THE DIFFERENCE

ENGINE
An Articulate Marketing Guide

Madeleine Leslie

Articulate Marketing
FOREWORD

Matthew Stibbe

CEO at Articulate Marketing

In my life, I have written two forewords for books. The one you are reading
now (thank you) and one for a book about SimIsle, a game I designed back
when floppy discs were an everyday reality and not a fossilised save icon in
Microsoft Word.
In that introduction, I waffled on about rivers of code and jungles of game
rules. Digital rainforest simulations lend themselves to environmental
metaphors. Books about marketing, not so much.
This is why I am grateful to the author and my brilliant colleague,
Madeleine Leslie, for coming up with the metaphor of ‘The Difference
Engine’, which has become the title of the book and the basis of Articulate
Marketing’s mission and strategic services.
As a metaphor, it works on many levels. First, there is the historical reality
that Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace were geniuses who laid the
intellectual foundations for the digital age. As a historian, I love that
reference (read on to find out more about this fascinating tale).
Then, it references the fundamental task of marketing, which is to find and
express sustainable market differentiation. That is what makes your brand
stand out from competitors. Differentiation turns all good businesses into
winners.
The idea that differentiation needs an engine is also appealing. Just as you
can’t build an engine using a single component, you can’t succeed at
marketing with a single technique. ‘A lot of moving parts’ is often used to
describe a complex disaster but if they all run smoothly together, it can also
describe a jet engine. A well-orchestrated marketing engine can be just as
powerful.
Lastly, this book also shares a title with Bruce Sterling and William
Gibson’s brilliant steampunk novel, which inspired me when I was at
university. It describes a world where Babbage actually built the Difference
Engine and the digital age dawned in the nineteenth century.
That future has arrived, albeit a hundred years too late, and all marketing
now exists in a connected, isolated, digital, analogue, distracted, hyper-
focused, computer-powered world of extremes. This book will help you
thrive in it.

✽ ✽ ✽
INTRODUCING… THE
POWER OF
DIFFERENTIATION

D ifferentiation is the engine that powers every successful business.

What do we mean when we talk about ‘differentiation’?
Differentiation is daring to be different.
The ‘weird kid’ at school.
The busker that dreams of stardom.
The tall poppy.
You risk-takers, you out-of-the-box thinkers, you out-on-a-limbers.
That’s a scary prospect, for some; an enticing one for others.
Differentiation is how you establish your business’s identity as distinct
from others’. It’s what makes you original. Maybe even odd. Worthy of
attention, expressive, diverse, value-added, authoritative, helpful,
customer-focused, people-led, more than the sum of your parts… and
and and…
The reality is, differentiation is all around us. You’ve seen it. That start-up
that takes the world by storm (Airbnb); a technological innovation that
changes everything (AI); the song that truly moves you (we’ll leave pulling
your heartstrings to Adele, but you get the idea).
Differentiated businesses stand out. People sit up, take notice, start talking
— and, they pay more, too.

Over The Parapet

Take a moment to consider this fact: only one business in any given market
can be the cheapest. Everyone else competes based on differentiation.
So, would you rather a race to the bottom? Or a race to the great beyond,
the moon and the stars? As a business, where would you boldly go, if you
had the means to get there?
Just as an inspiring leader will fearlessly make the most of their ambitions,
diversity and talents, so can your business. As Joy Fitzgerald, author and
DEI advocate, once said:

‘Stop apologising! It’s OK if your ideas are different, your goals are
big — don’t be afraid of what others would say. You are skilled,
capable, and talented — you deserve to be a leader, and you are
enough.’

That is to say, you can do it, too.

Differentiation is possible in any sector, at any level of business maturity.
It’s not exclusive to big business, billionaire babies, B2C moguls or
commercial elites.
For anyone, differentiation will help you grow your business, accelerate
sales, defend margins and outpace competitors (and look good doing it).
That isn’t to suggest there’s a magic bullet. Any marketing book that says
‘this one thing will fix your business’ is selling a fairy tale. No one thing
will differentiate your marketing or your business. To achieve your goals,
you need to build a system of strategies and activities that work together.
An engine of many parts.
And, you must be willing to face the complex challenges that come with
raising your head above the parapet of mediocrity.

Slings And Arrows

Too many organisations fall foul of fear. They gravitate to what’s familiar
or — not wanting to scare off their audience — they copy whatever
competitors are doing. Some are stuck doing marketing for vendors rather
than for their own company. Some have lulled themselves into a false sense
of security (Take note: ‘professionalism’, ‘friendliness’ and ‘expertise’ are
pre-requisites, not pillars of excellence). When ‘good enough’ is the default,
you won’t make ambitious choices, and neither will your customers.
Poor differentiation can even lead customers to make choices that aren’t in
their best interest because they don’t have the right information, motivation
or level of trust. So, organisations that could deliver real value don’t get the
customers they deserve. And customers don’t get the help they deserve to
succeed themselves. All because you failed to differentiate.
We know this because we’ve seen it time and time again. What we’ve
learned, we’ve also fed into the development of this book. We’ll get to how
we came up with our framework for differentiation, ‘The Difference
Engine’, and what steps you can take to apply our marketing best practices
to your day-to-day, but first — introductions are in order.
Hi. We’re Articulate Marketing.

About Articulate Marketing

Articulate Marketing is a multi-award-winning marketing agency based in
the UK. Founded in 2003 by Matthew Stibbe, the business has grown over
the years into an agile, experienced team.
We offer strategy, copywriting, website and HubSpot consultancy services
for B2B technology clients, including big names like Microsoft and Dell.
We aim to do good marketing for good businesses that contribute positively
to the world. Plus, we’re a B Corp, Investors in People certified, Real
Living Wage, Climate Positive accredited HubSpot Partner.
Brand differentiation is at the heart of what we do. Our mission is to build
your ‘Difference Engine’. We believe every successful company has one.
With it, you will stand out from the crowd, attract customers and be a
thought leader. But, what we’ve come across is that many companies are
missing crucial parts of their Difference Engine. As a result, it’s just not
working. They turn the key and the whole thing stalls. We want to help you
fix your engine. With our mission in mind, we decided to pool our
resources and write this book, which represents decades of marketing
know-how, conveyed with our customary flair.
Look. We know it’s tough to get your business noticed these days. There
has never been a greater need for a consistent, validated framework for
companies to construct better positioning and engineer sustainable
differentiation. That’s what this book aims to deliver.
Visit our website at [Link].

What Is ‘The Difference Engine’?

The Difference Engine is a philosophy of marketing and differentiation best
practices that we’ve honed as an agency over the twenty-something years
we’ve been in operation.
It’s the brainchild of our collective experience, innovation and expertise.
More than that, it is a process of steps and activities that any business can
follow and adopt, although it is mostly aimed at the B2B world.
With a Difference Engine firmly embedded in your organisation, you will
have the power of brand differentiation at your fingertips, with all the
benefits this entails. It will help you accelerate your growth and build the
momentum you need to reach even your most ambitious goals.
Let’s address the (steam-powered) elephant in the room. You may have
heard this phrase used in another context.
The term ‘Difference Engine’ originally refers to the 19th-century works of
Charles Babbage, the founding father of computing, and Ada Lovelace, the
first computer scientist. These two collaborated to engineer new technology,
invent ground-breaking processes and solve complex problems. They
started the computer revolution that has changed the world.
Through various iterations of the Difference Engine, and the thinking
outlined in later works, Lovelace and Babbage created the principles of
computing that we use today. After some experimentation, the original
machine was envisioned as a crank-powered ‘computer’ made of stacks of
gears. Those gears or ‘figure wheels’ interlinked to calculate numerical
problems and then print the results. These calculations unlocked future
innovations (the types of innovations that got us the internet and space
travel).
As fellow technologists, geeks and inventors, we’ve made the Difference
Engine our own.
Paying homage to this model, in our Difference Engine, eight pillars — or
columns — make up the main part of the engine:

1. Your mission
2. Talent and culture
3. The toolkit
4. Strategic blueprints
5. Brand architecture
6. Thought leadership
7. Lead generation
8. Iterative optimisation

They are further comprised of 48 components or ‘cogs’ that stack, interlock

and impact one another (and which you will be able to put into action in
your own business). Every one has a part to play. The more parts in motion,
the better the results and the more advanced problems you can solve.
Conversely, if too many components are not moving, they will likely jam
your engine and halt progress.
We don’t want that, do we?
Marketing is a system. It’s a complex machine. Everything is connected to
everything else. Our Difference Engine reflects that reality. Do not think
that we view differentiation as the one thing that will solve your marketing
woes. It is a helpful lens through which you can take into account the parts
that make up your whole marketing machine.

What Fuels The Difference Engine?

Engines convert one form of energy into another.
That means they require an input, like fuel, to feed into a mechanism for
transformation, calculation or good old-fashioned combustion. Only then do
you get the outcomes you desire. Car goes vroom. Apollo 11 gets to the
moon. Quantum computer solves the answer to life, the universe and
everything…
So, what do you need in order to fuel your engine?
The better quality your fuel, the more efficiently the engine will run.
Plus, the bigger the engine, the more you can put in, the faster you can go
and the more you get out at the end. Quality and quantity both play a part
here.
Despite all this talk of engines, it’s not, in fact, rocket science. You need to
put in the usual resources:

Time
Motivation
Attention
Expertise
Stakeholder buy-in
and, of course, BUDGET (a marketing budget should be around
10 percent of revenue, the Gartner gods decree)

That will about do it.

The Outputs Of The Difference Engine

On the other side, for all that energy you put in, what do you get out?
We’ve talked a bit about this already, but let’s get specific. A differentiated
business will grow exponentially. It will get record profits, because it stands
out from competitors and attracts an engaged audience of paying customers.
In actual fact, there’s more to differentiation than the bottom line. It triggers
a chain reaction that leads to even more valuable outcomes that boost
innovation, employee wellbeing, market penetration and other positive
impacts.
Our expertise is built from experience working with B2B (business-to-
business) clients. So, we know best the ouputs that the Difference Engine
delivers for them, and what they find most valuable. As we mentioned, this
book is mainly aimed at leaders and marketers in that B2B space (however,
others may find it helpful).
To that audience, then: think about what you would do if you had such a
healthy pipeline that you end up with a waiting list of potential clients. You
could pick and choose who gets to work with you. You’d go from order-
taker to respected partner. Got a disengaged client that takes up too much of
your time? You no longer have to hold on to them just for revenue’s sake.
Let them go their own way and focus on the people that want to partner
with you. Conversely, the joy of having keyed-in clients cannot be
underestimated.
Businesses in this position get the chance to work with companies that
share their values and that are a force for good in and of themselves. They
become part of a community that drives positive change. They lead the
charge. There is no rule saying you can’t be a for-profit business that is also
sustainable, contributes to important causes and treats employees well. You
could have a business that is an ideal place to work, which attracts and
empowers the best talent, with a culture that makes clients want to work
with you. All while having a net zero impact. How about that?
Lastly, what wouldn’t you give to be a household name? A brand name that
is used as the generic term, even? As Hoover is to vacuums. As Biro to the
common pen. Google. If you were the most trusted voice — the ‘thought
leader’ in other words — for your audience, you would get to set the terms
of the conversation. You then become the defining authority in the market.
The advisor. The one everyone else looks up to and tries to copy. That also
means you’re the one innovating, so you can give the best advice and make
the smartest moves possible.
That’s how you future-proof your business.
That’s the power of differentiation.
✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER ONE: YOUR
MISSION
‘It's so easy to string together a bunch of platitudes and call them a
mission statement… The essential choice is this: you have to
describe (and live) the difficult choices. You have to figure out who
you will disappoint or offend. Most of all, you have to be clear
about what's important and what you won't or can't do.’

— Seth Godin, author and entrepreneur

T he first pillar of the Difference Engine is all about your mission.

Your mission is your goals as a business and for marketing. It
encompasses the analysis, metrics and strategies that will help you
define and achieve those goals. Such objectives must be contextualised
within your industry and benchmarked against competitors.
Your mission is the right place to start designing your Difference Engine
because it gives you direction and purpose. A heading — where you need to
go: that glint on the horizon.
The next steps should be based on where your organisation is, today. Let’s
call this Point A. You need visibility on where you stand now, first and
foremost. Then, to get to Point B, you need stand-out ideas, ambition and
you must have some idea of the metrics involved. That’s how you both
make progress and measure progress along your journey from Point A to
Point B.
Your mission, your vision, is part of what makes you exceptional as an
organisation. It gives you a solid foundation for every decision you make,
every partnership you build, every step you take as you grow your business.
That clarity of purpose is, in itself, differentiating. It colours all that you do
in the same shade, building opacity and vibrancy. Where competitor
organisations’ colours are muddled or pale, yours shine clear, bright and
pure.
It’s worth mentioning the old adage ‘plans are useless but planning is
indispensable’ here. Or, to dig a little deeper, goal-setting is more useful
when considered in the context of intention and purpose, and less useful as
an attempt to accurately predict the future, with all those unknown
unknowns. It is what drives you, not where you are going, that matters. (So
says Thompson and McEwen’s study on ‘Organisational goals and
environment: Goal-setting as an interaction process’.)
In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Industry analysis — "What is happening in the industry and

where do we fit in?"
2. Competitive positioning — "How does my business compare to
competitors?"
3. Product-market fit — "How well do our products and services
solve for the client?"
4. Business vision — "What needs to happen and how do we align
objectives to get there?"
5. Reporting and metrics — "What can I measure to see the value
of our activities?"
6. Marketing strategy — "What are the best ideas that we can
implement this year?"

At the end, we provide a summary of the actions you will want to take to
clarify and embed your mission and use it to differentiate your business.
Our aim here is to give you a reason to believe, with the tangible steps you
should take to piece together your own Difference Engine. Of course, we
are a marketing agency. You can always come to the team at Articulate
Marketing for support, or if you have any questions about defining and
implementing your marketing mission. We’d be more than happy to help.
That said… and without further ado…
Let’s build this engine.
INDUSTRY ANALYSIS

Y ou cannot create effective goals if you’re missing these two things:

context and data. An industry analysis provides both.

When you are thinking about your mission in context, based on accurate
data, you are less likely to let ambition overrule reality. Ergo, you’re more
likely to make better decisions that differentiate your business now and in
the future.

Write What You Know

First of all, it’s safe to assume you already have considerable insight when
it comes to your sector, how it operates, who the customers are, who your
competitors are, etcetera. Sir Terry Pratchett, a prolific novelist, once said
that ‘the first draft is telling yourself the story’. Do that. Tell yourself the
story. Get those thoughts down on paper. For example:

‘The Fintech industry is experiencing a boom due to advancing

technologies and the changing economic landscape. We’re in the
middle of the pack for personal finance apps aimed at frontline
workers, who desperately need transparency when it comes to
money management.’

Talk To People
Then, talk to other people in your business. Gather their thoughts, too. Look
for gaps or discrepancies. Be aware that some of this information may have
been correct once, but is no longer accurate. Accept that you and others
may have a biased view of your business’s position in your industry. Accept
also, that people will tell you uncomfortable truths.

Do Desk Research
Now, do the desk research. Let’s consider what information you’re looking
for. Try to find the answers to these kinds of questions:

What is the current market size in terms of total addressable

market (TAM) and are there any local variations or anomalies?
What is your business’s share of that TAM, i.e. what is your
penetration rate as a percentage?
What is the average value per customer, and therefore, based on
your penetration rate, what is the current market value for your
business?
What is the forecasted growth of the sector overall over the next
year, and three-five years?
Is the market growing at a faster or slower rate compared to
previous years? How does that compare to the wider economic
picture? Are there similar industries that are growing at a faster
rate (and why)?
Who are your main competitors based on company size, location,
or other factors? (Try to find at least ten.)
Are you certified, vendor-partnered or otherwise part of any
groups of businesses? How many other organisations share those
partnerships or certifications? Are there any you haven’t joined?
Are there recent changes in buying behaviour that you should be
aware of? Is there any evidence that certain marketing methods
(such as online adverts) or messages are not likely to resonate
with your audience?
Is anything changing in legislation around marketing or your
sector specifically that could impact your strategy? (For
example, GDPR.)
What evidence shows the viability of your products or services in
the here and now? What about the next five years?

Don’t stop there. Keep digging when you find something interesting. It
could reveal new opportunities, new strategies. Of course, although you can
— and probably will — simply Google a lot of this information (or ask AI
software to serve those answers on a silver platter, some of which may be
true), make sure you’re using reliable sources, such as:

[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
[Link] (plus LinkedIn Sales Navigator)
[Link]
Vendor directories
Lists of certified companies
Industry-specific reports (for example, the Wow Company’s
annual BenchPress report for marketing agencies)

Document And Share The Results

Think of this exercise as a small research project you conduct regularly,
perhaps every year or every few years. It will help you figure out which
way the wind is blowing. We recommend documenting your findings as a
short report or presentation deck to refer back to and share with
stakeholders.
COMPETITIVE POSITIONING

A sabout
part of your industry analysis, you’ll have gathered some information
your competitors.

In this section, we recommend zeroing in on around four or five core

competitors that are similar in size, target market, location or brand
positioning to your company. You can throw in a few aspirational
competitors if you prefer. You may have some companies in mind that
you’ve lost customers to in the past or that have won an award you coveted
for yourself (ouch).
What you want here is to position your business in this line-up accurately.
In so doing, you might find that you are lagging behind your chosen
competitors. However, leave your ego at the door and be open to the
insights that will be valuable to your goal-setting and differentiation
ambitions. Take a second to frame your expectations so that you come away
from this exercise feeling galvanised about the opportunities that lie ahead.
When you benchmark against competitors, you are trying to achieve three
aims:

1. To study other businesses so you can learn how to be different

from them, not the same as them (’The wise learn many things
from their enemies' according to Aristophanes).
2. To steal their brilliant ideas while avoiding expensive mistakes
(as Picasso said, ‘Good artists copy; great artists steal’).
3. Finally, to challenge cognitive biases and assumptions (‘Errors
using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at
all’ — Charles Babbage).

You’ll want to consider this from two different angles:

A) subjective and/or qualitative, and
B) data-driven and/or quantitative.
Both are useful. For example, you can look at a competitor’s homepage on
their website and make design-related comparisons with your own
(subjective), and you can run it through Google’s Page Speed Insights tool
to compare loading time on desktop and mobile (data-driven).
You may also want to take note of the latest news about a company, such as
investment rounds, new hires, public revenue data and recent press releases,
to contextualise your insights.

Subjective Insights
Start with overall impressions. How differentiated are these competitors?
Does one stand out in particular? Why? If everyone else is in the Navy, who
is the pirate? Who is taking a risk — and is it paying off? Apply the MAYA
principle. Raymond Loewy a.k.a. the father of industrial design, originated
this term, which stands for ‘Most Advanced. Yet Acceptable’, saying:

‘The adult public's taste is not necessarily ready to accept the

logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too
vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into
accepting as the norm.’

Basically, which company in your line-up, including yourself, is pushing

the boundaries but not going so far as to alienate the consumer?
You could even use a grid with two axes, one for ‘advanced’ and one for
‘acceptable’, then position competitors in a visual way. See Gartner’s
annual Magic Quadrant for an example of what this kind of competitive
positioning looks like.
Then, consider the brand messaging — how clear is the messaging from
each of these competitors? Can you discern the key messages that they are
trying to get across? What words do they use to describe themselves? Who
are they targeting? Are there case studies, reviews or testimonials? Do these
competitors have the credentials to back up their claims?
Also, review their website design. A website represents the digital
shopfront of any business. Is the logo memorable and up-to-date or generic
and old-fashioned? Does the site use stock imagery or illustrations? What
colours or fonts are competitors using and what do they convey about the
business? What are the similarities and differences in the visual branding
choices that you and your competitors are making? What information are
they putting front and centre, and what is buried deeper in the navigation?
How are they presenting the hierarchy of that information?

Data-Driven Insights
Here, we’d suggest making a table (data points in one column and
competitors in a row along the top) and simply running the numbers. You
can use a traffic light system to make this data more accessible at a glance.
Analyse your findings in more depth afterwards, writing up notes on key
takeaways and dramatic differences. Here are some areas for comparison:

Website page speed (mobile and desktop) — A useful proxy for

user experience and website sophistication, and an important
factor in SEO. Find this information on Google Page Speed
Insights, [Link] and [Link].
SEO domain rank, backlink profile and traffic value — Measures
SEO proficiency, online reputation and proxies for organic
traffic. Find this information using tools at [Link] or
[Link].
Site content format, readability and sentiment — A proxy for
writing quality, user experience and branding as expressed
through writing. Find this information at [Link] and
[Link].
A Government Health Warning
Competition can turn unhealthy. The desperation to get one over your rival
can make you rush to gain a temporary advantage. It can make you look
backwards and sideways when you should be looking forward. It can focus
your attention on your competitors rather than your customers. The knock-
on consequences hurt businesses. They stumble into pitfalls such as:

Concentrating on external gloss rather than internal solidity: style

over substance.
Making decisions to better the competition rather than decisions
that are better for the customer.
Refusing to pivot and be agile, or (perhaps worse) overreacting
to competition and pivoting too soon.
Overreaching, trying to boil the ocean in terms of products and
services, target markets, resourcing, and so on.

There’s a phrase we like to use: this is information worth knowing, and

worth ignoring. Meaning, you need to do the research —of course you do,
it’s sensible and right and you’d be making a mistake not to — but don’t let
it define you. Don’t worry too much about competitors. There are plenty of
clients for brilliant companies. With all of this, focus on making your
diamond shine.
PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

Y ou’ve analysed your industry and the competitive landscape. Now, you
want to sense-check your products and how they stand up to the test of
market demand.

David C. Baker, author of ‘The Business of Expertise’, which is the next

book you should pick up after this one, says:

‘You’re attempting to craft a positioning where you are less

interchangeable, so that withholding your expertise has some
practical impact. That’s the only power you have in a professional
service context: to withhold your expertise… [So] for an expert
within the professional services sector, the appropriate number of
competitors is 10–200 and the appropriate number of prospects is
2,000–10,000.’

Of course, this isn’t a science, and it can vary from industry to industry.
And, we’d add that product-based businesses may face a different
competitive landscape to those offering services. But the principle of the
advice is sound: find where you fit.
If you’ve uncovered in your research that you have almost no competitors
and very niche demand for your products and services, don’t delude
yourself into thinking you’re an early disruptor. It’s more likely you’re
teetering on the cliff edge of insufficient opportunity. That indicates that
you need to pivot to broaden your offering and improve your product-
market fit. To mix metaphors, you’re in a fish bowl. Nothing can harm you
here. But there’s no room to grow and no way to sustain yourself
independently.
On the flip side, in the context of differentiation, say you’ve identified
many competitors, but what you offer has value for a wide audience, too.
Sure, the ocean has sharks, but loads of fish. Sounds grand, right?
Bad news. This is also a danger zone.
If you do not market your business carefully in this context, you can end up
part of the undifferentiated masses, offering everything to everyone (and
interesting no one). We see this a lot with managed service providers and
cloud migration firms. Technically, they can work with any business that
needs to modernise their IT systems. However. All marketing is targeting.
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

All Marketing Is Targeting (We’ll Say It Louder

For Those At The Back)
For those of you who fall into the latter category — ocean, sharks, fish —
we suggest taking a broad view of how well your products or services solve
for certain segmentations of your client base. Break your audience into
verticals, maturity or location. Observe your audience from every angle,
through every lens. Where have you seen success, historically? Who would
you like to target next, and how well does your existing positioning meet
that audience’s goals and pain points? Should you change your positioning
to be more saleable in light of the information you now have? Be open to
that change.
By adjusting your products, services or positioning to ensure market fit, it’s
much easier to engage your audience with targeted marketing and find a
value proposition that works for you.
All this is vital information for your goal-setting activities.
By this stage, you’re well-armed with contextual data. You’ve done your
research. You’ve laid the groundwork. You’re on a mission to differentiate
your business and grow your market share and now, finally, it’s time to craft
your high-level business vision.
BUSINESS VISION

A truth universally acknowledged: stand-out businesses have ambitious

goals, one hundred percent of the time.

A business vision is the combination of your mission statement and

your objectives. Together, these form a time-bound set of goals and a
means to benchmark progress in a particular direction.
They say, ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the
stars.’ Humbly, we would like to add, ‘you know… assuming you’ve got a
rocket ship.’ For those of you in a Ford Fiesta, aim for Croydon and at least
you’ll land among the suburbs.
You have to be prepared to set challenging goals if you want an effective
Difference Engine. Highly differentiated businesses are driven businesses.
But wait! While big dreams are a must, they have to be firmly grounded in
the context and data you’ve just worked so hard to gather. By balancing
aspiration with that reality, you’re more likely to get buy-in from everyone
in your organisation. People need a vision they can believe in and that feels
true to their lived experience. That matters. You’re guaranteed to get further
when everyone is on board and heading in the same direction.

How To Manifest Your Big Dream For The

Business
It’s important to get your dream, your ultimate vision for the business, right.
But, equally, you need to express that dream clearly and aptly. It can’t just
exist in your head or as a disconnected mission statement buried somewhere
in your website; it has to be manifested in all parts of your organisation.
If you’re not sick of metaphors, let’s take a brief diversion into complex
geometry (you’re thrilled, we can tell). A fractal is a type of mathematical
shape. It’s a visual expression of a repeating formula. It begins simply and
gets progressively more complicated. Usually, you’ll start with one shape.
From there, self-similar shapes are repeated and scale. It’s a phenomenon
found throughout nature, in snowflakes, branches, crystals, river systems,
sea shells and so on.
Think of your business vision as the starting point of that fractal. From this
point, you then branch out into departmental goals, team goals, individual
goals. You get this first step right, and the rest will fall into place. ‘You’
being the business founder(s), CEO, senior leadership, the board — these
are the people responsible for the business vision. Everyone else is
responsible for ensuring their goals align with this mission. Leaders plot the
course; then, it’s everyone’s job to hoist the sails, fend off pirates and swab
the decks. Arr.
Enough of geometry and the high seas. Now, let’s move on to the practical
steps to create your business vision.

The Mission Statement

To get you thinking about your business vision, try out these two methods:

Merlin management. Writer John Coulthard coined the ‘Merlin

management’ technique. The idea is to ask, 'Where do we want
to be in 12 months?' Then you work back from that (Merlin
being a wizard who travels backwards through time).
The two cafés scenario. Peter Czapp from The Wow Company,
has a similar exercise. In one scenario, you imagine sitting in a
café in 12 months’ time, the sun's out, you're drinking coffee and
looking back over an amazing year. What did you do that made
that happen? The other scenario is, you're sitting in the same
café, but it's miserable outside, and everything's gone horribly
wrong. What didn't you do? What went wrong?

Map out a few scenarios, such as growing the business in one target sector
versus diversifying. Come up with several ideas and see if you can find a
common thread or stand-out ambition. Write a mission statement for where
you want to be this time next year in one to three sentences. Do the same
for five years, then ten. For example:

‘In five years, I want the business to grow to a 12 million GBP

turnover and be the top choice for Environmental Tech clients. We
will be certified Net Zero by 2030 and will be a pioneer for others in
this industry for sustainable business practices.’

As this takes shape, bring in other stakeholders to verify the mission. Is it

financially feasible? Is the timeline right? Is it ambitious enough? Does it
reflect the brand? This is the first step to implementing your vision into the
business.

SMART North Star Goals And OKRs

Now, let’s return to our fractals. How can we represent our mission
statement in all parts of your organisation? How can we cascade this down
to each level and to each individual? How can we bring this mission to life?
To do this, we highly recommend using Objectives and Key Results.
OKRs are a methodology for goal-setting and measuring progress over
a year, broken down by quarter. The Objective is a goal that relates to
the overall mission. The Key Results are how you measure progress. At
each level have three to five objectives for the year.
Alternatively, you may prefer North Star goals, which are goals set at an
even higher, more abstract level and may cover a longer time frame, such as
five years. Potentially, this is an easier entry point, and can even be used in
conjunction with OKRs. Or, the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS)
likes ‘Rocks’ for quarterly priorities — whatever floats (or sinks?) your
boat.
Either way, having specific and measurable goals has been shown to
improve performance significantly. You want ‘SMART’ goals, in other
words (a term coined by Doran, Miller and Cunningham in their article,
‘There's a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management goals and objectives’).
These are defined as:

Specific
Measurable
Achievable
Relevant
Time-bound

How Do You Know If You’ve Achieved Your

Mission?
The creator of the OKR system, John Doerr, author of ‘Measure What
Matters’, was an original investor and board member at Google and
Amazon, helping to create some of the world’s most valuable companies.
He attributes much of the success of these brands to the OKR system.
Part of that success is because ‘success’ looks like around 70 percent
achieved. That means, you set your Key Results as aspirational enough that
you probably won’t get full marks — and that’s fine. What that does is push
you to stretch yourself beyond your comfort zone while maintaining a
reasonable baseline. Success doesn’t have to be the perfect achievement of
your business vision and objectives. Celebrate good progress and lessons
learned.
A final note on the business vision. Long wordy business plans hide the
decisions that weren't made. They replicate the status quo. They are
ignorable. Stick to short, pithy goals with clear criteria for victory. With that
said, let’s talk about how to measure results on a more granular level.
REPORTING AND METRICS

G oals are one side of the coin; metrics are the other. In other words,
OKRs tell you what to measure, but not specifically how to measure it.
For that, you require software with dashboards that report on Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs). These act as leading indicators for your Key
Results.

KPIs are signposts. They are data points that tell you if you’re heading
in the right direction or if you need to course-correct. They’re not
milestones.
Every marketing leader will have their own KPIs that they really care about.
They’ll be looking for trends in the data, spikes or any other significant
changes, usually over a rolling time period such as 30, 60 or 90 days.
Business leaders might not need to know about every shift in every KPI, but
they do need to know what overall picture the data paints. Sales and
marketing leaders, then, should pay attention to key KPIs. These are the
brushstrokes. They come together to depict a picture of results. It’s up to
sales and marketing leaders to analyse and communicate what that picture
means. From this point, data-based decisions can be made (hallelujah).
To help you colour in the numbers, here are the KPIs we recommend paying
attention to:

Sessions, Leads And Customers

Number of sessions on the website (visitors)
Number of new contacts (leads)
Session-to-contact rate as a percentage
Number of deals (and relevant pipeline metrics, such as, number
of demos delivered to customer ratio as a percentage)
Number of customers
Lead to customer rate as a percentage
Cost per lead and/or cost per customer
Deal amount as attributed to marketing campaigns or assets, by
revenue and profitability
Customer lifetime value and churn rate
Number of inbound versus outbound contacts (leads that filled in
a form on your site versus leads that you cold-called)
Other lead sources (referral, paid search, events and so on)
Contacts as a ratio associated with each of your campaigns
Conversion rate throughout the lead lifecycle stages in the funnel
as a percentage (new contacts to marketing qualified leads to
sales qualified leads to opportunities to customers, or similar)
Where relevant, conversion rate funnel per gated offer as
percentages, as well (see chapters six and seven for clarity on the
term ‘gated offer’)

Website And Blog Analytics

Website analytics such as Google’s Core Web Vitals and page

speed
Sessions on mobile versus desktop as a percentage
Number of sessions by country
Number of pages with keywords that rank in the top ten on
Google
Number of blog post views (and webinar, podcast or video
views)
Number of subscribers to various media, such as the blog
Conversions on blog posts as percentages
Number of CTA clicks
Number of form submissions for key forms on the site
Landing page to view submission rate for forms as a percentage

Promotion Metrics

Number of marketable contacts (those who are opted into emails

and who are not suppliers, employees, clients and so on)
Email open rate and click-through rate as percentages
Email bounce and unsubscribe rates as percentages
Number of followers on social media that also click through to
the website
Social media click-through rate as a percentage
Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) view and click-through rate as
percentages
Event-specific metrics, such as number of attendees, booked
demos and so on

Some of you may be asking, but what about bounce rate? Time on page?
Social media engagement, comments and likes? Well, firstly, in our
experience, less is more. And, vanity metrics disguise real problems.
‘Engagement’ is a wishy-washy metric that is hard to pin down, but can
look good to the higher-ups. Conversion rates, however? Now that’s
something genuinely useful; if you have a Key Result to get X number of
leads, then that metric is an indicator of how likely you are to achieve the
desired result.
It’s up to you to decide those metrics that really matter. Ask yourself, ‘Am I
measuring this because it tells me something actionable about how effective
my marketing is, or am I measuring it because it looks good?’
Analysing The Data
Data on its own is not enough. You need eyes looking at your reports,
wherever they live (we’ll talk about this more in The Toolkit section),
regularly. Clued-in people will have the insight to know what story that data
is telling, and can relay that information to relevant parties. They know
what “normal” looks like, and they will therefore spot danger signs early
on.
For example, they may see sessions to your B2B website dropping off by 25
percent in December. That’s the raw data. The insight is: Hey, it’s the
holidays, people are shopping for presents, not new products or services for
their business. 25 percent is normal. A 50 percent drop, though? Now that
might be a sign of something else going on. Time to start investigating.
Ideally, you’d have dashboards that are visible to all relevant people in your
business, and that update in real time. These should show ONLY the
metrics that you actually care about. Look at the same metrics over time
rather than swapping and changing. That way, you get long-term insights
based on the same parameters. In other words, the data is clean.
With the right reporting in place, you can compare past performance with
current performance. This is how you establish a credible basis for
forecasting, that is, making predictions about future performance. Plus, it’s
how you can measure return on investment (ROI) for your marketing
activities, optimising that ROI moving forward. To learn more about the
iterative optimisation process across key metrics, skip ahead to the last
section of this book. Or, stick around as we tackle the subject of your
marketing strategy, next.
MARKETING STRATEGY
‘Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right
things.’

— Peter Drucker, author, management consultant

G oals are not strategies, but the two work hand-in-hand. You need to
know where you’re going (goals) and how you’re planning to get there
(strategies). And, yes, strategy is also figuring out how to do things right,
while goals are about doing the right things. You need both.

‘Strategy is an integrative set of choices that positions you on a

playing field of your choice in a way that you win.’

— Roger Martin, former Dean of the Rotman School of

Management at the University of Toronto

As a business, your visionary goals are supported by departmental

strategies. This combination, alongside a means to measure progress, as
we’ve just discussed, will ensure your mission is more than a pipedream;
it’s achievable.
Given that successful marketing is all about differentiation (and the fact this
book is written by marketers), we’ll stick to talking about how to put
together an effective marketing strategy, here. Naturally, every department
from production studios to HR should have their own strategies that
contribute to your overall differentiation and align with your business goals.
How To Craft Your Marketing Plan
A strategic marketing plan is a high-level framework for the year,
broken down into key sections, covering major themes, projects,
workstreams and campaigns.
Your marketing plan should be influenced by the departmental OKRs, the
business goals and overall vision. You will use strategies to address certain
KPIs, such as reversing a trend of decreasing traffic to the website.
Therefore, the person making the plan, usually the Head of Marketing or
similar, must have a solid insight into the company’s direction, the data and
the needs of stakeholders within the business if they want to end up with a
good-sense plan.
If you’ve never done anything like this before, it may be helpful to read this
book through to the end before putting together your strategy as we do
cover a lot of these topics in more detail. Saying that, here’s a rough outline,
at a high level, that you can follow to structure your plan:

Key themes
Goals and challenges
Target audiences
Ongoing activities / workstreams
New projects / campaigns
Budget
Timelines
Technologies
Allocation of resources
Accountability
Outsourcing
Skills
Processes

(A timeline, particularly, should be as minimal as possible, with only the

major milestones and a rough sketch of the years’ activities. Anything
more, and it’s a rod for your back.)
The thing about your marketing strategy is it doesn’t have to be
complicated. Don’t reinvent the wheel. Simply think critically and
realistically about where you are now and how to get to where you need to
be. Check your ego. Use simple terms that everyone can understand, not
dazzling marketing lingo. While bright ideas are welcome, this is not the
time to sound clever, it’s the time to communicate those ideas effectively.
More advice. To remain agile, factor in plenty of room for unexpected
variables. Account for seasonality. Refer back to your industry analysis.
Consider your headwinds — things that could inhibit progress — and your
tailwinds — things that could accelerate progress. Is there a major theme or
brand position (more on this later) that ties everything together? Are there
recurring activities that you need to include alongside new projects? What
campaigns will you run, and why?
Rather than producing a dense report that could comfortably wedge open a
door, try making this marketing plan as a slide deck. And yes, the text size
should be legible from the other side of the room. With pictures. Make it
something you could present in less than 45 minutes with 15 minutes for
questions. Thirty or forty slides, at most. Those constraints will keep you on
the right track. Plus:

Avoid These Seven Pitfalls

1. Having no marketing strategy — You can’t measure what doesn’t

happen. The cost of doing nothing is not obvious. Yet, without a
great strategy, you’re missing out on the opportunities that could
have been.
2. HiPPO — Or, the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion. You need
strategists who are capable of speaking truth to power and who
specialise in marketing. They will collaborate with senior leaders
to forge the best path forward. Leaders, watch out for the
Dunning-Kruger effect, i.e. the tendency to overestimate your
own knowledge in an area outside your experience.
3. Confusing activity with strategy — In an episode of South Park,
a group of gnomes are collecting underpants. They believe this
activity will lead to profit. They have a strategic goal: profit. And
a plan for activity: steal underpants. They didn’t identify the
mechanism that would turn underpants into profit. Don’t be an
underpants gnome. Don’t try to solve your marketing by doing
stuff without connecting the activity to the outcome.
4. Magic bullets — Your strategy should reflect a diverse range of
tactics. There are no magic bullets. Marketing doesn’t work like
that. To be truly bullet-proof, you need to diversify.
5. Relying on what worked before — What got you here, won’t get
you there. Yes, keep doing what works, but always experiment
and evolve your tactics as you grow.
6. Resisting change — Change is hard. Yet all good strategies
involve change. Ensure you keep all stakeholders involved
during the planning process, so everyone is driving change, not
impeding it. Face change head-on, but also avoid…
7. …Giving up too soon — A good plan will be resilient in the face
of the unexpected. You don’t want to create something so brittle
it snaps at the first bit of pressure. It can be worth seeing your
strategy play out, even if you don’t see instant results. And if that
doesn’t work, then sure, try something different, but give it time.

‘Patience is waiting. Not passively waiting. That is laziness. But to

keep going when the going is hard and slow.’

— Leo Tolstoy
YOUR MISSION —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

Y our mission is a critical part of your organisation’s Difference Engine.

If you follow our steps, then you will have brought that mission to life
in a way that is meaningful, realistic and ambitious.

A quick note here to say that, of course, you can do these activities in
parallel with others suggested in this book; you don’t have to do each bit
one after the other. Hey, you may be doing some of this already. We’re not
here to teach you how to suck eggs. This is simply a guide to help you fill
in the gaps that are tenuous and hard to visualise, and to inspire action.
In fact, consider everything we say here as part of the recurring cycle of
activities that is — simply — marketing. The engine turns. Momentum
builds.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Conduct an industry analysis

☐ Run a competitive review
☐ Sense-check your product-market fit
☐ Create a business vision statement and cascade it using OKRs
☐ Report on progress with KPIs and dashboards
☐ Make a strategic marketing plan
Up next, we delve into the (fairly major) part company culture has to play
in your brand differentiation journey.

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER TWO: TALENT
AND CULTURE

E ven if you operate in the most saturated market, selling the least
specialised products and services, you can outshine the competition
based on company culture, alone.

That is how powerful it can be.

We’d go so far as to say all truly differentiated businesses have a distinct
culture, one that attracts and retains talent, operates efficiently, inspires
others and tells a story worth hearing. Speaking of, the best stories have to
have an epic quest, right? So for every quest, every mission, you need a
motley crew who bring their unmatched talents and personalities to the
table. Cue the team-building montage.
In short, people make a business.

'I think if you want to build a company that attracts a lot of great
customers, you need to build a unique product. But if you want to
pull in the best people and retain them, you need to have a unique,
differentiated culture that’s very strong.'

— Brian Halligan, HubSpot co-founder

If you want a well-run Difference Engine, you need the master engineers,
the innovators, the diagnosticians, the strategists, the collaborators, the
hard-grafters and the outside-the-box thinkers to build it. A great company
culture empowers such people to do their best work. Alongside this, having
an inspiring purpose backed by strong values helps those people to feel they
are spending their time wisely, aligned with their selfhood, their ethics.
Then, all you need are the repeatable, scalable processes that keep the
wheels turning.
ONS data spanning more than 30 years shows that we spend around 35-40
hours a week at work. Given we’re awake for about 112 hours a week,
that’s about a third of our waking lives spent on the job. If that information
comes as a shock, we apologise!
To make the most of that time, you probably want to ensure it’s spent
contributing positively, both to the organisation and in a wider context,
while you make progress in your life and career. Susie Myerson’s character
in The Marvellous Mrs Maisel said, ‘I don’t mind being alone. I just do not
want to be insignificant.’ Soon-to-be employees feel the same way.
Inherently, people want to be significant — whatever that means for them.
It’s this attitude of productive ambition and rejection of complacency that
makes a brilliant employee, and a brilliant team.
This is all advantageous for marketing, by the way. Prospective clients and
employees, potential business partners, vendors etc. — they want to work
with happy, energetic, well-organised people. They want to see your
company’s stories on your website and communications platforms.
It’s not just a “nice to have”. Employees and companies are looking for
value alignment. This is becoming more and more formalised in the
working world. Potential vendors are assessed on things like their
commitment to diversity and Environmental Social Governance (ESG)
strategies, for example. In short, we talk about business-to-business and
business-to-consumer. The reality? All business is human-to-human. That’s
worth remembering, and worth highlighting.
In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Company culture — "What holds our company together?"

2. Purpose — (Or, as Simon Sinek puts it) “What’s your ‘why’?”
3. Sustainability — "How do we make choices that have a positive
impact on the world?"
4. Employer branding — "How is my business viewed by potential
recruits and existing talent?"
5. Skills and resources — "How does my organisation get the best
work done?"
6. Processes — "What steps will it take to be effective and
efficient?"

At the end, we summarise the actions you can take to build a robust
company culture, centred around a singular differentiating purpose.
COMPANY CULTURE

A scompanies,
we’ve said, you can hawk the same goods as a thousand other
yet still differentiate your business entirely based on
culture. (Of course, we recommend differentiating your products and
services too, but culture is the other side of the coin and just as important.)

Culture is a brand differentiation powerhouse. What’s more, there’s ROI in

them there hills. A Glassdoor study concludes that there is an important link
between 'company intangibles, like employee satisfaction, and broader
financial performance'. Among other findings, businesses in their 'Best
Places to Work' portfolio have outperformed the overall market by more
than 115 percent in the last decade.
Therefore, not only are there the hard-to-measure brand benefits of paying
attention to your company culture, but there are clear financial benefits, too.
Now you know it really is worth reading this section, let’s define our terms.

What Is Company Culture?

Your company culture is a heady mix of power structures,
demographics, industry, leadership, personality, ethics, empathy,
ambition, socialisation and and and... It's imposed from the top and
undermined from the bottom — or the other way around. It’s
something part man-made, part organic. It grows and changes and it's
split into sub and counter-cultures, rapidly fragmenting, reforming and
being made new.
Ultimately, it manifests as boundaries, goals and ways of working. It’s how
people speak to one another. It’s what holds corporate structures together.
We can’t tell you how to develop your company culture, because culture is
unique to every organisation. However, we can offer some pointers and
showcase examples of other company cultures in the context of each
brand’s overall positioning.

What Makes Your Culture Special?

In the context of differentiating your business, let’s consider what makes
your company culture remarkable and marketable, then.
To have a good company culture, your employees need to feel part of the
tribe, but everyone is different. The extroverted sales-focused organisation
might love a culture that encourages straight-talking and big risks. The
design agency might appreciate a culture of quiet remote working and
creative freedom. Different departments may have their own cultures, too.
You will have a diverse range of people and job roles, all with their own
views and needs. It’s worth talking to your people or running a survey and
asking them to describe the company culture in their own words. Do the
same with people outside your organisation. See if there are any overlaps.
Tease out the most true and exceptional aspects of your company culture.
That could be anything from your daily working practices to how you react
in a crisis. Be honest about where your culture needs substantial work, or
what could be polished to a high shine with just a little more attention.
In doing all this, strive to find the words to describe your culture. This will
help you communicate that culture as a marketable asset.
Here are some examples of company cultures to inspire your thinking.

Netflix
Netflix is renowned for its distinctive work culture that promotes freedom
and responsibility. The company values an extremely high-performance
culture and believes in hiring and retaining top talent, to the extent that
anyone who doesn’t meet these exacting standards can expect a short tenure
with the company. Netflix encourages employees to take ownership of their
work and gives them the autonomy to make decisions without
micromanagement.
The company's renowned Culture Deck is a widely circulated document as
part of the company’s employer branding (see later in this chapter for more
on this subject). It outlines the core values and principles that drive
Netflix’s unique company culture. All of this tells Netflix’s audience about
the company’s attitude to things like quality of service and taking
accountability.

Google
Google is also famous for its unique work environment and employee
perks, such as free meals, on-site gyms and fitness classes. The company
offers opportunities for personal and professional growth, encouraging
collaborative innovation through its open office layout and ‘20 percent
time’, which is time employees are permitted to work on their own projects.
Saying this, Google had to build its cultural reputation, with employees and
leadership grappling with the culture as the company grew at breakneck
speed. It faced numerous hurdles to get where it is today.
Additionally, Google places a strong emphasis on diversity and inclusion,
with employer branding initiatives aimed at creating a welcoming and
supportive workplace for all employees. What does this do? It reinforces
Google’s brand positioning as a generous organisation committed to
innovation and equitable access to learning resources.

Patagonia
Patagonia stands out in the outdoor gear and clothing sector for its
commitment to environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The
company's culture revolves around this statement:

‘Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use

business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental
crisis.’
Patagonia encourages its employees to live out this purpose, offering perks
like flexible work schedules and encouraging employees to take time off for
outdoor activities. The company also supports activism and social causes,
allowing employees to take paid leave to participate in environmental or
community projects. This is a fantastic example of a company’s culture
aligning with its brand mission.

Articulate Marketing
Humbly, we add our name to the list. Why? Because this is a massive focus
for us, and always has been. We can prove it. Not only are we a B Corp
‘Best for the World Honouree for Workers and Governance’, but we have
even won Investors In People’s ‘Small Employer of the Year’ award.
Our culture is centred around the concepts of eudaimonia (’human
flourishing’) and happiness, championed by our People team. We spend a
lot of time and resources on causes such as mental health awareness and
sustainability. And, we encourage innovation by giving people the support
and tools they need to thrive at work. Our culture is our pride and joy, and
while far from perfect, it’s something we actively work on, every day. As
our target audience is purposeful B2B technology companies in industries
such as environmental and health tech, this signifies to such prospects that
we are a values-aligned company.

What NOT To Do - REDACTED

The New York Times called this big-name company’s culture (which we’ve
kept anonymous because everyone deserves a chance at redemption) both
‘aggressive’ and ‘unrestrained’. In the past, this organisation has faced
numerous allegations and controversies regarding its workplace
environment and treatment of employees. A toxic workplace, even by their
own account, given they stated in their IPO filing that ‘a failure to
rehabilitate our brand and reputation will cause our business to suffer.’
This company may know how to differentiate on product — after all, it is
hugely successful — but the culture stands out for all the wrong reasons.
Still, some argue the business’s ruthlessness is what got them where they
are today. On that basis, you may decide that’s a path you’re willing to take
(personally, we wouldn’t recommend it).
That said, it's important to note that company cultures can change over
time, and organisations can take steps to address and rectify toxic cultures.
Until that day, such businesses as this one are not in a position to market
their company culture or differentiate on its merits.
But, we’re willing to bet you are, you good egg.
In all of this, as you share stories with your audience about your company
culture, vitally, you must be truthful. People have a nose for hype and lies.
Former and current employees will quickly out any BS. Whatever you put
into the world, it has to be a reflection of your culture as it is, not what you
want it to be. So, put in the work and speak from the heart.
PURPOSE

P urpose drives company culture. Culture drives purpose.

Your company’s purpose, which is different from your mission (more on
that in a second), is at the centre of your culture. It’s both born from that
culture, and it in itself continues to define the culture as you grow and
change as a business.

The Difference Between Mission And Purpose

No semantics here. There’s a real difference between ‘mission’ and
‘purpose’.
We’ve already discussed your mission: that vision of the future that you’re
aiming to get to. The goal or goals you plan to accomplish. Your first
octuple-digit year as you swan into your penthouse office in Canary
Wharf… which you got to from the Bahamas… via company jet. This isn’t
our recommended mission statement — the carbon emissions alone leave
something to be desired — but boy, wouldn’t that be something?
Missions are finite. They change as they are achieved. A purpose, on the
other hand, is constant. Your mission encompasses what you do. Why you
do it is another matter. It’s why your organisation came into existence. It’s
the guiding value that informs your whole brand. As is the case with brands
that champion a social cause, for example.
You might be a business that makes delicious chocolate — that’s what you
do. And you plan to make a thousand shipments by year X with Y turnover
— that’s your mission. It’s tied to what you do very clearly. But if your
purpose is ‘Providing a fair income for all cocoa farmers’, then that’s going
to impact every decision you make, every piece of marketing and every
interaction.
As you can see, a strong purpose is something your audience can get
behind. It gives them, and you, an ideal worth caring about.

Why?
‘Why?’ is the question your purpose answers.
Simon Sinek champions the concept of the Golden Circle in his book, ‘Start
with why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action’. In it, he talks
about how ‘why’ is at the centre of three nested circles, with ‘how’ and
‘what’ forming rings around this central concept. Businesses, he argues,
know what they do. Many know how they do it. Very few know why they
do it. Those few are the organisations that are able to innovate and inspire
in ways that distinguish them from the pack.
It’s a lot easier to think about what you do. So, we began with ‘Your
mission’ when we built the Difference Engine, because it’s information you
likely already have, in some format or other.
However, your purpose, your ‘why’, can be more elusive. We might assume
we know ‘why’. But, as Sinek points out, ‘How do you explain when things
don’t go as you assume? Or better, how do you explain when others can
achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions?’ And, most
famously, ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. So, the
goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe.’ If you don’t have a
strong handle on that belief, and you don’t communicate it effectively, you
will fail to differentiate.
We like Simon Sinek. His thought leadership in this area is extremely
useful. Go watch his interviews. Get inspired. And look to examples of
companies you admire and trust, too (he says Apple; your mileage may
vary). What are the brands that make you feel something, and that instil
loyalty? Who do you buy from? Which companies seem to have a secret
ability to provoke decision-making or action in their buyers? Who are the
leaders?
When marketing, to make your message sound different, use purpose-first
communication. Start with why. No one wants to hear about the features
and benefits of your products, cold. They need a reason to make them
engage with what you have to offer on a more emotional level. They’re not
ready to hear it, otherwise. Tap into your purpose and make it known. Then,
you’ll have a willing audience. In fact, more than that. You’ll have a legion
of fans.
SUSTAINABILITY

F orOr,asustainability
good number of companies, their purpose is related to sustainability.
is in some way part of the culture, values or mission of
the business, even if it isn’t that central ‘why’.

Globally, nations are looking for ways to be more sustainable, so it makes

sense for brands to champion sustainability efforts. Businesses have the
power to be more sustainable, for the planet, for employees, and for the
community as a whole. That collective power is needed to tackle the
climate crisis. And that messaging resonates with an increasingly
environmentally conscious audience.
Companies that take that responsibility seriously will be more likely to
differentiate themselves and survive in the long term. Those that reduce
their impact, whether that’s by offsetting carbon or planting trees in the
community, are already setting themselves apart from other businesses that
only care about the bottom line. By making sustainability a priority and
taking action, not just talking about it, you have a sure-fire way to elevate
your business above competitors from a marketing perspective. Think of it
as integrating your sustainability initiatives with marketing — a true
intersection, where each workstream enhances the other. Actions speak
louder than words, but stories that are not told will be forgotten.
Going above and beyond the basics will be how you differentiate here.
Saying that, even the basics are a must-have: investors, governments,
potential clients and employees will be scrutinising your business.

The Triple Bottom Line

Thirty years ago, John Elkington came up with ‘The Triple Bottom Line:
Profit, People and Planet’. This ‘TBL’ model was intended to replace the
single bottom-line way of thinking that has dominated modern ways of
operating. All three parts form a whole and should be pursued with equal
fervour. Unfortunately, as the originator himself admits, too many
businesses simply think of the TBL as a balancing act that they approach
with a trade-off mentality.
Herein lies your opportunity to be different, to be better. While others give
lip service to sustainability and the TBL, you can be the shining example of
real transformation.
This book, hopefully, will help you be more profitable. In this chapter, we
talk about your people and the part they have to play in growing and
differentiating your business. To support your efforts around ‘Planet’, then,
here are ten tips for making your business and marketing more sustainable.
And, how you can use such actions to position your organisation favourably
to key stakeholders and customers.

1. Aim for ‘Net Zero’: While people debate what it means to be Net
Zero, you can already be making tangible, data-driven steps
towards a more sustainable future. This section, in fact, includes
several such steps. So, set goals, establish timelines and hold
yourself accountable. If nations are to meet climate targets and
sustainable development goals (SDGs), businesses must operate
in line with Net Zero principles. That means, minimising impact
as much as possible and offsetting everything else. The ability to
say you’re a Net Zero company is a huge achievement and a
striking marketing message.
2. Get certified: Elkington applauds the B Corporation movement
as a great yardstick for businesses who want to be ‘best for the
world’. By being certified by a third party, such as B Labs,
you’re not only doing due diligence in not marking your own
homework, but you also get to be a part of a like-minded
community. That’s a brilliant networking opportunity. Plus, you
get a shiny badge to add to your website.
3. Work from home: The pandemic forced many of us to work from
home, yes. However, the upside of that is many businesses saw
benefits such as improved employee satisfaction, but also a
positive impact on the environment. Even if you don’t go fully
remote, you can still embrace the learnings from remote work,
such as by reducing the number of times people in your
organisation commute, or by maintaining a smaller office, or
closing the office one day a week.
4. Do carbon offsetting: There are many organisations that can help
you with carbon offsetting, though you should do your research
to find one that is truly effective. Due diligence is needed, here.
Ecologi is one provider we’d recommend. Offset things like
travel for meetings and events, or even offset the average impact
of every employee in their day-to-day life (around 10 tonnes per
person per year in the UK, which is about double the world
average). Share your offsetting milestones on social media and in
your company newsletter.
5. Plant trees and reduce paper usage: One person uses about four
40-foot trees worth of paper a year, according to The Economist.
That number is going down as we digitise things like work-based
paperwork, which is something many businesses can support.
Cut paperwork by going digital as much as possible, using cloud
solutions that are provided by climate-conscious vendors. While
you’re doing so, give back to the earth by planting trees — again,
there are companies like Ecologi that can do this on your behalf.
Not only will this balance out your paper usage, but it helps to
stabilise the climate. (Bonus: you can copy our example. We use
Zapier to connect our website forms with Ecologi’s portal. Now,
when someone fills in a form on our site, we plant a tree. It’s a
message that sits on all our forms. Now we can literally measure
our ‘Tree Conversion Rate’. Pretty cool, right?)
6. Minimise impact: Offsetting is not good enough on its own; you
also need to minimise your impact. Things like recycling,
replacing lightbulbs and so on all add up. Aim for zero waste to
landfill, if you have an office. If your team works remotely,
empower them to be sustainable with educational resources.
Limitation breeds innovation. What you learn on this journey
may provide valuable insights for your target audience, as well as
your own business.
7. Partner with ethical suppliers: Suppliers are included in your
Scope 3 emissions, including inbound marketing, social media,
press and ad agencies. For example, you could use an ad agency
that has signed up for the UK Advertising Association’s Ad Net
Zero Policy. In short, work with people whose values align with
your own.
8. Audit your technology: It may be you could switch to a more
climate-positive technology vendor. Perhaps you could reduce
your data storage usage (which has a carbon cost). Opt for
laptops, which consume up to 80 percent less electricity than
desktops. Look at your tech through the lens of sustainability.
You never know what you could discover.
9. Optimise your website: Speaking of tech, your website has a
carbon footprint. In fact, everything on there from the copy to
images to fonts has an impact. Clunky code is not only bad for
loading speed and user experience, but also the environment.
This is a real win-win, then. Optimise your site for page speed,
for search, for file sizes and so on, and not only will you be better
for the planet, but you will have a more effective and efficient
website overall.
10. Share the message: In working towards a more sustainable
business, you can share your efforts across your communication
channels. This shows prospects that you are an ethical business
with good values. And, you can even carve out your own niche as
a thought leader in how to make these changes successfully in
your industry, even if this isn’t something you sell directly. It’s
still useful to build your reputation as a sustainable business, as
an educator and as a community leader.
EMPLOYER BRANDING

B rand positioning is a bigger topic that we tackle in chapter four,

‘Strategic blueprints’.

‘Employer branding’, on the other hand, is the very specific work you
do to position your business to employees — past, present and
(crucially) future.
Plus, it says something about how you work, your talent acquisition and
level of skill in the company, and your culture, all of which tend to matter to
customers as well. In that sense, it can be thought of as a subset of your
main brand. It is perhaps most effective if there is some kind of connection
between the two, though there doesn’t have to be.
The way we think about it, employer branding is an easier ‘in’ if you want
to reposition your whole brand but don’t know where to start. There’s less
risk. You can afford to experiment. It’s also something many businesses are
more ready to try, and less likely to have already. There’s a shorter, clearer
feedback loop as — unlike with your main brand positioning — you can
measure its efficacy using fairly simple metrics, such as:

Number of applicants
Number of successful interviews
Employee retention rate
Employee engagement survey scores
Employee churn rate
Number of positive reviews from employees and leavers
Post-employment engagement (returners, project work,
partnerships, referrals, etcetera)

The Value Of A Great Employer Brand

There are two sides to this. Value to the employee and value to the
employer.
Talented people are attracted to high salaries and good benefits, sure, but
also culture, opportunities for career growth, contribution to the community,
wellbeing support and so on. Employer branding is a promise that you make
with a prospect, which, at its best, is a mutual agreement; a give-and-take.
They provide their talents, you provide an environment where such people
thrive.
Of course, there are more obvious benefits that may attract employees at
first blush, like a company laptop. However, the deeper, more meaningful
things, like robust mental health support in tough times, are what people
really value.
It stands to reason you want to showcase the best you have to offer, which
in itself helps to differentiate you from other businesses. Good pay, good
benefits, evidence that employees have built their careers at your workplace
— these things tell the world that you are a successful, well-run business.
They speak to those deeper values.
In the end, by attracting the best talent to work in your organisation, you
will inevitably stand out because of the skills, creativity and drive of your
employees. They bring differentiating capabilities into your business,
allowing you to innovate more, do better work, sell more expertise and even
open up new revenue streams. People who love where they work will give
their best, not their bare minimum. If you want to be the best provider in
your sector, then you need the best talent, working to their full potential.
How To Position Your Business As An Attractive
Employer
Sadly, many organisations don’t give employer branding much thought.
They think it’s just something that happens. ‘Of course people want this
job, it’s got a great salary.’ Or, worse, ‘of course they need this job, the
economy is in the tank.’ This way of thinking omits events like the Great
Resignation and the upheaval in the job market during the pandemic. It
bypasses the changing attitudes to work, gig culture, entrepreneurship,
remote work, and more. It’s blind to the realities of the modern job market.
In fact, at the time of writing at least, this is a buyers’ market. Prospective
employees know their worth, and they are discerning about where they
want to work. So, as marketers, we invite you to approach your employer
brand from a marketing angle. There’s something you’re offering (a job)
and an audience (applicants). The gap between these two things is good old
marketing, in our book (and this is our book).
To bridge this gap successfully, you need to establish the key messages that
you want to get across. See if there is one ‘red thread’ connecting them or
one that stands out from the rest as your most persuasive point.
Here are some ideas to get you started:

We offer opportunities to learn and develop with training and

mentorship
Fostering a sense of belonging matters to our organisation
We are committed to diversity, inclusion and equity
Our team will help you realise your personal ambitions and
career goals
We encourage autonomy and innovation
You will get to do challenging and rewarding work
Everyone supports one another — you can make life-long friends
here
You will have a great work-life balance at our company
Our business operates sustainably and has a positive impact on
the community
We suggest tailoring these with specific proof points. For example, the first
suggestion might be, ‘by providing X number of paid training days and
access to sought-after apprenticeships like yada yada.’
That way, you frame your messaging using that ‘start with why’ model.
Start with the reason to believe, then talk about the hows and the whats.
You can have a great work-life balance… because we pay this kind of
salary and offer these holidays. We’re environmentally friendly… because
we offset carbon for employees and encourage homeworking. You get the
idea.
Once you have your messages and proof points, and you’ve put that
information out there on your website and other marketing channels, you do
have to follow it up with actions. Consider how you treat candidates
throughout the hiring process and ensure your promises don’t fall short. Be
attentive and responsive, even to unsuccessful candidates. Assume
everyone you talk to will leave you a review on Glassdoor (they won’t, but
assume it). That social proof matters.
Done right, you’ll build your dream team. With talented workers at your
disposal, let’s turn now to the skills, resources and processes that will
empower them to engineer your Difference Engine.
SKILLS AND RESOURCES

Y ou need the right skills in your business to deliver on your promises to

customers. Potential and good intentions are what you have at the start
of a customer engagement, but they will only get you so far. You require
both the resources and the skills to follow through. To ensure, in other
words, your marketing is more than just hype; it’s a true, tangible reflection
of your unique value proposition and ability to deliver.

‘You’ve got to build a team that is so talented, they almost make you
uncomfortable.’

— Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb

Take time to audit the skills and resources you have in-house, and how
things might be optimised or outsourced. You may need to invest in
devices, training, workshops, certifications, even automation — all of
which will empower your employees to do their best work. So, too, will
good processes, which we talk about in the next section.
This is a two-way street, of course. You, as a business, must deliver on your
promise to support employees, and employees must be self-motivated to
achieve goals that benefit both themselves and the company as a whole.
That’s the road to victory.
So, now, we’ll go through four steps to help you define your playing field
and differentiate on the basis of your skills and resources.
Step 1: Take Stock Of Your Skills
To determine what skills you already have in your business, ask your team
members to name around five to ten skills they have or are working on, and
how they would rate their abilities in those areas.
You could do this with just your own team to begin with, then extend the
exercise to other departments. Include soft and hard skills.
As you likely know, ‘soft skills’ are things like:

Good communication
Time management
Problem-solving
Organisation
Teamwork

And so on. On the other hand, ‘hard skills’ might be the ability to use
certain software, application development, copywriting, or things of that
nature.
Armed with this information, build a skill framework where you can
visualise patterns or gaps in your ideal employee skillset. For example, if
you’re a start-up that is strong in development power but weak in project
management, then that’s something you would either want to train for, hire
for, or even outsource. Understanding this helps to ensure you know what
you can and can’t deliver for customers, and where you have exceptional
levels of resources (such as multiple certifications in a certain skill). This is
an iterative cycle: customer demand drives upskilling, while skill
development can expand your revenue streams.

Step 2: Take Stock Of Your Resources

Do the same sort of exercise with resources. Simply list out your resources
in terms of people power, such as employees in each department,
freelancers, contractors or other third parties. Suppliers, vendors, partners,
consultants — these can all be considered resources in this context.
Resources can also be things like offices, data, technologies and more
(we’ll talk about tech in the next chapter: ‘The toolkit’). Consider things
like:

What is the utilisation rate in your business?

Do you know the bottlenecks and dependencies for upcoming
projects?
What new resources will be required to meet your growth plans?

If you like a matrix (and we sure do), then break down those answers into
the Rumsfeld matrix. This concept is based on a phrase uttered by US
Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld: “There are unknown unknowns”.
The matrix, originated by Mikael Krogerus in The Decision Book, breaks
knowledge into four categories:

1. Known knowns: Things you are aware of (data/evidence) and

understand (insight).
2. Known unknowns: Things you are aware of, but don’t
understand (due to lack of insight, methodology, skill or some
other missing quantity).
3. Unknown knowns: Things you understand intuitively, but lack
data on (the unproven hypothesis).
4. Unknown unknowns: Things you don’t know you don’t know,
meaning you lack both awareness and understanding (blind spot).

Similar to the personnel management tool known as the Johari Window,

these four categories help to define your parameters. For example. You have
a rough idea of your team’s capacity, but don’t have the means to measure
that data — that’s an example of an unknown known. You have a gut
feeling, but lack hard data.
The more information you gather, the faster you can act to shore up those
skill gaps and acquire the resources you need to grow and differentiate your
business.

Step 3: Supercharge Your Existing Assets

The reality is, you may be under-resourcing your talented, skilled
workforce. Consider how you might empower them with training,
technologies, automation and even artificial intelligence, so they can
outperform competitor peers who are slower to adapt.
Where possible, use training programmes to gain valuable certifications for
your business. These can be shared on your website and on other
communication channels, and can even unlock access to networking
opportunities. Certifications and awards are persuasive and reassuring
proof-points of your expertise. They will make prospective clients sit up
and take notice.
Here are some example. Microsoft offers certifications that will help you
show that you’re keeping pace with today’s technical roles and
requirements. These are available for individuals and teams, and contribute
towards tiered business-wide certifications and standards. HubSpot has a
similar system for marketers and partner agencies (like Articulate
Marketing). The Chartered Institute of Marketing provides certifications
and diplomas for professional marketers.
Another way that you can empower your team is through automation and
assistive technologies; again, we’ll go into this in more detail in chapter
three. And, better processes, which is the next topic.

Step 4: Outsource Everything Else

For everything else, there’s outsourcing. If you don’t have the skills you
need in-house, you will benefit from interventions and support from a third-
party expert.
Here’s a use case. In smaller firms, owner-managers tend to take on the
brunt of sales and marketing. That is a Herculean task on top of running a
business day-to-day and taking care of the decisions to achieve that all-
important future vision. The good news is, you don’t have to do it alone.
You could hire a marketing agency to navigate those thought processes, and
run that activity.
Just a suggestion.
To put it another way, experts can help you fill in the blanks on your
Rumsfeld matrix. They are able to test your unknown knowns and provide
insight for your known unknowns. And, most importantly of all, they know
what you don’t. That’s rather the point.
When you hire an agency or a consultant, you are explicitly bringing honed
expertise into the business, alongside specialist knowledge, and collective
strategic and implementation power. The organisations that leverage expert
intervention at key stages are going to grow faster and make better
decisions than those too proud, or too cheap, to do the same.
PROCESSES

W hat do processes have to do with differentiation, you ask? There are a

number of reasons why good processes matter here, namely:

1. Bad processes will be obvious to your clients, which may be the

deciding factor for whether they stick with you or not, even if
you deliver good outcomes.
2. Bad processes lead to confusion, stress, lack of accountability
and a whole host of issues that will wear away at your company
culture. Culture, as we’ve established, is a major part of your
brand differentiation puzzle, so this has a knock-on effect.
3. Finally, bad processes can make you inflexible to change.
Marketing is an ever-evolving challenge, so to do good
marketing, you must be both agile and responsive.

With good processes in place, the atmosphere will be calm and orderly, with
work done in an effective and efficient manner. A solid process strategy is
people-led, always. The best processes, then, are built around how people
work, with accessible documentation, good briefs, clear accountability for
tasks and upheld Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

What Next?
You can tell if your processes are not up to scratch by applying one simple
question: ‘What next?’
In a company with a robust procedure for task management, the answer to
that question should be clear for every task, for every interaction. It should
be obvious who is accountable for next steps. Either there are good-sense
rules everyone can follow independently to work it out, or there is
documentation that dictates the specific process, where needed. Either way,
the question won’t be answered by an uninspiring, ‘I don’t know.’
However. And this is a big ‘however’. It is said that bureaucracy is the art
of making the possible impossible. In an effort to create a great process,
sometimes you may find you’ve made something so rigid that it is
impractical and time-consuming to maintain.
Take Japanese buildings in regions where earthquakes are frequent. On one
end, ‘Taishin’ is the minimum amount of flex required to earthquake-proof
a building, and on the other, ‘Menshin’ is an advanced level of earthquake-
proofing. To make these structures stable, they must bend and move as the
earth moves. If they were built like typical buildings, all brick and stone and
otherwise sturdy stuff, they’d be rubble in a matter of months.
So, consider how ‘earthquake-proof’ you’d like your processes to be. How
rigid, how flexible, but always within a range of flexibility. Build on that
basis. In other words, move as the earth moves.

The Challenges
There are several challenges we face when crafting any process. One is
aligning budget with scope. Budget is the cost based on the predicted value
of work. Scope is the predicted extent of that work in terms of resources
and time. You can only make such predictions as precise as the data you
have to hand. Projects are notoriously hard to predict. However. While it’s
never going to be one hundred percent, you will make better and better
predictions for both budget and scope as you repeat and refine your
processes. And, as a general rule of thumb, if you think a task might take
you a day with no interruptions and no distractions and no problems and no
hiccups, then you're planning to fail. Those issues always come up. We
often underestimate how long things take. Then, we end up wondering
where the time goes.
Another major challenge is change management. Whether you’re building
new processes in your organisation or updating old ones, change is an
inevitable part of that journey. Marketing is the visible tip of the change
management iceberg. With every new marketing initiative, engagement or
campaign there lies — underneath it all — the need to manage change.
Change is stressful, confusing and complicated. You have to pick your
battles, and be resolute in the face of adversity. A lot of things that your
employees thought they knew, and the status or power that they had
acquired by knowing what they were doing, gets undermined when things
change. People seek stability and familiarity, so change may even trigger
various stages of grief, which individuals in your business will move
through at different rates. Some may never recover. And that’s true even
when change is successful, which is certainly not always the case.

‘Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist

them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow
naturally forward in whatever way they like.’

— Lao Tzu

Project Management For Marketers

We’re by no means the last word in process management. So, we spoke to
friend of Articulate and project software expert, Layla Pomper at
ProcessDriven. She gave us four of her best project management tips for
marketers who want to build useful, dynamic processes that evolve over
time as part of a culture of continuous improvement. (Non-marketers may
also find them useful.)

1. Think of your business as a client. Treat your own internal

projects with the same care and attention you would give when
providing services to customers.
2. Address stressors as metrics. Stressors happen when your values
are impinged upon. You may value a predictable workflow, so a
stressor would be a pop-up task. So, schedule in a pop-up task
review every few weeks to evaluate the number of pop-up tasks
and why they occurred. Then, that stressor becomes a metric that
you’re measuring and acting on.
3. Have a list of issues. Similar to our last point, it’s generally a
good idea to have a process evaluation cycle. Keep a list of any
issues that have come up, like blockers and dependencies, and
review it regularly. That way, you can pre-empt problems that
seem to come up frequently and make any necessary adjustments
to your processes.
4. Make it a team effort. Collaboration is key. Process maintenance
should be on the whole team, not just management. It is
everyone’s responsibility to adjust standard operating procedures
on an ongoing basis, so that when a process changes in real
terms, so too does the documentation. This builds consensus as
well as a sense of ownership.

A business with consistent processes will be more able to offer a consistent

experience to customers, and a consistent image as a brand. That will
ensure your organisation is both reliable and memorable.
TALENT AND CULTURE —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS
‘Employees who believe management is concerned about them as a
whole person — not just as an employee — are more productive,
more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees means satisfied
customers, which leads to profitability.’

— Anne M. Mulcahy, former CEO of Xerox

P eople power, baby. As you can see, people make a business. The talent,
skills and resources you have are your greatest assets. People are not
cogs in the machine. Rather, they, you, are the engineers that will build a
truly modern, souped-up Difference Engine within your organisation.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Define what is special about your company culture

☐ Figure out your ‘why’; your purpose
☐ Take steps towards operational sustainability, integrated with
marketing
☐ Craft your brand messaging as an employer
☐ Identify and shore up your skill and resource gaps
☐ Document and refine your processes

Up next, we explore the toolkit — the technologies you use for marketing
— that you need to build your Difference Engine.
✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER THREE: THE
TOOLKIT

W e’ve talked destinations — goals. We’ve talked people. Now, let’s talk
technology.

It’s the Cluedo whodunnit triplicate. Where (library), who (Colonel

Mustard) and with what (the candlestick, or, in this case, the marketing
toolkit).
Here are some of the reasons why we care about technology as marketers:

As an agency, most of our clients work in the B2B technology

sector. So, we are familiar with and interested in the topic of tech
on a broad basis.
We are a HubSpot partner agency, so we are affiliated with a
marketing technology provider (cards on the table).
Fundamentally, we’re geeks of the highest order. Our CEO ran a
computer games company for years. When we can’t find
something that does what we want, we make our own apps. We
nerd out when new technologies come to market (hello, AI). If
it’s shiny and automates something arduous and goes ‘bang’ or
perhaps ‘zap’, we’re in.

Enough about us. Here’s why you should care about how to use technology
to differentiate your business and accelerate your marketing:
It is only possible to do effective marketing with up-to-date
marketing technology. Handshakes, events and leafletting will
not sustain your business.
The judicious application of certain tools and automations will
empower your whole customer-facing team to engage with
people on a personalised level, at scale.
The right combination of technologies will enable you to track a
tangible return on investment, helping you to build a healthy
pipeline of high-value deals.
Through learning and optimisation, your tech suite will allow
you to unlock new possibilities and innovations over time. It’s
only once we learn enough to understand the parameters of what
a platform can do for us that we discover hidden treasures, those
‘unknown unknowns.’
Data, data, data. The more data you have, with integrated
reporting on the metrics we spoke about in chapter one, the more
informed your decisions will be.

So, what to we mean by 'toolkit' anyway?

We mean the platforms, channels and playbooks that power your marketing.
These tools, as part of a fit-for-purpose tech stack, enable real-time
collaboration, data visibility, analytics and sales and marketing automation.
All of this puts your customers at the heart of your business, giving them
exactly what they need (information, guidance, your services), right when
they need it most during their buyer journey. Tailored to fit. And, from a
customer experience perspective, the more effortless that journey, the more
likely they are to choose your business over a competitor. In short:

‘The technology you use impresses no one. The experience you

create with it is everything.’

— Sean Gerety, User Experience expert

In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Customer relationship management software — “Where do we

keep data about leads, deals and customers?“
2. Tech suite — “How does our tech stack fit together to best serve
my business’s needs?“
3. Marketing automation — “How can technology help our
marketing be more efficient?“
4. Sales automation — “How can technology help our sales be
more efficient?“
5. Playbooks — “What resources can our team create and use
consistently?“
6. Marketing channels — “Where should we be communicating
with our audience?“

At the end, we provide a summary of the actions you can take to collate the
ultimate marketing toolkit that will help you build your very own
Difference Engine.
CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP
MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE

C ustomer relationship management software, most commonly referred to

as ‘CRM’ software, is a platform for storing customer and company
contact records, tracking deals and reporting on aggregated marketing and
sales data.

Deployed correctly, it is a single source of truth for all interactions with a

customer/company/account.

A Potted History Of This Software: Why We’ve

Evolved Beyond The Black Book
In simplest terms, you use a CRM platform for record-keeping. Of course,
now, it’s so much more than that. But, once upon a time (the 1950s), there
were two means of keeping contact records. These were: a list of accounts
kept by your organisation’s bookkeepers and the Rolodex or ‘little black
book’ of customers, former customers and prospects kept by every
salesperson. That meant each salesperson had their own private and highly
guarded lists, with very little means or indeed incentive to share
information that had mostly been gathered via referral and networking.
As we progressed through the 1980s and into the early 2000s, because of
the computer revolution, platforms like ACT! and Goldmine popped up and
became a more widely used way to store contact records. The term
‘customer relationship management’ then became popular with the
introduction of the Siebel Sales Handheld mobile CRM, Salesforce’s
systems and SugarCRM.
Instead of stacks of customer profiles making up a static database, today’s
modern CRM systems (like HubSpot) are made up of dynamic records that
allow businesses to track customer actions, sales activities and all other
aspects of the customer journey. This way, you have a real-time
understanding of your database in one central, accessible format, which
allows businesses to meet customer interaction expectations.

What Makes A (Good) Customer Relationship

Management Platform So Useful
A good CRM platform will provide a one-stop shop for all the information
you have gathered about a contact. That means no matter which department
has contacted this person, whether marketing, sales or customer services,
that activity is logged in one place. In fact, not only is a record of the
activity kept in the CRM database, but the actual activity takes place within
the contact record, meaning you can call and email right from the same
system. So, multiple business functions have visibility on the contact
database and can interact with it. This helps to break down silos and ensure
a streamlined customer experience.
The customer’s experience matters, but so does your experience. Ideally, a
CRM system will help you sort the wheat from the chaff. It allows you to
segment and categorise your leads so you can prioritise nurturing leads
most likely to make a purchase. You want the majority of your contact
database to be made up of well-worked and active leads and customers who
may want to buy again. Don’t we all?
Of course, a contact database contains more than just customer information.
You can use it to store all contact data related to your organisation, such as
suppliers, freelancers, competitor information and more. Recently, we used
our CRM system to build a recruitment process for our agency, so now we
have job applicants in the system. The benefit of a CRM system with good
identity and access management is that you can segment contact visibility
by team, department or even office location, to ensure appropriate levels of
privacy. In this case, our HR team can access this type of contact, and our
sales team cannot.
This is all true of a good CRM system that is well-optimised for your
business. If you feel your CRM platform isn’t living up to the standard
we’ve set here, or that you are not fully deploying your CRM’s capabilities,
then keep reading.

Signs You Need To Upgrade Your Existing System

Ninety-one percent of businesses with more than 11 employees use a CRM
system, according to BuyerZone. The vast majority of organisations have
adopted this technology to some degree, though a fair few ‘buy the book’
only to never read it or just skim the first chapter.
Plus, not every system offers the same capabilities. Many providers deliver
different functionality based on a tiered system. It can be difficult, then, to
recognise when you need to change to a new provider or upgrade your
existing systems. One way you can tell you’re in trouble is if you resonate
with HubSpot Chief Technology Officer, Dharmesh Shah’s
"Frankensystem," which is a "CRM monstrosity cobbled together with
software parts.” This is the state of play for many businesses.
So, say you need to upgrade. Where do you start? Well, providers will be
after the sale, so their perspective is going to be skewed in those terms. But,
they do have some expertise that may be worth considering as you research
your options. Listen out for those nuggets of genuine insight. But, disregard
shiny features and functions; start from your business goals and work back
from there to assess your technology requirements. Understand pain points
across departments and get buy-in from colleagues. Razzle-dazzle is nice,
but ROI is nicer.
Here are sixteen signs you need to upgrade your existing CRM system:

1. The technology does not allow you to reach your business goals.
2. You are paying more to store contacts than the contacts are
worth.
3. The user experience is confusing (and your users are frustrated).
4. Some departments are refusing to use the CRM software,
preferring other methods (salespeople are still rather attached to
their little black books).
5. There are limited training options for new users and scant vendor
support.
6. The system is consistently going down.
7. There are multiple bugs (read: not features).
8. You have to ‘hack’ your way around roadblocks.
9. There is no IP telephony functionality so you can’t make calls
directly through the system.
10. You can’t automate your workflows in the ways you would like.
11. The reporting dashboards are not customisable.
12. The CRM platform doesn’t integrate with your website, forms
and so on.
13. It doesn’t integrate with your other system or applications, such
as email, LinkedIn Sales Navigator or eCommerce platforms.
14. There is poor security and compliance tooling, which puts
sensitive customer data at risk.
15. It is hard (or impossible) to use the platform in a remote-working
setting.
16. It’s time-consuming to maintain and the tech support is
lacklustre.

What An Optimised System Looks Like

Look at this from another angle. Your problem may not be the system itself,
but how well it functions for your business. It may be you need to upgrade
to a higher tier to unlock the functionality that you require. Or, you need to
optimise your usage of the existing systems to get the most out of the
software and leverage it to differentiate your business. Many businesses
have bought a decent CRM but are only using about a tenth of its
capabilities, and that’s both frustrating and wasteful.
A fully optimised CRM platform will be well-organised, with agreed rules
of engagement across departments, such as the use of naming conventions
and folders.
You will have been able to build reporting dashboards that show the
information you need in a way that’s mutually exclusive, yet collectively
exhaustive (MECE). That is, each report shows specific information that,
taken together, gives you the full picture of what you need to know, without
overlap.
And, you will have boosted your efficiency with process automation and AI
support. We’ll return to this topic in much more depth later in this section
and beyond. But, next, let’s talk about the rest of your marketing technology
suite and how this tech stack integrates with a good CRM platform.
TECH SUITE

A longside your CRM platform, you’ll be using a range of applications to

run your business and your marketing. That may include project
management and document-sharing software. It’s likely to also include
marketing, sales and service tools (such as ticketing). As we operate more
and more in a digital workspace, the tools we use, how they fit together and
how data is shared between them are all the more important.

However, to differentiate your business, you don’t have to shell out for the
most popular, most expensive tools on the market. Rather, differentiation
comes from the wisdom to build a tech stack that’s right for you, with room
to grow and adapt as needed, securely, accessibly and with minimal risk or
fuss.
At the time of writing, we can rattle off dozens of recommendations for
marketing tools that will complement your processes and — in some cases
— integrate with your CRM platform. However, the high turnover rate in
this space is worth noting. What we recommend today may be outdated
tomorrow. We’re on the cusp of an Artificial Intelligence boom, so the likes
of ChatGPT, Adobe Firefly, Gemini and other AI technologies may well
either integrate with existing tools or, in time, replace them. This remains to
be seen.
As such, we’ll highlight those few marketing tools that have so far stood the
test of time and that we believe have a strong use case over the next few
years. That said, we advise you to do your own research to figure out which
tools are best for you based on the general terms we outline below.
Project Management
Take your pick of any of the Kanban or Agile-supportive project
management tools to help you manage your marketing campaigns and tasks.
There are plenty to choose from, such as Notion, Jira, Trello, Monday,
ClickUp or even our old favourite if you prefer something more simple:
Basecamp. Or, build your own system in Excel or some other database
builder if that’s more your speed (which may be the case when you’re just
starting out).

Document-Sharing
Use a real-time document-sharing platform to collaborate on your
marketing content and plans with your team. Google Docs, DropBox Paper
and Notion are some excellent options. These offer infinite whitespace to
write, as well as the simple formatting tools you might need, such as
headers and bullet points. Many project management tools have their own
built-in document creation. We are big Notion fans, so we like to do a lot of
our project management AND document-sharing on this platform, which
benefits from database systems and nested pages.

Search Engine Optimisation

Google Analytics and Google Search Console will help you track key
metrics around site performance, traffic and Core Web Vitals. Then, the big
players in the SEO space are, of course, SEMRush, Moz and Ahrefs. These
tools offer advanced SEO analytics and keyword insights (see also, Answer
The Public and Quora) that will help you put your website and your content
on the map. And, you can see third-party backlinks, domain information
and competitor site data that will help you benchmark your progress.
Alongside either one of these, we love the extra information you gain from
SiteBulb, which provides a real deep-dive audit into your site’s critical
issues.

Writing And Editing

Again, we like Notion for writing and editing our content. But, there’s
always trusty old Word, too. Many writing applications have additional
features like focus mode, grammar-checking, tracked edits and even AI-
assisted advice on things like tone and sentence structure. You might
consider Grammarly for all your spell-checking needs. It works nicely
alongside the gloriously-still-free Hemingway app which offers some
readability analysis and other functions, too. SEMrush, Pro Writing Aid,
Smart Edit — there are thousands of providers that offer content writing
and editing tools. Truly, there’s no excuse for error-filled copy on your
website these days, even if you don’t have a professional writer putting
words on the page. (Naturally, we DO recommend having a professional
writer wield that mighty pen.)

Promotion And Outreach

Now, many CRM systems, including HubSpot, integrate with email and
social media platforms so you can schedule promotion and listen to
engagement from the comfort of one platform. However, if your CRM
system does not include these features, there are things like Office Outlook,
MailChimp, Seventh Sense, Buffer and Hootsuite for your email and social
media scheduling needs. And for direct outreach, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
is a fantastic resource to help you find potential leads by sector, region or
other parameters.

Website And Design

We have some slightly unfavourable opinions about quick site-builders like
Wix or Squarespace, based on the plethora of hidden fees and clunky
coding that lurk within such systems. WordPress and HubSpot CMS are
definitely better website hosting platforms for businesses that want a
properly functioning and secure site. (Naturally, we have a preference
between these two giants: HubSpot CMS, of course.) For website design,
and design tasks in general, the standout tools are Adobe XD and Figma.
Octopus is a useful sitemapping tool. For site performance and testing user
behaviour, you could try tools like GTmetrix, Hotjar and Lucky Orange.
Again, this is a crowded and ever-changing space, so bear this in mind
while reading our recommendations.

Time Management
Lastly, time management. Actually, this is an important subject for
marketers who are juggling a lot of moving parts and have to keep ahead of
deadlines and publication schedules. So, if you can find a to-do list,
Pomodoro or concentration application to give you that boost to your
personal efficiency, then it’s undoubtedly worth including in your tech
stack. In fact, throw in wellness applications, too. Ten minutes of guided
meditation may be just the reset you need to come up with your next
brilliant marketing campaign, and is certainly time well spent.

… And More
There are other tools. Video marketing, podcasts and so on require editing
software like Adobe Premier Pro, for example. Many tools have built-in
analytics, but you might want to use another solution for that, like Power BI
or Databox, to aggregate those reports. Your CRM should have dashboards
to monitor key statistics and trends across your website and other channels,
however.
We may have missed your favourite tool off this list. It’s inevitable. This is
an evolving space, and we haven’t tested every marketing tool on the
market. Our tastes may differ. Consider these suggestions as a place to
benchmark your existing tool suite and check for gaps, or to start your own
research, rather than a definitive set of must-haves.
MARKETING AUTOMATION

W ith your CRM and tech stack in place, let’s now look at one of the key
functions of all this technology: automation.

As your audience grows, you will reach a point where you cannot manually
sift through new contacts. Instead, you want to automatically segment your
audience, only passing on viable, high-quality leads to your sales team via
streamlined processes.
One of the most powerful things that a CRM platform and a well-chosen
tech suite offer is the ability to build automation into your marketing and
sales activities.
We’ll start with marketing automation, then look at sales automation the
next section.
A variant on Doc Brown’s Flux Capacitor, marketing automation doesn’t
make time travel possible, but it does make time. When you automate your
marketing activities, you make time to focus on your strategy. You make
time for research and development. You make time for in-depth data
analysis, reporting and decision-making on marketing metrics. You make
time for your customers.
With more time, you can build the momentum you need to propel your
business into the future.
Roads?
Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.

What Is Marketing Automation?

Marketing automation is the process of using technology to streamline
marketing activities. For example, it’s setting up a workflow whereby
one action, like filling in a form, triggers another activity, like sending
an email, without any human intervention. It saves time by reducing
repetitive tasks and removing the risk of human error in a process.
Typically, businesses will invest in one or more platforms or tools to
automate marketing efforts such as lead capture, email or social media.

How To Automate Your Marketing

Within most marketing activities, there’s room to accelerate and innovate.
Here are some examples of areas where businesses often use marketing
automation:

Lead capture with gated content: Put your best content behind a
form as a downloadable asset, such as a PDF guidebook. When
your site visitors fill in the form with their details, they gain
access to this content, and you get leads in your database that
you can qualify and pass on to Sales.
Process workflows: These automations are triggered by an
action, behaviour or time. You can use them to streamline parts
of your processes. To follow on from the point above, use
automation to do some of that qualification process for you by
filtering out leads that are a bad fit based on things like company
size or country ID.
Lead scoring: We talk about ‘warm leads’ a lot in marketing. It’s
a finger-in-the-air kind of metric — a lead that has engaged with
a lot of marketing materials recently and may be prime picking.
If you assign a value to certain activities, like page views or form
fills or email clicks, then you can set up an automated ‘score’ for
that contact, which tells you if they are ‘warm’ or not. The higher
the score, the hotter the lead. This can help your sales team to
prioritise who to contact. More on this in chapter seven.
Queued smart forms: Short forms that ask as little as possible
from the site visitor are more likely to get conversions. We’ve
seen this in action. One of our forms asks for four pieces of
information and last year, it had an 11 percent conversion rate.
Our other form asks for three pieces of information. It had a 40
percent conversion rate. Big difference. To keep your forms short
and sweet, queue your fields so they appear sequentially. That
way, if you have a returning contact fill in a second form, you
can get new information to add to their contact record. If first
you asked for their email, next you ask for their job title, and so
on.
Marketing emails for lead nurturing: Build pre-written emails
that you can send to contacts after they’ve performed an action,
such as downloading a piece of gated content. For example, a
week after such an action, an automated email could say
something like, ‘You recently downloaded our eBook on cloud
migration. Here’s a relevant article about how to optimise your
cloud infrastructure once you’re in Azure.’
Re-engagement: Keep your database clean and tidy by
automating your re-engagement process. After a certain amount
of time without activity, this automation would send an email to
the contact. And, if they do not engage, remove them from the
database so your contact list is a reflection of engaged, active and
useful contacts.
Content personalisation: A marketing automation platform (like
HubSpot’s Marketing Hub Pro or Enterprise) unlocks this
powerful functionality. With it, you can create personalised
content. For example, emails that address the recipient by name.
Or, you can refer to their company name or, indeed, any other
data you have in your system about that contact, such as location.
Smart content: Taking personalisation one step further, use the
data you have about a contact to completely change what a
person sees on your website. So, a returning site visitor might see
a ‘Welcome back!’ on the homepage. A current customer might
get a navigation that prioritises their portal login. The
possibilities are infinite.
Social media and digital advertising: Again, depending on the
tools you use, there are many opportunities to automate social
media posting, from having AI write the content to digital ads
(yes, the uncannily observant ones on your Facebook feed) that
encourage people to return to your site.

Benefits Of Marketing Automation

We’ve already said marketing automation saves time. How much time is
relative (for the deeply nerdy, Google XKCD’s ‘Is it worth the time?’
comic). In essence, automation makes everything you do more efficient. So,
you can do more of it, or spend less time doing that task and more time on
something else.
The potential of automation isn’t just about getting a computer to do what a
human once did, though. It’s about rethinking the whole process. It gives
you the opportunity to re-design and improve how you do something and
identify where human intervention is most useful and powerful.
Here are some other benefits of marketing automation. It can also:

Allow a steady stream of contacts to enter your database through

inbound conversion opportunities.
Prompt contacts to return to your website and move further along
the buyer’s journey, while always being exposed to content that’s
relevant to their needs.
Help to bring a personal touch (a.k.a. Hi [First name]) to your
brand, without a lot of human input.
Ensure all your leads are properly qualified and prioritised, so
no-one slips through the net.
Keep your marketing team accountable to follow-up on triggered
tasks, reducing the number of mistakes or missed opportunities.
Give you the ability to reduce spend on new hires for marketing.
(Instead, you hand your existing team super powers!)
Provide the fast connection and engagement you need to get your
potential customers’ attention, before your competition can spin
up their lumbering old spreadsheet.
Now, let’s take a look at sales automation.
SALES AUTOMATION

S ales automation will help your sales representatives spend their valuable
time on building relationships with customers, rather than in
bureaucracy. Saying that, paperwork had a place for a reason. It provided
data, insights. The true benefit of sales automation is you get to keep and
expand on that data, all with very little effort, while focusing on
relationship-building. Automation can never replace that human element,
but it can empower your people and fit within their workflow.
Your mantra here? ‘No lead left behind.’

How To Automate Your Sales

The first step to effective and efficient B2B sales is to identify and map out
processes.
Once you have them written down, then you can streamline each step,
create service level agreements (SLAs) to align sales and marketing teams
and build scalability into your systems through automation.
Here are some examples of how businesses use automation in the sales
process:

Copy company and contact data between records or trigger

actions at both levels: Some CRM platforms, like our go-to
HubSpot CRM, have separate records for companies and
contacts. It can be helpful to automatically copy information
across all contacts associated with a company so you don’t have
to fill this in manually.
Trigger notifications and tasks for Sales: Set up an automation
that notifies Sales whenever the lead does something important
like view core buying pages, complete a lead nurturing email
workflow or requests a demo. You can make it so new leads are
automatically assigned to a contact owner as well.
Add the lead to a suppression list: This is a good way to
temporarily remove leads from marketing activities without
having to change any status or lifecycle stages. It says: ‘if a lead
is on this list then only Sales can contact them’. Some companies
may choose to use this method to enable a distinct handover
from Marketing to Sales, with no overlap.
Send sales emails: Set up template emails that go out every few
days, without your sales reps having to do anything. When a
contact replies, make sure this sequence is set up to stop sending
and notify the contact owner to send a manual reply. This helps
the sales team to work many contacts at once. In HubSpot, you
can even create a ‘sequence’ which you set up to include
touchpoints, calls as well as emails, throughout. So, sales reps
get a task to call the contact in between emails. This ensures
leads are being contacted across multiple platforms and are being
worked properly.
Create lists based on next sales action: You may have hundreds
or even thousands and tens of thousands of contacts in your
database. Sales people have to know at a glance what needs to
happen next for each of them. If you set up lists that are
populated based on ‘next sales action’ then sales reps will get a
list of people who need to be qualified, called, emailed,
messaged and so on, segmented by each activity. This makes it
easier to do tasks in bulk. Call these people. Email those people.
Etcetera.
Trigger events based on deals: Once you have a deal in the
pipeline, you want reminders or events to occur when you move
that deal through each stage. Rather than do this manually, use
automations to trigger based on this metric. For example, when a
deal is closed successfully, then you want the company and
associated contact records to be marked as ‘client’, you want the
deal amount to be added to your reporting and you want a
reminder in the diary to check-in for future upsell opportunities.

Benefits Of Sales Automation

By building automation into your marketing and sales processes, you’ll
create a seamless, timely experience for all your leads. And, for your sales
team, it will help them achieve two things that they care about:

1. Efficiency — ’It will make your life easier. It will remove the
friction in day-to-day work. It will do what you once did
manually.’
2. Effectiveness — ’It will give you key insights to do your job
better. It will give you the visibility to ensure you’re working the
right leads.’

Automation is only possible with the right tools. Not every CRM platform
has the functionality you might need to do everything we’ve suggested
here. You may need multiple tools to achieve some of this. It’s worth the
investment. The truth is, any of these functions could be a game-changer for
your business. So, you need to ensure you have the marketing and sales
technology that enables you to build out automations like these, rather than
systems that stand in the way of progress. Welcome to our robot overlords,
we say.
PLAYBOOKS

I nsales
the last section we mentioned using template sales emails to make your
process more efficient. Templates and playbooks work alongside
good processes, SLAs and automations to help you optimise your use of
marketing technology. Often, they can be built into your marketing tech
stack and into your CRM, ensuring that they are living, breathing
documents rather than dusty manuals. This is how you go from using ten
percent of what your tools are actually capable of, to using one hundred
percent of those tools, to maximum effect.

Armed with this library of resources, you will bring the same value with
less effort, improving your profitability with no discernible compromise to
the quality of your outputs. In fact, having playbooks improves consistency
overall, so you are more likely to produce your best work, every time.
We’re willing to bet there are some things you do over and over again. For
those projects, deliverables, campaigns and so on, you can save yourself
some mental effort by making templates and step-by-step playbooks.
Think of the best restaurants. El Bulli is the classic example — praised
equally for both innovation and consistency. The chef-team provided high-
value offerings with minimal wastage and totally optimised levels of effort,
night after night. This is what elevated the brand to greatness. Having
playbooks, then, will help you on your path to a ‘profit and value’ model,
rather than a ‘revenue and resources’ model. That’s how you get those
Michelin stars.

What Is A Playbook?
A playbook is a set of templates and scripts that you can use for a
particular marketing or sales process. Often, it comes with step-by-step
guidance for how to best use the templates, and the sequence in which
these templates might be used.
It’s not quite the same as a process (see ‘Processes’ in chapter two), but it
can be used within a process to make it more efficient. And, you might
embed these templates into certain platforms, as we described in the
sections on ‘Marketing automation’ and ‘Sales automation’.

Template Ideas For Marketing And Sales

Google is your friend here. You’ll find many examples of playbooks and
standalone templates online.
In fact, if you head to the Articulate Marketing website we have several
useful playbooks in our resource library. For example, we have a playbook
for inbound sales, replete with call scripts and template emails.
Here are some things you might want to create a playbook or template for:

LinkedIn messaging: For outbound prospecting, you may find it

helpful to start a relationship with a quick connect message on
LinkedIn. Have a standard format for this and you can get a good
number of connects done each week with minimal effort.
Video/voice message script: Use a video or voice message script
to persuade a prospect and inform them about what you do.
Negotiations/objection handling script: Another one for the sales
reps. Have a list of common objections and how to handle them
ready to go. Then, you can negotiate your way to a deal without
getting caught on the back foot.
Proposal decks: When giving a proposal to a prospect, use a
stand proposal deck as a base, with other decks as add-ons for
particular lines of conversation, client industries or services. This
way, you can put something together quickly and don’t miss out
any key information.
You could also use templates for things like plans, strategic documentation
and roadmapping, such as:

SLAs: Have a standard format for your service level agreements

and keep these with your standard operating procedures (SOPs),
so they’re visible for everyone.
Conversion plan: Use once per year to map out current numbers
of site visitors, outbound and inbound leads and their percentage
conversion rates as they are qualified through each lifecycle
stage, from Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) to client. Then,
plan what you’d like to achieve next year. It can help to start
from the number of clients and work your way back up to site
traffic based on what you know about your conversion rates at
each stage.
Buyer journey: use once per year to map out the buyer journey
from first-touch through to purchase and even beyond. Consider
what activities your potential customer is doing, how they feel,
what their expectations and goals are, what marketing channels
or assets they may be engaging with and what metrics you might
use to measure that engagement. (More on this in chapter four.)
Buyer persona: We’ll talk about personas in chapter three, but
you can use a template to fill in your buyer persona and ideal
client profile (ICP) information. A persona is a semi-fictional
representation of your ideal customer. A template for a persona
should include things like demographic information, job titles,
goals, pain points and where they go to find resources online.

Email Template Ideas

Emails are a great place to start making templates because everyone uses
them and they take a lot of time to write if you do them without a template.
You can make a playbook of sales and marketing emails, for example. Here
are some things you might want to include:

Form-fill follow-up: After a lead has filled in a form to gain

access to something like a white paper or a webinar, use a
standard-issue follow-up email format to send the asset or link to
their inbox.
Book a meeting/assessment/demo: If things are going well,
you’ll need to send a lot of these ‘book a meeting’-type emails.
Have templates ready to go and you’ll save hours of time.
Recommendations: If you offer services, then having a standard
template listing what you do, with links to case studies or other
resources, can be a helpful tool. Use it as a meeting follow-up
email.
About the company: People want to know who you are, not just
what you do. Have a template email that’s all about your culture,
values and history. That’s a story worth telling.
Try again (and again): Not everyone will read the first email you
send, or the second. Have a bank of ‘I tried to get in touch - did
you have a chance to think about my last email?’ type email
templates ready to go. Maybe email number seven will be the
one that gets lucky. Top tip: add new value with each email, for
example, by sharing a different link each time.
A fond farewell: Sometimes, you need to call it a day. If a
prospect isn’t responding to you, use a friendly goodbye email
template to end the (sadly one-sided) conversation on good
terms. Don’t guilt-trip.

A good CRM platform will allow you to embed things like your personas,
emails and call scripts directly into the system, making them easy to access.
We recommend using those tools if they are available.
Your mindset should be this: ‘What can I do to ensure my people are doing
the most high-value activities possible to promote my business, engage with
our target audience and win bigger, better deals?’
The answer is neither sticks or carrots. People are not donkeys. It’s more
about the systems you create: the technology, training, processes and
playbooks. These are the things that make a difference.
MARKETING CHANNELS

I fchannels
your CRM platform is the back-end of your tech stack, then marketing
are the front-end. They are the (primarily) digital platforms
where your audience sees the content you produce and learns about your
company and services.

Every business has to work out for itself where its audience is spending
time, and so where it should maintain an active presence. The bigger the
presence, the more likely your audience will notice you and buy from you.
Ipso facto, the best marketing channel is your website. That’s the platform
where you have the most control. It’s your digital shop front. You want to
drive traffic to this site and get noticed on search engines. That’s the heart
of inbound marketing. Of course, you need to get people to come to your
site. To do that, it helps to go where they are already. Throughout this book,
we’ve talked about websites and there’s a lot more on this topic to come.
For now, we’ll outline ten other marketing channels and their benefits.
We’ll talk in more depth about how to make best use of a few key platforms
in the ‘Promotion’ section of chapter six.
Use this list to gauge your current state of play. What platforms do you use?
Which ones get the most attention and why? What data do you have to
show this is where your audience is getting their information? What are
your growth areas for the next year?

1. Email
Email is a great way to promote your business and get contacts who have
already engaged with your content to return to the website. When sending
marketing and sales emails, you want to ensure they appear correctly on all
email providers, and aren’t going straight to spam. Test how your emails
look on different devices and on the main email providers such as Outlook
and Gmail. Make sure you’re sending emails from a clear sender address
linked to your company, and that you’re compliant with the law (such as
GDPR in the UK and Europe).

2. Social Media
For B2B marketing, we suggest you prioritise posting on LinkedIn. This is
a lively space for business networking. People on this platform (all one
billion of them) expect to talk business here. Nevertheless, it’s useful to
have a presence on Facebook (three billion users), Instagram (two billion
users) and X/Twitter (500 million users… and declining), too. Other
platforms dominate in different parts of the world, such as WeChat in
China.

3. Industry Aggregate Sites And Directories

Most industries will have a few aggregate sites kicking about. For service
providers, there’s [Link], as an example. ‘Yell’ is a big one. Make sure
you have set up at least a free profile on as many of these as you can find.
It’s another backlink, if nothing else. Moreso, it’s probably where your
audience will go when they’re researching providers. You may choose to
pay for a profile on a particularly good site, if you want to elevate your
brand’s presence there.

4. Review Sites
TripAdvisor, Yelp, Glassdoor — there are any number of these review sites.
People use peer reviews to decide if you are a good business to work with,
so the more good reviews you have, the better. Testimonials are not
something you can control, but you can encourage happy customers to post
a review.

5. Forums
Some industries are more forum-heavy than others. Quora is a good general
forum to have a presence on. Answer questions relevant to your industry to
build your position as an expert.

6. Podcasts
You may have your own podcast, or you may be a guest on another podcast.
This is an increasingly popular way of delivering content to an audience.
Often, podcasts are hosted on multiple platforms such as Spotify or Apple.
Some platforms can simulcast your podcast across multiple media sites.

7. Video Platforms
As with podcasts, if you’re running an online speaking event, a webinar or
you want to leverage video marketing for your business, then you need a
channel like YouTube or Vimeo to do it.

8. Events
Speaking in terms of tech, we mean online events, but of course, these
could be in-person. They’re a marketing channel like any other and can be a
useful way to broaden your reach. In fact, there are whole platforms
dedicated to hosting online conferences, such as vFairs.

9. Publications And Print Media

Press release sites will post your company news on a range of platforms.
These do sometimes get picked up by journalists for news media. You can
also get published or run ads on magazines, if it makes sense to do so in
your industry. It’s worth investigating what niche publications your
audience reads and finding out if there are opportunities for you to get a
featured article or advertisement. These platforms can be quite costly, but
they also have the potential for a high return, if your story is particularly
sensational.

10. Advertising
Advertising is a very broad topic. Many businesses use pay-per-click
advertising like Google Ads or ads on social media, but of course there are
a myriad of places to advertise. Again, this can be a costly marketing
channel, but useful if you’ve got well-placed, well-timed persuasive ads.
We’d suggest starting with free channels like social and email, and going
from there. But, that’s what any inbound marketer would say. You can test
each channel and see what works best for you.

Prioritise And Focus

For many of these channels, the goal is — you guessed it — to funnel
traffic to your website and to drive contacts into your database, ideally via
integrations with your CRM system. All roads lead to Rome. (A hub of
commerce, talent, thought leadership and immense beauty that has stood the
test of time… Hey, we’d all like a Rome, right? Sadly, we hear it wasn’t
built in a day…)
Your best bet is to prioritise. Establish your presence on three or four
channels. Look at where you get the most engagement, then focus your
efforts to optimise communications there. Build connections and a
consistent and recognisable brand voice. Where possible, use scheduling
software, workflows and tools to set up a central framework for your
promotional channels. Your CRM platform may have this built-in, or you
can use any number of tools on the market to do so.
Remember, you don’t get to choose where your audience might be. You
can’t pick your platform based on what you’d prefer to use. Rather, you
must differentiate yourself within highly trafficked, competitive spaces,
standing apart through your brand identity, your content and the quality of
your offering.
THE TOOLKIT — SUMMARY
OF ACTIONS
‘Tools are great, but content marketing success is about the wizard,
not the wand.’

— Jay Baer, business growth thought leader and speaker

S aying that, as we well know, ‘the wand chooses the wizard’. In other
words, there is power in the tools we use. Marshall McLuhan (or
possibly Churchill or others, as is the way with these aphorisms of the
zeitgeist) said, ‘We shape our tools and thereafter, they shape us.’ They help
us direct our talents and provide the means to be more productive in a
workday than ever before.
Digital platforms and channels give you the chance to reach your audience
and drive them to buy. It’s not just about having them, but about how you
use them. Modern businesses cannot be complacent about marketing tech.
It’s too important. And it’s worth investing in if you want marketing magic,
rather than a damp squib.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Use a good CRM platform, at the right tier for your ambitions
☐ Put together your ideal tech suite — the dream team
☐ Explore the audience-reaching possibilities of marketing automation
☐ Make your sales more efficient and consistent with sales automation
☐ Create a bank of playbooks, templates and scripts
☐ Identify and prioritise your marketing channels based on audience
presence

You’ve set your goals, got the right people on the job and put together your
toolkit. Up next, let’s explore the strategic blueprints that will help you plan
and build your Difference Engine.

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER FOUR: STRATEGIC
BLUEPRINTS

I n the 1840s, a spate of photographic inventions shook the world.

Alongside the invention of photography itself (thanks, Daguerre) this period
included the innovation that was to become the blueprint.
This was the only low-cost process of accurately copying drawings that
would exist for a century.
John Herschel, a mathematician, astronomer (son of William Herschel),
chemist and inventor, was this process’s progenitor. He found that by
coating paper with a photosensitive compound, where that compound is
exposed to strong light, it becomes insoluble blue ferric ferrocyanide —
what we know today as ‘Prussian blue’. It was this ‘negative’ style of
cyanotype printing that was the precursor to the ‘blueprint’.
Of course, the modern term ‘blueprint’ refers to any kind of detailed plan or
engineering schematic. But its origins as a means to print and copy
schematics multiple times, accurately, are what we’d like you to focus on
for a moment. That is: blueprints as repeatable, accurate and uniform.
For marketing differentiation, consistency is the path to brand recognition.
Yes, stand out, be different. But in doing so, be strategically consistent by
design. Use consistent positioning, tone, messaging, targeting and so on in
all of your marketing content and communications. Through this repetition,
you become more visible and memorable as a business.
People buy from brands they recognise.
The ‘strategic blueprints’ of this chapter are ways to think about and
document the parts of your brand that need to be consistent in order for
your marketing to be successful. We will talk about visual brand
consistency in the next chapter, as well.
In fact, we see this as such a vital part of the marketing process that all
clients who come to our agency have to — as we put it — ‘come through
the strategic door’. That is, we take a strategy-first approach to branding
and marketing, always. This is absolutely critical to get right if you want to
lead the pack.
In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Positioning — "How do we make the business and our offerings

more memorable?"
2. Tone of voice — "What does my business’s ‘voice’ sound like
and is it distinctive?"
3. Messaging — "What are the key messages we want to get across
to our audience?"
4. Ideal client profile — "Which sectors, verticals, and customer
and company profiles are we targeting?"
5. Personas — "What is an ideal representation of my customer(s)
and what they care about?"
6. Buyer journey — "What steps make up the journey from stranger
to customer?"

At the end, we provide a summary of the actions you must take to create
strategic blueprints for your Difference Engine.
POSITIONING

B rand positioning is the synthesis of the distinctive value you bring to

your target market. It inspires action.

Positioning is a short-form summary of your business’s offering as

compared to others in your sector. It’s intended to get your audience to
engage with your brand and buy what you’re selling. It can be something
that changes over time or stays the same, or you can even have different
positioning for certain product lines, regions or some other segmentation.
Like employer branding, which we’ve discussed in chapter two, it is this
brand positioning that will elevate even the most commercialised business
as an attractive and unique organisation. Except in this case, we’re
attracting potential customers, not prospective employees. Brand
positioning also works alongside, or can even be, your “Why?” — your
purpose. It’s a promise between your business and the customer.

The Power Of Positioning

Positioning is a really important step in building your Difference Engine.
For example, Articulate Marketing’s positioning statement is (you guessed
it):

‘We build Difference Engines.’

Or, in its longer form:

‘We build Difference Engines for purposeful and ambitious B2B
technology companies, using marketing best practices to
differentiate their brands.’

Let’s unpack that further. That statement opened up the lexicon of

engineering terminology, which is relatable for our B2B tech audience. It
speaks to our credibility as differentiators and our emphasis on brand
differentiation itself as the linchpin for exceptional marketing.
Would you believe this started out as a simple brand statement? A tagline.
Flavour text. It quickly grew legs. Good positioning, like a good story, has a
tendency to take on a life of its own. After two years, one simple statement,
one idea, has become a huge part of how we talk about and do marketing.
We’ve even written a book about it. You’re reading it. That’s powerful
positioning in action. What was once a simple statement has become more
than a reflection of our business and services, it has, in turn, shaped our
business. It's even impacted how we think: more 'engineer' than 'marketer'.

The Pitfalls Of Positioning

Brand positioning statements might be short, but they’re hard to pin down.
Too many opinions from too many stakeholders, and you get ‘word salad’
(a.k.a. meaningless nonsense). A lack of engaged voices and you get the
loudest person’s opinion (with no buy-in across the business). Overwork it,
and you end up crafting something generic and banal. Underwork it, and
you may overemphasise the wrong thing entirely and fail to resonate with
your customers.
Here are three things that are NOT positioning (but that companies THINK
are):

1. Table stakes: As a business up against tough competition, you

need to cover your bases. For a marketing agency, we risk getting
rejected for a project if we don't say 'we do SEO' on our website,
for example. But those aren't differentiators; they're just the table
stakes.
2. Sock puppets: There are things that you have to pay lip service
to, but you really only do the bare minimum to get by. It's not a
differentiating, full-stack service. It's a sock puppet, and it won't
hold up to scrutiny if you use it as part of your positioning. (Hat
tip to Professor Sonia Marciano for the phrase.)
3. MacGuffins: In film theory, a MacGuffin drives the plot forward,
but in and of itself isn't that important. In business, it's how you
name or package your products and services. This could be, for
example, 'Lockbox' - a security services package. The services
themselves are nothing that differentiated, but the name is.
However, again, this is not positioning; this is something you
made up to dazzle people. While still useful and very much a part
of branding, MacGuffins are not in themselves positioning.
Positioning has to have more depth and, to coin Stephen Colbert,
'truthiness'.

We’ve said this before, but it’s worth restating: Don’t bother positioning
your business based on low prices. That’s a road to ruin.

How To Think About Positioning

What do you want to be famous for?
What unique capabilities do you bring?
What do you do differently from your competitors?

These are some questions to start asking yourself as you consider your
brand positioning. We also recommend looking for examples across a range
of industries. Listerine (yes, the mouthwash) has a nice framework for
brand positioning that you can try yourself. Given they’ve achieved the
holy grail of brand positioning, becoming a household name, they’re an
example worth following:

'To [target segments], Listerine is the [frame of reference] that

[rational or emotional benefit promise]. That's because Listerine is
[reasons to believe].’

Just for fun, we made one up for Subaru:

‘For social justice-minded parents, Subaru is the safe SUV that

protects your loved ones because it has four-wheel drive, better
safety features and a stronger protective cage.’

Or, for short:

‘Subaru: made to protect your loved ones.’

See how we zeroed in on the emotional benefit? In fact, this is rather

harmonious with the company’s actual tagline:

‘Love: It's what makes a Subaru a Subaru.’

Of course, Subaru has had many advertising campaigns and taglines

through the decades. Positioning is an active thing. It doesn’t have to be set
in stone. Nevertheless, if you change your positioning you’ll need to
consider what your transition strategy looks like and how to roll that out
consistently across all your marketing platforms.
Document your positioning and make it accessible to relevant stakeholders.
Make it easy to understand, so it can be translated into website content and
other kinds of marketing collateral. To do that, it’s helpful to add a short
value proposition and proof-points to your ‘big idea’. These two things help
you ensure that your customer is at the centre of your positioning, not your
business. And, they ground your positioning in reality, making it tangible
rather than simply words on a page.
TONE OF VOICE
‘People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.’

— Maya Angelou, American memoirist and poet

T one of voice (ToV) is the attitude of your communications. It’s how you
say something. It’s the energy you bring. It’s what you make people feel
about your business.

To put it another way, it’s the unspoken but ever-present voice of your
brand identity and personality. What we mean is, when it comes to ToV, you
show, don’t tell. You speak confidently, you don’t say ‘we are confident’.
You embody professionalism in every email, but every email doesn’t start
with ‘As a professional…’. It’s not what you say, but how you say it.

How ‘Tone Of Voice’ Works

The thing is, you probably already have a tone of voice, even if you haven't
curated it, thought about it or documented it. In some way, it exists. Either
you have some kind of distinct tone, but it’s not intentional and likely isn’t
relaying what you want — or, you don’t have anything particularly distinct,
which means your tone ends up fractured and neutral. It's some kind of
“default” voice, often the natural tone of whoever is writing at the time.
What you need is a deliberate tone of voice, applied consistently across all
of your written communication. This builds trust. It sets expectations.
Everything is aligned. Like LEGO, 'every brick is perfect'. Here are the
LEGO bricks of ToV:

Attitude: What is the attitude you want to demonstrate as a

business? Are you energetic and youthful, or calm and
professional, for example?
Energy: This is the overall vibe of your tone. Are you positive
and optimistic? Interrogative and inquisitive? Bold and
assertive?
Syntax and rules: These are the practical details. For example, do
you refer to your business as ‘we’ or do you always use your
business’s name?
Your audience: This is where being true to your brand, your
business and who you are meets the needs of your customers.
You want to resonate with your audience and reflect their tone of
voice back to them to some extent, so it’s a bit of a two-way
street.

Think of your favourite brand. How would you describe their attitude, their
tone of voice? Is it Looney Tunes or Disney? McKinsey opts for a readable
yet academic tone of voice. Notion goes for a wholesome, relatable, witty
tone of voice. Spotify is cool and self-referential. Apple is confident and
minimalistic. Ben & Jerry's is light-hearted and fun. Skittles is just wacky.
How would you describe your own voice, by comparison? If you had to
pick a handful of adjectives to describe it, what would they be?
Can’t get past ‘professional, friendly and confident’? Then you need to do
some more work. Everyone says that stuff; it’s not differentiating. Here’s
how to actually craft a unique tone of voice:

1. Build On Your Values

Consider your unique positioning. What makes your business special? What
is your “Why?”, what are your values? How could that relate to tone? How
can tone bring your messaging to life? These things are not something you
can consider in isolation. They inform one another.

For example, if you say you value the personal touch and customer
relationships but your tone of voice is quite formal, then you might be
working against yourself.

2. Be Ambitious
Your tone of voice defines how you speak as your best self as a business.
Think MAYA: Most advanced, yet acceptable. In other words, ambitiously
and bravely push yourself to the edge of your comfort zone. Being
distinctive requires being different from everybody else. You can still fit in,
but be specific about what makes you different. That's where the real
differentiation lies. Instead of ‘friendly’, be ‘gregarious’. Instead of
‘trustworthy’, be ‘radically honest’. Go the extra mile.

3. Consider Your Audience

Think about your target audience (more on personas later in this chapter).
What media or people do they already trust? Magazines, influencers,
podcasts, bloggers and vloggers, forums, and so on. Individuals tend to
have a better, clearer tone of voice than companies, because it's their voice.
It's not a voice built by committee. If these people inspire your target
audience, consider why that might be and what you could learn.

4. Pay Attention To The Details

Document the details, like British English vs. American English vs. 'export'
English (simplified and idiom-free for easy translation into other
languages). There's also audience variation, which is how to talk to different
people, such as technical vs. non-technical people. Not to mention little
things like how to use quotation marks, numbers, dates, capitalisation and
symbols.
5. Don't Do Quirky For The Sake Of It
Yes, quirky is distinctive. But you can choose NOT to be quirky if it just
doesn't suit you. Equally, serious businesses can often afford to undo the top
button, just a bit.

6. Beware Smooth Pebbles

Build consensus, but don't play it too safe. It's easy to get to a tone of voice
that's inoffensive, but not very helpful or prescriptive. Be wary of HiPPOs
a.k.a. the highest paid person's opinion, or the 'Owner of No'. That way lies
pedantry, obsequiousness and the false promise of a 'professional' tone of
voice (a.k.a. 'innocuous thought leadership', which is a tricky combination
to achieve).

7. Don't Talk To Yourself

Just because you are, for example, a technically savvy, white, middle-aged,
middle-class person, it doesn't mean your audience is all of those things.
Separate your tone of voice from the business's tone of voice.

8. Review Everything
Review all your assets and update them in line with your new tone of voice.
This could take a while. Start with the most visible pages and content. Use
it for new content. Don't forget the little things, like your cookie policy pop-
up or your footer copy.
Top tip: If you are trying to write with a particular tone of voice, listen to a
particular artist or album while you write. Remember, you’re tapping into
the emotions of your audience, so music is an effective tool to access the
emotions you want to express.
MESSAGING

A longside positioning, value proposition and tone of voice comes

messaging. By this, we mean the main messages you want to get across
to your audience about your business.

Your obvious is your talent. It’s likely that what you do best is both valuable
to your customers and not being talked about enough. Say what's obvious
about your business that people need to remember. Then say it a hundred
times in a hundred different ways. That’s how you drive your message
home.

Messaging In Perspective
Consider these three perspectives when thinking about these key messages:

1. Customer perspective: What’s important to your customers? If

your messaging doesn’t speak to their needs, you may lose their
interest or trust. Survey or interview your existing client base and
note down the common topics or keywords. Be informed about
what matters to them.
2. Internal perspective: It’s important to get organisation-wide input
into your brand messaging. What do your employees think your
business’s values are? What do they think make your products or
services unique, different or useful to your customers?
3. Marketplace perspective: Where do you position yourself in the
marketplace? What makes you stand out amongst other similar
businesses within your chosen industry?

How To Format Your Messaging

First of all, don’t have too many messages. If you want to tell your audience
a dozen things about your business, they’ll zone out and remember none of
them. What you need to do is distil the three or four key messages that
resonate with customers and that you can convey reliably.
Then, embed those messages throughout your content. Say one of your core
messages is, ‘We deliver exceptional customer service’. You could put
proof points on your website, such as showcasing the percentage of happy
customers, or give a guaranteed response time if you make an enquiry. You
could end a blog article with (for example), ‘Our customer service team is
dedicated to giving you a world-class experience with a 24-hour turnaround
on all requests for reps to come to your business. Get in touch to find out
how we can modernise your IT systems.’
Here’s how you may want to format each key message:

What we say — The most succinct version of your message.

Keep it short and memorable.
Why it matters — A short explanation about what value this
brings (consider the three perspectives above). So, if the message
is ‘We help businesses be more data secure’ then this matters
because data breaches are costly and embarrassing, hackers are
getting more and more savvy, and so on.
Proof points — A handful of data points that prove your message
is more than just empty words. If you deliver excellent outcomes
for customers, then what proof do you have? Testimonials, case
studies, awards or the number of referrals you got last year are
all good proof points.
Formatting your messages this way makes them pretty bullet-proof. Bonus
points if you can tie your messaging in with your tone and positioning. As
we mentioned, our ‘Difference Engine’ positioning opened up the language
and tone of engineering, innovation and technical complexity in the context
of marketing. And, our messages talk about our team as ‘expert marketing
engineers’ and our approach as ‘clear-minded about complexity’. As you
can see, it all ties together.

Example Messages To Inspire You

These examples are based on work we’ve done with clients. We hope they
spark some bright ideas for your own messaging.

We get the job done on time and within budget

Our team is in the trenches with you
You need both experience and ingenuity
Collaboration should be easy
We’re the geeks (so you don’t have to be)
Privacy, security and trust are non-negotiable
If a process exists and is repeated, it should be automated
Small enough to care, big enough to cope
We do AI in the wild
We don’t sell tech, we solve problems
Support that makes you look good
Enterprise-approved
We put compliance at the heart of care
Flexible software for real-world data challenges
We help you succeed, every time
Information must be accessible to be useful
We’re a family-run, privately-held business
The ‘next step’ is the most vital one
We live our purpose and our values (a.k.a. we’re good eggs)
The Benefits Of Clear Messaging
Yes, your brand positioning will always be the most bold and succinct
encapsulation of what you want people to hear, but you do need to articulate
a few supporting messages to round out that positioning. By putting a
handful of clear messages out there, on a consistent basis, you’ll stand out
from other companies that are trying to say too much all at once.
Imagine you’ve asked someone who has engaged with your business to
describe your company. In reply, they rattle off a list of your key messages:
“You really seem to care about making customers happy. I see you go above
and beyond to help people. And, I can tell from your reviews that you’re
super reliable.” Wow. That’s how you know you’ve succeeded.
Speaking of your audience, let’s delve into client profiles and personas,
next.
IDEAL CLIENT PROFILE

A naudience.
ideal client profile, or ‘ICP’, reflects the parameters of your target
In a business-to-business setting, that means the organisations
that you want to sell to.

HubSpot defines an ICP as:

'The perfect customer for what your organisation solves for.’

Say you want to target B2B FinTechs in the UK with 200 seats and an
annual revenue of £20 million plus. That’s an ICP.
It doesn’t have to be super long. It does have to be specific and
exclusionary in order to differentiate your business. You need a narrow
enough ICP that your marketing speaks directly to that audience, so you
avoid the pitfall of trying to be everything to everyone. Of course, you may
end up working with customers outside this ICP. They may find you. That’s
fine. But in order for you to find your ideal clients, you need to focus your
attention to attract their attention.
Remember, all marketing is targeting.

What To Watch Out For

First off, don't settle for your existing market. Think ahead. Think
scalability.
While we encourage you to look at your customer database as a source of
inspiration, never fall into the trap of simply creating a list of people you've
sold to recently. If you have ambitions to expand, you can lead the target by
jotting down your aspirations as well as capturing the profile of your
current client base.
Worth noting that ICPs are not about individual people, either. Multiple
personas can exist within one ICP. (We'll come to personas next.)
You may even have more than one ICP. However. ICPs are like children.
You have one kid, it costs a certain amount to keep them clothed, fed,
educated, entertained and so on. You have a second child, then yes you can
use some of your existing resources, but even if your costs don’t double,
they do increase substantially. The more ICPs you have, the more it costs to
market to each one, so make sure you budget accordingly. (Naturally, we
love all our ICPs equally.)

How To Format Your Ideal Client Profile

As a baseline, you want to know your ICP’s location, size, sector and how
much money they make.
If you also know what your average (or ideal) deal size is, and the industry
average percent of revenue that is spent on your services, whether that’s IT
or something else, then you can extrapolate the ideal revenue range for your
clients. Think of this in terms of TAM, SAM and SOM:

TAM = Total Addressable Market (that is, the total market for
your offering).
SAM = Serviceable Available Market (the portion of the market
you can acquire, if the stars align and all things being ideal).
SOM = Serviceable Obtainable Market (the percentage of the
market that it is realistic for you to acquire, given your resources,
competitors and so on).

Beyond that, it can be useful to specify things like certain characteristics,

values or behaviours held by your target audience. If you only want to
target eco-conscious businesses, that is something you’d want to mention.
Here are the categories that we would suggest:

Geography (e.g. UK, or distributed)

Headcount (e.g. 50-100 seats)
Vertical or sector(s) (e.g. financial services)
Revenue (e.g. £1m+ annual turnover)
Budget for services (e.g. 10 percent)
Technology (e.g. cloud-native)
Special characteristics (e.g. VC funded)
Behaviours (e.g. eco-conscious)
Disqualifiers (e.g. Public Sector contracts)

Now, we’ll move on to personas. As ideal client profiles are to businesses,

personas are to people within those businesses.
PERSONAS

A longside your ideal client profile, personas help you to narrow your
focus on your target decision-makers within such organisations.

So what is a persona? HubSpot said it best:

'A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal

customer based on market research and real data about your
existing customers.'

A Personal Connection
It’s important to note that personas are people, not one person. They're not a
description of the last person you did business with, or a job description
with bells on. Rather, you're trying to build a composite picture.
At the same time, your personas cannot be shallow amalgamations. They
are not generic; they are specific. Go deep. When you’re thinking about
your persona’s ‘pain points’, try to feel that pain, their doubts or fears, and
empathise. When we talk about ‘goals’, try to consider core motivations
that are tied to self-worth, and the barriers people may be trying to
overcome.
To do marketing effectively, you must build a connection with your
audience. To do that, then, you’re looking for points of commonality and
vulnerability. Figuring out your personas is an exercise in compassion as
much as data-gathering.
Brené Brown, a research professor who has spent the last decade studying
vulnerability, courage, worthiness and shame, explains this idea in her Ted
Talk. To put it (very) simply, she says you need to accept and acknowledge
your audience’s vulnerabilities and reassure them that they are still worthy
and capable. And, on the other side, be willing to accept your own (or your
business's own) vulnerabilities and retain your sense of worthiness if you
want to develop a meaningful and constructive connection.

Avoiding Unconscious Bias

Bias is a barrier to connection. You cannot connect with the real person if
you have a false perception of who they are. To avoid bias, you need to
focus on the psychological and behavioural parts of your persona, not the
surface-level features, such as what they look like, or certain demographics.
For one, people tend to want to dress their personas up with a stock image.
But this is a world of problems. Stock pictures are often homogenous and
over-polished. They lack diversity and they can give a false impression. Or,
you can deliberately go the other way and risk wandering into the realms of
inappropriate tokenism, too. In short, we suggest an image is not necessary.
Similarly, don't give your persona a first name. Names come with all sorts
of associations like gender and cultural background that again, don't serve
any real marketing purpose.
In fact, biographical details don't actually tell us anything interesting even if
they are true. Sure, based on statistics, most IT managers are male, aged 35-
55, university educated and middle-class. Know your demographic
information without making this the focal point. Age, gender, education —
this is information worth knowing and information worth forgetting. What
we mean by this is you’re much better off focusing on their goals, pain
points and so on, than whether your client has a Bachelor’s degree. That
way, you get to the heart of what motivates your prospects and you avoid
stereotyping your audience.

How Many Personas Should I Have?

Aim to have about one to three personas.
It can feel like you have more, each with their own nuanced reason to exist,
but it’s very likely that a) you’re spreading yourself too thin and b) you’re
overestimating the differences between personas. Broaden your perspective;
existing customers will slot into place and new customers will come into
focus.
Most B2B companies will find they are speaking to these sorts of people:

1. Leaders — Think owner-managers, CEOs, founders and co-

founders. These people will have the highest authority to spend
money and make decisions. Everyone wants to market to these
people. But, they may not be your first point of contact within an
organisation. They’re busy people. Most likely, they will have set
the budget and then delegated the responsibility for finding and
approving services down the chain of command.
2. Executives — This is one level down from the business leader.
The CFO, the COO, the CDO. Heads of departments, senior
managers and so on. In many cases, this persona will be your
primary persona. You may in fact have several personas at this
level only. For example, if you sell HR Tech, then it may be
worth talking to a Chief Technology Officer persona AND a
Head of HR persona, who will have very different profiles. These
people have budget and authority, key attributes for Sales.
3. Advocates — These personas are a bit of a wild card. They are
often mid-tier within an organisation and are feeling the pain.
They need what you offer and they’re willing to fight for it. They
may not have the purse-strings or the ultimate authority to sign
off on a purchase, but they have the ear of those that do, and they
are a champion for change. In certain cases, this can be a
worthwhile persona to target, certainly if you use an Account-
Based Marketing model (ABM — see chapter eight.)

Documenting Your Personas

As with the ICP, documentation is the end result of this thought process.
The thinking is what matters here. So, have a discussion — more than one
— as well as doing some research on LinkedIn (try using the Sales
Navigator) and within your own contact database. Talk to customers. Talk
to your sales team. Do anonymised surveys. You might learn something
new and discover people have different priorities than you expected.
Once you've done all that research, draw out the key points. We find these
categories helpful:

Job titles (e.g. various forms of a category of job titles, like IT

manager, Head of IT, IT leader, and so on)
Role and responsibilities (e.g. is a line manager)
Pain points (e.g. business continuity concerns)
Goals and needs (e.g. enabling secure remote working)
Common objections (e.g. cost)
Where they go for information (e.g. LinkedIn)

Focus on responsibilities, ambitions and areas of friction. Who do they

carry the can for? What will cause them to get promoted? What will cause
them to get fired? How will they justify next year's huge pay rise? What are
their intrinsic (internal) and extrinsic (external) motivators?
Once you have your personas, you can then map their thoughts and actions
against various touchpoints within your buyer’s journey.
BUYER JOURNEY

T hecustomer
‘buyer journey’ is everything that happens up to the moment a
buys from a business. So, it covers each step, each touchpoint,
from stranger to customer. The ‘customer journey’, on the other hand,
extends through the full lifecycle of the customer even beyond that point of
purchase. It’s the whole engagement.

How do your personas interact with your business? The hard truth is, most
people haven’t heard of you, won’t spend very long on your website, won’t
visit the pages you’d like them to see, and aren’t ready to buy anything
when they first stumble across you (or when you first call them out of the
blue).
Take the user journey on your website, as an example. You’d love your
personas to come in through the front door. Perhaps they do a tour around
your welcoming homepage. Maybe they check out those product pages that
you spent so much time crafting, before heading to the ‘Contact Us’ page to
solicit a salesperson.
Instead, they clamber in through the bathroom window, read the backs of
everything in your medicine cabinet and mistake you for a toilet merchant,
leaving before you’ve even had a chance to correct their assumption. All
you have to remember them by? A high bounce rate.
What we’re trying to say is, the buyer journey is not necessarily linear. You
can’t dictate the behaviour of your prospective customers. You can’t decide
what web page they’re going to see first, or what device they’re using
either. There’s a lot you can’t control. This is their journey, you are just the
guide. However, you can:
1. Signpost where you want people to go. Only some read signs or
obey rules, but this helps guide the willing in the right direction.
2. Ensure that no matter where your audience finds themselves,
each touchpoint gives a great impression, has value in itself and
offers clear next steps.

How To Map Your Buyer Journey

Eighty-nine percent of successful businesses say anticipating customer
needs along the customer journey is critical to growth, according to a
Google and Econsultancy study.
HubSpot talks about the buyer's journey as having three stages: awareness,
consideration and decision. A lot of our clients tend to focus on the last
stage. They assume that somebody is ready to buy, knows what they want
and has come to the site for that reason. The reality is, as we’ve said, most
people are earlier in the process and their needs look very different,
especially in the B2B space.
If you’re feeling ambitious, you could even map out the full customer
journey, going beyond the point of purchase to cover all seven of these
steps:

Awareness — The potential customer is experiencing a problem

or has a question. They’re looking around for answers.
Consideration — The potential customer is aware of what they
need to solve and is weighing up different ways to meet their
goals.
Decision — The potential customer has narrowed down their
options and is almost ready to make a choice of provider.
Purchase — The potential customer has chosen to buy your
products or services.
Onboarding — The customer has bought what you’re offering
and is just getting started, for example, learning how to use the
technology that you’ve sold them.
Relationship — The customer and your company have continued
to engage in a mutually beneficial partnership.
Advocacy — The customer is so happy with your company’s
services that they want to shout about it from the rooftops.

Or, you could look at it from the perspective of what you're trying to
achieve, so using the traditional inbound marketing model of 'Attract',
'Convert', 'Close' and 'Delight'. With all of these, bear in mind that your
customers can arrive at your website at any pre-purchase stage. Some are
ready to buy right away, some need more information.
Whichever framework you choose, consider each stage from multiple
angles.
The journey from the customer’s perspective:

Goals — What the customer is trying to achieve.

Expectations — What the customer expects.
Thoughts — What the customer is thinking about.
Emotions — What the customer is feeling.
Activities — What the customer is doing.

The journey from the company’s perspective:

Opportunities — What the company is trying to achieve.

Channels — Which platforms or channels are involved.
Ownership — Who is accountable.
Assets — What materials are available or required.
Metrics — Measurements for what success looks like.
You should think about how this journey might be experienced by different
personas. Look for any gaps or risk areas. Uncover opportunities to
differentiate your business throughout. Map this out on a spreadsheet. See
where you have gaps in materials. See where you don’t know what
someone needs or thinks at a certain stage. Use this to identify opportunities
for marketing.
STRATEGIC BLUEPRINTS —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

B ack to our man Herschel of blueprint fame (see the start of this chapter).
Not only did he invent the blueprint, but he also attended university
with and was a lifelong friend of Charles Babbage, who you may remember
from the introduction was the creator of the original Difference Engine.

They even co-founded the university’s Analytical Society to refute the

impression that science was in decline in Britain. Babbage recounts when
he first started to consider the Difference Engine during this period:

‘I was sitting in the rooms of the Analytical Society, at Cambridge,

my head leaning forward on the table in a kind of dreamy mood,
with a table of logarithms lying open before me. Another member,
coming into the room, and seeing me half asleep, called out, "Well,
Babbage, what are you dreaming about?" to which I replied "I am
thinking that all these tables" (pointing to the logarithms) "might be
calculated by machinery.”’

Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but we like to imagine Herschel was the one
asking after Babbage’s mathematical dreams. Whatever the case, blueprints
and Difference Engines go way back. Maybe, you too have all these plans
in your head, and are just waiting for the prompt you need to get them out
into the world.
Let this be your prompt.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Craft an exquisite and unique positioning statement

☐ Establish your business’s tone of voice
☐ Create three or four memorable messages about your organisation
☐ Document your ideal client profile(s)
☐ Develop one to three personas
☐ Map out the buyer (or customer) journey

Strategic blueprints: sorted. Next, let’s move on to the visual side of brand
differentiation and how your brand image and website can further
supercharge your Difference Engine.

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER FIVE: BRAND
ARCHITECTURE
‘The world is full of boring stuff — brown cows — which is why so
few people pay attention. Remarkable marketing is the art of
building things worth noticing right into your product or service.’

— Seth Godin, Marketing guru

T oAsbeSeth
perceived as worthwhile, your brand has to stand out from the herd.
Godin puts it, ‘Be the purple cow’.

Now, we don’t know a lot about cows, purple or otherwise, but brand
differentiation is certainly at the core of the Difference Engine. The goal of
marketing is to leave an impression. Your brand is the impression. Branding
pioneer and writer of the Coca-Cola script, Walter Landor, said, ‘Products
are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind.’
Branding is the emotional counterpart of marketing. Meaning, it’s the
bit that happens in an eye-blink, that leaves a lasting feeling, that says
something true and important and resonant.
There’s an intangible value to great branding that is hard to measure, but
you know it when you see it. Brand equity is the perception customers have
of your products and services based on what they think of your brand.
Apple, Google and Microsoft are all considered to have high brand equity,
so they reap considerable business benefits from:
Awareness
Credibility
Reputation
Customer satisfaction

Truthfully, we’ve already talked about a number of elements that make up

your brand, from your mission and culture to your tone of voice. In this
chapter, we will focus on the part you actually see in that blink of an eye.
We’re talking about the visual brand architecture of your business. This
includes things like your logo, your design language and your website and
how your online brand presence is experienced both by search engines and
by users. Your visual brand and online presence are both means to establish
the visual perception and therefore perceived value of your business.
In advertising expert Rory Sutherland’s TED talk, he tells the story of a
king who, to prevent famine, decreed the potato a royal crop and put guards
around the fields to make the previously rejected (at the time, it was new,
unfamiliar and unwanted) vegetable desirable. The king changed the
perception of the crop's worth, not the crop itself. He advises that 'anything
worth guarding must be worth stealing.' Of course, the potato has since
become much-loved.
You may not be able to decree your brand or products a ‘royal crop,’ but
you can strive to create the same kind of perception through marketing.
Where we started with cows, somehow, we’ve taken a circuitous route and
ended up back at agriculture. Everyone knows the first thing you do with
mashed potatoes is built a fort. Let’s talk architecture instead, shall we?
Brand architecture, that is.
In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Logo — "Does my company logo stand out from the crowd and
accurately represent my business?"
2. Marketing collateral — "How do we represent ourselves visually
as a business?"
3. Design language — "Does my organisation have a well-
documented set of design rules that ensure consistency?"
4. User experience — "Is it easy for site visitors to find what they
need on our website?"
5. Technical search engine optimisation — "Is it easy for Google to
crawl our website and does it find the site fast, accessible and
authoritative?"
6. Website development — "Does the company website look good,
represent our brand well and bring in leads for the business?"

At the end, we summarise the actions you should take to build out the brand
architecture for your Difference Engine.
LOGO

S ome businesses think a logo IS a brand. Those businesses are wrong.

As we’ve already established, your brand is a lot of things. And in a digital
marketing setting, your logo is the least of your worries. For example, our
design team operates on a website-first approach because this is the most
impactful part of your visual brand online. Or, to think about this another
way, in traditional advertising, your logo is the face of your company. In the
digital world, your website is.
All that said, a logo is a visual cue that represents your company. A good
logo in and of itself won’t differentiate your brand, but:
A logo is a signature to mark your content and your visual assets. It
will — in time — become an indicator of your trustworthiness as a
business. So, it must be recognisable, clear, consistent, flexible and
modern.

Should You Update Your Logo?

It doesn’t have to be a big effort to rebrand your logo. In the spirit of
‘everything is entropy’, brands need to update their logos every few years to
ensure they remain current. Often, these changes are so minor most
consumers don’t realise it’s happening. The recognisable Pepsi logo, a ball
with red and blue hemispheres separated by a curved white stripe, has
evolved over time, but in essence, has remained similar.
Sometimes companies do make more drastic changes, for example,
changing a logo from a bird to an X. That sort of rebrand is normally a
more effortful endeavour and carries some risks, such as loss of brand
familiarity and continuity. People may hate the new you — it happens. But,
such a change may be the right decision for your business.
Here are some reasons to consider a rebrand:

Most obviously, if your logo, website and other assets are tired
and outdated. If they were last updated several years ago. That
could be a red flag.
An inconsistent or non-existent visual personaility is a glaring
sign, too. Meaning your brand style is hard to pin down or shifts
from platform to platform.
If your logo does not match your website or marketing materials,
then that’s also something to watch out for. Disconnection
happens when a brand strategy is not applied across the whole
piece. More on that later.

Be Mindful Of Brand Bandits

A word of warning on budget brand agencies: Yes, you can go to a cheap
provider and get a new logo for a hundred bucks. But that logo probably
won’t have a strategic purpose. It’s likely to be a hodgepodge of stock
imagery. There’s even a risk that you end up mimicking or outright
plagiarising an existing logo because the company hasn’t done their
research. Lawsuits are expensive.
On the flip side, watch out for inflated prices, unnecessary extras and hype.
Look up the Staples 2019 logo reveal for a cringe-worthy example of a
company that clearly overpaid for its new logo.

What Makes A Good Logo?

All companies are tech companies nowadays, but if we look at the world of
B2B technology specifically (our wheelhouse), these companies tend to
want logos that…

Appear professional — It’s vital for tech to walk that fine line
between being approachable and authoritative.
Celebrate newness — In its nature, tech is new and exciting.
Businesses want to tap into that energy.
Suggest acceleration — Drive growth, increase innovation, move
forward. As we say at Articulate, ‘Everything upwards and to the
right!’
Promote connection — The concept of ‘connection’ speaks to a
universal truth about both technology and human nature.
Are blue — How many tech companies can you name with blue
in their logo? Facebook, Intel, Samsung, Dell, IBM, Windows,
PayPal… the list is a long one.

While these trends are worth considering, don’t get too hung up on them.
You’ll end up with a generic logo that looks the same as everyone else’s. Or
worse. As Oscar Wilde once said:

‘A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable

that we have to alter it every six months.’

While logos must be updated over time, what you don’t want is to have to
completely change your logo every few months just because you
succumbed to a flash-in-the-pan trend. The zeitgeist has a say, but you make
the decisions.

The Five Key Steps Of A Logo Rebrand Project

1. Start with the right mindset, a.k.a. this isn’t set in stone. It can
change over time. It doesn’t have to bear the emotional weight of
permanence. In most cases, view this as an evolution of your
existing logo. You’re not starting from scratch. As such, the
process should take a few weeks, not months, with the help of a
small team or designer who is experienced in creating logos in
this way.
2. Kick-off the project. Discuss your initial preferences and goals.
Look at examples of logos across your industry and beyond. Do
market research. Refer to your strategic blueprints (chapter four).
3. Brainstorm sketches for the logo mark. Stick to black and white
because every logo should work first without any colour. At first,
embrace the concept that every idea is a good idea. Then, pick
out a few favourites to develop further. Try out different colours.
Add typography. Look at it when it’s very, very small, and when
it’s enlarged to billboard proportions. Consider things like
simplicity, legibility, contrast, harmony, colour hierarchy,
accessibility and personality. Once you’ve narrowed your
choices, check these designs are not being used already.
4. Document your chosen logo, for example in a brand book (which
we’ll discuss later). Have one version that’s just the logo mark,
and one with typography. Define size ratios. Decide if the logo
changes depending on the background colour. (Always have
versions that work on dark or light backgrounds.) Show how the
logo would look in situ. Perhaps create some logos for special
events, such as for Pride month.
5. Launch your new logo. Add it to your website and marketing
channels, email headers, footers and so on. If you’ve made a
significant change, share news about the relaunch on your blog
or social media, to provide continuity for your audience. If you
have a physical office, products or merchandise, update these
with the new logo and retire (and recycle!) old assets.

Finally, celebrate the win: a logo that, over time, will be known and trusted
around the globe.
MARKETING COLLATERAL

B riefly, we will touch on the visual side of marketing collateral. (We’ll

discuss marketing assets in much more depth in the context of content
creation in the sixth chapter.)

Marketing collateral means designed materials that are on-brand.

Everything on your website is marketing collateral. Marketing
collateral also includes white papers, eBooks, presentations, leaflets or
brochures, videos or any other assets.
Marketing collateral is the playground where your brand thrives and where
copywriting and design work together in harmony. Meaning, marketing
collateral is the main medium where your brand architecture and your logo
will be applied. As such, it is useful to consider it now, in those terms, as a
bridge to crafting an outstanding design language. More on that, next.
So, take stock of any existing marketing material you have and use it to
think about where you want your visual style to go next.

Audit Your Existing Assets And Make A Brand

Timeline
Assuming you are updating your visual brand and have some materials in
place already, we’d encourage you to audit that existing marketing
collateral. This includes any brand books you might have. Dig up older
assets, too. If you’ve gone through several different brand styles, that’s
interesting to look at. We don’t want to throw out the baby with the
bathwater, nor do we want to repeat history’s mistakes.
Consider why you made these design decisions at the time and what you
like and dislike. Evaluate your marketing collateral from a visual brand
perspective. What impression does it give? Who is it for? Does the design
stand out? Is it a good representation of your business?
Effectively, doing this reveals something about the evolution of your brand
identity and your business. Because your website is mostly wiped clean
whenever it gets rebranded, you can lose sight of this story, so looking at
marketing collateral like whitepapers is a good way to visualise design
changes over time. (Saying that, if you investigate your site on the Wayback
Machine, it may have captured some snapshots of your website in the past,
which you can include in your timeline.)
In the end, you will gain insight. That will likely leave you with two paths:

Option A. Auditing your assets can help you create continuity

when you evolve your brand as the business grows. You can pick
what to keep and what to throw away.

Or

Option B, this activity can be a catalyst for a more radical

change: a revelation that your brand must be reinvented entirely;
out with the old, in with the new.

You have to decide which one is right for your business.

If you’re just starting your business, you can skip this step. Or, take this
time to perform a similar exercise and evaluate competitor materials. This
will help you figure out how to shape your own visual brand and is a useful
bonus activity for established businesses, too.

Think Ahead
Now, look into the future. You see a tall, handsome- ah, not that future.
Rather, take a moment to examine what kinds of marketing collateral you’d
like to create over the next year or so. Are there gaps you’d like to fill,
media you’d like to explore or topics you haven’t covered? Are you going
to (re-)launch your website? What are the UI (user interface) elements you
should consider, such as icons, buttons, transitions and so on?
At a high level, what do you need your visual brand architecture to achieve?
Meaning:

Do you need a basic visual brand to ensure key areas such as

colours, fonts, images and so on are consistent for marketing
assets but don’t require much detail?
Do you need a purely digital visual brand to enhance your online
assets with a bank of digital materials such as PDF templates,
stock images, illustrations or infographics?
Do you need a highly detailed visual brand to implement a wide
range of top-quality marketing assets across physical and digital
formats?

Your visual brand ambitions must match your requirements for marketing
collateral. That way, you set yourself up for success when creating content.
Well-designed marketing collateral impresses and persuades. It does work;
it doesn’t just look pretty.
So, next, we’ll talk about your design language, what it is and how to
document and implement it throughout your marketing collateral and
website.
DESIGN LANGUAGE

M asimo Vignelli, creator of the ground-breaking Modernist New York

subway map, said ‘Good design is a language, not a style.’

A design language is a visual vocabulary. It refers to the unified

application of consistent visual and interactive elements across multiple
mediums or products. In the case of digital design for marketing
purposes, that is how a design is applied to a website and other
marketing collateral.
Concepts that we’ve talked about previously — positioning, tone of voice
and messaging — are as foundational to the visual part of your brand as the
content on your website. They should inform the creation of your design
language. If you spent the last chapter creating or updating these strategic
blueprints, then chances are you need to consider how that work will impact
your design language.

Why Brand Design Is Worth Caring About

There's so much content bombarding us now that any point of
differentiation that will grab one extra reader, or hold someone's attention
for ten seconds longer is worth investigating. Designing with intent,
constructing a visual context to aid written communication is not an easy
task, but when it's done right, it’s worthwhile.
To go one step further, they say we humans communicate more with body
language than with the words that come out of our mouths. The
communication iceberg applies to online B2B comms, too. You need to
convey a complex, multi-faceted impression of who you are as a business,
why customers should care, and what they need to do to buy from you, all
in a very short span. Visual design is the only way to achieve all of that
easily and quickly. Design is the art of functionality. It’s a doing word. A
workhorse. It elicits emotion and inspires action in a Pavlovian way,
bypassing our frontal cortex and speaking straight to our basic selves on a
deeper level.
Plus, good design (and content) inspires faith that your business does good
work. In that ‘emotional eye-blink’ as a visitor lands on your website, they
will make instant assumptions about your level of attention to detail and
your decision-making capabilities. They will apply those assumptions to
how you operate and the quality of your products or services.
In short, good design gives you a competitive advantage and a means to
differentiate. As we said with regards to company culture, you can
absolutely differentiate on this basis even if you sell a commercialised
product in a saturated market. Lots of different aspects of a brand can
capture people’s attention. Values matter. Personality matters. Looks matter,
too.

The Components Of A Design Language

No part of a design language is random. Everything serves a purpose. Every
component makes up the whole.
We’ll talk more about things like grid systems, layouts and balancing
elements, and other principles of design later in this chapter when we
discuss user experience and website development.
For now, here are the main building blocks of your design language:

Logo — We already looked at the logo as your point of entry to

brand architecture. In truth, if you’re updating your design
language then of course it needs to be cohesive with your logo,
and one can inform the other. Saying that, one of the signs of a
great brand design is this: If your logo and business name were
to be hidden, is your brand still recognisable?
Typography — The fonts you use for headers, sub-headers, body
text, buttons and so on. Serif, sans-serifs and so on. Fonts for
B2B websites must be readable and aligned with the brand and
industry.
Colour — The colour palette you use throughout your visual
branding. Normally, you’d have a handful of neutrals and main
colours that are harmonious with one another, with a few accent
colours. You’d also have colours for things like text, headers and
links.
Shapes and patterns — The use of certain shapes and patterns,
whether these are more of an organic style or more cubist,
smooth or textured. These can work alongside or be part of
imagery, iconography and animations.
Imagery — The images you use. This could be stock photos,
custom photos (i.e. pictures you have commissioned, or indeed
AI-created ‘photos’), illustrations or a combination of any of the
three. You need to decide what kinds of images, in what styles,
conveying what subjects, best represent your business.
Iconography — The icons that you would use on your website or
elsewhere. These could be flat icons, three-dimensional,
simplistic, linework, coloured… there are many options here.
Animations — Animation on a website can enhance the user
experience, creating a sense of movement and flow. Done badly,
it can be jarring and distracting. Be judicious in how much
animation you use, and where.
Semantics — These are the meanings of interactions on your
website and elsewhere. That is, the result of an action or the
indicator of a possible action. For example, the colour might
change on a link when you hover over it.

How To Document Your Design Language For

Marketing
Once you have made decisions about your design language, there are a few
options for documenting these components. It’s important to have your
design language documented in some way so that all relevant stakeholders,
such as designers and marketers, are using the same design language.

1. Design principles — You could simply have a set of design rules

or principles to ensure things stay cohesive. This is a good place
to start. But, these are often applied with the discretion of the
designer, so you may end up with some variations.
2. Brand books or style guides — This is the most common
outcome when documenting a design language. A brand book or
style guide will include all the brand components with some text
to explain how and when to use each element. Sometimes,
businesses will include things like their mission and purpose,
values, personas, tone of voice and so on in a mega brand bible.
3. Design systems — A design system is a sophisticated and highly
granular collection of reusable design components or tokens, and
pattern libraries, sorted into folders with specific naming
conventions. Typically, these are used in complex product
development because they require quite a lot of up-front
investment to implement and maintain, but they save time during
production. For most businesses, a brand book would serve;
however, if you have a bigger website, multiple sites, a lot of
marketing collateral or you have complex product and marketing
production that also needs to be on-brand, a design system is the
way to go.

Think you’re done with design? Think again! We’re not finished talking
about design just yet. Now, we’ll analyse how design impacts user
experience and what you can do to format your company’s website design
for users.
USER EXPERIENCE

T hewebsite
experience of users is a crucial part of your brand architecture and
design. The reason being, for marketing, good design
contributes towards two crucial workstreams: building brand awareness and
attracting customers.

In terms of design, user experience (UX) is how a user experiences or

interacts with a product, system or service and — often — how the user
experiences a website.
By applying the principles of human-centred design (HCD), you put the
requirements and goals of the primary user at the heart of your design. HCD
is about getting feedback and testing what works best for real people, with
the customer’s needs baked into all design and navigation decisions.
This can be quite a radical shift.
It’s the difference between telling the user what they need to know and
giving the reader what they actually need. You might be sure they need a
product layout and laundry list of technical specifications, but if the user
wants testimonials and a price (and you’ve hidden them away as a second
thought), you’re definitely not giving them what they need. Too many
business leaders think more about their brand’s image — how it looks, if
it’s something they personally like — instead of the opinions and needs of
the end user.
You can see how well HCD works with the classic Apple example. Apple
has always done a stellar job of speaking to the user, from its famous
‘Think Different’ marketing campaign to its innovative user interfaces.
Even the product names are a departure from the acronym-laden 123-XYZ
products marketed by other personal tech providers. Everyone from
Microsoft to Samsung has been scrabbling to replicate Apple’s magic
formula ever since.
So, let’s consider UX as it applies to website design, which is the hub of
your visual brand. Let’s think about how to create your ‘rules of
engagement’ for UX.

Navigation Structure
One of the main considerations of UX is navigation and site structure. Good
UX leads people to what they’re looking for. People can intuitively move
around your website, no matter where they are. The less they have to think
about how to get information, the better.
You can have a beautifully designed website, but if users can’t find what
they need, then what you’ve created there is art, not design. A static
brochure is not a marketing-optimised website.
Consider what rules you could apply to your navigation to improve the user
experience. For example, no more than a certain number of items in a
mega-menu. Or, only two layers of nesting for web pages. Establish how
many items need to be in your main navigation bar or your footer. You can
quickly improve the UX of your existing site by applying these common-
sense rules. You will need to do what makes the most sense for your unique
site, of course.
Then, when you zoom in on a page level, there is still an element of
navigation structure to consider: the information architecture. This is how
information is prioritised on a page, but also how pages are linked together
on the page. For example, your homepage may link to several other pages
like your ‘services’ or ‘about us’ pages. What rules might apply here? Only
so many links to other pages per page? Does every page include a link to
the contact page? These are the kinds of things you need to consider when
building out your pages. Speaking of which…

Page Layout
UX applies to the page as well. Pages should be laid out so things are easy
to read and look balanced on the page. One thing that can help you here is
to consider what isn’t there: white space. White space is the space between
elements. A good amount of white space means everything doesn’t appear
busy and squashed, which is overwhelming to the eye. It gives your site
design some breathing room.
You may also want to think about the hierarchy on a page. Users tend to
scan webpages in an F shape: they look at the top of a page, then skip down
to key headings, and then trail off. Many don’t make it through more than
half a page. This means you need to put your most important information at
the top, with lots of reasons to stay invested.
A final point on layout. You’ll want to use a grid system. This is when you
arrange a site according to an underlying structure of columns, rows and
containers. Many designers prefer a 12-part grid system because it is a
composite system divisible by two, three, four and so on. This system is
invisible, in the sense that it is a structure that dictates where elements are
on a page, but the user never sees the underlying framework. Grid systems
help designers to create a consistent user experience and arrange
information in a pleasing way. And, they help to ensure sites look good on
all devices, from desktop to mobile.
Again, what rules would you apply to a web page to make it user-friendly?

Accessibility
All sites should be accessible as a baseline. Meaning, they should have
sufficient colour contrast that ensures elements are legible. The default font
size should be easy to read for the average person. Clickable elements
should be obvious. Images should have alt-text describing the image.
Navigation should be intuitive. We say ‘should’ because so, so many sites
don’t even manage these basic requirements. More than 90 percent of
homepages don’t meet these standards.
Those are the basics. You can choose to go a step further. There are widgets
and functionality you could embed into your site’s code to add layers of
accessibility. For example, you can provide a high-contrast option or a
larger font size for the sight-impaired. You could add an audio feature to
your blog.
Suppose you want to differentiate your business based on a company
culture of inclusivity and diversity. In that case, considering accessibility on
your site is a clear signifier that you care about the people coming to your
site and you want to make it an inclusive space.
TECHNICAL SEARCH
ENGINE OPTIMISATION

W hile the user experience is all-important, we can’t forget about the

robots. Search engines like Google will crawl your site (with
‘spiders’… robot spiders, now that’s nightmare fuel) to discern its purpose,
authority and structure. You can also be penalised in search if you have a
low domain authority or poor loading times.

Technical search engine optimisation (SEO) is the activity of ensuring

your website performs well in terms of site security, schema, loading
speed, link health and more.
While we will cover SEO in terms of keyword optimisation in the next
chapter, for now, let’s look at four areas of technical SEO you should pay
attention to for website performance. We’ll discuss why they’re important
and what tools you can use to analyse your site against them. This will help
you establish a baseline for iterative site optimisation (see chapter eight).
And, should you launch a new website as part of your Difference Engine,
you can compare this baseline to your new state of play.

1. HTTPS
HTTPS or ‘Hyper-text transfer protocol secured’ is a critical factor for
improving your website SEO. It tells Google that when your website
communicates with a server, it does so ‘securely’ (via encrypted data
transfer).
Why is this important? Google has a responsibility for data protection. It
will favour websites in its index that demonstrate security. And, many
browsers flag HTTP as not secure to visitors, too, many of whom won’t
bother taking the risk by clicking through to your site. If you haven’t
already, purchase an SSL certificate and secure your website.

2. Site Schema
Schema markup is a line of code that you can input into the backend of a
specific URL. It’s a form of structured data that helps search engines
provide a more informative, user-friendly experience to searchers. In a
sense, schema markup structures page data to look like those SERP snippets
(or rich snippets, depending on what terminology you prefer) you see on
Google.
When it comes to your SEO strategy, structured data is a quick and easy
way to improve your site’s search visibility and gain fast, tangible results.
Essentially, it makes it easier for Google to categorise your content. This is
how you make it more likely you’ll get a featured snippet — great for your
brand, if not necessarily always your click rate.

3. Google’s Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWVs) are Google's way of measuring what the search
engine thinks is important about website performance, meaning speed and
responsiveness. There are three elements:

1. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — How long does it take for a

page to load? Usually measured in seconds, or, if your site is
exceptionally slow, tens of seconds. Less than 2.5 seconds is
desirable.
2. Interaction to Next Paint (ITP) — How responsive are
interactions on the site? Usually measured in milliseconds, and
you’re looking for less than 200 milliseconds here. ITP is a
complex metric referencing several factors around interactivity. It
replaced ‘First Input Delay (FID)’ in March 2024.
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) — How much does the site
change as it is loading, a.k.a. visual stability? Usually measured
in seconds or as a score (ideally, a score of less than 0.1).

These elements are measured with lab data (testing tools) and field data
(real user data). You can view data related to your CWVs on Google Search
Console, Google Analytics and Google Data Studio. And, run real-time
tests using tools like PageSpeed Insights, Clickio, [Link] and GTmetrix.
If your CWVs are in the red on certain pages, then consider how to make
your site perform better. This could require a whole site overhaul, rehosting,
building mobile-first — the works. More likely, you’ll want to take an
iterative process. Prioritise heavy-weight, popular pages first. Start with two
of the worst offenders: embedded elements like pop-ups, videos or
presentations, and oversized images. Images should be below 250KB, for
reference. Compress, reduce, remove. You should start to see an
improvement in site traffic and even if you don’t, your site will load faster
and give your existing visitors a better experience.

4. Wrong Status Codes

Finally, you want to make sure your site doesn’t have any broken links on
it. That includes links to other pages on your own site and links to third-
party sites. You will need a tool to detect broken links so you can replace
them. Such tools are a-plenty. Ahrefs has good resources for this.
Here is a list of common status codes you need to know (there are more):

301 and 302: Redirect codes that tell a spider a page exists, but
it’s at a new location now.
307: A temporary redirect that implies a page will return to the
original URL.
304: This means a page has not been modified.
403: This page is forbidden. You might need a login for this, or
you can’t ever access it.
404: This page is broken. Fix these links first because they have
the worst impact on indexability.
410: A 410 means that you’re telling Google to remove a page
from its index.
451: This means the webpage is unavailable for legal reasons (a
reference to Fahrenheit 451).
503: This tells Google that your webpage is under maintenance
or is otherwise unable to handle the request.
200 OK: This tells Google that your link is good to go!

Technical SEO is not ‘set-it-and-forget it’. We recommend apportioning at

least an hour each week for maintenance. Use this time to compress images,
fix broken links and so on. It’s drudge work, but it’s worth the time to keep
your site running smoothly. Unfindable, low-ranking and broken sites do
not stand out and do not make for a good brand experience.
WEBSITE DEVELOPMENT

T hus far, we’ve spent this chapter talking about your brand architecture in
terms of good design, optimised user experience and technical site
performance.

At this stage, you may have come to the conclusion that, in fact, you need
to redesign your whole website to implement all our best practices properly.
We don’t blame you.
Most businesses tend to update their website every two to five years
anyway. Chances are, you’re due.
The topic of website development is a book in itself. One we may write,
one day (watch this space!). However, here we’ll cover the need-to-know
steps to upgrading your website, as well as the key points we’ve learned
from building dozens of websites for clients over the years.

What Is A Website?
According to The Oxford English Dictionary-
Just kidding.
More to the point — what is a website for? What does it do?
Your website is the home of your brand online. Even if you have one or
more physical locations, studies show the majority of consumers will check
a company’s digital site before visiting their physical site. Many B2B
businesses, of course, only have a presence online.
So, a website must be a functioning, living part of your brand. It’s not
enough for it to be a shiny brochure. You want a site that supports your
differentiation, builds trust with visitors and helps you turn them into
customers.
A website needs to look good and function well for the user. It should be
built on a few core principles, such as clean code, optimisation for page
speed, easy navigation, accessibility, and the ability to update the site easily,
and (ideally) without developer input.
Google knows a static and long-neglected site when it sees one. So does
your audience. As humans, we're good at making snap verdicts and coming
to heuristic conclusions, which involve taking small pieces of evidence and
forming quite large inferences from it based on previous experience. People
make judgments about design and clarity in a fraction of a second.
Polished, well-optimised websites elevate your brand image, help you
demonstrate your expertise, and of course, sell your goods and services.
Brilliant brands have brilliant websites. Websites help you to differentiate,
but they’re also the main channel where your marketing strategy plays out,
where your thought leadership is on show, where your visual identity is
most visible, where your cultural positioning is on display. A website is a
jumping-off point — a launchpad — for many of the marketing activities
you do to try and differentiate your business.
So, how do you get a new website, and what do you need to watch out for?

Start With A Kick-Off

A website project is a journey, not a destination. Every journey has to start
somewhere, and we recommend having a kick-off meeting to get everyone
on the same page right from the start.
You’ll want to begin by gathering the input of several stakeholders,
including representatives from Sales and even HR. While these people
won’t need to be involved at every stage, it’s crucial to have them be
involved here. From this point, you’ll need a core steering committee to
organise the project and keep it on the right track. Include key decision-
makers, especially the person with HiPPO status — the Highest Paid
Person’s Opinion — usually the CEO but this could be the Marketing
Director. Make sure everyone understands what is in scope and what isn’t.
Check if there are multiple domains or subdomains, or even separate e-
commerce sites that need to be taken into account. Manage expectations
and sketch out timelines for launch. Capture must-haves and nice-to-haves.
Establish the fundamental principles of good design and user requirements.
These are the rules of the road.

Conduct User Research

While stakeholder input is valuable, so is the opinion of your end customer.
If possible, speak to some of your contacts (clients, former clients) about
your website and what they’d like to see in a future design. Or, designate
someone on the team who knows your customers to advocate for them.
And, while the customer should be front-of-mind for everyone, it can be
helpful for one person to be the customer champion as a counterbalance to
those who have other goals for the website. Use your personas to inform
yourself of customers’ goals and pain points.

Create Mood Boards

Then, either internally or with an agency (like Articulate Marketing), put
together some mood boards based on this research. These are a collection of
images, fonts, colours, existing sites and so on that appeal to you, and that
align with the kind of brand story you’re trying to put across. You may have
several such mood boards that represent different design paths.

Consider Website Structure

You’ll also want to think about how your site is structured. If you have an
existing website, then you may have some changes you’d like to make to
add, remove, or consolidate pages. You might want to edit your navigation
layout and so on. Map out your site structure using a tool such as
[Link].
Produce Designs And Wireframes
You may go through several rounds of designs before you land on the right
one. That’s normal, and you shouldn’t be afraid to share something that
isn’t quite perfect with others in the business. You want to get their
feedback early before you commit to a certain direction. A good way to
showcase this is to make design variations of your homepage as a basis for
the rest of the site.
Alongside this, flesh out your sitemap with wireframes, which are rough
sketches of pages with no design elements. Typically, websites are (or
should be) designed in a modular way, with elements that stack on a column
in a grid system. Base your site and page structure on things that are
intuitive and familiar to the user. Everyone knows how to use a back button.
Everyone knows how to scroll. They know what a link or button does when
you click on it. They read from top to bottom and left to write (in English).
Websites are like books: the structure of the book doesn’t have to change
for the book to be unique and differentiated. So, our advice? Put your
creative freedom into the design, not the structure.

Create Modules And Content

Once you have made a design-direction decision (say that fast three times),
you need to design all of the modules. The modules will include things like
section headers, rich text fields, multiple columns, rows of cards, image
grids, embedded videos, icon rows, calls-to-action, testimonials and so on.
These are the building blocks of your website.
In parallel, you’ll want to either create or use existing copy to fill out each
page. It’s rarely the case that a re-design doesn’t coincide with a re-write.
Think of it this way. Copy and design can seem like two pillars holding up
the house (that is, your website). In fact, copy and design are the bricks and
mortar of those pillars. They are bound together. If, at this stage, you’ve got
your strategic blueprints all up to date, this is a great time to implement new
content that aligns with your business vision, your tone of voice and your
target personas. That way, the visuals and the words on the page unify into
one.
Develop The Website
There are a few ways to approach website development. Think bricks,
plaster, painting and decorating. It’s building a house from the foundation
up, testing everything as you go so each layer, each step, is solid.
You can build something from scratch. You can use a template, a theme, or
even a stock site-builder. You can use internal developers, freelancers, or an
agency to code your website. There are multiple website hosting platforms,
like WordPress and HubSpot, to choose from.
Whatever you decide, ensure that your site works for multiple devices,
browsers and operating systems. You want clean code that loads quickly,
functions well, and that is built within a system that’s easy for non-technical
users to update. It’s harder than you might think to balance all these factors.
Out-the-box websites are easy to build and use but often have messy, slow
code that isn’t very flexible. Custom sites are clean and function well, but
usually require developers on stand-by to make changes. You can have your
cake and eat it, too, but it takes care and attention to make a site that ticks
every one of those boxes.

Populate The Site

Once the modules are coded, the copy is ready and the pages are built out
with placeholder content, it’s time to put it all together. This is where you
add your content and imagery page by page, ensuring multiple people check
each one. There’s nothing worse than stumbling across ‘lorem ipsum’ text
on your website because you didn’t run enough pre-launch checks.
You’ll want to ensure each page is populated on the back end as well, with
search-optimised meta-descriptions and URLs that are spelled correctly and
mapped onto existing site pages, so when you make the change, nothing
gets broken or lost.

Don’t Forget The Fine Print

Remember, a website also includes pages you don’t often see, such as
privacy policy pages, copyright and other legalities. There are pages for
managing subscription options, or for errors (like 404 errors). You may
want to keep these pages simple or add a little design flair. A fun 404 page
is always appreciated.

Launch!
The launch may feel like the end of a website project, but in reality it’s just
one more step in the journey — and certainly not the final one.
However, it is a big step, one that can cause a fair amount of strain, tension
and lost sleep.
It’s both exciting and nerve-wracking to launch a new website. You do want
it to perform well, you don’t want any links to break, to lose traffic or to
alienate your audience. Just remember, this is a moment to be celebrated: a
key part of your marketing machinery brought to life, lightning, levers and
all.

Run QA Checks
Quality Assurance, or QA, is the step to ensure that everything functions as
expected. You want to run QA checks throughout the development cycle,
pre-launch and post-launch. Testing takes a considerate, methodical
understanding of your website and your users. You want to look out for
broken forms, links and pages, SSL errors, oversized images, and pages
hidden from Google that shouldn’t be and vice versa.
Some things can only be detected once the site is live, so don’t launch it on
a Friday afternoon and leave users to their fate over the weekend. Plus, no
website is perfect. After launch, for several weeks or months, you will
probably want to look for issues that aren’t immediately obvious and use
real user data to make informed changes over time.

Ten Tips For Great Website Design

We’ll end this chapter with a few rules that we've learned over the years,
and over dozens of website builds. These will keep you on the right path,
and will help you build a truly differentiated website:

1. Put your preferences second, and your personas' needs first.

2. Focus on how you help your customers, rather than just listing
your services.
3. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. What works, works for a reason.
For example, focusing solely on the above-the-fold area is a
myth. Everyone knows how to scroll. There's even a website
about it: [Link].
4. Keep the navigation short and simple.
5. Make buttons value-driven. Avoid generic copy, like ‘Learn
more’ where possible.
6. Always link to a relevant page if a page with more context exists.
7. On key pages, avoid external links. (Your blog is a different
story.)
8. Always end the page with one or more CTAs (calls-to-action),
taking the user to the next step in their journey.
9. Don’t underestimate the power of a contact page — too often it's
an exit point, but you really, really want to keep people on that
page.
10. Less is more!
BRAND ARCHITECTURE —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

D avid Brier describes branding as ‘the art of differentiation’, saying

‘brands exist because people exist.’

Your visual brand speaks to something fundamental about the human

experience: self-expression. We all harbour a desire to express ourselves
and we love to see that creative expression in others — that’s why we listen
to music, enjoy art, sing and dance together (however badly!). It’s part of
what makes us human. It’s what binds us together.
If you can successfully use your brand as a means of self-expression for
your business, you will find your marketing efforts resonate with a
sympathetic audience. Spark their interest on an emotional level, and they
will want to know more. You can’t tell your story if no-one is listening.
Your visual brand is the means to get people’s attention.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Ensure your logo is in line with best practices

☐ Evaluate your marketing collateral
☐ Document your design language (a.k.a. make a brand book)
☐ Establish your UX rules of engagement
☐ Determine a baseline for technical SEO and start your maintenance
cadence
☐ Launch your new website (or update your existing site)
With your brand architecture fully formed and your website up to date, let’s
move on to how thought leadership can help you differentiate your
business. Content is king, as they say!

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER SIX: THOUGHT
LEADERSHIP

W hat’s the difference between being a leader vs. a follower?

Original thought.
‘Thought leadership’ is what we call content that imparts relevant, engaging
and structured original thought to an audience.
Thought leadership gets you noticed by search engines, by industry peers,
by suppliers, by prospects. It’s how you entrench your authority,
knowledge, credentials and personality. And, how you communicate all of
that across multiple channels, such as your blog, social media or email.
In other words, thought leader is an individual or firm that is
recognised as a distinctive authority in a specialised field and whose
expertise is sought and often rewarded.
Thought leadership is the application of that expertise to content. That
might be a piece or collection of content that demonstrates true, deep
and unique knowledge on a topic. It might be solving new problems,
providing a new perspective on old problems or demonstrating an
understanding of change and the impact of developments in a sector.
It’s not just noise; it adds to the conversation.
You know by now that differentiation comes in many forms, and the parts
that make a marketing machine work are varied and numerous. While some
people choose to focus on how their culture and values differentiate their
business, others may use their brand style or technology.
By positioning yourself and your business as a thought leader, you are
differentiating on the basis of expertise and insight. We’d wager most
businesses, especially in the B2B space, see this as the holy grail of
differentiation. Everyone wants to establish themselves as experts in what
they do. (Certainly, we put a lot of stock in the — rare — ability to
demonstrating expertise via thought leadership content. We are after all a
creative agency that specialises in content creation.)
Of course, content comes in all shapes and sizes. Video, audio, scripted,
unscripted, blogs, books… For the purposes of accessibility — and because
this is something we know a lot about — we’ll focus on how to manage and
produce written thought leadership content here. That’s our wheelhouse.
Plus, in our experience, blog articles and other written forms of content are
ideal formats to build your reputation as a thought leader, and to build your
audience. You don’t need to be a TikTok influencer to be a powerful voice
in the cloud computing sector, for example. Trends come and go, but words,
whether they’re carved in stone or written on the internet, last forever.
Right?

‘Man has two great gifts: “words” to give sound to thoughts, and
“writing” to give thoughts meaning forever.’

— Gianfranco Iovino, Italian author

In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Campaign calendar — "What do we put into the content

publishing schedule and why?"
2. SEO keyword plan — "How do we answer potential customers’
most pressing questions in a Google-friendly way?"
3. Content creation — "How do I share my company’s unique
knowledge and perspectives?"
4. Product literature — "How persuasively do we talk about our
products and services?"
5. Customer evidence — "What proof can we share that showcases
our business’s capabilities?"
6. Promotion — "How do we tell the world about our content,
offerings and culture?"

At the end, we provide a summary of the actions you should take to

effectively demonstrate your thought leadership chops, which is a major
component of your Difference Engine.
CAMPAIGN CALENDAR

L et’s take a bird’s eye view of your thought leadership content plan. This
will enable you to get the broad strokes jotted down, prioritise which
topics to write about, and plot the cadence of your content output before
you get stuck into writing.

First tip: You want to have some idea of what kinds of content you want to
publish and when. You want to bring focus, consistency, coherence and a
regular cadence to your thought leadership output. But, in order to remain
relevant in the moment, to be flexible and able to react to industry news or
changing priorities, you can’t be overly prescriptive. So. Leave gaps. Be
agile. Consider what you want to achieve and what resources you need to
do it. You’re looking for outcomes, not deadlines.

What Is A Marketing Content Campaign

Calendar?
A marketing content campaign calendar is a plan for a selection of
content on a particular topic to be produced and published over a set
timeframe.
When planning out your content, most businesses find it makes sense to
break your plans down into campaigns scheduled out over the course of a
year. For campaign calendars, the old adage that ‘plans are worthless, but
planning is essential’ very much applies.
A campaign calendar should be a sketch of the year’s topics that you fill in
with more detail at around six months ahead, then more detail again at three
months ahead. We highly recommend thinking of marketing content
campaigns on this quarter-by-quarter basis. This allows for the right amount
of agility. And, gives you the space to allocate your efforts accordingly
between focus areas. Meaning, you may write a few pieces that are more
SEO-focused, some that are op-ed thought leadership pieces and some that
are more product branding-style content.
As with your marketing plan, a content campaign calendar must align with
your business goals, sales ambitions and strategic messaging.
For example, say you’re an IT company and you’re launching a new ‘green
IT’ service line for sustainability-minded businesses. The marketing
department may look at that and break it down into a few phases across a
campaign:

Month 1: Topical thought leadership to generate interest in the

service line. Content that targets keywords related to
sustainability and green IT, and timely opinion pieces based on
current events, like World Earth Day.
Month 2: ‘House in order’ content to support the service line.
Content that demonstrates your organisation’s stance or
credibility around the topic, like an impact report about your own
business’s carbon footprint.
Month 3: Brand-focused content to launch the service line.
Alongside the new service page, this would look like supporting
articles, one-pagers, visual assets, emails and so on.

A Typical Quarterly Campaign

Every campaign is different, but if you want a standard model to follow,
you can’t do better than:
Half-dozen to a dozen articles
A white paper, gated behind a form on a landing page (more on
this in chapter seven)
Two webinars / podcasts
Weekly social media posts on the campaign topic
Emails to blog subscribers when articles are published
A company newsletter

You can only do as much as your resources allow. Some say you need to
post articles weekly to see results. Others claim (rather fervently) that you
need to post even more often; two to four times per week, or even daily.
Then you have to consider the complexity of your content, and its length,
and how such considerations factor into what your team can create. It may
be a better strategy for you to post shorter articles more frequently, or
longer pieces every few weeks. You have to test this — only time and
experimentation will tell.
Of course more is more. Of course it is. If we all had unlimited budgets and
a huge marketing team we wouldn’t have to compromise on any of this. We
can have our daily blog and eat it, too. For most of us, that’s not realistic.
All we’ll say is, as we’ve now established that marketing is a complex
machine with many moving parts, it wouldn’t be wise to put all your efforts
into writing blogs while ignoring everything else. The battering ram
approach may work for sales, not so much for marketing. A campaign
calendar is where you pick what buttons you’re going to press, what levers
you’re going to pull. That way, you can start to build a picture of what
works for various audiences, for short-term engagement vs long-term
relationship-building, and how all these efforts interact and bolster one
another.
Before we dive into content creation itself, here are two further tips for
planning successful thought leadership campaigns:
1. Be Different, Copy Shamelessly
Remember, the goal is differentiation. Just because your competitor has
content on a particular topic, it doesn’t mean you need to copy them.
That said, if you have a unique perspective or deeper knowledge, then you
may well want to target that topic and out-do your competitor. That’s a
cunning little SEO tactic called ‘skyscrapering’. If you can encourage more
attention and backlinks to your article by offering a better piece of content
then you stand a chance of beating out your competitor on search engine
rankings.
Oscar Wilde said, ‘Good writers copy, great writers steal.’ If you want to be
famous, take it from one of the greats. (But we don’t mean literally stealing
copy, or plagiarism. That’s bad. Don’t do it.)

2. Your Obvious Is Your Thought Leadership

Meaning, what you might consider obvious is unknown, useful information
for others. Chances are, you have an incredibly deep knowledge of your
subject matter, your technology, compared to your audience. Use it. Take
inspiration from the day-to-day as a starting point when considering topics
for your content campaigns. Write what you know.

Venn Content Meets Thought Leadership

In fact, thought leadership content is the centre of a Venn diagram
comprising:

What you want to be famous for

What you know and can write about
What the audience wants to know
What will rank highly on search engines
That’s another answer to the question, ‘What is thought leadership?’ That
sweet spot, there.
Consider your campaign topics in this context, and use the next section on
SEO keyword research to further refine and inspire your content creation
process.
SEO KEYWORD PLAN

O nce upon a time, SEO was a dirty word associated with ‘black hat’
operations manipulating rankings for their evil bidding. Now, some
consider it a sort of alchemical conversion: tin to gold, content to
customers.

In reality, neither is true. Writing for SEO is part of a package deal. You
need to take it into account as part of your content strategy while keeping
the human audience at the heart of what you do.
We discussed writing about ‘what you want to be famous for’, and writing
‘what you know’ in the last section. Now, we’ll look at the two other
components of that Venn diagram: ‘what your audience wants to know’,
and ‘what ranks highly on search engines’. To translate that into SEO terms,
search intent and search visibility.

How Search Engines Work

Google’s mission is, ‘To organise the world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.’ Google uses increasingly advanced
algorithms to sort, or ‘rank’, content on the internet, so that when you
search for something you can easily find the relevant information you need.
Search-optimised keywords signify to Google’s web crawlers, and other
search engines’, which content:
A) matches with what the searcher is looking for, and
B) is most useful to them.
There are 8.5 million searches on Google every day. Great content ranks
more highly on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), so it is served to
more users, resulting in more traffic to your site.
There are, of course, hundreds of factors that impact ranking on Google, not
just keywords — for more information, see Backlinko’s article on ‘Google
200 ranking factors’, listed in the sources at the end of this book. To be
clear, no-one outside Google actually knows all the ranking factors,
otherwise people would be able to game the system and it wouldn’t work.
We can only make our best guesses based on both what search engine
providers tell us matters, and what testing reveals.

What Makes A Good Keyword?

SEO keywords, key phrases or search queries are words that describe
the content on a page. They are words that users type into search
engines when they are looking for information.
Every content campaign should have a solid foundation in SEO best
practices and include SEO keyword research. Your aim is to find as many
good keywords as you can around certain topic areas that you have
identified as both something you want to be known for and that you know a
lot about. In the tech world, that might be a topic area like ‘cyber security’,
‘big data’ or ‘digital transformation’. Spoiler alert: those are massive topics
and are extremely difficult to rank for on SERPs. Sorry to get your hopes up
there.
Good keywords are ones with a high search volume (number of people
typing the keyword into Google) and low difficulty (how hard it is to rank
for that keyword). A good keyword is worth nothing if it is not taken in
context of search intent. Meaning, ‘differentiation’ may attract mathematics
students trying to find answers to their homework. ‘Brand differentiation’ is
going to entice marketers. As you can imagine, it can take a bit of research
to find keywords that fit the bill.

Where To Find Keywords

Tools like Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz, which we talked about in chapter
three, can help you find good keywords. We favour Ahrefs, which gives
you country-based and global information on search volume, as well as
difficulty ranking out of one hundred.
Top tip: While this is a huge generalisation and every company differs, aim
for keywords that have several hundred to several thousand searchers and a
difficulty rating of less than forty on Ahrefs.
Go to forum sites, Quora or Reddit, to see what questions people are asking
and look for trending topics. This is a great way to gather keywords. Or,
simply use Google autocomplete to find suggested searches.
AnswerThePublic is another useful tool to explore. Look to your personas
for things they care about. Talk to customers about the terms they use to
refer to your topic areas — they may be different to the terms you use.
Gather a few hundred keywords per topic, then skim off the cream.

How To Use Keywords Strategically

When you’re planning your keyword strategy, we suggest following the
topic cluster model pioneered by HubSpot. That is, organising keywords
into clusters.
First, separate your keywords by topic, and then again into these two
categories:

Short-tail keywords: these are more contentious, but have a

higher search volume and tend to cover a broad topic.
Long-tail keywords: these are easier to rank for, but have a lower
search volume and tend to cover a more specific topic.

Then, pick the best short-tail keyword that you want to rank for. This is the
centre of your cluster. Other long-tail keywords sit around this keyword.
When you write content, put the most effort into the article or page in the
middle, which is known as a ‘pillar’ page. Add more resources, make it
longer, make it the best answer on that topic you can manage, the pinnacle
of your thought leadership on a subject.
Next, use shorter pieces of content around those long-tail keywords that all
link to this one central pillar. These are more likely to rank well for their
keyword, so can lend SEO ‘juice’ to that central pillar. Map this topic
cluster to a marketing campaign, or spread it out across several campaigns.
We’ve seen considerable success using this methodology.

Balancing SEO And Thought Leadership

The acronym ‘E-E-A-T’ stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness
and Trustworthiness. It’s Google’s standard for quality. Google is looking
for content that meets the highest standards of these four things. Each
algorithm update brings us closer to a world where real, human-produced,
quality content matters. Everything else, including whatever Artificial
Intelligence can write, is just noise.
It’s important to remember that while you should aim to rank for keywords,
you also want to be a thought leader who starts conversations about new
and innovative topics, too. Don’t be afraid to know all the rules about
writing for SEO and then break them. It may be you start a conversation
that picks up traction and becomes a popular topic — surely, that’s a sign of
true thought leadership.
CONTENT CREATION

A hard truth. The amount of content online is increasing at a faster rate

than your audience’s ability to engage.

This means that your slice of the pie, as a business, is going to shrink as
more and more people vie for the attention of ‘your’ audience. Without
pushing back against this pressure, you will get squeezed out by
competitors.
You need to publish marketing content on a consistent basis to stay in the
game.
You need thought leadership content to win it.

The Content Funnel

Marketing content can be broken down into three types, which align with
the 1. Awareness, 2. Consideration and 3. Decision stages of the buyer
journey.

1. Top-of-funnel (TOFU) = Easy-access content that is often

designed to help someone solve a problem or answer a question.
Blog articles and social media fall into this category.
2. Middle-of-funnel (MOFU) = Content that goes a bit deeper. It
might be more niche, or higher value, like a white paper or
industry report. It is often gated behind a form on a landing page,
which we talk about in chapter seven, ‘Lead generation’.
3. Bottom-of-funnel (BOFU) = This content is about the business,
such as case studies or one-pagers. Most businesses have some
BOFU content, but lack MOFU and even TOFU content. More
on that topic in the next section.

Basically, content comes in many shapes and sizes. These are the types of
content most businesses tend to use for marketing:

Blog articles
White papers / eBooks
Infographics
Marketing emails
Social media posts
Industry reports
Quizzes
Website copy
Case studies
Podcasts / webinars / videos

The medium almost doesn’t matter — Seth Godin, for example, is as much
a thought leader in his daily posts as in his books. The point is to deliver on
the promise of information, originality and insight across the board and
throughout the buyer journey. And, to embed your messaging and tone of
voice — as we’ve discussed already — into that content. That way, key
messages, style and quality work in harmony to ensure you stand out as a
thought leader.
So, how do you go about creating content, then?
Enter: the copywriter.

What A Copywriter Does

A copywriter is someone who writes marketing content on a professional
basis. Many businesses have the in-house expertise on their subject matter,
but not the writing finesse to turn that expertise into thought leadership
content. That’s where a copywriter comes in: to interview, research, write,
edit and proofread high-quality content on your behalf.
First things first, let's address a few misconceptions:

Not all copywriters are advertising copywriters. This in itself

causes some confusion, as the latter is the more famous
(especially after the phenomenon that was Mad Men).
Medical copywriters have their own special niche, which we
don't pretend to know about or comment on here. Technical
copywriting can (often) also be put in this box.
Copywriting has nothing to do with copyright law.

Unlike fiction writers or journalists, copywriters usually follow an agenda:

the business or client's agenda and, in turn, their customer’s needs. It might
be to promote something, but it might also be to educate an audience or
demonstrate expertise. Written content is used in all sorts of ways by
companies, especially in the era of inbound marketing, which is all about
talking to and about customers, rather than endlessly pushing a product or
service.

‘Don’t market yourself. Editors and readers don’t know what they
want until they see it. Scratch what itches. Write what you need to
write, feed the hunger for meaning in your life.’

— Donald M. Murray, author

Thought leadership content should, therefore, follow in the footsteps of all

great creative works: to be expressive, meaningful, passionate, urgent and
poignant. That will create a real connection between your business and your
audience. So, choose your copywriters and content creators carefully —
there is artistry in this work. Do you want dime-a-dozen watercolours or
masterpieces that shape whole decades of thought?

Government Health Warning: Bad Actors,

Content Farms And Artificial Intelligence
Now a word from the writers, on behalf of writers everywhere.
Trust is hard-earned, easily broken and difficult to repair. It’s also a rare
commodity at the moment. We’re in an age of mistrust, where content is
ubiquitous; checks and balances are lagging; opinions seem interchangeable
with facts, and everyone is trying to sell you something.
Some people deliberately set out to misuse this media landscape we live in.
The Rand Corporation called this methodology the ‘firehose of falsehood’
when they wrote about Russian propaganda.
There are good and bad actors who are clearly using this technique. The
goal is not so much to persuade people or to counter one version of the truth
with another version of the truth. It's about confusing and distracting
people, creating apathy and fundamentally building distrust.
Thought leadership content is the antidote to all that.
On the other hand, there are well-meaning people who still use cheap
content mills or AI as ways to produce marketing content.
Whether you’re paying someone pennies for paragraphs or getting the
robots to do it for you, the outcome is the same. More noise, less thought
leadership. More humdrum, less human. It’s not going to cut the mustard,
sorry. In fact, it will kill your SEO and annoy your audience. People (and
Google) are getting better at spotting lightweight, low-value content.
Good content takes time and effort. Bad content lacks substance,
comprehensiveness, research, sourcing, insight, originality, vigour, attention
to detail, perspective and empathy.
You’re creating an expression of yourself and your business here. You’re
showcasing your individuality. Content must be meaningful enough to
reach, help, inform and persuade your audience, as one person to another.
How To Write Thought Leadership Content
Quality content has the potential to be a major differentiator for your
business, so it deserves your attention. If you want to get into content
creation or would like to understand what makes the difference between
thought leadership and me-too-blah-blah content, here are some
fundamentals and top tips to help you get started.
Firstly, let’s talk about the writing process. Whether you’re writing a blog
or a white paper, there are some fundamental processes that remain the
same. Abide by the [Link] rule. That is, 50 percent of your time should
be spent researching, 20 percent writing and 30 percent editing. You read
that correctly. The actual writing is the least of your worries. Spend most of
your time researching, planning and editing. This is where the magic
happens.
When considering structure, next, there are a few options, such as the tour
d'horizon (a tour of the landscape), a listicle (like the one below), or the
classic ‘Problem - Recommendation - Solution.’ We suggest mapping out
the piece's structure using headers and rough notes, then filling in the
blanks. Sketch out your introduction, but come back to it at the end. Often,
you’ll find a better, pithier way to introduce your topic once you’ve written
everything else.
And always, start with a killer lede and a ‘kicker’: the first and last
sentences. The lede is the hook to keep the reader’s interest; the kicker is
the call to action, the final food for thought, and the last chance to drive
your point home.
That’s the process and the format. Now, you’ve got to fill in the words.
How to draw an owl in three simple steps: draw a circle for the head, draw a
circle for the body, draw the rest of the owl. Easier said than done, in other
words, but there are plenty of fantastic books about how to write content
(’Writing to Deadline’ by Donald M. Murray is one of them).
We’ve distilled some of the best advice we could find into this listicle of ten
top tips, which should keep you on the right track. The rest is just your ten
thousand hours of mastery, a.k.a. practice, practice, practice. For now:
1. Prioritise information — It’s widely known that humans are
about as heedful as goldfish: we only have a few seconds’
attention span before we want to click on it. So, position your
main point at the beginning of your content or your audience
may never get to it.
2. Highlight important information — Make keywords and phrases
noticeable by using bold text or italics. Ensure your headings
stand out. Emphasis helps readers decide if you are giving them
what they want, and it helps them scan.
3. Remove extra words — You could say: ‘Our system coordinates
services to create a continuum of progress that will empower
small business owners.’ Better to say: ‘Our system gives power
to small business owners.’
4. Speak plainly and remove jargon — You might write: ‘The
company has commenced a period of formal consultation on its
proposals to establish two new amalgamated branches.’ Consider
saying: ‘The company is considering the proposal for opening
two combined stores.’
5. Shorten paragraphs and add white space — Learn how writing
and design work together. Ensure you have one paragraph per
idea and a proportional balance of text and images. The design of
each page deserves extra thought. You want eye-catching,
scannable content.
6. Give readers quality and quantity — Don’t duplicate words to
build up your content. Readers abandon ship if their time is being
wasted. If you write an article on ‘How to lay the culture
foundation for digital transformation,’ your article a couple of
weeks later on ‘How to avoid culture pitfalls when implementing
cloud technology’ must contain new information.
7. Make peace with SEO — Write for readers, not for search
engines. But understanding how search engines work and how to
make your writing more findable is like understanding grammar
rules or using the right structure for each piece - it’s part of a
writer’s job. See the earlier chapter on SEO for more on this.
8. Link your sources — When you’re writing for the internet, take
advantage of the fact that you can hyperlink to relevant,
authoritative sources. Not only does this prove you have in fact
done your research, but it lends credence to everything you say.
9. Check grammar again — It might seem like common sense, but
it’s important to check your copy again. Misspelt words and
typos change the perception a customer has of your business. So
do other writing mistakes. (Those in glass houses… We pinky-
promise we’ll set up an inbox for you to send us any spelling
mistakes you find in this book.)
10. Make titles honest — Clickbait is for Buzzfeed. In fact, the
easiest way to lose a customer’s attention is to fail to deliver on a
promise. Make sure the content matches your title. The faster
visitors click away from an article that fails to deliver, the lower
Google will bump that article down the SERP.

Putting Your Content Campaign Together

You have your topic areas and your keywords. You know what kinds of
content you’d like to create and how you’re going to create it (in-house,
freelance copywriter, content agency). You’re aware of where the gaps are
in your marketing assets relative to your buyer journey. You know the key
messages that you want to get across and the tone of voice you’ll be using.
You know how to use thought leadership to differentiate your business and
what the creation process looks like.
Now, it’s time to synthesise these components into a content campaign.
Gather your marketing team and any other relevant stakeholders to come up
with some specific content title ideas. Titles come in many formats. How to
do XYZ. Ten steps for ABC. Everything you need to know about… Why
this matters (and how to do it right). The pitfalls of… What is… Discover
the best way to… 12 statistics about… the list goes on.
Consider your verticals. These are signposts to your audience that say: this
article is specifically for you. X must-read cybersecurity tips for healthcare
professionals. Everything manufacturers need to know about the AI boom.
That sort of thing.
Ideally, you want to develop a few content titles within a campaign, so you
can link these pieces together using hyperlinks (for the SEO ‘juice’) and
build a firm basis of thought leadership in this topic area. The central focus
of a campaign could be that ‘pillar page’, a long-form, deeply researched
centrepiece, with shorter articles supporting this core feature. At a basic
level, anyway, a content campaign plan needs to include the following:

Topic area
Titles
Summaries
Type of content (blog, white paper etc.)
Keywords (and synonyms)
Target persona

Armed with this information about each piece of content in your plan, you
will have an executive summary you can share with colleagues, and a clear
brief to give to whoever is writing your content. By making content on a
campaign-by-campaign basis, you ensure you fully cover a topic and create
some energy around it. Yogis talk about building heat in the body. In the
same way, you want your readers to flow from one piece to another, gaining
momentum and awakening something like enlightenment.
We started this section with a hard truth and here’s another (one with a
happy ending). They say every story has been told, and maybe your
competitors are already making waves. Don’t be intimidated or
discouraged. Just because it’s been done, doesn’t mean your take and your
perspective aren’t worthy of the spotlight. It’s not too late to get your
content out there, to find your tribe. To this day — astonishingly — 15
percent of all searches on Google are never-seen-before one-offs. That says
the interests of your audience are not static, and there is always a hunger for
new, valuable information. Be the provider, and you’ll soon find yourself
leading your pack.
PRODUCT LITERATURE

D oliterature?
you ‘have marketing content’, or do you actually have product

We’d go so far as to say many people equate product literature with

marketing content.
In fact:
Product literature is marketing and sales content specifically about
your products and services.
However useful and important this type of marketing collateral is, it’s just
one cog in the machine.

Who Interacts With Product Literature?

Product literature caters to buyers who are at a later stage in their journey.
They are near the bottom of the sales funnel, meaning they have identified
the problems they are trying to solve, they have some answers in mind and
they’re actively evaluating if your business offers the right kind of support.
They’re ready for a sales conversation.
Problem is, the vast majority of people who come to your website are not
ready to buy.
If you only have product literature on your website, then you’re catering to
just this small segment of your potential buyers. Thought leadership content
— as we’ve discussed — helps you widen the net, capturing people’s
attention earlier in the process. Once this broader audience trusts you as a
provider of relevant, useful and timely information, then you’ll be
perceived as credible. It is at THIS stage where great product literature
shines.

What Is Product Literature?

Take stock of your existing materials and check to see if you’re missing
anything from this list:

Product pages — These live on the website. They’re a high-level

view of the features and benefits of your products (or services),
one for each product. Most importantly, they are presented in
terms of the pain points and goals of your personas. This is not a
technical specification.
One-pagers — One or two pages, often in PDF format, that
describe, in depth, a product or service. You may have several of
these, one for each product. These can be slightly more detailed
versions of the product pages, and can be available to download
on the site, sent directly by your sales team to prospects, or
feature in your marketing lead nurturing (see chapter seven).
Brochures — Again, a PDF, or even a physical brochure, about
your business and what you offer. This is where you’d list out
your products and services, a bit about the company and how you
work, who you work with and so on.
Demo videos — Short videos that showcase your product’s
capabilities. These can live on the website or be sent directly via
email.
Non-product literature — By this, we mean content that looks
like non-product literature, but is actually primarily an
advertisement for your product. For example, an article about
‘How to choose the best IT services provider’ can be a list of all
the things you do well. It’s talking about yourself and your
products and services, but it’s framed as an answer to a question.
Customer evidence — We’ll dig into this in the next section, but
some customer evidence can be considered a type of product
literature. For example, a case study is you talking about your
products and services in the context of a particular client.
Proposals — These are presentation decks used during the sales
cycle to persuade prospects to buy. Once more, we’ll discuss this
in more detail in the section on sales enablement in chapter
seven.

Is Product Literature Thought Leadership?

Put it this way. You are an expert on your own business. You can speak
about your products and services with absolute authority, evidence and
energy. In this sense, product literature is thought leadership content —
deep knowledge about a topic.
However, it’s at its most persuasive when it’s pitched to the right audience
at the right time. That knowledge has to be interesting to your audience, not
just yourself.
That means using simple, clear language that appeals to the reader. Avoid
jargon the audience won’t be familiar with. Resist hype; you’re not going to
bamboozle anyone into buying anything.
Rather, focus on benefits, using data and finding reasons to believe. Let
your genuine passion and connection to your audience guide how you craft
your product literature, and you won’t go wrong.
CUSTOMER EVIDENCE
‘We will use the actions of others to decide on proper behaviour for
ourselves, especially when we view those others as similar to
ourselves.’

— Robert B. Cialdini, author of ’Influence: The Psychology of

Persuasion’

C ustomer evidence is the content created by customers about your

business. Or, content you’ve created about your work with customers. It
sits towards the bottom of the marketing funnel.

As we’ve just said, customer evidence (in some cases) can be considered a
subset of product literature — but it’s so much more than that.
In a survey of 1200 shoppers, more than 90 percent said they would read at
least one review before making a purchase. Because customer evidence is
content that is created by or in collaboration with your customers, it is
compelling social proof. People like a good story, they like evidence
something works, they like to see themselves reflected back, they like to be
a part of something successful. Social proof is a powerful differentiator.
Customer evidence is aspirational. A glimpse of the end of the rainbow.
That is, how to get from where you are to where you could be — to that pot
of gold.

How To Get Customer Evidence

Customer evidence brings together a number of business functions. Calling
all marketers — that means it’s time to speak to the customer success team,
the account managers, the people on the ground who did the work, the sales
team who sold the work, and, of course, the customer who received the
work.
Invite happy customers to review your business either by providing a
testimonial, or, preferably, adding a review to a third-party site of your
choice, social media or Google reviews. If you conduct a regular NPS (Net
Promotor Score) you can see who might be likely to give you a five-star
review. Has a project just launched without a hitch? Has a customer just
signed another deal? Those are huge triggers to gather customer evidence.
Make the most of that window of opportunity.
Plus, if you helped your customer with something they might also want to
promote, such as how your collaboration helped make their customer data
ultra-secure, then that’s an ideal incentive for them to agree to something
more involved like a case study. That’s something they can use for their
own marketing, too.

How To Write A Stand-Out Case Study

All too often, case studies are lifeless, formulaic, self-congratulatory, under
or even over-detailed. They can suffer from ‘too many cooks’, long
approval cycles and unrealistic expectations. In an effort to make your
business look good and keep the customer happy, you may fail to tell a
compelling and differentiating story.
You need to avoid these issues by creating a case study that really stands
out. There are a few ingredients you need.

One person to spearhead the process.

Written permission from the customer upfront.
Verified and approved evidence, such as results data.
Subject matter expert interviews to get direct quotes from the
customer.
Listen attentively and respect everyone’s input. Spend the majority of your
time upfront gathering research. Then, once you’re ready to put pen to
paper, find the red thread.
Meaning, pick out the key message for the case study. Frame the story
around this message so it’s not, ‘we did this and this and this…’ but instead,
‘we did this, it led to this, and we saw this result.’ It doesn’t have to be
complicated. Think Hungry Caterpillar, not Game of Thrones. Case studies
are not the place for a complex web of multiple storylines, characters and
perspectives. In other words, you want the kind of linear storyline that can
be understood at a glance and has a happy ending. Feel free to leave out
aspects of the engagement that don’t contribute directly to the narrative.
In terms of structure, start by setting the scene and introducing the project,
the customer and your business. Establish the problems faced and the
challenges that had to be overcome. Talk about what solutions you offered
and why. Dig into how the work was done and what were the benefits.
Finish by showcasing results data, quotes and evidence of future
collaboration, if any. How did your customer go from hungry caterpillar to
beautiful butterfly? That’s what the people really want to know.

Reuse, Recycle, Reshare

Once you have your case study put together, pick it apart again. You heard
that right.

Put customer quotes from the case study on your website and
social media as testimonials.
Invite your customer to comment and reshare their own quotes
on their profiles — these are their words, after all. Most likely,
they’ll be happy to collaborate. It makes them look good, too.
Ask to use their logo on your website’s logo carousel. That’s
pretty flattering.
Make reference to particular results from the case study on your
website and blog, like: ‘One client saw a 50 percent increase in
user engagement’.
If budget or time allow, turn the case study into a transcript for a
video or series of video snippets. Put a face to a name.
Nominate this client your ‘showcase client’ for the quarter. Make
them feel special.

Do all this to make the most of your customer evidence and persuade others
to buy, too.
PROMOTION

M ake your brand synonymous with high-quality insights and best

practices. Then, be everywhere your target audience goes for
information.

You don’t just want to be remembered, you want to be impossible to forget.

‘Being different and thinking different makes a person unforgettable.

History does not remember the forgettable; it honours the unique
minority the majority cannot forget.’

— Suzy Kassem, poet

‘Promotion’ is using all of the communication channels at your disposal

to get the word out to your audience. You can promote company news,
third-party resources that reflect your values or your industry
knowledge, content that you’ve created — the world is your oyster.
By sharing your website links on other channels and getting people to share
that content on their websites too, you are also boosting your SEO by
generating backlinks from referring domains. Remember, this signifies to
Google that your content is popular and trustworthy, making it more likely
to rank highly on SERP. So, it’s a double win.
To promote your content, you can stand on a rooftop with a megaphone; we
won’t stop you. That said, we recommend using the standard marketing
channels that we covered in chapter three. In this section, then, we’ll dig
into copywriting and promotion strategies on two digital platforms: email
and social media. They’re table stakes. Everyone should have a strategy to
differentiate on these platforms and must have a presence to be considered
credible.
Of course, there are other promotion methods. Press releases and other PR
tactics can help to garner interest in major publications. Events, even online
events, are a potential way to launch something major and build a bit of a
buzz. Print media is another potential avenue for advertisement, though as
digital marketers we don’t know much about this world. There’s influencer
marketing, too: getting key figures in your industry to promote your content
for you. We consider these activities that could be outsourced to specialised
agencies or otherwise utilised on an as-needed basis, such as around a major
product launch. This ensures you’re not spreading your budget too thin. In
general, your two major promotion channels for day-to-day content
marketing, other than your website, are as follows.

1. Email
‘Your email inbox is a bit like a Las Vegas roulette machine… every
once in a while there’s some juicy tidbit of a reward, like the three
quarters that pop down on a one-armed bandit. And that keeps you
coming back for more.’

— Douglas Rushkoff, author of ‘Team Human’

Be the ‘juicy tidbit’. We like that. You’re on a few mailing lists, right? But
there are one or two that, when you get an email, you click it right away.
You know it’s going to be relevant, timely, informative or even just
entertaining.
To get to that level, start with a few basic assumptions. Assume most people
won’t open your emails unless the subject line is interesting. Assume they
won’t click on any links in your marketing emails unless they are both
interested in the subject AND they feel safe that it’s not a scam. People are
far more security-conscious these days, rightly so. Assume that your
audience will assess their interest within a few seconds, and therefore
within a few sentences.
Based on these assumptions, we can come to some conclusions. It won’t
matter if your email content is top-notch if it never gets opened. So, put
effort into your subject lines. Indicate the contents of the email, ask a
question, set up a mystery, throw in a data point, say something quirky, use
personalisation or even simply be personable. Be genuine.
Then, get your point across in the email as quickly as possible, in line with
your company’s tone of voice. Link to one call-to-action — more than one
will dilute your message — and be clear about where that link is going to
go, such as to an article or to a page with a form. Your emails don’t need to
be full of glossy stock photos or anything fancy. You just want to capture
attention and encourage action. Simple is better. It’s respectful of people’s
time, especially in the world of B2B marketing.
Speaking of, don’t bombard your database with constant emails. That
invites good leads to unsubscribe, and may even land you in the spam
folder. Not good. Send emails to targeted segments of your database,
whenever possible, to avoid email fatigue and encourage higher open and
click rates. Use a combination of manual and automated emails (more on
this in chapter seven) to maintain a regular send cadence without
overwhelming your audience. Send emails during work days and at times
when people are most likely to look at them, such as the morning, when
recipients are feeling fresh and are more likely to engage.
While you may be using email to promote a piece of content, don’t forget
that the email itself is content, too. So all the same rules apply around tone
and transmitting value.

2. Social Media
Social media is the news media. It’s the forums, groups, gathering ground,
speakers corner, community hall, debate club — you name it. It’s a loud
space. That constant background hum? Content.
Social media feeds accelerate our consumption of content, like a sushi
conveyor belt sending morsel after morsel directly to you. Yum. As a
business, you want to ensure people develop a taste for your content. You
want them to click through to your site and be engaged by liking,
commenting and resharing your links and posts. Lean into the spirit of
reciprocity. Part of your effort to self-promote has to include engagement on
your part as a business, by liking other posts and responding to comments,
too.
Here are seven top tips for using social media to promote your content:

1. Prioritise growing one or two social media accounts at first,

where your audience is most likely to be, rather than spreading
yourself too thinly. Statista shows that LinkedIn is the most
effective platform for businesses, according to a survey of B2B
content marketers. With over a billion people on the platform,
which is owned by Microsoft, it is a stable and thriving
environment for professional engagement.
2. Don’t overpromote yourself. By this we mean, balance posts
about your company and your content with resharing third-party
content that is relevant to your audience. Be timely — if there is
a seasonal event on, like it’s an awareness-raising week or
something, then engage with the movement. Yes, share
information about your activism off-platform (social media in
itself is not activism) but better yet, use your platform to reshare
information from other organisations and the voices of other
individuals. This shows you are engaged and knowledgeable
about the industry and about topics your audience cares about,
not just me-me-me all the time.
3. Use scheduling software to set up your posts in advance across
multiple platforms. This makes sharing on social media more
efficient. If you’re not doing this, you’re behind the times.
Seriously.
4. Think about what you share on each platform. X, formerly
Twitter, requires you to be pithy, and has a higher refresh rate, so
you can post more often on that platform. Threads, Bluesky and
other similar platforms suggest this kind of short-form posting is
here to stay. Saying that, you might want to create longer posts
for LinkedIn, with a slightly more formal tone of voice. People
come to this platform expecting that kind of content. And for
Instagram, you can’t share URLs there, except in the bio, so
focus on imagery, like pictures of your company, and measure
success on that platform by engagement, not clicks. Similar best
practices apply to Pinterest. You may, depending on your
audience, want to try things like short-form video and experiment
with platforms such as TikTok. These kinds of platforms are
ideal for making a connection with a B2C audience, for example.
5. As much as possible, rely on the free tools that social media
platforms offer. You can post content, share opinions, join
groups, comment, like and share posts. Use hashtags to signify
what your content is about and share it with an audience
interested in that topic. Research which hashtags are most
popular and be consistent so you build a reputation as a thought
leader on a few core subjects.
6. Consider using paid social media ads to link a carefully targeted
segment of your audience to newly launched conversion
opportunities on your website, such as a landing page where your
audience can download a whitepaper. Don’t use it to link to blog
articles or product pages — that’s just an expensive way to get
traffic.
7. Use retargeting to ‘say the same thing twice’. That is, people are
more likely to retain information if they hear it more than once.
So, use PPC retargeting ads to do things like serve ads to those
who got to a landing page on your site but didn’t convert.

Nail your promotion strategies on these two platforms and then expand your
efforts from there. Better to deploy a few promotion tactics really well than
a lot of tactics badly.
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

T hought leadership is a cornerstone of differentiation. Many businesses

prioritise selling their products and services, while neglecting their
reputation as a thought leader.

And yet, it’s that expert positioning, that generosity of good advice, that
stance on subjects, that your audience values. These are what persuade
people to buy, because there’s honest graft there. No BS, sales hype,
manipulation blah-blah. You’re offering information honestly, freely, with
thought and care, uniquely from your perspective. In other words:

‘You can escape competition through authenticity when you realise

no-one can compete with you on being you.’

— Naval Ravikant, entrepreneur

Book sales might be a measure of success, but the stories are what sell,
because the stories touch on things that are aspirational, true and important
about the human condition. The same can be said of thought leadership.
Stop selling books and start selling stories.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:
☐ Define your campaign structure
☐ Research relevant SEO keywords
☐ Create thought leadership content campaigns
☐ Audit, then fill the gaps in your product literature library
☐ Run a customer evidence and case study programme
☐ Promote your thought leadership content on core marketing channels

Of course, we’re not quite done talking about how to create, use and share
content. In the next chapter, we’ll cover one of the key parts of the inbound
methodology and content marketing, and of your Difference Engine: lead
generation.

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER SEVEN: LEAD
GENERATION

L eads are the lifeblood of your business. With the right attention from
your business, they are your fans, your supporters. But most of all, they
are the people who become paying customers.

Thought leadership content is most effective when paired with a rigorous

lead generation strategy. The more information you learn about your leads,
the better you can pitch your products and services to suit their needs. The
more informed your leads are about both their own problems-to-be-solved
and about your business, the more likely they are to be open to that sales
conversation.
That’s the value exchange.
This exchange is dictated by how you serve your content to leads and what
you ask for in return, such as their name or email address. No one will give
up that gold for just anything. They must really want what you’re offering.
Some publications, like The New Yorker, serve some short-from content
freely, saving their main articles for subscribers. Many organisations give
away all their articles for free but keep some content gated behind a form
on a landing page because it is more valuable and takes more effort to
create (like a report or white paper). More on this shortly.
Here’s what to expect from this chapter. We’ll cover various tactics for
capturing and qualifying leads, all while nurturing them — meaning,
deepening their engagement with marketing materials and readying them
for the sales team. From there, we’ll look at the handover to sales and how
marketing and sales departments are best aligned to support one another.
And, we’ll touch on how to approach some of the most critical leads of all:
existing customers. The best leads are the people who’ve bought from you
before, after all.
In this pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics (or
‘cogs’):

1. Lead capture — "What does the business do to attract lots of

quality leads?"
2. Lead nurturing — "How do we nurture leads so they are
receptive to a sales pitch?"
3. Sales enablement — "How can we align marketing with sales to
enable a solid pipeline?"
4. Qualification and lead scoring — "How do we define the quality
of a lead, and who makes that decision?"
5. Sales collateral — "What assets do our sales team have to inform
and persuade prospects?"
6. Upsell and cross-sell — "How do we expand existing business
relationships?"

At the end, we summarise the actions you need to take to generate and
nurture leads throughout the buyer journey, and beyond. This is a major test
of the efficacy of your Difference Engine: will it produce leads?
LEAD CAPTURE

H ow do you measure the success of your Difference Engine?

There are plenty of ways, some easier to quantify than others. One
measurement that every marketer can agree on is the number (and quality)
of leads you generate. Leads are people who are in your contact database
whom you have a legitimate reason to contact and, hopefully, who would
like to hear from you.
You can get leads through inbound and outbound methodologies. Outbound
means you’re contacting cold leads directly, by phone, on LinkedIn or some
other method. Inbound means your leads have come to you, perhaps by
filling in a form on a landing page to access some premium content that
you’ve created, or to request a demo or quote.
Between the two, guess which ones are more likely to turn into a deal? If
you guessed inbound, you’d be correct.

What Is A Landing Page?

We’ve mentioned this before, but a landing page is a page on your
website with a form on it that stands between the visitor and a valuable
piece of content, such as a white paper, calculator or checklist. The
visitor is asked to provide some of their information to gain access to
this valuable information.
A landing page should include persuasive copy that encourages people to
fill in the form, as well as imagery of what they will gain access to. You
want to give people enough of a preview that they feel they can trust that
what they’re getting is worthwhile. It must be tantalising, hard to resist.
Don’t link to anything else on the page except the form. If you can, remove
your customary navigation bar from the page, too, so people are less likely
to get distracted and click away.

But, How Do People Get To This Landing Page?

First and foremost, you need calls to action (CTAs). If a blog post is the
first thing your site visitor sees, you want the second thing that catches their
eye to be a CTA.
Think of the hyperlinks that come up in a search engine — that’s like a
CTA, leading you onto a web page. However, instead of hosting these links
on Google and enticing visitors to click through to your website, CTAs are
buttons or image links hosted within blogs or other web pages. Visitors then
click through to a specific website page. Their destination? A landing page.
Basically, these are advertisements on your own platform, for your own
‘products’.

What Happens Next?

The journey doesn’t stop there.
When someone fills in a form on a landing page, they get sent to a thank
you page. That is a dedicated page that, firstly, thanks them (hence the
name) for giving you a few bits of information, such as their email address,
and secondly, provides the visitor (now a ‘lead’) with the gated content you
promised. You should also include more CTAs to more content on this page
so that it is the next step in the journey and not the final destination.
Now that you have your lead, you need to wrap up the visitor-to-lead
portion of the inbound journey with a follow-up email. This email has all
the same information as the thank you page. It’s only polite. And,
psychologically, it ensures that your email send-from address is a familiar
sight, so if you send further emails it’s likely they will be opened and
clicked.

More Tactics To Generate Leads

There are other places you can put forms, too, such as (sparing, targeted)
use of (unobnoxious) pop-ups or even on-page forms on a webpage or blog.
For example, you could offer a PDF version of a long article via a pop-up or
embedded form — that is a legitimate tactic that works surprisingly well.
And content doesn't have to be your only reason for a form. Obviously
things like a ‘contact us’ form or a ‘book a demo’ form can attract leads.
These are your ‘hand-raisers’: people who ask for sales conversation
directly. In addition, you can use subscription forms for your blog or
newsletter. Exit-intent pop-ups work well for this: ‘If you’re heading out,
why not subscribe to the blog before you go?’ The more you diversify
opportunities to convert on your website, the more leads you’ll get.
Some pay-per-click advertising platforms also allow you to make a direct-
to-form advert, which is another way to generate leads. If you’re going to
do PPC, whatever you do, always send people to a conversion opportunity.
The cost is not worth the return, otherwise; buying traffic is a fool’s game.
We have seen companies spend hundreds of thousands of Pounds on
advertising with very little to show for it. But buying leads can work — if
done well. This is especially true for remarketing ads (sending people who
have dropped a cookie on your site some targeted ads based on their
behaviour).
And of course, use all your marketing channels (chapter three) and
promotion tactics (chapter six) to share your conversion opportunity. Send
out launch emails when you create a new offer. Invite your contacts to
webinars or events. Share on social media. Ask existing customers or
business partners to share. When you’ve put in all that time to make a high-
value piece of thought leadership content and gated it behind a form, launch
it with a fanfare. Make it the must-have download of the season.

How NOT To Generate Leads

Buying lists is an old sales tactic and we don’t condone it. These
contacts are unlikely to be contact-compliant, are probably not
your target customer, are often out of date and will get you
marked as ‘spam’ in an eye-blink.
Using lead-generating farms (people who cold call on your
behalf, without your authority or passion) is a promised land that
rarely delivers, if ever. Some demand-generation activities may
be worth exploring, such as the applications of AI to help qualify
viable leads, but be warned, many demand-gen companies will
waste your time and money.
Hype doesn’t persuade, nor does generic, lazy copywriting.
‘Click here’ is less than ‘Get our cybersecurity checklist’.
Specificity matters.
Don’t be greedy with your forms by adding too many fields. We
know you want information like people’s sectors and job titles.
But you can get that later. The more fields on a form, the fewer
conversions, and the more missed opportunities.
If your only conversion point is your ‘contact us’ form, you are
unlikely to capture many leads. But people who fill in the contact
form can be high-value opportunities so you need to be
especially responsive and treat contact form submissions with
extra care.

We’ll talk more about how to optimise conversions in the final chapter of
this book. Until then, let’s move on to how to nurture all these new leads in
your database.
LEAD NURTURING

Y our Difference Engine is generating leads at full steam: what a result!

Now, what do you do with them?
There’s a story that goes: A pottery teacher told one group in the class to
make the single best vase possible, and another to make as many vases as
they could. In the end, the best pots were all made by the group that had
produced hundreds of pots. The quantity of pots led to higher quality
outcomes. In a similar vein, the more leads you get, the more likely you are
to find the best in the bunch. Lead capture, at its best, is a numbers game.
Then, to filter out the leads that are worth contacting, you need lead
nurturing.
Lead nurturing takes your new leads and encourages them to re-
engage with your content and return to your website. It will make your
business more familiar and trustworthy to leads by providing evidence
of your expertise. And, it gives you a chance to qualify those leads as
good-fit and move them towards a sales conversation.
In particular, lead nurturing encourages leads to develop trust, by drip-
feeding middle and bottom-of-the-funnel content, so they are ready to buy
even before a salesperson picks up the phone. Lead nurturing serves to
deepen your reputation as helpful and responsive. It’s not the place for hard
sales tactics. That will put people’s guard up. Instead, you want to tap into
the reciprocity principle, giving information freely:

‘The reciprocity principle is one of the basic laws of social

psychology: It says that in many social situations we pay back what
we received from others. In other words, if John does you a favour,
you’re likely to return it to him.’

— Nielsen Norman Group, in reference to the first of six principles

of influence written about in ‘Influence: Science and Practice’ by
Robert Cialdini

Yes you can use strategies like retargeting ads and so on for lead nurturing,
but if you ask us, the most effective platform for lead nurturing? Email, of
course. This is a direct line of contact with your audience, in a place they
look at daily. And, if you’ve done your due diligence, they’ve invited you to
send those marketing emails by agreeing to it on one of your website forms.
It’s a no-brainer.

How To Use Marketing Emails To Nurture Your

Leads

1. Always be helping: In other words, make sure that each email is

delivering something that will be relevant, useful and interesting
to the recipient.
2. Segment your triggers: You may want to send a particular set of
emails to a particular group, based on what they downloaded,
where they are in the buyer journey, what their location or sector
might be, or any other number of triggers.
3. Don’t bombard people: The key here is a light touch. Don’t fill
up someone’s inbox or they’re likely to mark you as a spammer.
4. Start strong: An email automation sequence tends to be a few
emails that are sent with breaks in between — perhaps some days
or a week apart. The first email in the sequence is the most likely
to be opened and clicked, so rather than simply sharing a relevant
blog, share another conversion opportunity.
5. Use a mix of regular and automated emails: Email strategies
don’t have to be all about automation all the time. Events,
announcements, launches, news — these are time-based, and
need to be incorporated into your strategy. Don’t send such
emails the same day as your weekly blog subscription email, for
example.
6. Be real: Send lead nurturing emails from a named person’s email
address, not just a generic marketing@company or worse, no-
reply@company. Be personable, and use personalisation.
7. Keep it short: Get to the point, quick. Respect people’s time.
8. Watch your widths: Many people check their email on mobile. If
images in your emails only look good on a computer, then you’ll
alienate people who read emails on their phone. Don’t rely on
images either; most email clients don’t show images unless the
recipient chooses to see them.

P.S. Add a postscript with a link at the end of your email. It’s a personal
touch that reads as ‘bonus content’ for the recipient. It also draws the eye
right to the bottom of the email, potentially improving read-time and the
chance that a lead will click.
SALES ENABLEMENT

B efore we dive into lead qualification and scoring, let’s first ensure
marketing and sales are singing from the same song sheet. The process
of qualifying inbound leads is an exercise in cooperation between
departments. When the handover from marketing to sales goes wrong, it can
seem like a comedy of errors, but the reality is this: as more leads fall
through the cracks, the more the relationships between departments can
fracture. The whole thing becomes a Greek tragedy. That song sheet? An
off-key chorus of missed opportunities and irreconcilable differences.

Apologies, things got a bit dramatic there.

The ideal scenario, then: sales and marketing, happily ever after. As we’re
primarily speaking to marketers here (this is a book about marketing after
all), you’ll know that those of us in the biz talk a lot about ‘sales
enablement’. Meaning, the work that marketing can do for the sales team to
maximise the chance that inbound leads will turn into customers. Naturally,
marketing can help with outbound activities, too, such as by providing sales
collateral, which we’ll come to later in this chapter. Here, what we’re
interested in is the process for handling inbound leads, using systems to
manage that handover and assigning accountability at each step.
It’s worth noting that all-in-one tools like CRM software that is used by all
departments, covered in chapter three, underpin your sales enablement
efforts. However, there are additional ways to encourage alignment, such as
Service Level Agreements between departments. For example, the sales
team might give the marketing team a commitment to follow up on high-
priority form submissions within one working day. Remember, tools are not
processes. A CRM won’t solve your handover woes, but it may allow you
to build better processes and use automation to make that crucial exchange
of leads both pain and error-free.

The Conversion Cliff-Edge

We talked about brand consistency being a big part of differentiation. That
consistency matters here, too. You want a smooth transition when handing
leads over to sales (and back — sometimes a lead needs more time to
engage with marketing materials before they are ready for a sales
conversation. Repeat: the life of a lead is not always linear).
Marketers AND salespeople have a responsibility to define and agree on the
steps between someone being a ‘lead’ and them becoming a customer.
That’s called ‘qualification’. When that agreement isn’t established, you get
the conversion cliff-edge, which looks a little something like this:

10,000 site visits >

100 new contacts >
Err…
Customers?

Seem familiar? You’re not alone.

One way to think about qualifying leads is how ready they are to buy.
Marketing can help to enable sales by ‘taking the temperature’ of a lead and
triggering activities or processes on that basis. Such a system is made easier
using marketing automation.

Cold lead: A lead that is in the system but hasn’t interacted with
your site for a while. Maybe they don’t click on your emails
much. Or, they’re so new that you don’t have enough
information to know if they’re a good lead or not.
Warm lead: A lead that has interacted with your site a few times
recently. They’ve downloaded some offers; they’ve read a blog
post or two. They’ve engaged with lead nurturing emails. They
seem keen.
Hot lead: Call them. Call them now. They want you to. They’ve
read your entire website, clicked on every marketing email and
told all their friends. That might be them at the door now.

Understanding a lead’s temperature gives you a lot of information with

which to work. You can start to gather more data on crucial touchpoints
along the buyer’s journey, refining your ‘map’ of said journey. You get
insight around which leads to prioritise for qualification, based on
engagement. You can create triggers based on lead temperature for warmer
leads to go to sales, so no one is wasting time trying to call an ice-cold lead.
That action, of course, helps to maintain friendly relations between
departments. Sales will be more than happy to receive leads who, if
contacted in that crucial moment of peak enthusiasm, know who is on the
other end of the phone, have just finished reading a whitepaper that
answered a bunch of questions and are thrilled to discuss a deal.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Our top tip for enabling sales is simply to come to an agreement about the
handling of such leads.
A shoddy handover process between departments means leads languish —
unqualified and underworked — in your database. SLAs help to ensure that
leads make it through the system. These are agreements of standards and
processes between departments.
Marketing may agree to do a certain amount of lead nurturing before
sending leads to the sales team, to ensure leads are ‘warm’. As a
salesperson, you may want you hear from marketing if a lead has viewed
core buying pages or downloaded a certain offer.
Once a lead is handed over to sales, you may want to add a lead to a
suppression list so they get fewer marketing emails while you want them to
pay more attention to sales emails. Or, you might want to run parallel
marketing and sales strategies. If a lead isn’t ready to buy yet, then they will
need to be removed from that list and put back into the marketing pool. You
need to agree on what happens in all of these scenarios, and how marketing
and sales automation feeds in to support each process.
For example, the marketing department may agree to notify sales once a
lead has opened and clicked on any lead nurturing emails following a
webinar. The SLA might be, ‘Webinar attendees tend to be some of our
most enthusiastic, ready-to-buy leads. After a webinar, the marketing team
will send 3 follow-up emails throughout the week to increase lead
temperature, however will stop sending those emails once a lead clicks a
link. That action triggers a task for a salesperson to qualify and contact that
lead within 48 hours. Given we see 100 attendees a week and at least 10
will click on a link, sales agree to contact 10 people per webinar.’
Your SLAs may be more simple, or more detailed. Whatever floats your
boat; just as long as you identify key handover moments and agree on how
to enable the crossing, that transfer of souls over the river Styx. (And
somehow we ended up back in Ancient Greece.)
QUALIFICATION AND LEAD
SCORING

W e’ve just looked at how to take the temperature of a lead. That defines
their readiness for sales from a marketing perspective.

But, it’s not the only thing that you should care about when qualifying
leads. You also need to know if they’re a good fit for your business. That’s
another important aspect of the handover process. Some of your hottest
leads may simply be big fans of what you do. They’re great to have, but
they don’t fit the criteria for sales.
You already understand what ‘good’ looks like because you’ve defined your
target market and personas. So, use that information as the benchmark to
define the quality of your leads.

How To Qualify Leads

This is where we fill in some of the missing steps in that conversion cliff-
edge. In fact, the marketing, sales and customer service team are all
responsible for qualifying leads. Here’s how that works:

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Marketing will decide if a

lead qualifies as an MQL by filtering out leads that are obviously
unsuitable. For example, if they are a competitor or based in a
country where you don’t do business or because they haven’t
shared a business email address. Marketing can do this manually,
or automate the whole process. Leads that pass through this
initial round of qualification are marked as ‘MQLs’.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Now, Sales will decide if a lead
qualifies as an SQL. Meaning, a salesperson takes a look at an
MQL and decides if they are worth contacting directly. That is,
they are the right fit for budget, type of company and so on. If so,
they become an ‘SQL’. Outbound leads are automatically SQLs
because they have been vetted by a salesperson, bypassing
Marketing.
Opportunity / prospect. An SQL becomes an opportunity once
they have engaged with the sales process. There are strong signs
they may want to purchase your products or services. Sales,
again, would qualify a lead on this basis and then start to put
together a deal package or proposal.
Former opportunities. We suggest tagging opportunities that
don’t close as ‘Former opportunities’ so that you can recycle
them back to marketing without losing track of the fact that they
were once in a sales discussion. It’s all too easy for these well-
qualified companies to get lost in the system just because they
weren’t ready to buy.
Customer. Wait, customers belong to the customer service
department, right? Nope. Just because a customer has already
bought from you, doesn’t mean they don’t want to engage with
the informative, well-written content produced by your
marketing team. And they may well welcome an upsell or cross-
sell conversation with your sales team. A customer is still a lead,
after all.

Using Lead Scoring For Qualification

A useful way to integrate lead temperature with lead qualification is lead
scoring. This means taking a defined set of characteristics and applying a
score to each, giving your leads a cumulative score based on those
characteristics.
Leads who subscribe to your blog might get ten points, or leads who fill in
two forms might get 20 points, and they may get a bumper crop of points if
they operate in a certain sector or have a particular job title. You may want
to use negative scoring to firmly disqualify certain leads, if they are
competitors or a clear bad fit for sales (for example, they represent a
fashion brand and your clients are all in the food industry).
This will help you prioritise who sales should contact first, who might need
a bit more nurturing and who isn’t worth contacting at all.
As well as marketing temperature, you can judge how engaged someone is
in the sales process and make a score or ‘sales temperature’ rating on that
basis, too. Attribute scores manually or automate it with a suitable CRM.
This is a great method to help you refine your leads, balancing their
readiness to buy against their suitability as potential customers.
By using qualification methods and tailoring your activities on this basis,
you will stand out from those who apply a blanket approach to all new
leads, namely, by throwing the sales book at them. That’s like proposing on
the second date. You need to get to know one another first before you make
such a big commitment. To extend the metaphor, which we like to do in this
book if you haven’t noticed, marketing is the ultimate wingman for sales.
You notice a lead is interested, you give them more information to fan that
flame, you see if you can find out more about them, then you wait for the
right moment to make introductions.
It’s up to sales to decide if the match is a good one, but either way, you’ve
helped create that spark. And like any good friend, marketing is cheering
from the sidelines all the way. This is where the gift of sales collateral helps
to seal the deal.
SALES COLLATERAL

P eter Drucker, ‘the founder of modern management’ said:

‘Marketing is so basic [meaning, foundational] that it is not just
enough to have a strong sales department and to entrust marketing
to it. Marketing is not only much broader than selling; it is not a
specialised activity at all. It encompasses the entire business.

It is the whole business seen from the point of view of its final result,
that is from the customer’s point of view. Concern and responsibility
for marketing must therefore permeate all areas of the enterprise.’

Marketing and sales don’t just need to work together to hand over leads.
They also need to ensure the handover process is smooth from an external
perspective — the lead’s perspective — too. As far as that person is
concerned, every interaction is marketing. That prospective customer is
forming an impression of you regarding your expertise, trustworthiness and
likability. That impression has to be consistent, throughout. Salespeople
have a role to play in delivering that marketing to the customer to persuade
them and build a relationship to the point that they’re willing to buy. Sales
collateral, then, is the marketing content that supports this effort.
Here are four key pieces of sales collateral your salespeople need to
succeed:

1. Win Library
Sales collateral includes things like product literature and customer
evidence, covered in chapter six. Case studies are extremely persuasive
pieces of sales collateral. However, time is precious, both for your sales
team, for the marketers creating such case studies and for the prospects
reading them. It helps to be pithy.
Here’s an idea we use ourselves: a database of micro-case studies for
salespeople to refer to during the sales process, which are not publicly
available. That way, they’re quick to create and easy to reference. We call
this the ‘win library’. Sales can extract data points from this library and
insert them into emails or as part of a conversation.

2. On-Hand Resources
Sales collateral includes indexed lists of relevant content resources, collated
by marketers who know where all that stuff lives, and again, to be delivered
to leads by a salesperson. Infographics, diagrams, images, videos —
marketing can support sales with all of this material, which is on-brand and
curated for their needs and the needs of prospects. These resources must be
easy to find and reference in the moment during a conversation. So, ideally,
you want a database tagged by service lines, sectors and topic areas that
acts as the sales team’s knowledgebase.

3. Sales Messaging
Beyond marketing emails, sales collateral is also sales email copy or
LinkedIn message templates ideally crafted by experienced copywriters and
deployed by salespeople. Often, this is a collaborative effort. If marketing
and sales emails are all created separately, then it’s easy for the tone to shift
wildly from one to the other. That is a jarring experience for recipients.
Not that every email must be written in this way, but if you’re building out
an automated sequence of sales emails, then this is the time to involve your
best wordsmiths. They can craft emails directly, make guidance for best
practices or run regular writing training for the sales team. That way, the
basics of tone and style (and spelling!) are well-understood by your key
communicators, even if they aren’t full-time copywriters.
4. Proposal Deck
Finally, marketers (copywriters and graphic designers) can help put together
the all-important proposal deck. When a salesperson is pitching to a
prospect, a slide deck is the visual anchor for that presentation. It helps
prospects to understand what they’re buying, so of course, it’s one of the
most important pieces of sales collateral there is. The telling is in the
showing. When a proposal deck is high quality, while the prospect is
viewing a slide, they’re also subconsciously ‘reading’ your company — and
making gut decisions about how you do business.

A Bit Of Give-And-Take
Marketing has a part to play in the sales cycle and salespeople have a part to
play in marketing, too. It’s their insight into the customer that will help
marketers tailor their campaigns to the right audience, about the right
things. And if the sales team is targeting a particular area for the next
quarter, then you want that targeting to be reflected in the marketing
campaigns for that quarter, as well. While these departments have different
ways of working, metrics for success and priorities, they must nevertheless
be tightly aligned and communicate consistently.
UPSELL AND CROSS-SELL

‘U psell’ encourages the purchase of a more premium version or tier of

your products or services, while ‘cross-sell’ refers to additional
products or services to complement the existing engagement.

Customers are some of your best leads. According to a 2022 HubSpot Blog
survey of more than 500 sales professionals, more than 70 percent said that
upsell and cross-sell drives up to 30 percent of their revenue.
Plus, retention is a lot easier than getting new customers. You can draw a
helpful parallel with recruitment here. Think of the time, funds and effort to
pay for recruitment software, post job ads, sift through CVs, interview
candidates, negotiate the employment package, then train and onboard a
new employee vs. simply keeping your existing employees happy so they
don’t quit on you. The same goes for customers. New deals are not always
the best deals.

Why Customers Buy Again

Existing customers have a proven track record of buying from you. The
reciprocity principle is already at play — you’ve given them products or
services, they’ve given cash in return, and that connection has been
established. They’ve spent resources and time on their deal with you.
There’s psychological buy-in. It’s a settled matter; they can move on to
think of other concerns. They feel empowered by their judgement: the
investment has worked out, and they’re seeing a return. The immediate
future of their organisation is built with your business’s support. They’re
happy.
Hopefully.
That said, ‘The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them,’ as
Don Draper’s character in Mad Men famously stated.
The challenge you face to turn a happy honeymoon into a lifelong
relationship, survive moments of turbulence, and build a long-lasting
connection. Things do change over the course of a customer relationship.
To avoid stagnation, you need to keep proving value so you don’t get taken
for granted. One of the ways you can retain value is by recommending more
services that will genuinely relieve your customer’s issues. To do that, you
need a deeper understanding of an organisation’s machinations and
problems, which is only acquired through trust.
Such issues may not have been apparent in the early days of your
engagement. They may not have been the highest priority. It’s possible there
was no budget to address those issues at the time, but the customer has just
had a big sale or an investment. The customer may not have known you
offer certain services or they may not have understood that you could solve
additional problems for them. They may not have realised there was a
problem until you pointed it out. Maybe you’ve unlocked new opportunities
to build on what you’ve done before. Maybe the market has changed.
Maybe you’ve added new service lines or products.
Whatever the catalyst, there’s a win-win by continuing the process of
marketing and sales with your existing customer database. It’s not about
bleeding them dry. It’s about deepening the relationship and establishing a
cadence where customers are delighted to keep coming back for more, like
hungry diners at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
This makes you the exception. You stand out in the eyes of the customer
because you’re constantly and proactively bringing value beyond your
initial engagement. Very few businesses do this well. There is ample space
for you to differentiate yourself by elevating your retention game.

Winning Tactics To Upsell And Cross-Sell

One step you can take today is to identify everything you can potentially
offer a customer, and compare that to what they are currently buying. Then,
work out a plan to get from where you are now to that full-service goal.
Simply make a grid with columns for each of your products or services, at
each tier. For your existing customers, mark where they are on that grid and
how much they’re spending. In collaboration with the customer service
team, try to identify what else would interest them. This is called a ‘white
space’ analysis. You’re looking for the gaps, either in what they buy, or
perhaps what you should be selling.
From here, you can set sales value targets. That is, the maximum potential
sale value of a customer based on your knowledge of their current budgets,
problems and goals, as they align with your offering. You want to move the
dial from the current engagement closer to that target.
Then, it’s all about inter-departmental alignment. Identify how each
department should contribute, and who is accountable for driving the
process overall. For example, marketing teams can tailor lead nurturing
messaging towards those topic areas, sending emails with relevant content
(assuming your customers are signed up for marketing contact, which they
should be!). Company newsletters are a good way to inform customers
about your other services. While Marketing’s at work, Sales can strike up a
conversation, too. Frame it as a regular post-sale health check. Do one
every quarter or so. Customer Services can feed back any nuggets of
wisdom they come across, so that all of this targeted messaging is hitting
the right notes and is timed perfectly.
And if it doesn’t work? Hey, break-ups happen. It’s not the end of the
world. Make the closing of the relationship the best part of the whole
experience (it won’t be, but the trying counts). Pain-free, calm, orderly. A
big part of elevating your retention game is also playing the long game. No
provider is perfect. Hindsight and a few bad experiences outside your
partnership can certainly turn the tide back in your favour, even if things
didn’t end on the best terms. Be the one that got away. Nurture those
‘previous customer’ leads, keep in touch, be a valuable member of their
network. Former customers do come back, it’s been known to happen. And
they can refer you to others, which we’ll talk about more in our section on
customer advocacy. The old sales mantra is ‘always be closing’ but the
customer upsell mantra is ‘always be building the relationship’. Maintain
that connection and when your previously ‘small fish’ client comes back
five years later with ten times the budget and a nostalgic recollection of just
how great you are, you’ll be glad you did.
LEAD GENERATION —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

W hile your Difference Engine is more than just a lead generator (much,
much more), it needs to do a stellar job of bringing quality leads into
your business. That’s if it is working well, of course.

Inbound marketing is the adventure your leads didn’t know they needed to
experience in order to grow. One full of challenges and self-discovery and
good friends along the way. Fall down the rabbit hole and discover
Wonderland. Step through the wardrobe into Narnia. This is the road to El
Dorado, the city of gold.
Instil a sense of wonder in your leads, feed their natural curiosity and be the
guide on their quest. Don’t just tell your audience your (brand) story, make
them a part of it.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Build landing pages to capture leads

☐ Put a lead nurturing strategy in place
☐ Support the lead handover process to sales
☐ Filter and qualify your leads
☐ Create sales collateral to elevate the sales process
☐ Develop tactics to keep existing customers coming back for more
Your Difference Engine is up and running, now. Everything you’ve done so
far has come together to get you to this moment. In the final chapter, we’ll
walk you through more advanced marketing techniques to iteratively
optimise and fine-tune that marketing machine.

✽ ✽ ✽
CHAPTER EIGHT: ITERATIVE
OPTIMISATION

A tteam
the 2008 Olympics, the cycling coach Sir David Brailsford led his
to victory, winning the majority of gold medals in track cycling.
They won big at the next Olympics, too. He then oversaw the successes of
many professional British cyclists over the next decade, proving time and
again that he has a secret sauce for success.

What is it?
‘Marginal gains’, otherwise known as the ‘1% Factor’. This is how
Brailsford puts it:

‘It struck me that we should think small, not big, and adopt a
philosophy of continuous improvement through the aggregation of
marginal gains. Forget about perfection; focus on progression, and
compound the improvements.’

As such, he didn’t look at his team, their physiology, mindset, training style,
daily routine, equipment, clothing and so on as a unit, but rather as
disparate parts that each could be isolated and optimised, saying, ‘The
whole principle came from the idea that if you broke down everything you
could think of that goes into riding a bike, and then improved it by one
percent, you will get a significant increase when you put them all together.’
Clearly, this was a successful tactic. It has since been adopted across the
sporting world, as well as in business and beyond. We liked it so much that
it went into our own consideration about the Difference Engine and its
makeup. Parts — that when taken together — form a whole. Parts — that
when broken down and diligently considered, understood and optimised —
form something greater than their sum.
Differentiation can be achieved via various routes. One of which is
following this maxim that small improvements, over time, make a big
difference. To stand out, one does not always have to burst on stage, brash,
dazzling, bedecked — and all that jazz. While the cancan can work for
some, other audiences appreciate the precision of a tea ceremony or the
emotional clarity of Rembrandt; that level of mastery, only achievable over
tens of thousands of hours of refinement.
So, pay attention to the details. When we push the limits of human capacity
and imagination, we find what is extraordinary in ourselves (and in our
businesses).
In marketing, iterative optimisation is the act of considering each part of
your Difference Engine and applying those principles of marginal gains,
continuous improvement and attention to detail, so every one is operating at
peak efficiency. To do so requires you to observe the data, then measure and
test variants, implementing the better option, each time. There is no end to
this process.
This is how you set the example people want to copy. And, how you grow
your network, encouraging the advocacy of peers and customers. It’s the
fine-tuning that wins you the race against competitors.
In this final pillar of the Difference Engine, we discuss the following topics
(or ‘cogs’):

1. Behavioural analytics — "How is my company’s audience

behaving and interacting with our site?"
2. A/B testing — "In what ways are we using data to test what
works best?"
3. Conversion optimisation — "How is my business trying to
optimise conversions at every stage of the journey?"
4. Personalisation and segmentation — "How do we automatically
target subsections of our audience, and individuals?"
5. Networking — "How do we build a connected network within
and outside our industry?"
6. Customer advocacy — "How do we keep customers engaged and
eager to give us referrals?"

At the end, we provide a summary of the actions you need to take to

optimise your Difference Engine so it runs smoothly as you accelerate your
marketing machine. Pedal? Meet metal.
BEHAVIOURAL ANALYTICS

C ontent
ear.
may be king, but data sits behind the throne and has the king’s

Digital behavioural analytics refers to the area of data analytics

concerned with how people act on a site, application or other platform.
Use this data to steer optimisation efforts for your users.
As much as possible, you want to be informed by data before you make
changes to your marketing strategies. This is never truer than in the case of
your website, which is a rich source of behavioural analytics and therefore a
valuable insight into your audience’s interests — especially when used in
conjunction with demographic information about different segments of your
audience. We’ll talk more about segmentation later in this chapter.
One of the best starting points for iterative optimisation is to trigger
experiments based on user behaviour. Here are four steps to help you set up
and make the most of behavioural analytics.

Phase 1: Create Your Launchpad

You need sufficient traffic and conversions for results to be statistically
significant. You cannot base the success or failure of a particular form
placement, word choice or page layout on a handful of data points. That’s a
lot of work for little pay-off, and it could lead you to conclusions that are
plain wrong.
As much as everyone wants to test what works and make data-driven
decisions, the first phase you must concentrate on is to create, create, create.
Build up your stock of marketing collateral and make your website the ideal
launchpad for experimentation, using the best data you have up to this
point. That may be real user data, if you have enough. Or, best practices that
you’ve researched yourself, the advice of experts, or learnings inspired by
your understanding of your own audience.

Phase 2: Install Tracking Software

Check if you already have some tools built into your website hosting
software, such as tracked links and calls-to-action. You can also implement
heatmap software like Lucky Orange or Hotjar. These tools show where
users are looking on a page, what they click on and so on.
Be careful not to overload your pages with code-heavy add-ons though, as
this will impact performance. Don’t think installing the software is enough.
You need to be prepared to actually use the information it reveals, not let it
gather dust while it weighs your site performance down. Someone has to
keep an eye on the results.

Phase 3: Observe Before You Act

Saying that, patience is important, as long as you’re paying attention to the
data.
Allow the data to flow. View how interactions change over certain
timelines, throughout one day, or over thirty days. Patterns should begin to
emerge.
You’ll be surprised at how people use your site — we’d bet it’s not how you
expected. Probably, they’ve trodden their own path and muddied up the
grass. It’s up to you whether you block that path off, or, better yet,
transform it into a walkway fit for royalty.

‘Correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the

precise visualisation of goals is vital to the success of any
enterprise.’

— Sir Terry Pratchett, author (and keen observer of human

behaviour)

Phase 4: Plan Your Experiments

Now, apply the scientific method as you plan your experiments:

Observation
Hypothesis and prediction
Experimentation
Analysis

As an example, you observe on the heatmap that site users often linger on
the homepage header and then click the button that reads ‘Chat to our sales
team’.
You form the hypothesis that site users will be more or less likely to click
on this button if the copy changes, and predict some word choice changes
could improve the click rate, such as by changing it to ‘Book a free demo’.
Due to the fact site visitors often click this button, the data is likely to be
meaningful and the return on optimising this important conversion
opportunity is going to be worth the effort. So, you run a test by changing
the button copy and measuring the results.
Once you have the data to make a like-for-like comparison, such as via a
time-bound experiment, you can analyse the results. Based on whether the
click rate has improved or not, you might decide to stick to the new copy or
revert to the old one, or even try another experiment. The opportunities to
improve are boundless.

One Decision After Another

The job of anyone in a powerful position is not to make perfect decisions
but to make decisions. Full stop. Indecision is the enemy of iterative
optimisation. Decide, then track, observe, test and, if needed, make new
decisions. No experiment is a failure, merely an opportunity to learn. As
Pratchett also said, ‘There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what
happens, and what we do.’
A/B TESTING

O nesimultaneous
way to speed up your testing and optimisation strategy is by using
tests. That is, rather than sequentially testing one feature
after another, you use A/B or multi-variant testing to compare two or more
variants at the same time, then pick a winner. Often, behavioural analytics
informs A/B testing.

The Value Of A/B Tests

The fundamental principle of A/B testing is to change just one thing at a
time, so you control all other variables. Then, you know for sure that the
change is what made the difference.
The advantage of simultaneous testing is that you automatically discount
factors, like seasonality, which can skew your results. Meaning, if you test
one landing page format in November and another in December, you’re
going to be impacted by the seasonal dip in traffic that usually occurs on
B2B websites during the winter holidays. That may give you a false
impression that the first variant works best. But, if you A/B test that landing
page in November, then you’re giving each variant the same chance at
success.

What Should You A/B Test?

There are a lot of things you can A/B test. You should tie your tests to your
marketing goals. Be mindful: you can’t run too many tests at once as that
may mess up your data, so be clear about your priorities. If you’re focusing
on traffic, then SEO tests where you try to optimise a page for certain
keywords or performance might be your priority. Or you may run
conversion rate optimisation tests to increase the number of leads filling in
forms, such as by A/B testing landing pages. Tests based on user behaviour,
which we discussed in the last section, are another great place to start. You
can also test things for your own purposes, to drive behaviour and
interaction. When you have no data to back up a change but you intuitively
think it will be an improvement, use an A/B test to get that data before
committing.
Here are some ideas of things you can test:

Sections or pages on your website, in terms of the copy, format

or imagery
Landing page copy, formats and so on
Forms (copy, number of fields, types of fields, and so on)
Calls-to-action, links and buttons (location, copy, number of
these on a page)
Pay-per-click adverts
Emails (subject lines, preview copy, body text, imagery, calls-to-
action — there are a lot of things you can test on an email)

The Never-Ending Cycle Of Tests

Running A/B tests is not always as easy as it sounds. Too often, companies
don’t have enough data to make such tests viable. Or, they test the wrong
things. Or lack the insight to translate test outcomes into actions —
sometimes, a test outcome is not as straight-forward as it seems. Maybe one
variant does better by the number of clicks, but the other results in more
buyers.
Or, companies fail at A/B testing because they don’t track test results and
analyse ongoing post-test data. Why? Because A/B testing is like doing the
laundry.
How often have you forgotten the laundry in the washing machine?
Everyone does it. Yes, even when it beeps at you. You see it’s done, turn it
off, and go back to whatever you were doing, don’t you? The trouble with
laundry, and A/B testing, is you start a task, leave it to run, and then you
move on to something else. Even if you’ve managed to get that laundry on
the line or in the dryer, you have another stretch where you have to wait for
it to dry. How often does dry laundry sit around before it gets folded and
put away? Hours? Days? Exactly.
A/B tests are the laundry of marketing chores. They never really end
(meaning, there’s always something worth testing), and they include several
steps that get chronically forgotten. The types of people who are good at
laundry are also good at A/B tests. For the rest of us, there’s software.

A/B Testing Software

You will require the right technology to allow you to run A/B tests. That is,
a means to both run the tests and to track the results.
For example, you need some way to gauge when your test has reached the
point of statistical significance. This may not be as simple as ‘one number
is higher than the other number.’ Software should account for other
variations and intelligently discount bad data, like bots.
Plus, ideally, you want built-in parameter settings based on the test setup.
That way, when you create your test the platform you’re using suggests a
test duration based on the criteria, and can notify you when a test has
reached a point of statistical significance. Such information makes A/B
testing much more accessible for non-data scientists.
As a HubSpot partner, we do the majority of our A/B tests using the Pro
Marketing Hub because it provides intuitive testing setup and tracking
systems. Other recommended tools are available, such as Optimizely.
How To Run An A/B Test

1. Choose your test subject, such as a marketing email.

2. Establish your test criteria, such as the subject line of an email.
3. Split your audience (Some platforms, like HubSpot, can use
cookies or other ways to automate splitting your audience. You
may want to send one email to one list of contacts, and another
email to a second list. Whatever you do, try to make the test as
fair as possible with a like-for-like group receiving each email).
4. Decide the test parameters (Such as a timeline. For example, you
may run an A/B test on an email for four hours, sending it to a
portion of your contacts, before choosing a winner and sending
the rest of your contact list the winning variant).
5. Create your test with sufficient variation that it is likely to have
an impact (As in, for an email, don’t make your subject line
variants subtle. Do something completely different for each one).
6. Determine the metric you are measuring and the criteria for
success (When it comes to email, that might be open rates or
click rates. If you’re testing subject lines, a variant with a better
open rate would be the success metric).

Then, of course, run the test, analyse the results and take that learning
forward. In other words, differentiate based on data.
CONVERSION OPTIMISATION

Y ou understand your users’ behaviour and you’re consistently testing

variables on your site and other platforms to find opportunities to
improve their experience. That is noble and right and good. But it’s hardly
altruistic. On your end, you want to see a higher quality and quantity of
leads come through the door as a result of your iterative testing efforts. That
is, conversion optimisation.

Here are two ways to increase the number of inbound leads to your
business:

1. Get more traffic to your website, OR

2. Improve the conversion rate at all the key stages of qualification,
from lead to customer.

Now. SEO will get you more traffic. Backlinks from referring domains,
pay-per-click ads, optimising content for keywords — all these strategies
we’ve discussed. However, this alone is not enough. If your traffic stays the
same, there are still opportunities to increase the number of leads and the
percentage of that traffic that converts and becomes a contact.
Think like an engineer. Energy in > energy out. Input > output. Traffic >
leads. However, by optimising for conversions, you establish a store of
energy, like a battery, which supplements the energy output when
seasonality or something else reduces the flow of traffic. That way, you’re
not reliant on one method to get your energy, your leads. You have a store
in reserve, and activities you can do to optimise leadflow from that store.
Combine this with energy efficiency — getting more out of less — for truly
optimised lead flow.

Determine Your Conversion Rate Goals

Certainly, it helps to have a benchmark here. A benchmark is just a rough
guide. If you’re miles below that number, then you know conversion
optimisation is something you need to be working hard. If you’re hitting the
mark or batting above average, then maybe it’s time to focus on SEO
instead. For your reference, Unbounce and WordStream both report a
median conversion rate of about two to five percent across industries.
Unbounce says Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies get around three
percent, but Finance sees a CR of over six percent, so FinTech’s may see
their CR fall somewhere in the middle.
We run conversion rate optimisation efforts on many of our landing pages.
As such, we have a ten percent CR of page views to contacts, and a
whopping 25 percent CR for page views to submissions.
Another thing worth pointing out is that the top 25 percent of landing pages
get almost double the conversion rate of the rest, on average. These are the
landing pages that have been thoroughly tested and optimised for
conversions (and the content could also be more appealing).
As you can see, conversion optimisation pays off. So, observe where you
are now, and set some specific conversion goals for each of your conversion
opportunities. Here are three more tips to increase your conversion rate:

1. One Form To Rule Them All

A/B tests are a great way to optimise things like forms for conversions, but
they’re not the only strategy. Try making one master landing page form and
using it on all your landing pages. Don’t use it for other forms, like ‘contact
us’ or ‘book a demo’. These should be kept separate.
With the master landing page form, use queued fields so that when a contact
reconverts on your site, you’re asking them for different information, like
their job title or company size. Not only does this clue you into who your
contact is, but it also reduces the number of visible fields on a form. Fewer
fields mean a lower barrier to entry, so more people are likely to fill in the
form in the first place and to convert more than once, grabbing multiple
downloads in a Netflix-style binge session. Once someone has filled in a
form on your website, they’re much more likely to do it again, especially if
you signpost the next chapter on their journey with clear calls-to-action.

2. Make Your Blog A Conversion Powerhouse

If your inbound marketing machine is running well, your blog is the
primary source of traffic to your site, so it stands to reason it should be the
place you focus your conversion efforts.
Add CTAs to blogs and test their placement, subject matter, copy and so on.
Put conversion opportunities in the sidebar. Add a ‘recommended reading’
section to every article. Include the option to download articles as a PDF, or
as an audio file. Give people the chance to subscribe to your blog. You
could do the same thing for webinars. Leave no stone unturned. Pack your
blog with goodies.

3. Optimise For The Mobile Experience

Finally, many B2B businesses operate on a desktop-first basis when it
comes to their website. Most visitors (at the time of writing) do probably
come to your website on desktop, but — mobile is ever on the rise.
We’ve all had that experience of a giant pop-up covering the screen on
mobile, with the ‘close’ button cut off at the top so you can’t even get rid of
it. What do you do? Leave the website. Disaster.
So, put together strategies to target conversions from mobile users, like
mobile-specific CTAs or simplified pages with conversion opportunities
higher on the page, so you don’t have to scroll too much. This is a form of
segmentation, which is the next topic on our agenda.
PERSONALISATION AND
SEGMENTATION

N ow we’re really into the weeds of advanced marketing tactics.

Personalisation is when you use tracked or provided data to speak
directly to individuals, through automation.
Segmentation means targeting activities based on subsections of your
audience, using customer data. These activities are sometimes called
‘contextual marketing’.
You often see the use of personalisation and segmentation in email
marketing. Most companies do this. For example, addressing an email
recipient by name using a ‘Name’ field. Or even segmenting which emails
go to certain lists of contacts, based on information on their contact record
like job title or sector.
Another use-case is multinational organisations using location ID data to
suggest a language change for your site. That way, if a site visitor is visiting
from Germany, then you send them to the German version of your website,
or, use a pop-up to suggest they make the switch.
You could even go so far as to re-prioritise the navigation on your website
— based on a cookie being dropped — for known customers. Rather than
highlighting your ‘book a demo’ page, instead, you can prioritise portal or
platform logins and other content they’d be interested in. Existing
customers will have an improved experience, which means they’re more
likely to advocate for your brand and give good reviews.
On the flip side, you might have experienced it yourself when companies
get personalisation horribly wrong, alienating their audience instead of
engaging them. Something as simple as messing up placeholder default
copy or sending the wrong people a highly targeted email can seriously
impact your brand reputation. Always have someone double-check your
work and your send lists.

Account-Based Marketing
We can’t talk about personalisation and segmentation without touching on
account-based marketing or ABM. Despite its roots in a 30-year old
concept detailed in Don Peppers and Dr Martha Rogers’ book, ‘The One to
One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time’, this is a hot
marketing trend, today. Unlike inbound marketing, which focuses on
individual leads, ABM targets the organisation as a whole. This is a joint
effort between Marketing and Sales.
Account-based marketing is where you identify key accounts —
prospective organisations you want to sell to — by examining specific
organisations based on your ICP criteria, emphasis on ‘ideal’. That is,
looking at location, revenue, values, size, trajectory, technology,
competitors, key stakeholders, buying power and so on. This is not a
cursory good-fit check, but a careful data-gathering operation. In this data-
driven world, there is a lot you can find out with simple sleuthing and the
right digital toolkit.
Once you have completed this information-gathering step, marketing and
sales should agree on the content and activities that would most entice this
specific account, and plan out a cooperative campaign to reel them in. That
might mean social media engagement over time. Subscribing, liking,
following, commenting on posts by various team members. Custom one-
pagers or reports. Videos made just for that account, emailed directly to
each stakeholder with personalised copy. Attending events. Tailored ads and
retargeting. Setting up alerts when anyone from this account interacts with
marketing materials. You can’t put this kind of effort into every prospect,
but for the ideal client, nothing is off limits.
Where traditional sales is akin to blind speed-dating, ABM is all about
making your target organisation feel like ‘the one.’ It’s attentive marketing;
paying attention to the specifics. It’s showing you care in a super personal,
targeted way. And it could be setting yourself up for heartbreak. They may
not love you back. That kind of sunk cost can be painful to acknowledge —
a real blow to the ego. That fact doesn’t get enough acknowledgement. So
there is risk, yes, but there is also reward. The potential pay-off is huge.
Your biggest deals, your longest partnerships, your best work. The kind of
clientele that makes working with your business look like a coveted
invitation to the highest echelons of society. You are in demand. You aren’t
just another fling, you’re spouse-material. ABM is where marketing really
gets personal.

1-1 Marketing
Now for something completely different. With artificial intelligence, the
possibilities for personalisation and segmentation are growing. You can
make marketing experiences feel more personal without actually putting in
all that ABM-style human effort. Plus, you can use the pattern-recognising
capacity of machine learning to support ABM, in terms of information-
gathering. And, even use AI tools to quickly create targeted content for
ABM prospects, if you do so with all due diligence. We’re already seeing
hyper-targeted ads on social media, with cross-platform data-sharing
allowing brands to zero in on your interests. (Hey, if it’s a free platform,
then you’re not the customer, as they say.)

‘Personalisation is when you go into a bar and sit down, and the
bartender puts a whiskey in front of you without having to ask what
you want.’

— Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon

The reality is, people expect curated experiences. We don’t all have
Amazon’s budget, but there are many ways that any business can tailor their
brand experience to the individual.
Here’s a strategy. Use behavioural analytics to see which assets on your
website may benefit from personalisation. Say, there’s a CTA linking to a
landing page that’s popular with a certain demographic of users, such as
those that match up with one of your personas. Run an A/B test to trial the
regular version versus a personalised version. For example, you could have
a bit of copy next to your contact form that says ‘Hi [Name], you recently
downloaded [offer], which tends to mean you’re interested in [service].
Book a meeting to find out how we can help you with that.’ Or a chatbot
that pops up with a message along those same lines.
If more people fill in the personalised form or reply to your chatbot, then
you’re onto a winner. If not, then maybe you got too personal. Dial it back.
Try again. Customers won’t expect loads of personalisation in certain
contexts on your website (or elsewhere), so overdoing it will seem like
you’ve been going through their bins in your spare time. However, don’t
mistake what is true now to be true forever. The threshold for
personalisation tolerance is already shifting. Younger people, especially,
expect a level of personalised marketing and advertising that once would
have been off-putting. To quote Marty from Back to the Future, ‘Guess you
guys aren’t ready for that yet… but your kids are gonna love it.’
You can also choose to be more subtle about it. When a new user visits your
site and drops a cookie, you can track their movements. So, see if they’ve
read half a dozen blog posts about cybersecurity for banks or something.
Then, the next time that person lands on the homepage, adjust the copy and
even imagery to suit. Instead of the default copy, serve up a banner with a
relevant case study in the banking industry or a link to your cybersecurity
services. Set up several variants and triggers. Yes, this requires a lot of data,
a lot of insight and some pretty heavy-duty tools, but we predict it won’t be
long before this level of personalisation is the norm for B2B websites.
Today, highly segmented, personalised marketing has the potential to be a
real differentiator — but tomorrow? The future of marketing will surely put
the custom in ‘customer’.
NETWORKING

P ersonalisation works because personal connections matter. That extends

beyond your customers, too. Personal connections include the
relationships you have with your suppliers, your stakeholders, your
employees, industry peers… the list goes on.

Want to grow your network? Build your community.

Doing so takes time and patience. Networking (or as we prefer to think of
it, community building) is another iterative activity that you optimise over a
period. It’s not a project with a beginning, middle and end — it’s more
organic than that. Make a connection, grow, learn, make another
connection, on and on. Over time, you’ll turn competitors into partners;
bigger companies into backup; hungry start-ups into think tanks, and even
causes into sponsorships. As you do this, you’ll discover new opportunities
and will become more known in the sector.
So, make your business a friend worth having. You never know where your
next referral is going to come from. It could be from the person you gave a
nugget of helpful advice to at an event. It could be because someone sees
you’re leading the charge towards Net Zero, or you’re the first company in
your region to become B Corp. There are companies who are on that same
journey. They will want to learn from you, connect with you, buy from you
and collaborate with you.

Community As Branding
As an example, those of you who operate in the Environmental Tech sector
know this all too well: how much building that sense of community is a part
of your brand. ‘We are all in this together, doing our bit to save the planet.’
If one business is serious about sustainability, it will partner with
organisations that are on the same wavelength, as we discussed in chapter
two. The attitude of collective participation is an important part of the
brand.
No person is an island; no business is either. Organisations that have a clear
mission, that have a company culture and values that people want to be
aligned with, that do great work and contribute valuable insights to the
conversation freely and generously — these are the organisations, the
people, with whom others want to associate. That is the direction forward-
thinking businesses are going in. In short: ‘The currency of real networking
is not greed, but generosity.’ So says Keith Ferrazzi, New York Times best-
selling author.
Yes, sure, when it comes to marketing, you want to capitalise on your
relationship with another organisation, accessing their audience to grow
your own. You want new ways of doing things and insider secrets. You
want to learn from others and benefit from their experience. You want to
use connections to build your reputation. You want to sell to potential
buyers. Want want want. As they say in New York, everybody wants
something. What is crucial, however, is the give and take. You have to have
enough credibility in the space and enough of an audience that other
companies are keen to partner with you. You have to have something to
give. Information, contacts, experience, skills, ideas, help.
This all sounds a bit transactional, but there is a word for that, and it sits at
the heart of most communities: the marketplace. Not that one. More, your
local farmer’s market. There’s a lot to learn from such places. Local
marketplaces are not just about the sale; they’re about coming together as a
community, growing together, meeting people and giving back to the local
economy. Embody the spirit of free samples and getting to know your
fellow vendors. You can’t go wrong.
If you still don’t know where to begin — beyond shaking hands and
exchanging never-to-be-read business cards at a conference — here are two
ways to kick-start this process:
Co-Branded Campaigns
Run a joint marketing campaign with another organisation. This gets your
marketing in front of a new audience and means you can pool resources,
benefitting from economies of scale.
An example. Data storage and management company A joins forces with
Cybersecurity business B. Together, they decide to run a marketing
campaign on ‘business continuity’ featuring voices from both sides. Not
only does this give their audiences a deeper, more nuanced understanding of
the subject matter, but it lends more authority to the campaign overall. They
both benefit from the reputation of the other, and can even refer business to
one another after the fact.
And, it’s an easy pitch. Offer your point of contact at another business the
chance to do a co-branded marketing campaign on a subject that benefits
them too, and offer to pay for half of it. Watch them leap at the opportunity.

Be My Guest
Another tactic is to be a guest on a webinar, podcast, video or event, sharing
your wisdom as a thought leader. It’s estimated there are between three and
four million podcasts out there. Many will welcome business leaders onto
their platforms. And, you can use your own platform, whether that’s a
podcast or webinar or whatever, to feature guests in turn. This is reciprocity
at its finest.
Plus, it’s highly scalable. Start with being a guest and freely providing
information, then invite guests back to your platform, which you’ve created
in the meantime by working out what resonates with people. As you get out
there, build your repertoire of useful and valuable ideas. You’ve attended
many a conference, but perhaps now is the moment to sign up to speak at
your next favourite industry event. Maybe one day, you’ll be running the
conferences. And, like that magnetic person at any event, you’ll be the hub
of attention, energy — and commerce.
Humans are social creatures. It’s what sets us apart from the baser creatures,
right? Our ability to build deeper, more widespread, meaningful
relationships as we thrive, together. Sometimes, standing out means fitting
in.
CUSTOMER ADVOCACY
‘Advocacy can propel a brand unlike any other paid or unpaid
media because it unlocks the networking power of one-to-one
relationships with a key of trust.’

— Rick Wion, Senior Director of Consumer Engagement, The

Kellogg Company

H ow can you tell if your differentiation strategy is working? More leads,

more customers. Sure. Brand recognition. Of course. Engagement.
Yeah. But customer advocacy is the gold standard. Where engagement is
conversation, advocacy is creed. It’s buy-in. It’s loyalty, faith,
internalisation, fervour, love. It’s seeing oneself as the extension of a brand,
and as its champion and defendant. It’s vouching for a business, even in
times of crisis. It’s the ultimate achievement — the glorious moment when
your customer starts doing your marketing for you.
We’ve already spoken about case studies and testimonials. That’s you using
customer evidence as marketing collateral. This could be considered a form
of advocacy, but it’s not the customer doing the marketing for you. What
we’ll talk about in this final section is how to close the loop. Meaning,
we’re looking at ways to optimise our chances of getting referral business
and industry-official recognition, while leaving the marketing entirely in the
hands of the customer. Why not let the customer take the wheel for a bit?
With a Difference Engine as powerful as yours under the hood, they’re sure
to have the (brand) experience of a lifetime.
1. Referrals
First up is the obvious one. Get referrals. Every business wants referrals.
Asking, often, isn’t enough. You need to optimise your chance at getting
referrals by implementing a referral scheme. Give existing customers
discounted rates or a percentage finder’s fee for referring new business.
Promote your referral scheme, such as by using segmentation to surface it
as a pop-up or CTA on your website to customers, or through a customer
newsletter or portal.

2. Enablement
Alternatively, take a leaf out of the book of vendors. Tech vendors, like
Microsoft, are experts at enabling their partners to do marketing on their
behalf. Like a co-branded campaign, you can give customers the marketing
collateral to share with others as a nicely bundled package. Again, you
could offer incentives for doing so. Ideally, you won’t have to. You’re
simply helping customers to articulate this message: ‘Check out this
business that we work with, don’t you think they’d be a great fit for what
you’re trying to achieve, too?’

3. Awards
There are plenty of awarding bodies for businesses, both for the work they
do and for things like culture. Awards are like case studies, except the
audience is a panel of judges, all of whom are authorities in your industry.
Businesses that win awards certainly stand out. And customers who are true
advocates would be delighted to either support an award entry or even
nominate you for an award themselves. We’ve seen it happen.
In this scenario, you’ve made such a difference that you’ve helped them
differentiate in some way, by growing their business, being more secure,
innovating, or empowering their people. When you’re running a truly
optimised, award-worthy Difference Engine, you’re helping other
businesses — your customers — create their own. As Oprah once said,
‘You get a car. You get a car. Everybody gets a car.’
Or better yet, a Grease Lightning-style flying car. Or perhaps a DeLorean.
ITERATIVE OPTIMISATION —
SUMMARY OF ACTIONS

O ptimising your marketing practices is about focusing on your audience

and your stakeholders, and how they perceive and engage with your
business. As you build momentum, that flywheel of feedback and action
starts to refine your understanding of your customers. It makes those
relationships stronger. It embeds your business in the sector, so those roots
go deeper.

Whether you use data to gain that insight, or good old-fashioned personal
connection, you’re always striving to know more, and be more well-known
yourself, as a business. And put that knowledge and presence to use.
As a reminder, here is a list of actionable recommendations from this
section:

☐ Track behavioural data and plan your experiments

☐ Set up A/B tests for your marketing assets
☐ Run a conversion-optimisation sprint on your website and other
channels
☐ Use personalisation and segmentation (carefully!)
☐ Engage with your community through networking efforts
☐ Get your customers to do your marketing for you
From Flintstone-style pedal-power to souped-up marketing engine, you’re
now well-equipped to race against the big players in your industry — and
win.
NOTE G
’Those who have learned to walk on the threshold of the unknown
worlds, by means of what are commonly termed par excellence the
exact sciences, may then, with the fair white wings of imagination,
hope to soar further into the unexplored amidst which we live.’

— Ada Lovelace, the first computer scientist

With your Difference Engine up and running, we hope you, too, feel
empowered to soar into the unexplored. Or, boldly go, if Star Trek is more
your bag.
This book is a manual for building such an Engine for yourself. It’s a guide,
not a rulebook. Rules are made to be broken. But if you’re feeling lost in
space and you want to get your marketing on the right heading, then a bit of
expert guidance is just the ticket.
All prosperous businesses have a Difference Engine; we fervently believe
that. If you’ve read this book cover-to-cover, then we’re willing to bet
you’re of the same mind. Welcome aboard.
Join our movement, where strategy, innovation, expertise, data, people
skills, culture, drive, process and yes, technology, dictate the successful
differentiation of a business. Where marketing best practices are tangible
and accessible. Where powerful engines and marketing machines can be
built in tiny garages or huge warehouses, and where every business — even
the little guy — has a chance at making history.
Spread the word. The Difference Engine: it’s the future of marketing.

Acknowledgements
First and foremost, the team at Articulate Marketing would like to thank
everyone who contributed to this book. In many ways, our Difference
Engine guide was years in the making, having been written with the
collective brainpower of dozens and the experience of decades.
Alongside the contributions of the team as a whole, we’d like to thank
everyone who has written content on our blog, which has oft-inspired this
book’s contents. While those people include Madeleine Leslie, Marketing
Manager, and Matthew Stibbe, CEO, they also include Clare Dodd, Editor
in Chief (who edited this book, too), and: Adam Catterall, Alex Cohen,
Aoife Porter, Ben Holness, Callum Sharp, Claire Rowe, Elizabeth Fielder,
Gemma Haggarty, Grace O’Brien, Ioana Negulescu, James Dhakal, James
Lavender, Jenny Davies, Jessica Lawrence, Katelyn Piontek, Lauren Lovett,
Neil Baker, Paul Morton, Rachel Kennedy, Rich Jinks, Simon Collins, Toby
Knott, Tom Wall and Violet Myers.
Next up, we’d like to validate our clients and partners in the business
community who push us to be better, to think harder and to innovate faster.
Their standards are our standards, and they set the bar in the nosebleeds. We
are forever reaching to attain greater heights and these wonderful people
help us do that, for which we are very, very grateful.
Lastly, we want to thank you, our readers. Whether you’ve been a fan of our
content for a while, you’re a former or current employee or client, or you
just care about doing marketing well, thank you for picking up this book
and for making it to the end. May it inspire your ambitions, or, in the words
of Ada Lovelace once more:

‘As soon as I have got flying to perfection, I have got a scheme

about a steam engine.’
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