Hola! Welcome to The Fresh Salmon, the newsletter that helps you get better at B2B Marketing in 10 minutes or less.

This week, on Fresh Salmon, I share why build a habit of exploring tools, content-first events strategy, and collecting testimonials from highly regulated customers.

Let's jump right in. . . .

1) Building a Habit of Exploring Tools 

Back in 2016, when I was Head of Marketing for Klara - a secure healthcare communication platform, I started to explore Facebook Ads to target physicians and private medical practice owners. I was surprised to find that Facebook's audience targeting and custom audience targeting were far superior to those of any self-serve media buying platforms.

Our direct response advertising on Facebook alone was generating 22-25 demo meetings per week, and it quickly became our bread and butter. No one would believe the results we were generating, especially with our target audience, whether they were investors, founders, or peers.

I've always believed that if you follow what everyone else is doing, you'll always be behind them.

Because of this, I have always adopted an explorer's mindset and looked for new ways to reach the target audience. Sometimes those methods were scalable, and sometimes they weren't.

In 2017, I began focusing on video ads on Facebook. Video ads, however, present a production challenge. As an early stage startup, we did not have the budget to spend $5K-10K on videos. Thus, I began thinking about a way to transform real footage into TV commercial style videos by mixing sound with it.

That's when I stumbled upon Promo.com, an online video maker that changed the game for me. I tested many types of videos to see what really worked. Ultimately, videos with a length of 10 to 15 seconds were found to be the most effective.

Two videos in particular worked really well and generated almost 70% of the pipeline that Facebook was generating at the time. 

Since then Promo has been part of my marketing toolkit along with Canva. 

Although I don't have those two videos, I've created this sample video for you using Promo within 10 minutes just to give you an idea.

Check this out -

My experience as a startup marketer for 13+ years has taught me that if you let your imagination run wild, you will find the software to make it happen. For real :)

Marketing professionals today must also be able to find great software solutions that make their work easier, cheaper, and more effective.

I do all my software exploration in three places:

1. Appsumo.com

2. Producthunt.com

3. G2 Categories - ​​G2.com/categories

It is your job as a marketer to optimize. Always.

For the record, I have no affiliation with Promo, Canva, Appsumo, Producthunt or G2, and I don't get paid to mention them.

2) Content First Events Strategy

I was invited to a Happy Hour for Sales and Marketing Executives after the Salesforce World Tour NYC on Thursday evening. This networking event was sponsored by 6-8 Martech SaaS companies. 

On a personal note, here is a photo of me and my favorite mentee, Arthur Castillo. For the past two years, Arthur and I have been doing Zoom calls, and now we finally met in person at this event. Arthur has accomplished a lot since we first connected. Since transitioning from Account Executive to Field Marketing, he has been crushing it. This guy is awesome!

Arthur and his team, who was one of the primary sponsors for the event, had also set up a couple of rooms at the venue with video production equipment. 

Why?

So that they can bring in guests and record "live" video content.

That is really smart. 

In 2023, B2B companies must have a conferences and events strategy that puts Content first. In this way, their event investments will yield a significantly higher ROI.

Your business can benefit from your target audience's attendance by creating original content that can be leveraged for months after the event.

No one wants to sign contracts while wandering around at conferences, so focus on creating content and conducting market research instead of business development first event strategies.

3) Collecting Testimonials from Highly Regulated Customers

When I was VP of Marketing at Heretto, in 2020, we had some really good fortune 100 companies as our customers. 

There was, however, a very long approval process for getting case studies and written testimonials, it typically took us about six to eight months from start to finish.

Crazy!!

To avoid the legal process, I came up with an idea and chose a format that allowed us to record the voices of real customers without revealing their identities, and use them in our testimonial videos.

As a result, we created this amazing testimonial video. 

Following several tests, we posted this video on our pricing page, which acted as a perfect nudge for prospects to request a sales call. Ultimately, we improved our conversion rate by 2.5x on that page.

A similar approach could work in healthcare as well, where patient testimonials could be recorded without revealing identifiable Personal Health Information (PHI) that might violate HIPAA laws.

Interesting Thing That I Read Last Week

Very well said…..

Tweet That I Noticed Last Week

Meme of The Week

What Do You Think?

This concludes this edition of Fresh Salmon.

I would like to hear what you thought of today's newsletter.

Also, let’s connect on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Cheers,

Vivek

PS. I love you ❤️