3 Ways to Earn the Trust & Attention of B2B Customers

two men sitting across each other at a brown table with papers organized in piles
Whether your brand has long been established, is getting a refresh, or is a new start-up company, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out in today’s noisy, competitive world. To make our point even clearer, take a moment and scroll through your email inbox. How many of those emails are marketing messages? And, how many have you read or even opened? If you want to stand out in an increasingly noisy world, you must earn the trust and attention of your customers. This isn’t anything new. It’s what Seth Godin outlined nearly two decades ago in his book, Permission Marketing. The difference is this concept has become increasingly more important in today’s world. 

3 Ways to Earn the Trust & Attention of B2B Customers

If you’re a B2B company, here are three specific ways you can earn more trust and attention from today’s customers: 
  1. Create the same kind of personal and relevant experience as the best B2C companies.
If you think about brands that are known for amazing customer experiences like Amazon and Nordstrom, they all provide customers with customized experiences.  One way you can do this is by segmenting your list prospects based on their specific interests, communication preferences, or stage in the buyer’s journey. Instead of acquiring large lists of users to contact, consider building segmented, high-quality groups that can be reached through targeted marketing.
  1. Create an experience that matches your brand promise. 
Every potential customer already has a perception of your brand, whether you like it or not. In order to earn their trust, the experience you create must match the expectations they carry. Every marketing team should focus on building a quality audience and providing them with the resources and information they expect to receive. This is essential for developing a strong relationship with potential customers. 
  1. Leverage transparency as a marketing strategy.
According to a study by Label Insight, 94% of consumers surveyed indicated that they were more likely to be loyal to a brand that offers transparency, while 73% said they were willing to pay more for a product that provides complete transparency.  Companies that hope for long-term success must be open and transparent with their customers. And, for B2B buyers who are often looking to establish long-term working relationships over performing a one-off transaction, a clear understanding of your business, what you stand for, and how you operate have become non-negotiable. It’s a crowded world out there for today’s B2B marketers. If you’re going to be heard above the noise, you have to earn the trust and attention of our potential customers. By embracing these three keys, you’ll put yourself in a better position to get your prospects’ attention, begin to earn their trust, and start building the foundation for relationships that can last a lifetime.

How Marketing Can Directly Impact Revenue with Sales Enablement

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Directly tying your marketing efforts to revenue generation is a challenge for almost every business leader and marketing manager. In today’s world, there are so many factors that influence a potential customer’s decision, so utilizing proper marketing tactics is essential. It’s the only way to know if the time, energy, and resources you invest are making an impact on the bottom line. 

One of the simplest and most effective ways for marketing to directly impact revenue is to focus on sales enablement. Essentially, sales enablement is equipping your business development team with assets that make them more efficient and effective. This includes content that helps prospects to answer the questions they ask, solve their problems, and build the case internally with their team.

But, what’s the best thing about sales enablement? All of it can be tracked, measured, and attributed to the bottom line. 

How to Create Sales-Enablement Tools That Directly Impact Revenue

How can marketing equip your sales team with resources that make them smarter and more efficient and effective? Here are a few important considerations when creating your sales-enablement assets: 

  1. Sales Enablement That Answers Potential Customers’ Biggest Questions. The most effective sales-enablement tools proactively answer the questions of prospective customers. This includes assets such as answers to frequently asked questions, at-a-glance competitor comparisons, and statistics that add credibility.
  2. Sales Enablement That Comes in Different Formats. Every customer is different in how they prefer to consume content. The good news is that you don’t have to create all of these resources from scratch. Re-organizing the content you create into various formats is one of the simplest ways to maximize your content marketing efforts. Equipping your sales team with content in various formats such as ebooks, case studies, blog posts, videos, webinars, and infographics is key.
  3. Sales Enablement That Is Easy to Find and Simple to Use. Sales enablement tools are effective if your business development team actually uses them. That’s why it’s critically important to create sales enablement tools that your team can use. Make sure everything you create is easily accessible, consumable, and shareable.
  4. Sales Enablement That Makes Your Business Development Team More Efficient. Marketing automation and technology have opened the door for new levels of sales enablement. Not only can you create resources for sales to use, but you can also send it on their behalf. Finding simple ways to leverage marketing automation to support your sales team will save them a tremendous amount of time and enable them to focus on having meaningful conversations with potential customers. 

The great thing about sales enablement is that all of it can be tracked. You can see what potential customers are consuming. You can know what content is influencing their decisions. You can share that information with your sales team to help them be even more effective. While marketing might not be able to take complete credit for “closing the deal,” empowering your business development team with sales-enablement tools that can be tracked and measured is a meaningful way to directly tie your marketing efforts to the bottom line. 

How Marketing Can Create Company-Wide Collaboration

a round wood table in a warm lit room with three men gathered sitting with white papers scattered
Creating a culture of teamwork and collaboration is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Here are a few reasons why…
  • 75% of employers rate teamwork and collaboration as “very important.” (Source)
  • 86% of employees and executives cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failure. (Source)
  • Collaborative teams are 5x higher-performing because they feel motivated towards a common goal. (Source)
And, while every leader agrees that collaboration is important—creating a culture of teamwork has gotten increasingly difficult in a world where employees can work from anywhere and open offices don’t seem to be working. How Marketing Can Create Collaboration Across Your Company Creating a collaborative team environment is no simple feat, but it’s possible. Here are a few ways in which marketing can play a unique role in supporting this effort:
  1. Constantly remind employees of your mission and vision.
Your mission and vision statements won’t sink in if you promote them once or leave them on your website for others to read. Employees need to be constantly reminded about why they show up to work every day in order to increase teamwork and collaboration. Marketing can support this by looking for creative and engaging ways to keep your mission and vision top of mind for employees.
  1. Encourage creative problem solving and brainstorming.
Collaboration and teamwork works best in environments where creative brainstorming is a regular part of the business. Because of where they sit in the organization, marketing can lead out in this by pulling together leaders from different areas of the company to address issues your company is facing.
  1. Share knowledge, insights, and resources across your organization.
Does your account services team know everything that’s happening in marketing? Does your sales team know all the impressive results you’re getting for clients? Marketing can help bridge the gap by collecting all this information and dissemination throughout your organization.
  1. Celebrate the impact your company is making.
When morale is low, productivity suffers and collaboration decreases. Marketing can play a role in improving morale by regularly celebrating the growth and success your company is experiencing. Celebrating the exciting things that are happening across your business on a regular basis is a great way to create a culture where people are on board and excited about the things that are happening. Whether you’re a large corporation or a small startup—these are a few simple ways your marketing team can play a role in creating a more collaborative culture. Collaborative companies are more productive companies. Leaders who know this invest time and resources in creating environments that are conducive to teamwork.

3 Ways to Improve Sales & Marketing Alignment

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Getting sales and marketing on the same page isn’t easy. It takes buy-in from both teams and a lot of work to get marketing and development leaders on the same page. It requires investment and direction from senior leadership.  

But, what happens after you’ve laid the initial groundwork to create that alignment? How do ensure that all the hard work you’ve done until this point isn’t completely abandoned a year from now?

How to Continually Improve Sales & Marketing Alignment

When it comes to maintaining sales and marketing alignment, the biggest factor is communication. Both teams must make sure they are communicating with and enabling the other to do their jobs.

What does this look like in real time? Here are a few tips:

  • Understand the communication preferences of the other person. This sounds really simple, but it’s one of the most important keys for effective communication. If marketing is going to equip sales with real-time updates of who is on your website, make sure the information is presented in ways that are easy to understand and act upon. If you’re going to share time-sensitive information with your sales team, make sure it’s through a channel they check frequently.
  • Have a one-stop shop for all marketing information and sales tools. Creating a single document or microsite that your sales team can use to access sales tools and stay informed about marketing campaigns is another key. You want to make sure you showcase the information in places where sales can easily access it in their cars before a meeting.
  • Determine the right cadence for regular updates. How often should your sales teams be informed with marketing insights? How often should sales teams download what they’re learning to marketing teams? Finding the right cadence to address these questions is important. It could be a weekly stand-up meeting or bi-weekly email that prioritizes what campaigns sales should focus on.

Alignment between sales and marketing is like a road trip caravan. Both teams should stay in their individual cars but constantly stay connected about the directions they’re heading. The two-way communication between marketing and sales teams ensures you’re doing everything that you can to make sure both teams reach the intended destination.

7 Steps to Develop Your Go-to-Market Strategy


You have an idea for a great new product or service. You might have already invested time and money developing the solution. But, how do you get the word out?

Whenever launching a new product or service, the last thing you want is to waste time and resources investing in marketing tactics that don’t work. To avoid this, it’s important to craft an intentional plan that will help you rise above the noise and reach potential customers.

7 Steps to Develop Your Go-to-Market Strategy

Here are seven steps you can take to develop your go-to-market strategy for a new product or service:

  1. Identify your specific decision-makers and buyers. First and foremost, it’s important to define who you’re trying to serve (and who you’re not) with this new product or service. Knowing your ideal customer is foundational for marketing in ways that resonate with them. Everyone on your sales and marketing teams should take time to identify as much information as you possibly can about your target audience.
  2. Determine the specific pain points and messages that resonate with buyers. Knowing your ideal customer and their pain points are essential for determining the messages that will resonate with them. Before you launch your product, your sales and marketing should know (and agree) on exactly who you’re trying to reach and how you are uniquely positioned to help them.
  3. Understand your buyer’s journey. Intentionally considering the experience you’re creating for potential customers during the buying process is one of the most valuable things you can do before launching a product or service and is one of the best ways to spend your time. Not only will this help you create a buyer’s journey that potential customers actually enjoy, but it will also help you define the processes and systems you’ll need to create it.
  4. Define the relationship between sales and marketing. Marketing and sales teams should work together to achieve your goal. Without absolute clarity on the business objectives or specific products/service lines you want to grow, both sales and marketing teams are left guessing what will actually move the needle. This is true for businesses at any point in time but is especially important when launching a new product or service.
  5. Generate interest and develop a plan to increase brand awareness. Once you’ve laid the initial groundwork, it’s time to start thinking about your specific marketing tactics. Whenever you’re thinking about brand awareness, don’t neglect the simple but often overlooked ways to reach customers. Take time to learn from the successful campaigns and mistakes other brands make when it comes to brand awareness.
  6. Create content that connects emotionally with potential customers. How do you create content that cuts through the noise and actually gets read? Consider how you can use content to create emotional connections with potential customers. Begin weaving these strategies into your marketing efforts to appeal to their emotions. Brands and products that evoke our emotions—such as Apple, Disney, and Google—are always effective when launching new products or services.
  7. Determine how you will leverage data to evaluate and optimize your efforts. Now that you have a plan in place, the final question is: How are you going to measure and optimize along the way? Creating a data-driven marketing culture is essential for the long-term success of your product. Without knowing what you will measure before you start, you won’t know how to improve your marketing efforts along the way.

Without taking the time to think through these seven steps, it’s impossible to know if you’re chasing the wrong audience, you’re too early or too late to the market, or the market is already too saturated with similar solutions.

How to Align Sales & Marketing in Just 30 Minutes a Week


Let’s face it: Aligning your sales and marketing teams isn’t easy. For many businesses, there are big obstacles to overcome—from breaking down the silos between the two departments to getting everyone to agree on the ideal customer for your business.

While business leaders understand the importance of marketing and sales alignment, most businesses can’t stop everything they’re doing to make sure marketing and sales are on the same page. Leaders are left asking, “How do we improve marketing and sales alignment as we go?”

How to Align Marketing & Sales in Just 30 Minutes a Week

One solution I often recommend is to establish a weekly 30-minute standing meeting between key stakeholders. These stand-up meetings don’t have to be complicated. In fact, each meeting agenda can be built by addressing three simple questions:

  • What progress have we made since the last meeting?
    • What insights can sales team members provide that are valuable for the marketing team?
    • What is the marketing team working on that would be helpful for sales team members to know?
  • What is the plan going forward?
    • Are you gaining traction on sales conversations? What can the marketing team do to support those conversations?
    • What parts of your strategy need to be tweaked? What new ideas should you consider implementing?
  • Blockages
    • What information do you need from the other team to do your job well?
    • Where are you getting stuck? What potential problems do you see?

The biggest piece of advice I can give is to spend time focusing on what matters the most for your business. If you have a major event coming up, you could focus the stand-up meeting on how you’ll set up meetings at the show. It’s OK to be flexible on the topics covered, as long as everyone has a clear sense of next steps.

Sales and marketing stand-up meetings are one of the most important things a company can do to create alignment and foster face-to-face collaboration between the two teams. Don’t let it become a simple review of the existing marketing programs and schedule. Instead, use the time to collaborate and problem-solve together.

3 Ways Marketing Can Enhance Your Company Culture

two office buildings with connecting walkway


Corporate culture has arguably always been important. But as many business leaders are beginning to recognize, it is actually becoming more important as the modern workplace continues to evolve.

  • 88% of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success. (Source: Deloitte).
  • Employees’ overall ratings of their company’s qualities are 20% higher at companies with strong cultures. (Source: CultureIQ).
  • 90% of employees at winning company cultures are confident in their company’s leadership team. (Source: CultureIQ)

And while culture has become an increasingly important factor for employees, it is also on the top of mind for business leaders as well.

  • Companies with strong cultures saw a 4x increase in revenue growth. (Source: Forbes)
  • Being named a Best Place to Work is associated with a .75% stock jump. (Source: Glassdoor)
  • 82% of business leaders believe that culture is a potential competitive advantage. (Source: Deloitte)

Everyone in your organization makes hundreds of decisions that affect the business every day. Culture determines the quality of those decisions.

So, what does this have to do with marketing?

3 Ways Marketing Can Enhance Your Company Culture

While marketing might not be responsible for many of the factors that impact culture —  it can have a direct impact on creating certain aspects and taking your current culture to the next level.

Because of the unique place it sits within your organization, here are three ways marketing can enhance your company culture:

  • Supporting and re-casting vision. Leadership is responsible for casting the vision, but it’s not something that should happen once. Companies with positive cultures are constantly reminding employees of the vision employees are working together to achieve. Marketing can support this effort by using your expertise to help identify which messages will stick with your audience, your employees, and developing creative ways of keeping that vision in front of employees.
  • Learning and development: Continual learning and personal development are two big factors in employee satisfaction. Because marketing is often at the forefront of changes in the industry or updates to a product, you can play a valuable role in keeping employees educated on the latest trends worth noting.
  • Connection and collaboration: Marketing can help people stay connected — especially as more and more employees start working remotely. Whether it’s something incredibly simple like managing an internal employee Facebook group to share updates or putting together a more formal employee engagement plan, your marketing team can lead out in enhancing communication and collaboration between employees.

Here’s Why Your Marketing Probably Isn’t Working

close up of hanging warm lit light bulb
As the leader of a marketing agency, I have the opportunity to constantly meet business leaders who have questions about marketing or curious about our work. Almost every conversation starts with… “Our marketing strategy isn’t working…” or “We need a new marketing strategy that will help us reach more customers.” Once we dig a little deeper, there’s nearly one common reason why most companies struggle to generate success through their marketing efforts — they define marketing by thinking about tactics instead of strategy. Marketing Tactics vs. Marketing Strategy Let’s take a step back and look at the difference between strategy and tactics. In marketing terms…
  • Strategy = defining the space where the business decides to engage, and how it plans to win in the market.
  • Tactics = identifying the tools and executions deployed in order to deliver on that strategy.
A strategy is an overall framework that is filled in by the tactics you use. It is essential for determining which tactics will be most effective. When most businesses say their marketing strategy isn’t working, what they typically mean is that the tactics aren’t effective. When this happens, it’s likely an indicator that they didn’t take the time to develop a strategy in the first place. The reason their marketing strategy isn’t really working is that there wasn’t really a strategy to begin with. How to Develop a Marketing Strategy At Green Apple, there are a few key components we encourage brands to consider when developing a marketing strategy:
  • Define your target market and buyer personas. If you want your marketing tactics to work, you need to have absolute clarity about your ideal buyer and how they operate. You need to know their challenges and pain points. Defining your target audience and evaluating the buyer’s journey are essential for an effective marketing strategy.
  • Identify your unique value proposition. What makes you better than your competitors? Answering this question is imperative for your marketing strategy. Your value proposition is a unique value that a buyer desires and will receive from your company, product, or service. Think of the word “only” and how you can apply it to your business, products, and services.
  • Determine how marketing will support your larger business objectives. In order to develop and implement an effective marketing strategy, you need to be absolutely clear on what you’re trying to achieve. What are the larger business objectives your marketing strategy is supposed to support?
Once you’ve addressed each of the issues above, you need to start asking which tactics you should use to reach customers. It’s only after your target market and buyer personas have been defined that you can decide which kinds of tools and processes might be deployed to reach them.

3 Strategies to Take Your Trade Show Marketing to the Next Level

attendees of tradeshow sitting in a row taking notes
Marketers have a love-hate relationship with conferences and trade shows. On one hand, conferences and trade shows are a lot of work. There are logistical challenges that seem to happen at every single event. Determining the ROI of having a booth in the exhibit hall or advertising in the event guide can seem impossible. Despite the challenges, having a presence at trade shows and conferences is still one of the best ways to connect with your target accounts’ key decision-makers. According to a recent study, 82% of trade show attendees are directly involved in their teams’ purchasing decisions. The question becomes…how do you maximize the opportunity of each trade show or event to generate some truly meaningful traction for your sales and marketing efforts? 3 Strategies to Take Your Trade Show Marketing to the Next Level Here are three strategies and mentalities to consider as you prepare for the trade shows or conferences you’re attending this year:
  1. Promote an experience, not your product or service. The best way to stand out in a noisy exhibit hall is to create an experience that makes people want to stop and spend time at your booth. Creating an experience that surprises or delights attendees enables you to make much more of an emotional impact than selling them a product ever would. These experiences also make for a great word-of-mouth marketing opportunity since visitors will be more likely to tell other attendees to stop by.
  2. Treat everyone as if they’re already a customer. Your brand will make hundreds of new first impressions during a trade show or conference. One of the best ways to make sure it’s a positive one is to consider every person you meet as someone who’s already a customer of yours. This mindset will transform the way you interact with attendees and help create impressions that lead to connection. You never know when a seemingly unqualified prospect could get a new job and turn into a coveted lead. And, you’ll never get the chance to make another first impression with them.
  3. Find creative ways to grab the attention of companies in attendance. If you know a particular company or decision-maker will be at the trade show, consider how you can create intrigue with them. Whether it’s reaching out to them beforehand to stop by the booth to pick up an exclusive gift or grabbing their attention by mentioning how your service can help their specific brand, there are a lot of creative ways you can design your booth to attract specific target accounts in attendance.
If you’re looking to take your trade show or conference marketing strategies to the next level, we hope these ideas can spark some creative ideas.

How to Tell Stories That Your Customers Actually Want to Hear


Stories help us understand the world around us. They are the mental shortcuts we use because we are overwhelmed by the details about a person, product, or service. As marketers, we rely on storytelling as a way to engage and inspire customers. If stories are authentic, consumers are more interested in what we have to say about our products or services.

The challenge in today’s world is telling our stories in ways that actually get heard. Today, brands market and sell their products in an environment that is more competitive than ever.

So, how do we rise above the noise?

Brands who are successful will treat people as an audience whose trust and attention must be cultivated rather than imagining them exclusively as consumers with choices that should be immediately influenced.

How to Tell Stories That Your Customers Actually Want to Hear

So, how do you go about cultivating the interest of potential customers by telling stories they actually want to hear? Here are a few key steps:

  • Define your audience. First and foremost, it’s important to define who you’re trying to reach (and who you’re not). Unless you’re Amazon, you aren’t trying to sell your product or service to the whole world. Knowing your ideal customer is foundational for telling stories in ways that resonates with them. Everyone on your sales and marketing teams should know (and agree) on exactly who you’re trying to reach.
  • Get an in-depth understanding on what they’re really thinking. There’s a difference between knowing about your audience and truly knowing them. The brands that are known for storytelling are ones that tell stories in ways that communicate what we’re all secretly thinking. If you want to tell stories that resonate, take time to truly get inside the mind of potential customers. Listen to the pain points you hear in sales conversations, interview current customers to understand what a typical day is like for them.
  • Tell a story that matches the audience’s current reality. Potential customers must be able to see themselves in the story you’re telling. If they don’t, your story won’t resonate. One easy way to accomplish this is to tell a story about a personal experience or client success.
  • Find ways to make an “emotional” connection. I’m not talking about bringing a potential customer to tears with your story. Rather, find ways to connect with all of the emotions potential customers experience—joy, excitement, longing, hope, etc. Tell stories in ways that make your audience laugh or brightens their day. Invite them into a tribe of their peers through the way you tell stories. Remembering to create an emotional connection will make sure your storytelling doesn’t fall flat.

In today’s increasingly noisy world, perhaps the only competitive advantage remaining is having a deeper, better understanding of and relationship with potential customers. Effective storytelling is the best way for capturing that advantage.