Content marketing is therefore brand building. Am I getting this right?
Martin Jiras
I'm sure that's one part of it.
Martin Hurych
However, you're actually advising that if I have nothing, I need to send people out into the marketplace and I shouldn't even attempt performance marketing in B2B. Is that right?
Martin Jiras
Here I think that if we don't have any developed materials, even with the educational content, then pure performance marketing for an IT studio can bring little. Most of the time those inquiries are irrelevant, the kind you don't really want, that someone comes in and wants that 9,000K€ website, or wants to write one page of text on a website. So a little something will do it, maybe it will stick you, maybe then the job will become something much more, but I think you can't totally run it like that. You need to go at it through some channels and have that performance advertising somewhere in the search engines, or on Facebook and Instagram as more of a sort of remarketing channel.
How to separate performance and brand marketing for B2B?
Martin Hurych
This is just the point where it's good to stop at what is commonly written about performance and brand marketing. Because if you're starting out with marketing, the money should primarily be poured into the performance part and gradually build the brand. What you're saying is that this doesn't apply to B2B companies and I shouldn't follow it.
Martin Jiras
Yes. For the B2C segment, if a company is starting out, I would say that the performance marketing, of course, with creating some materials, is definitely more necessary at that start. Because they're making money because of that, they don't have that sales team, the owner doesn't do sales because you can't do it that way. In B2B, sales is more important after all, there you can't start with pure performance marketing without anything, in my opinion, because it won't work. There we really have to go a little bit the other way, I would say.
How to measure the benefits of brand marketing?
Martin Hurych
Then I observe that when the owner understands this and wants to get on with it, he again says that he measures every penny he makes by what it brings him. So he either buys an engineer, a lathe, or invests in brand marketing. How do I tell these people what I should measure to make sure I'm walking down that path, which is not short, but at least I'm walking down that path and not going down the blueberry patch?
Martin Jiras
There are a few points to mention, but the most important one is that I wonder how well known our brand is in general. If we're starting out, not at all, but if we're a company that's been around for 30 years, we're I'm sure someone already knows. So we can find out through at least a small survey, which the employees will do by means of some questionnaire, how we are perceived by the people who know about us, what they appreciate, what they don't appreciate and what bothers them. We can build those touchpoints on that and then take those touchpoints into some messages that we communicate out. When we do that, we're going to set some kind of goal. Right now we get 100 people a month coming to the site organically, so our goal is to be at 500 by the end of the year. That's the first metric that a company can measure without some research if they have Google Analytics set up. Then it's similar to B2C. We started to use social networks, people started to interact with us more and we got more inquiries, we got more comments, we got more clicks from social networks to that website and a growing follower base. For example, we might get mentioned in some forums or online magazines. These are all points like that that you, without doing any big surveys, can track and see if you've moved somewhere. I know that the owner of that company will say it didn't make them any money. Of course it's not going to bring you money right away, brand marketing is a really long haul. I think the first results might be in three quarters of a year, a year, a year and a half at the earliest, but if everything is gradually improving like that, then even that owner will feel better about it. He will start to believe more that something has changed, we are moving somewhere and it makes sense. Then maybe a client will tell him that he saw something about them somewhere and that always strokes the ego. So I think that's definitely a way to measure and set some goals, go step by step after those goals and it will break.
How to choose communication channels?
Martin Hurych
When I look at the recommendations of individual people, the recommendations go from wall to wall regarding, for example, the channel where I should perform. One option says, be on one channel and dominate it great and when you have enough fans there and you know what it's about, go somewhere else. The other category says you have to be seen everywhere from morning to night. What do you think is the happy medium?
Martin Jiras
If we're talking about the B2B segment, I don't think you have to be seen everywhere, certainly not. There I would rely more on that one or two networks, but you really need to find out if those potential customers are on that social network, or those business owners and so on. Because everybody in B2B automatically leads to LinkedIn these days, but not for every B2B segment those people are there. So that's something that needs to be said as well. It doesn't get talked about much, but for example, a pretty good social network for B2B is YouTube because YouTube is watched by an awful lot of people from all different segments. They're watching those how-to videos, how to do something, they're watching webinars, they're watching a lot of stuff, and those people are there. And then maybe if an ad pops up, they notice it and again, you can do remarketing there.
How to make the most of YouTube and TikTok?
Martin Hurych
In my case, how to work with Ignition to make the most of YouTube?
Martin Jiras
I would cut all of your episodes into short formats and put them into YouTube Shorts right now. I'd always take a look once a week, maybe, to see what works best, and I'd support that financially so that it jumps on to the right people.
Martin Hurych
So we have LinkedIn with a question mark, YouTube, what's next, what could we use in B2B? I did hear somewhere that although it still has a bit of a pejorative label in the Czech Republic of a network for minors, that it's supposedly flying in the TikTok business.
Martin Jiras
Definitely, TikTok is an interesting social network and again it's full of the educational content that I myself am looking for there. I think if we're talking about those IT studios, I think that's perfect for them because like I said, there's those people who like to consume some news, some tips on how to do things, get inspired. We use it a lot as an inspirational channel, as some other agencies do, or individuals do. If I follow someone for a long time and I find that I can't do it the way that person does it, there's a good chance that I'll try to approach them and start doing some business with them.
How to work with different types of outreach on one channel?
Martin Hurych
This has a few corners, in my experience, because for me, the person I'm going to attract technically is very likely to be different from the person who then hires and pays me. So how do I work with the fact that within one channel on that particular network, I have to deal with multiple people to whom I have to deliver diametrically opposed content?
Martin Jiras
Obviously, that's important to monitor somehow, and if what happens is that you find that you're being followed by people, but you're not being followed by the right people, I would change the channel and try to do it somewhere else.
Martin Hurych
Now we don't understand each other. My bubble is in a situation where the CTO obviously understands what I am saying, however the CEO will not be interested in what I can do, but what I can deliver to him business-wise. The salesman will be interested in what the application I potentially deliver to him can bring him in business. These are the people who will be watching my channel. Rather, I'm asking if there's a recommendation for mixing three different pieces of content for three different people within one channel for the business that I want to wow.
Martin Jiras
I don't think that's going very well. If I were speaking for myself, I would go to each of those target audiences on that different channel and tailor the content to that, because everywhere works a little bit differently. Usually what works best is that that content is on that one social network for that one person. It's very similar and it usually doesn't work completely if there's different things and different information. Because the way those algorithms usually work is that if I give you an interaction for something, then the other thing pops out at me. But that might be something that I'm not interested in at all, so I don't give you that interaction anymore, and then the algorithm is completely messed up. So I would tend to focus on that particular person on that particular social network that I want to engage and create that content accordingly.
How much time is needed for all this?
Martin Hurych
How much time do I have to prepare for all this? Because what we're talking about here is time- consuming, and in most of these companies, the owner or some informal head of the company who wears a bunch of hats in the beginning is necessarily pulling it off. So how much time, say, a week should I set aside for this to make sense? I understand that further processing is not up to me anymore, here it's just about preparing those documents.
Martin Jiras
I'm sure it's going to take some time, but I certainly wouldn't go about it by writing down a bunch of topics here and making an ambitious plan to release three videos every day. That's not going to last, so I'd rather go the other way. It's best to make a plan for the whole month, or at least a week, but more like a whole month, sit down for maybe an hour or two, think about it, figure out the topics, and then break it down a little bit. After that, it's a matter of whether it's really just you creating it and someone else just tweaking it graphically, or editing it, or even someone else creating it and you just designing the themes. If you're going to continue to do it, like you're going to write that article, or you're going to do that case study, or you're going to shoot that video, I think it's going to take another 5, 6 hours to create a plan for the whole month. I call it the meat of the month, which we'll then go on to put out into the world. So that's a total of maybe 8, 10 hours a month.
What does WeBetter marketing look like?
Martin Hurych
Finally, a little teaser, we were talking about marketing for small and medium-sized businesses. There are 10 of you, so what does your marketing look like?
Martin Jiras
Our marketing looked horrible because, as it happens, the only thing we mostly dealt with was the website because I wanted it up to date. But now we've said that we want to create some just an educational platform and do more of that content because I think we have a lot of things that we can pass on. We're working on it today and every day that could help a lot of other companies and we're not telling anybody, which I think is a terrible shame. So we have a content plan, we have these things and maybe on a Sunday I just go into the studio and record videos.
Martin Hurych
So now you sit alone one day a week and do your own marketing.
Martin Jiras
I guess you could say that I do, but it's more like it's been chopped up into smaller chunks over the course of that week. It has to be said that it's not just me doing it, we've agreed that the whole team is involved in some way, everyone has a role to play and we want to push it more to be an inspiration to B2B companies in particular.
How does WeBetter use AI?
Martin Hurych
I hear more and more around me that AI will shut down a bunch of industries, that it will overtake the ones that remain, and that one of the first industries that AI will touch will be marketing. So how is AI affecting you and how are you using it, for example?
Martin Jiras
So far, it has influenced us very well, because it helps us, it is a kind of helper. For example, we do storyboards through Midjourney and it works very well for us. Sometimes it helps us to generate some ideas, it's nothing groundbreaking, but we might pick up something there. It definitely helps generate some articles. You have to play around with it, tweak it, put your own take on it, but so far it's working well for us. I think the human factor will still be needed, but we'll see in 10 years.
Martin Hurych
10 years is a long time, where will the world be in 10 months?
Martin Jiras
I think that artificial intelligence will take a big step forward again and will be more applicable to marketing as such. In terms of social media and things like that, it's going to be about creating the first positions that are going to be purely focused in companies on being specialists in putting those prompts out for anything possible. That's exactly what we've been laughing about in our agency, where the first one will be some junior prompt manager, but I think that's going to be relatively soon because we can generate a lot of stuff. Maybe 10 months from now some of the progressive companies will have something like that, because that person will help them accelerate a lot, spark some work outputs that maybe take a long time. It's definitely going to be interesting.
Martin Hurych
So let artificial intelligence spark you too. Thank you very much for the interview.
Martin Jiras
Thank you too, Martin, have a nice day.
Martin Hurych
You see, if we've brought a slightly different perspective on B2B marketing today, we're glad. If you've got an idea, a thought left in you, and you've recorded something on your phone while you're driving, or written something on a sticky note if you're currently looking at your computer, we've done our job well. Be sure to like, share, comment, whatever your platform where you're currently watching us allows. I have no choice but to keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.