Then start giving stuff away. Not just any stuff. Stuff that your customers and prospects will find of value. Use a B2B copywriter to draft a white paper that can be downloaded from your website by readers who provide their contact details. Get yourself a speechwriter, get yourself on a presentation course and whenever the opportunity arises, speak up. Speaking engagements at exhibitions, events and seminars is a great way to spread your brand and businesses without costing a fortune. And if you do undertake speaking engagements, get them professionally recorded and get them on your website as downloadable podcasts – again accessible by submitting contact information.

At Chapter & Verse we’ve completed two recent projects for blue chip multi-national clients in the technology sector that do just what we’ve described above. For the first client, Capita IT Services, we wrote a white paper on Customer Experience Management, targeting Customer Service Managers in local authorities. The gist of the paper was on the lines that within the public sector, a slightly different approach than CRM was required – as citizens don’t choose to have a customer relationship with their local council; they have to. The paper positioned Capita IT Services as a partner who can help local authorities become the customer-oriented, efficient and effective organisations they want to be (and that their citizens and central government demand). The downplaying of technology and sales related messages was deliberate.

We also wrote a 6pp business paper for Fidelity Information Systems following a breakfast briefing event they held (and recorded) for their customers in the financial services industry. The paper summarised the presentations of the three keynote speakers at the event and was sent to all those who attended, as well as all those who expressed an interest but were unable to attend. The article put forward the proposition that in an environment where funds are limited, volumes down, margins cut and competition fierce, the challenge facing financial services organisations was how to wage a battle on three fronts; converting the right customer, minimising the risk of bad debt and eradicating fixed costs out of the business fast. With Fidelity’s help, of course, all could be achieved.

Don’t be afraid of giving information away above and beyond your core value proposition. Most businesses don’t. And for us, that’s a good thing.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Many businesses I meet for the first time have for years undertaken all forms of business activity from their own viewpoint, not their customers. As a result, communication problems often occur as the customer and the business don’t just see things differently, at times they are almost speaking completely different languages.

An organisation that understands its customers and speaks their language is therefore, by definition, going to be more successful. A b2b copywriter can work with businesses to help them look at the world from their customers’ perspective. By identifying customer insights and evaluating customer behaviour, it becomes easier to understand why customers do what they do and just as importantly, why they don’t do what the business wants them to.

Using such insights and analysis to influence and improve all forms of b2b marketing and b2b advertising improves customer communication and can lead to dramatic increases in the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

You don’t have to keep spending marketing pounds to improve performance dramatically. Here at Chapter and Verse, we do it by helping our clients get into the shoes of their customers and understand how they see things. We then translate that insight into b2b copy that talks to customers at a peer-to-peer level, understands their needs, speaks their language and by doing so removes barriers to purchase.

Popularity: 34% [?]

We help our clients communicate more effectively with theirs by improving the words on every piece of marketing activity they invest in. Whether it is words for a website, a piece of packaging, an advert, a brochure, a leaflet, an article, a presentation, a news release, a tender document, direct mail, emarketing or sales force aids, we help make it more targeted, more relevant, more appropriate and more persuasive.

We’ll be using this site to share some of the techniques and tips we use to help businesses communicate more efficiently and effectively.

Popularity: 23% [?]