Catalyst Marketing

The shiny, not-as-new-as-you-think strategy of account-based marketing

Account-based marketing. It’s not new to most of us B2B marketers.

Hey there, B2B marketer. Here’s your cheerful news of the month: The number of decision-makers at your target companies is ballooning.

Gone are the days where two or six or even just 10 people influenced a business purchase. Long gone are the days of a single decision-maker. Today, an average of 16 different people influence an enterprise purchase decision.

That’s right. 16.

16 cooks in the kitchen. 16 different opinions to wrangle. 16 people to sell on what your product or service can do for a client.

It sounds like a Christmas song gone all wrong. On the first day of Christmas, my boss gave to me…16 times the work.

Ho, ho, ho, Merry Workmas.

And perhaps it’s this ballooning number of purchase influencers that’s breathed new life into the words account-based marketing.

For those unfamiliar, a quick definition: account-based marketing (ABM) is a collaboration between sales and marketing to target accounts—rather than individuals. It’s a way to personalize marketing to a group of decision-influencers—both before you’ve made your first sale and along the way as you upsell and cross-sell to drive up the lifetime value of a big account.

In B2C, a more 1:1 approach is typical. After all, B2C buyers are usually their own decision-maker. No 16-person committee needed. So when Amazon looks at my buying habits and targets me with a book of Medieval practical jokes and a game called “what do you meme?” that’s a more 1:1 approach.

But for big B2B decisions, the decision-making chain is a lot more complicated than “does Robin like memes?” Which is where ABM—which personalizes for the whole decision-maker ecosystem at an account—can make a big difference.

Though the term is only about 20 years old, marketers have been doing ABM for approximately as long as marketing has been around. Time travel to the 60s and you would have found whole teams of creatives dedicated to making a single account—with its multitude of decision-influencers—happy.

Today, the big difference is the tools we have to support an account-based approach. Automation that breaks down silos. Predictive analytics that help us build up accurate customer profiles. Targeted ads on LinkedIn. Personalization and sales and marketing integration tools like Triblio and DemandBase. Tools that take the 16 influencers of Christmas and turn them into a more manageable single account. Still more complicated than your average B2C consumer, but now with analytics, dashboards, and personalization tools that turn a web of relationships into a simplified understanding of the client’s big picture.

And as the sophistication of ABM grows, so does its value. In fact, according to a 2014 study, ABM has the highest marketing ROI of any B2B tactic.

So should you be thinking about ABM? If you’re a B2B marketer, it’s probably a no-brainer. And where should you start? With a call to the experts (that’s us).

Video will change your life (if you get it right)

Here’s a cheerful truth to kick off the holidays: If you’re not using video as a marketing tool yet, you’re falling behind—and fast.

That’s right. Last year, survey said 81% of businesses were already on the video bandwagon and 51% said video had the best ROI of any marketing tactic.

If you’re familiar with the stats, that may come as no surprise. Research shows that video:

• Increases organic search traffic by 157%
• Generates 1200% more shares on social media
• Increases email click rates by as much as 300%

So when we tell you that video can change your life, we mean it. Because wouldn’t we all like to go back to the c-suite with 1200% more social shares or 157% more traffic?

Of course, it’s not as simple as pushing record and tossing up a video. We’re not saying video is a magic button that’ll fix your pipeline with a simple flick of your wrist.

Doing video is one thing. But doing video right—that’s where you’ll see the results.

So what does it take to get it right and push your own stats skyward? Well…

First comes budget

We’ve all heard the old adage “you have to spend money to make money,” and video is another place where that holds true.

Good video isn’t cheap. Live production in particular will make costs skyrocket. And with more and more brands knocking video production out of the park, gone are the days when you could toss up something half-assed and generate interest.

If that sounds scary, the good news is that not all video pricing is created equal. Animated videos are typically cheaper than live action. Stock video, stock images, and user-generated video can add variety without breaking the bank.

Plus, animated video can be just as helpful and compelling as its live-action sister.

So what do we mean when we say good video isn’t cheap? Estimates range all the way from $1,200 to $50,000, with the typical video coming in under $10,000.

Actually…first comes story

When it comes to video, budget is vital. But story is even more vital.

You can make the most beautiful video in the world, spend tens of thousands of dollars on it, and if it doesn’t have a compelling story, it’s going to fall flat.

Which is why, even though most compelling video also comes with high production quality, you can still find examples of effective videos produced for next to nothing. Like Blendtec’s viral Will It Blend videos—the first of which cost them about $50 to produce.

In the case of Blendtec, the story was that this blender can blend. It’s strong. Your puny fruits and veggies aren’t going to stop this powerhouse. And we’ll prove it…by blending up marbles.

Take a look at other viral videos and you’ll find the story is always what’s carrying them through—from Android’s “better together” animal-best-friends video, whose story is about connecting to those you love, even if they’re different from you, to Dove’s real beauty sketches, with its story about the power of seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes.

Show me a viral marketing video, and I will show you a great story. Budget matters, but story is your trump card.

Now, there are more ingredients to good video than simply story and budget. Length matters (hint: shorter is usually better). Timing matters. Cultural context matters. Your strategy for getting that video out into the world matters.

And if that all sounds a little daunting but also exciting? That’s what we’re here for. Reach out anytime. We’d love to help you navigate video (or whatever other marketing tactics are keeping you up at night).

18 unconventional content ideas to level-up your marketing

What’s your biggest marketing challenge?

If the answer is producing consistent, high-quality content, you’re not alone. In fact, 60% of marketers say it’s tough to produce content consistently. And 65% say it’s even tougher to produce content that’s consistently engaging.

Of course, the rewards for getting the content thing right are pretty substantial. 72% of marketers say content marketing drives engagement up, and another 72% said it increases leads.

So what’s a marketer to do when we know content marketing is the answer, but the ideas just aren’t flowing?

Turn to the experts, of course.

Here are 18 ideas we’ve brainstormed to get you started.

Calculators

Help customers figure out something that would take them oh-so-much-longer or be oh-so-much-more-frustrating on their own.

Calculators can range from the expected—quick math machines that help you figure out how much tax you owe or if you’ve overstayed your tourist visa in Europe—to the unexpected, like HubSpot’s website grader or ThirdLove’s Fit Finder.

Infographics

People love infographics. If you’ve ever done one, you probably already know that.

They’re sharable, compelling, and memorable. In fact, infographics are read 30 times more often than text articles. Sites that feature infographics report 12% faster traffic growth than sites without. And people remember about 80% of what they see, as opposed to just 20% of what they read—making the visual approach of infographics a likely win for “most memorable content marketing.”

Animated infographics

Infographics are already pretty damn great. But sometimes adding animation can make them even better, drawing the eye to the right part of the page, communicating motion or change, and highlighting key pieces of the story you’re trying to tell.

Interactive infographics

Sometimes there’s so much info to include in your infographic that it makes sense to have multiple layers. Sliders. Mouseover pop-ups. Options within the infographic that let readers dig deeper.

Enter the interactive infographic—similar to its predecessor, but with more levels for a reader to unearth by clicking, sliding, and otherwise interacting with your presentation of the data.

Animated infobits

If an infographic visually presents a lot of data around a single topic, an infobit is her little sister—presenting a single compelling piece of data.

The benefit here is in the simplicity. Research tells us that too many choices can be paralyzing—and so can too much information. Homing in on a single, powerful stat helps combat that overwhelm while still making your point.

And if you can animate your infobit? Even better. You’ll be drawing the eye and keeping attention.

GIFs

Whether you pronounce it with a hard g or like the peanut butter, GIFs are basically image files with animation. Show off more products. Show how trends have changed over time. Or just add a little movement to draw the eye to your image. GIFs are fun, small, and sharable.

Listicles

Invented by Buzzfeed, listicle is shorthand for any article that’s also a list (oh, hey, like this one).

You can write a listicle with short text, lots of graphics, and a dash of humor. Or you can write something more serious with longer paragraphs and less jokes (though, really, do you want less jokes?). Either way, people love lists (in fact, articles with a number in the headline perform about 30% better). And Google loves them too.

If this sounds like an idea you want to hit the ground running with, here’s a listicle on how to write a listicle (how very meta, we know).

Guest blogging

One of the tricky questions of content marketing is this: how do I find new audiences? You might have your loyal blog following, your podcast listeners, a nice little funnel of new readers coming in by word of mouth. But how do you grow beyond all that?

One of the most effective answers? Guest blogging. Creating valuable, compelling, trustworthy content not for your own blog, podcast, video channel, or social media, but for someone else’s.

This is the strategy that took Buffer from 0 to 100,000 readers.

Microsites

Your main website might feature lots of different products, services, and ideas. But what happens when you want to home in on a single something special? An annual report. A topic your team has deep expertise in. A book your CEO just published.

The answer: microsites. Small websites designed to zoom in on a single thing and showcase it without distraction.

Bonus: This is a great strategy for SEO. Fill the microsite with strong, optimized content on a single topic and your chances of ranking go up-up-up.

Augmented reality

Remember all those near-future movies we watched back in the 80s and 90s—where every computer was a hovering 3D touchscreen and we were all driving flying cars?

Well, the future is here. Not the flying cars part (though self-driving is quite possibly even cooler)—but the 3D animated graphics that augment reality.

Companies are finding that augmented reality—a composite of the real world with added, computer-generated information—adds sophistication to presentations and keeps investors engaged.

Face-averaging images

Face-averaging technology means we can show what the average person looks like across pretty much any use case. You could use this tech to make a point about how gendered certain professions are, what celebrity faces share in common, or what mugshots can tell us about who’s likely to be arrested.

However funny, surprising, or even dark your subject matter, face-averaged content has the potential to take your content viral.

Real-time, live-updating pages

Raising money for a big campaign? Crowd-funding your cool new project? Helping a Fantasy Football audience understand where stats stand in real-time?

Ongoing campaigns, games, and fundraising efforts all lend themselves well to real-time, live-updating stats pages that keep customers, funders, and supporters engaged with any ongoing campaign.

Flipbooks

Think of a flipbook as an online version of your brochure—on-brand, well-designed, and full of information that customers need. To flip through the booklet, all people have to do is click the forward and back arrows.

Illustrations

Illustrations are nothing new, but what you do with them can be. Like when Bulimia.com re-drew Wonder Woman to be less damn skinny and highlighted the issue of portraying women unrealistically in art and media.

Custom apps

With 77% of Americans saying they own a smartphone, it’s common knowledge that websites and marketing campaigns should always be mobile-friendly. But for some campaigns, it makes sense to take mobile marketing to another level altogether—creating custom apps that engage, delight, and sell.

One good example of this is Disney, whose mobile apps help people plan vacations, check out on-resort restaurant menus before they walk half a mile, buy tickets, organize activities, and find character greeting times so that kids can meet up with Belle or high-five Donald Duck.

Videos

No shocker here: video is a fast-growing, revenue-increasing powerhouse. In fact, companies that use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t.

Branded magazines

Airlines have been using this strategy for years, and more and more brands across a variety of industries are catching on.

Travel brands—like Airbnb—are encouraging people to travel with magazines—online or in print—dedicated to the destinations they serve. Fashion brands are feeding readers’ style passion with industry interviews and gorgeous fashion spreads. And Red Bull has been creating extreme sports content for years.

“A look back”

Big data-driven brands are taking content to another level by using their data to give users a deeply personalized look back at their own year, month, or brand lifecycle.

Peloton does this with fitness data, tracking goals and celebrating with its customers at every milestone. Facebook does it with looks back at your year, five years ago today, etc. And Spotify gives users a look back at their year in music.

This kind of content appeals to people’s curiosity—and, let’s be honest, ego. What was I doing five years ago today? How have my musical tastes changed this year? How close am I getting to my fitness goals? Inquiring minds want to know—and brands that have the answers can use them to drive up engagement.

What’s your content marketing strategy?

So as we get deeper into Q4, what kind of content are you creating? What are your plans for the fast-approaching 2020? What new things will you try? What tried-and-true content marketing methods will you harness?

Whatever the answers, we’d love to chat about how we can help—from brainstorming to implementation. From tried-and-true to new-and-exciting.

“Performance guaranteed!”…and other lies you’ve been told

Be leery of “performance guaranteed.”

Is it just me, or are there a lot of liars out there lately?

Facebook’s lying about its video performance. Influencers are buying followers. Instagrammers are taking fake photos. And agencies are making promises they know they can’t keep.

The last one particularly gets me. Because your agency should always have your back. And instead, I keep watching from afar as they oil up their best sleazy-car-salesman approach and make guarantees that they can’t back up.

Buy our SEO strategy and we guarantee #1 placement in Google!

Launch a new website and we guarantee 50% uptick in ROI!

Sign a long-term, no-exit-allowed contract for this shiny new MarTech tool and customer acquisition will double!

But, Robin, I hear you saying, an SEO strategy does improve rankings. A new website does help with ROI. MarTech tools often do help marketers reach their goals.

And you’re right. They do.

It’s the part where the results are guaranteed that’s a problem.

It’s the con as old as time. Guaranteed returns! The territory of Bernie Madoff and pyramid schemes. It sounds like a dream. Which is what makes it so dangerous.

Because just like Ponzi schemers can’t control markets and MLM can’t force the entire world population to join the pyramid under you, marketers can’t guarantee outcomes.

They don’t have control over Google’s algorithm. (Even brands with solid domain authority and teams of experienced SEO writers write plenty of content that doesn’t rank #1 for their desired keywords.)

Same thing with websites. Will a website refresh probably help your business goals? Yes. Have similar websites we’ve done in the past generated big wins? Yes. Can any agency guarantee a specific ROI figure? Nope.

How do we know? First, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’ve done projects for a lot of different clients in a lot of different industries. We follow the same best practices. We know our stuff. And still the results vary from client to client.

(This is part of the reason that it’s a bad idea to put all your marketing eggs in one basket. Diversification means that even if one generally tried-and-true marketing tactic doesn’t knock your goals out of the park, another might.)

Second, it’s simple logic. Like so many things, marketing involves a lot of variables. And your agency can’t control them all.

If you haven’t done your market research, your agency can’t control the fact that people might simply not want what you’re selling—no matter how good your website is.

They can’t control internal politics. Or budget cuts. Or that one decisionmaker’s insistence that you make the logo bigger.

They can’t control Google’s constant algorithm tweaks. Or Facebook’s. Or YouTube’s.

They can’t control whether an editor makes changes to the thought leadership article the agency helped you place in an industry publication.

Not to mention that even the best marketers in the world make mistakes.

So if you hear the word “guarantee” come out of your salesperson’s mouth? Run for the hills.

Look instead for agencies willing to give it to you straight. Ask about proven track records, average outcomes, backup plans, client satisfaction, and long-term results. Look for an agency dedicated to making you look damn good.

And speaking of agencies that give it to you straight…we’ve got a great track record of results and a no-bullshit approach. So if you’re looking for an agency partner, let’s talk.

Top Customer Acquisition Strategies and Tips

How to get ahead when customer acquisition costs just keep climbing

First, let’s get the bad news out of the way: The cost of acquiring a new customer has gone up by 50% in the last five years.

Yep. You read that right. If customer acquisition cost you $20 per lead in 2014, it probably costs you $30 today. If you were paying $100 per lead, you’re likely up to $150.

Attention spans have dropped. Customer trust in businesses is still speeding downhill. And the top acquisition channels of days gone by are changing their business models in ways that force marketers to spend more and rethink their strategies.

In fact, these days, only 10% (or less) of your Facebook followers see your page’s posts organically. (If you want to reach more, you’ll have to pay to play.) Featured snippets on Google mean less click-throughs to your site. And that’s not even factoring in the cost of platforms like Facebook straight-up lying to advertisers.

If you’re like us, even reading about that shit makes you feel bone-deep tired.

So, what’s a marketer to do? Customer acquisition goals aren’t going away. The old platforms aren’t going to rewind the clock for us. And blind customer trust in business is a thing of the past.

Well, here’s the good news: acquisition costs may be up, but so is US consumer spending.

And then we can’t trust Facebook (really, who among us thought we could?). Now we have to rethink how we use our old channels. That’s the world that digital innovation gave us—a world that keeps on changing.

But I think we’re up for it.

Part of the answer is putting less damn pressure on acquisition and embracing the flywheel approach to marketing—where cross-sell, upsell, customer satisfaction, and customer retention get just as much attention as acquisition.

And the other part of the answer? It’s about embracing new ways of attracting, intriguing, and moving new customers toward the sale. New (and up-and-coming) ways, like…

The dreaded influencer

If there’s one truth universally acknowledged on the internet, it’s this: we like making fun of influencers.

But here’s another truth: we also buy what they’re selling.

As Venture Beat aptly put it, influencer marketing is “word-of-mouth recommendations on the world stage.” In fact, one study found that marketers make an average of $6.50 for every $1 spent on influencers. Top-performing influencer marketing campaigns generate $19 for every $1 spent. And influencer marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to attract new customers online (tied for the #1 spot with email marketing).

Now, this doesn’t mean you can just throw some money at influencers and watch the sales flow in. There are people who buy followers and game the system. Not every influencer is a good fit for every brand. And some platforms perform better than others (the study above found that bloggers had much better ROI than Instagram). But if you’re strategic about finding the right influencers and running the right campaigns in the right places, influencer marketing can be a big win for your acquisition goals.

Social equity

Speaking of trust, user-generated videos (made by and featuring your customers) get 10 times more views on YouTube than content created directly by brands. Even more compelling, a 2017 study found that user-generated content influences the decisions of a whopping 90% of shoppers.

Loyalty programs

Speaking of tactics with compelling ROI…84% of consumers are more likely to stick with brands that run good loyalty programs.

You might think loyalty programs fall squarely into the category of customer retention, but the truth is that they help on the acquisition front too, especially with customers who care about long-term value and are looking for a brand they can have a long-term relationship with (arguably, the best type of customer).

Reviews

People trust reviews 12 times more than they trust marketing content. Which means that if you aren’t already paying attention to your reviews, you should be.

Digital ads that don’t suck

Okay, so digital ads have been around for awhile. But here’s the recent twist: customer data, data science, AI, and machine learning have now made it possible to personalize them.

You can target customers who love shoes for shoe campaigns. You can suppress ads to customers who already bought the thing you’re advertising. You can let customers tell you, please oh please, stop advertising horror movies to me and show me more romance! (Or vice versa.)

90% of companies working on creating personalized experiences for their users say they saw a measurable lift in ROI. And while there are challenges to using customer data (including regulations and ethical best practices), it’s also an opportunity to better serve customers—both new and existing.

If you need help navigating these new opportunities, we’d love to chat. Reach out to our team anytime.

The biggest mistake B2B marketers make

20% of businesses fail in their first year. 50% go belly-up by the five-year mark. And within 10 years, that number jumps to 70%.

If you’re starting a business, those are some sobering stats. But they’re also probably too general to be helpful.

Because we all know that starting a business, launching a new product, or introducing a new market category is risky. But what we need to know is why.

Why do most businesses fail before their 10-year anniversary? What is the biggest mistake they make? And, consequently, how can we learn from their untimely demises?

The answer, according to their founders, is this:

The #1 reason businesses fail is that there is no market need for their products and services.

You read that right. Almost half (42%) of businesses that fail do so because nobody wants what they’re selling. They set up their proverbial lemonade stand without ever asking “do people even like lemonade?”

Yikes.

On first blush, it seems like such a simple mistake. Isn’t the first step of any new business figuring out whether buyers want what we’re selling? Isn’t validating the market page one on the local chamber of commerce’s new business materials?

Apparently, the answer is no. There are lots of businesses out there that figure they can skip the market research step. Which is how the world has gotten such gems as crispy beef-flavored bottled water for pets (ummm), Pepsi meant to replace your morning coffee (to which the world said a hard no, you can pry my morning coffee from my cold, dead fingers), and the app that notifies you when your friends take a pee break (TMI, thanks).

And, okay, we chose some ridiculous-sounding examples above. But don’t think that means you can guess at market success without the research part of the process. Sometimes ridiculous-sounding ideas flop like a toddler having a tantrum. Sometimes people love them, and they skyrocket their way to success.

Just take a look at equally weird-sounding ideas like the business that lets you rent a chicken before committing to chicken farmerhood. Or so-called rage rooms where you pay a fee to smash plates against concrete walls and beat up electronics with bats. Or jewelry made out of the cremated remains of your loved ones. These ideas probably raised a few eyebrows when founders presented them. They’re also all success stories.

The point here is that guessing what will and won’t work in the market is a crapshoot. If you want to know if your business idea is going to work, you need market research. Period. End of story.

And we’re looking at you, B2B. Because for some reason, B2B companies are the first to jump ship on the research boat.

B2C generally knows they need to figure out how their customers choose a washing machine or use an app or make decisions about chicken farming. They know they can love an idea and their customers might disagree. They know that understanding consumer minds is foundational to better connect with customers, find more of them, and convince them to buy.

But B2B? We’re falling down on the job.

B2B companies are more likely to skip market research, which results in trouble attracting customers, a major mismatch between customer values and company messages, and low customer satisfaction over time. In fact, where B2C companies generally hit customer satisfaction figures somewhere between 65 – 85%, B2B usually comes in under 50%.

So, you want to start a successful company? You want to grow fast and beat out the competition?

Be more like B2C. Prioritize market research.

And if you’re ready to do that? Let’s talk.

Your referral business is over

Your referral business is risky. It’s time to build your pipeline.

85% of small businesses rely on word-of-mouth referrals.

Their business is fueled by them. Their sales funnel is laser-focused. Without them, new business would completely dry up.

And, hey, we get it. Referrals are powerful. People are four times more likely to buy when they’re referred by a friend. And the lifetime value of referral customers is about 25% higher than average. Give most of us a choice between random pop-up ads and a personal recommendation from a friend, and we’re going with the latter.

Which makes referral-based sales funnels sound pretty damn good.

But hold up. Because here’s the cold, hard truth:

Small businesses may rely on their referrals. But there’s a reason that the biggest companies with the fastest growth don’t.

Referrals—both organic word-of-mouth from happy customers and marketing-led referral incentive programs—are often part of the strategy for big, successful companies. But they aren’t the whole enchilada.

Because the fact is that referrals only scale so far.

They’re a good way to grow locally or within a niche market. And they’re a powerful part of a healthy ongoing sales strategy.

But if you’re looking for the kind of growth that catapulted companies like Uber, Airbnb, Salesforce, and Adobe to the top of their respective fields, you need more. More than word-of-mouth marketing and personal networking.

In other words, your referral-only sales funnel is keeping you small—and staying small comes with some hefty risks.

In fact, 20% of small businesses fail within the first year. 50% bow out before the five-year mark. And 70% don’t make it to their 10-year anniversary.

In our experience, a referral-only sales funnel increases those risks. Because what happens when the well runs dry? What happens when you’ve already been introduced to everybody within your networking sphere? What happens if that recession everybody’s been talking about hits your small network especially hard?

What happens, in other words, when you realize you need a lead pipeline in order to grow—or even just hold steady in a bad market for awhile?

The answer isn’t pretty. Because building a solid pipeline of good leads takes time. Experts say it typically takes at least six months for tactics like content marketing or SEO just to start seeing results—and that’s assuming you’ve got a solid strategy, experienced team, and a good amount of investment.

Which means if you don’t get started until your leads run dry, your business could easily give up the ghost while you’re still trying to figure out how to get more damn Google traffic.

So, what’s the answer here?

As usual, it starts with planning ahead and treating your marketing as a long game.

Because the truth is that there is no lead gen silver bullet. So plunking down a few thousand dollars here or there on a tactic or two probably isn’t going to move the needle for you. Marketing success builds over time, but only if you invest in it continually.

And if you don’t invest in it continually? Your competitors will.

That’s right. In a 2018 survey, 70% of marketers said their lead gen budgets were increasing. Anybody in that remaining 30% is already falling behind.

And when your competitors knock their lead gen out of the park, it won’t matter if you were first to market. It won’t matter if you’re smarter. It won’t even matter if you have a better product. The steady marketing investment will win the day.

So, here’s the point:

Referrals are pretty great. We’re not telling you to ditch them.

But if you want your business to grow and thrive, you need a long-term marketing strategy. And that applies even if you still want referrals to be a huge part of your business.

Because not only can said strategy diversify your lead sources and grow your business…it can also make your referral business even better.

Don’t believe it? Ask Airbnb. When their team introduced and marketed the hell out of a new version of their referral incentive program, they increased bookings by 300%.

And if you’re ready to stop relying on a single lead source and start building your pipeline? We’d love to chat.

Marketers, forgive thyselves

I set out to buy a damn sweater.

You know the one. That cute, fuzzy, warm, snuggly fall cardigan that one of those bloggers was wearing. It looked cute. Damn cute. And, of course, she convinced me that I must have it.

(Because obviously we all look as good as influencers when we buy the things they’re peddling, am I right? I mean, ignoring the fact that getting that perfect influencer product photo often takes days of planning. But I digress.)

In a stroke of luck, said sweater just so happened to be on sale at a major retailer, and it felt like I was getting the deal of the century. I could just picture myself cozied up in it on the couch, watching a football game with a bowl of chili and the comfortable righteousness of a woman who’d saved 50%.

I went to the website, added the sweater to my cart, and went to check out…and the website crashed. And I don’t just mean crashed like I had to do my order over. I mean legit crashed. For a long time. In fact, the last time I checked, the site was still down.

And hey, maybe that was divine intervention. The universe telling me I don’t need yet another damn sweater. (But oh, need is such a subjective word and cozying up on the couch with that chili is such a compelling image…)

More likely, the crash was a development team having a bad day. Or a hacker who’d successfully sabotaged so many hours of marketing effort. Or a data center outage.

Whatever the cause, I’m sure the marketers over at that retailer are having an epically bad day. Scambling for fixes. Scambling for answers. How many sales did we lose? How many customers did we alienate? Who launched the bad code? Who left the door open for the hacker? How did we let this happen?

But here’s the thing: my enduring need for cozy sweater time on the couch notwithstanding, every marketing team has bad days.

We’ve had a few here at Catalyst, for sure. Days when shit just didn’t go our way—no matter how hard we tried. Sometimes you don’t get it right with a client. Sometimes not getting it right happens more than once on the same day. Sometimes it’s outside your control. Sometimes it isn’t. The best marketers I know have all had those days.

In case that’s the kind of day (or week) you’re having, maybe it’ll make you feel a little better to know that you are so very not alone. And your bad day probably isn’t as terrible as you think.

At least not when you compare it to the bad days of others. Like that time Apple lost $25 million because of an app store outage in 2015. Or when a five-hour computer outage cost Delta Airlines $150 million in 2016. Or when Facebook went down earlier this year and experts estimate their loss was probably around $90 million.

(That time you sent an email out with the wrong event date is seeming pretty tame right now, isn’t it?)

The point here is this: Like with anything in life, the important thing is how you deal with it. Because so far, no one has invented the time machine that’ll let us go back and change the date on that email, come up with a better password that will keep out the hacker, or un-delete that article you worked so hard on and now have to re-write.

So the only thing to do is move forward. Forgive ourselves. Analyze what happened and vow to never do it again. Figure out how to brush ourselves off and do a better job next time.

Because a mistake is rarely a death sentence for your brand. Apple’s still here after learning a $25-million lesson. Facebook is still here after losing $90 million. Even brands that seemed to be on their way out have come back from bad marketing and product decisions.

And some of those comeback brands? They’ve not only come back. They’ve thrived. Lego was going under until it started doing more customer research to find out what kids wanted. Today, the brand is going strong. Starbucks closed 900 stores in the late 2000s, but a strong campaign brought them back in force. Today, they’re the largest coffee chain in the world.

The point? That retailer may have lost my sweater sale (or maybe not, because football and chili), but that doesn’t mean they can’t bounce back from an outage. It doesn’t mean the next compelling campaign or clever offer will meet the same end. And it definitely doesn’t mean marketers should beat themselves up.

Every failure is simply a chance to move forward.

(And if you need help moving forward from a faux pas or outage? Supporting marketers is what we do best. Get in touch.)

3 Ways to Improve Your Website Right Now

Customers are judging your website. Here’s how to make sure you measure up.

Here’s your cheerful news for the week: Your customers are judging your business based on your website.

That’s right. No matter how great your product, your sales team, or your offline customer experience, if your website doesn’t measure up, you are losing customers.

But don’t take our word for it. The proof is in the numbers:

75% of web users say your credibility is tied directly to your site. 95% say they’ve left a website because of a frustrating experience. And 57% won’t recommend your business if your mobile site sucks.

Which means, if your website isn’t up to snuff, it’s time to get it there—and fast.

How? Here are three big-impact changes you can make right away:

1. Marie Kondo your content.

If you haven’t heard of Marie Kondo, her philosophy is this: If it doesn’t spark joy, ditch it.

Now Marie’s working with homes and offices. She’s helping people de-clutter their lives.

But when it comes to websites, the philosophy still holds its own. What are most companies if not hoarders of old, stale, outdated, embarrassing content? And what is a de-cluttered website if not a beautiful, easy-to-navigate space designed to delight?

In Marie’s world, clients hold each item in their home and ask themselves “does this spark joy?” If the answer is yes, it stays. If the answer is no, it goes.

In the web world, we recommend going to every single page on your site and asking:

Does this meet a customer need?

Does this serve a business goal?

Does this 10-year-old press release for a product we no longer offer meet a customer need or serve a business goal? How about these 10 bio pages for donors who haven’t been involved in the business for over a year? What about that how-to blog post that is absolutely no longer correct?

Anytime the answer is a clear no, it’s time to ditch or replace that content. In the case of the how-to blog post, an update may be in order. In the case of the ancient press release, it’s probably a case of delete, delete, delete.

And if you’re worried about your SEO? Don’t be. Purging old, irrelevant content is good for your rankings. The more relevant your site, the better it’ll do. And the quicker you ditch that old content? The quicker you become relevant again.

2. Breathe new life into your design.

If it’s been more than 12 months since your last redesign, it’s probably time for an update.

Why so often?

Well, experts recommend updating anywhere from every six months to every three years. But in our experience, 12 months is about when things start to look dated or stale, no longer match up with your business goals and latest campaigns, and start to fall behind best practices for user experience, web speed, and responsiveness.

(If that sounds daunting, never fear. At Catalyst, we’ve got a tried-and-true, no-stress process for giving your website that yearly facelift. Ask us about it.)

3. Prioritize user experience.

If you’re looking for big wins for your website, user experience is one of the best places to find them.

In fact, one in three people will abandon an online purchase because they can’t find the right information. 88% will leave your website and never return after a bad user experience. And for B2B companies (and B2C, for that matter), websites are one of the top three most valuable lead sources.

So if you’re driving people away with your site? The consequences are pretty huge.

Now, those stats feel rather scary. But here’s the good news: there are probably some quick and easy ways to improve visitor engagement and satisfaction right away.

Things like adding calls to action in the right places (70% of small businesses get this one wrong), making sure information is easy to find, improving page speed, and cleaning up your content so it’s easier to understand.

And if you just don’t have the time or in-house skills to take this on yourself? You don’t have to go it alone. We’d be happy to chat about how we can help.

5 smarter ways to spend your Q4 B2B marketing budget

It’s almost time for Q4.

If you’re B2C, this is always great news. It’s time to amp up your marketing and rake in the successes. Every year, holiday sales seem to set new records.

If you’re B2B though…well, Q4 doesn’t have quite the same reputation, does it?

In B2B, as the holidays approach, things start to slow down. Clients go on vacation. Fiscal years often end and budget overages mean a conservative approach to the last few months of the year. Not to mention that with half the office out of the office, B2B sales decisions often find themselves on hold.

No wonder December conversion rates are 12% below average.

So what’s a B2B marketer to do in Q4? How can we maximize our time, budgets, and revenues? And honestly, is Q4 really as bad as it is made out to be?

With several decades of experience under our belts and more than a few stats to back us up, here are five ways we think you should spend your Q4 budget and maximize your team’s time:

1. Create some kickass content.

72% of marketers say content marketing increases engagement and leads.

And that’s not just guesswork. Stats on marketing ROI show that they’re absolutely right.

In fact, content marketing leaders experience nearly 800% more year-over-year growth than their competitors.

That’s right: 800%.

Which is why if you want to go into Q4 with a solid results-focused strategy in hand, content marketing should be a big part of it.

And not only because of the research numbers above, but because content is the kind of thing that naturally grows and expands.

Create an eBook and later you may repurpose it into blog posts, a video series, a SlideShare, a LinkedIn article. Maybe your sales team could use it as part of their sales process. Perhaps the concept will turn into a campaign, inspire a podcast, go viral on social media, or morph into a cool infographic.

Good content—content that helps your customers understand something or succeed at something—begets more good content. Not to mention the kind of results that leave competitors shaking in their boots.

2. Create a new campaign.

So remember earlier in this piece where we said Q4 is a slow time of year for B2B? The truth is that just because it’s a slow time for sales conversions doesn’t mean it’s a slow time in the customer journey.

Just because fewer buyers are pulling the final trigger, doesn’t mean they have stopped researching, reading, planning, and getting frustrated by the challenges your tools and services are designed to help them solve.

In fact, research says January to May is high season for B2B (with conversion rates in February jumping 10% above average). And since 75% of B2B deals take at least four months to close, Q4 is probably when you’re laying the groundwork for those big Q1 wins.

Which is why Q4 is actually a great time to run a new campaign.

3. Re-embrace snail mail.

When was the last time you reached inbox zero? For most, the answer is a distant memory. Because our email inboxes are more cluttered than ever before.

(You probably already know that. But if you’re skeptical, type “overwhelmed by emails” into Google. There are a whopping 13.5 million results.)

Which is why direct mail is back—with a vengeance.

It’s breathing life into lead gen campaigns again. Surprising prospects. Standing out in a world where all your competitors are focused on email marketing.

And hey, we’re not knocking email marketing. (How could we when it generates $38 for every $1 spent?) But we are saying direct mail is back and bringing its own compelling results to the table (according to some research, direct mail response rates are over 35 times higher than email).

4. Upgrade your tech.

As yearly quotas loom larger, we’ve found tech businesses are excited to have new business and willing to negotiate. Not to mention that if your team does have extra time on their hands, you can put that to use learning about and optimizing your new tools.

Hoping to automate marketing in the coming year? Now’s the time to start looking at automation tools. Thinking about implementing a new project management tool? Q4 is a good time to do it.

5. Get smart(er).

Have a fear of public speaking? A slower-paced Q4 is the perfect time to hire a coach.

Wish you knew more about Google Analytics? Q4 is a great time to take a class.

Been thinking about training some of your rockstar team members for future management roles? Q4 training program, here we come.

If client vacations are rampant, take advantage of the time to prep yourself and your team for even more success in the new year.

And if you need some help ramping up your content marketing, coming up with direct mail ideas, or brainstorming other high-return investments for Q4? We’re here for it. Reach out to start a conversation anytime.