Content Marketing & Social Selling, or How to Sell Through Relationships?

Let's start with the basics - tell us what you do, where do you come from?

This is the first very difficult question. I am a person who, using a well-thought-out content strategy, tries to open various business doors, generate opportunities. Some call me a content marketer. In fact, I identify with it. Although I am more of a business developer who uses content marketing as a weapon to create opportunities for the organizations I work for.

My main job now is the Nexelem product, which was created under the wings of Virtus Lab and is a production management system in the Lean methodology. A B2B product. It is also worth adding that I specialize in B2B.

“Opening business doors” – that’s interesting, I haven’t heard that definition of marketing yet. Because you would say you’re a marketer?

Yes, I am a marketer who combines different areas of marketing into one endeavor that supports business.

What do you mean by content marketing? People often equate it with simply writing a company blog.

Each organization has its own specifics, operates in a certain niche, uses a certain language, has its own clients to whom it provides value. By designing various types of content appropriately, we can talk about these values and reach various potential new clients or business partners with them.

Well-chosen content, properly prepared and delivered through the right channels should achieve business goals. That is why it is important to understand the organization in which you operate, its business goals – both short and long term, and conduct communication in such a way as to help achieve these goals.

Let me give you an example. Let's say I want to sell something as exotic as a system for optimizing the production queue in a company that produces windows. Assuming that I have no "entry" to such a company, I have to prepare something that will be in the scope of interests of people related to the production of these windows, but also generally interested in manufacturing processes and their optimization. My goal is to prepare content that has the greatest potential to address these different needs and interests of these specific people, so that I can then reach them in direct communication.

For example, I write an article related to some KPIs that occur in window production. Then I choose the appropriate communication channel in which I publish this content. Then I try to promote this article high enough so that its reach covers people potentially interested in this topic (which is usually very, very niche). Promotion through people who already have a strong network in a given industry helps in this.

If you can develop a discussion within the article, or in some other way identify people who are interested in the content (e.g., they liked or shared the article on social media), then such activity is the basis for contacting them more directly, referring to the content that was included in the article. Then there is the whole process of building relationships, up to the sale itself, although in this case it would be better to call it delivering value than selling. This is also a matter of how a relationship-based business works.

You said that understanding the business goals of an organization is key. Is there anything else that you think is key to successful content marketing?

I would say that understanding the business as a whole, the customers, what the company has to offer is key. Also in a more “modern” approach, i.e. we assume that everyone is online. And this means that there is no good content marketing without basing it on certain aspects of SEO. When building content, we have to speak not only a language that is understandable to the appropriate target groups, but also in such a way that this content works multidimensionally. Not only when we shove it up someone’s nose, but also when we are asleep. So it has to be searchable, we have to identify very well the keywords, phrases that people from a given group are looking for (here we come back to understanding the recipient and the business). Such holistic action definitely increases the probability of achieving success.

If I sell super healthy oranges that don't come from a ripening facility but have ripened in the sun in Cuba, is it enough to write that I am offering oranges for sale, or should I use other words that relate more to what is currently popular and important, e.g. "instead of dietary supplements, you can eat super natural oranges". Is the typical "orange recipient" my target, or is someone who cares about their health and spends money on supplements a more mature recipient of such oranges? This is a rather abstract example, but I wanted to show the approach.

We've talked about what's important, so on the other hand: what are the biggest mistakes?

Hacking the system that is the Google search engine. Can it be done? Yes. An untrustworthy SEO agency will be happy to show that we are in the TOP 3. However, an article created to hack Google robots is an absolute nightmare for a potential reader, who instead of a text that provides value, sees mush and an elaborate form interspersed with keywords.

This is the biggest problem for marketing agencies. Clients don't necessarily know what result they should expect. The key is to understand what we actually want. A good goal is, for example, "increase brand recognition" and this can also be measured. Is TOP 3 in Google search results a good goal? Not necessarily. It depends on what results from it and how you strive to achieve it.

This is also the role of marketers, to get to know our client, understand their needs and help them choose the right goals before we write, click or do anything. Hence, a good marketing agency always works a bit like a consulting agency.

I totally agree, we ourselves laugh that we do consulting even when we don't do consulting. Unfortunately, this is not always the standard and we often come across situations where agencies did what the client wanted, even if it made no sense.

We've talked about what's important and what's bad, but I'm still wondering about one more thing. There are different ways of promotion. Ads, billboards, whatever. It's really funny to me how often I see another headline like "email marketing is dead, now only Instagram", "quit Instagram, now only TikTok", "quit TikTok, now only cold calling, because it's the best" and so on.

It’s obvious why this is the case – after all, the creators of these headlines usually want to sell us a course or a tool for a new, “proper” way of promoting. Nevertheless, comparing different channels of reaching out is still an interesting topic. What do you think, should we all drop everything we do now and focus on social selling? 

I will answer from a slightly different perspective. For me, you always have to remember that when a deal is made, there are always two parties: a person who buys and a person who sells. We strive for these people to get to know each other, trust each other and trade takes place between them.

How we get to this point is a function of many, many variables, such as budget or niche. I am a fan of the holistic approach. Theoretically, at the end of the day, it does not matter how we got to this situation where two people are standing opposite each other, ready to make a trade. It can be anything, but at the end of the day, what counts is simply how many satisfied customers we have. In my opinion, we should first get to know the business of our potential customers, and then think about where our customers are easiest to acquire. And test. Test tactics, communication channels, so that quite quickly in such an iterative process we can select one or two channels in which we can invest more time, people and resources. Thanks to this, at the end of the day we get the biggest, best and fastest return on investment. So we focus on low hanging fruit, and as part of scaling and development we can go wider and wider, along increasingly difficult paths and so on.

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge. Any final thoughts, an appeal to the world, would you like to greet someone?

Appeal to the world? My appeal to the world is that you can, and even should, weave your interests and passions into every activity. And don't be afraid of it. Saying that, I have to tell you that as part of this long-term path to reach potential customers, e.g. Nexel, I started working on a podcast that will be called Nexel Talks. It will be addressed mainly to production engineers, systems engineers, but interested in... space. Because, as you may know, this is my great passion. In the first episode, I will talk to Marcin Stolarski from Rocket Lab, an American company that launches its rockets from New Zealand. And he moved from Poland to New Zealand.

It sounds great, I can't wait because - as you may know - I'm also interested in space 🙂 Where will we be able to hear it?

In two places: on nexelem.com 🙂 and on spaceindustry.pl

Then we invite you to listen and once again – thanks for the interview!