In a world awash with information, clarity in communication can be the key to B2B marketing success.
Steve Woodruff, who has 3+ decades of experience in sales, marketing, and consulting, shares his knowledge and experience on how to cut through the noise and connect meaningfully with your audience.
Steve is an expert practitioner who has honed his approach to communication across various platforms—from email to presentations. His latest book, The Point, is designed as a practical guide to clear communication, packed with actionable tactics that go beyond theory.
Some key insights from this episode:
- Subject line significance. The battle for attention starts in the email inbox. Steve emphasizes the importance of the subject line and the first sentence of the email, advocating for immediacy and relevance to capture interest right off the bat.
- Simplification. Steve advises against overloading messages with multiple themes. Instead, focus on a single theme per communication to enhance response rates and engagement, he recommends.
- Universal principles. The principles of clear communication are not just for marketers but for everyone. The goal is to engage the human brain by addressing the fundamental question: "What's in it for me?"
Steve's insights comprise a call to elevate our communication strategies in all aspects of business and beyond.
Check out the video for more details, and the full podcast (link below the video) for the entire insightful conversation.
Don't miss future episodes: Subscribe to the Marketing Smarts Live Show on YouTube. And to catch up on all previous episodes, check out the full playlist on YouTube.
Episode Details, Guest Information, and Referenced Links
Episode No. 79
- Live date: April 23, 2024
- Episode link: youtube.com/watch?v=ykaGdCBXW9E
- Original podcast episode: Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point: Steve Woodruff on Marketing Smarts [Podcast]
Guest's social media profiles:
- LinkedIn: Steve Woodruff
- Twitter/X: @swoodruff
MarketingProfs resources referenced in the show:
- Five Components of Effective Sales and Marketing Communication
- Five Tips for Effective Communication With Distributed Teams
"In B2B News" article referenced in the show:
"From the #mpb2b Community" links referenced in the show:
Transcript: Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point, With Steve Woodruff
Hello to all my Marketing Smarts Live viewers today. I'm super excited to bring you yet another amazing episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show.
This week's topic is all about Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point.
So, if you're ready to get your learn on, buckle up and let's get ready to rock and roll.
Hey, I'm your boy George B. Thomas, speaker, trainer, catalyst, and host of this here show, the Marketing Smarts Live show, as well as the Marketing Smarts podcast found on your favorite podcast app.
Our guest clips today are brought to you by none other than Steve Woodruff.
Steve Woodruff, is the "King of Clarity." His 37 years on the frontlines of sales, marketing, consulting, and entrepreneurship have uniquely equipped Steve to guide others in the principles and practices of clear and effective communication.
Steve has deep experience in corporate training and workshop facilitation for a wide variety of companies, from startups to Top 5 pharma. He is the author of the business book Clarity Wins and his new book, The Point.
Now, remember the clips of Steve Woodruff today are pulled from the full Marketing Smarts podcast episode, and if you want to listen to the full interview with Steve Woodruff and myself, make sure to tune into the Marketing Smarts podcast, link to the full show will be in the description below after the live show ends.
Now, in this episode, again, I'm talking with Steve Woodruff about Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point.
Steve: Absolutely. That's the point of this book. This book is absolutely chock full of actionable tactics of how to do these things. I don't keep it theoretical or academic, I go right into here's how you do email, here's how you do presentations, here's how you do branding, here's how you do effective leadership.
You can apply these principles to every single form and modality of communication. In fact, the most radical thing about this book is it's actually written for eight billion human beings. We all have one competition, the noise and distraction, we all have one customer, the human brain, and we can all use one formula, one set of rules and tools, to win. This is a book for everybody.
The lowest hanging fruit when I do my workshops with my corporate clients is email. We all do email, we're all fighting the battle of the email inbox. The most important visual real estate is the subject line and the first sentence. If you don't in the subject and the first sentence give me a point of relevance, of interest, of immediacy, of action, you're competing with dozens of other emails flooding into my box.
What do we do with an inbox? We skim and delete. That's the point of opportunity. You can differentiate your message by bringing forward the most relevant thing right into the subject line. That's the most immediate change anybody can make is make your messages quick hit and stratify them, get that distilled essence, that top of the pyramid right in the first visual real estate, and then you can move on to the details later.
We'll get back to Steve Woodruff and his thoughts on Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point, But first, I have to ask...
Are you part of the MarketingProfs community? If not, become part of the MarketingProfs community by heading over to mprofs.com/mptoday - That's mprofs.com/mptoday.
Now, it's time for one of my favorite sections...
In The B2B News - Where we talk about breaking B2B news or really important tips we find on the Google news tab related to you and your B2B business. This week, the title is...
Industry Jargon Is the Silent Killer of B2B Marketing by Jessica Marie
In the realm of B2B marketing, a subtle but pervasive problem looms—ironically, of the industry's own creation.
Clarity and meaning have become casualties in an ongoing war of words that often serve little purpose beyond filling content quotas or satisfying superficial engagement metrics.
As marketing professionals, we pride ourselves on our ability to craft compelling narratives, to turn the mundane into the extraordinary, yet in this endeavor we've inadvertently forged our own Achilles heel: an over-reliance on jargon and buzzwords that, rather than clarify, obscure our vision and deem our messaging virtually meaningless.
It costs us our customers and, ultimately, our bottom line.
To read this article, check out the link below when the live show is over.
So let's get back to Steve Woodruff and his Marketing Smarts podcast episode.
Steve: It's always the default setting, "I have to say more. I have to include more. I have to give more detail. I have to have an email with three different items instead of one item."
In fact, one of the other changes I've made very severely in my own life, I tended to be more comprehensive in my emailing before, I figured you have to let people know everything. Well, the more themes or points you have in an email, the harder it is for anybody to respond.
Now almost all of my emails are very single theme, short: here's what I want, here's what I'm looking for, please give me this answer. The response level is so much different than when somebody has to plow through and try to figure out what are the three points that Steve is giving me and which one matters and I have to go find that. You know what's easier to do? Just delay, wait. That's what kills us, too much information, people shut down. I don't want to shut people down.
When I do a presentation, when I write a book, when I do a blog post, when we do a podcast, I want somebody to feel engaged immediately. I have this one sweet spot, this one moment of truth where I have to make sure that I've got you, and that means I have to give the what's in it for me right away. You know from sales that the what's in it for me is the important thing, tell people the benefits, not the feature, but in fact, it's not just sales, it's all communication.
The brain is asking one question, the operating system of the brain has one front end question, "What's in it for me?" That's why we have to lead with relevance. What the human brain wants, the reticular activating system in particular, which is the master filter that gets us from 11,000,000 down to the 60 bits, the RAS is the focus machine, and what it wants is what's in it for me right now. So, you have to lead your communication with something that grabs people.
We will get back to Steve Woodruff in a few minutes but first it's time for some...
Dope B2B Learnings From The Vault of MarketingProfs Articles
That's right, It's time to dig into the treasure trove of valuable information and pull out two pieces of gold to help you be a better B2B marketer.
Article one this week is: Five Components of Effective Sales and Marketing Communication by Mark Organ
Communication is just as important in business relationships as it is in personal relationships. Most marketers are aware of this, but many do not know how and when to properly communicate their message to prospective customers.
In today's sophisticated marketplace, overcoming communication obstacles is critical—especially early on in the sales process. It is increasingly obvious that the competitive battle for customers is being won or lost at the top of the sales funnel.
So, how does a firm make itself stand out from the rest? Check out the article and find out.
Article two this week is: Five Tips for Effective Communication With Distributed Teams by Hellene Yelda-Garcia
Flexible work was Hellene's normal long before the pandemic. In fact, the bulk of her career in the video collaboration industry has been hybrid.
Hellene's first experience with working from home was in 2007, when Codian, the company she was a part of, was acquired by another company, Tandberg. At that time, she was given the choice to relocate closer to the new HQ or carry out my work remotely.
She chose the latter, and so began a steep learning curve as she experimented with ways to connect to her office-based teammates from my home office.
To help her, she had videoconferencing devices that were cutting-edge for their day. And yet, she often felt like a fly on the wall, one step removed from the action.
Want to keep learning more? If so, check the links in the description below after the live show to get access to both amazing MarketingProfs articles.
OK, back to Steve Woodruff... Let's dive back into this conversation of Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point
Steve: The measurement of success starts with defining what your point is. You have to begin with the end in mind. The reason why we begin with having a point is if you're going to move from A to B, you have to know what B is. That's the result, that's the thing we're looking for.
Whether it's open rates on an email, whether it's people passing exams after a training course, whether it's kids obeying their parents, this goes down to every single level: we have to know what we're aiming at and then see if we can have a result. But there's no way to measure a result that is vague. You can't measure fog. A lot of times, we're just throwing fog out there and we have no idea if we've succeeded because there is no way to even determine what we were trying to do.
I've never said that before, you can't measure fog. I like that. How do you measure fog?
We're going to get some words of wisdom from Steve Woodruff here in a few minutes but right now, it's time to turn the spotlight on you, the MarketingProfs community. Yep, time for...
From The #MPB2B Community
We searched far and wide in the #MPB2B universe to find amazing information and conversation to bring to the masses.
So, first, make sure you are using the hashtag, and second, make sure you have fun and add value to the community.
Then, we'll spotlight you or your crew on the show. This week, it's...
But you need to check out the description and click that link to check out the post and read or learn more!
Marketing Smarts viewer, I have to ask... are you going to be next to get the spotlight?
Remember, community, use the hashtag #mpb2b on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter and get the light shined on your awesomeness in the next episode or a future episode of the Marketing Smarts Live show!
Pro-tip, it won't hurt if you tag me in your post as well I'm @georgebthomas on LinkedIn and Twitter.
OK, let's kick it back to Steve Woodruff and some words of wisdom around this topic of Navigating the Power of B2B Communication by Getting to the Point.
Here is what Steve Woodruff wanted to leave us with...
Steve: I'll give you one. This will probably twist your head a little bit, but I've heard this quoted by more than one person. Dave Ramsey, the finance guru, uses it all the time. He says to be unclear is to be unkind. If we're not clear with our intentions, our expectations, with our words, we are actually being unkind. Clarity is a form of love. Being able to speak the truth or speak whatever with clear words and intentions is love.
I believe that whether it's teachers, preachers, corporate leaders, politicians, this is the way to be considerate to people is to actually speak in such a way that people can understand and know where you're going and what's going on.
Many politicians practice obfuscation, which is fogging it up because they don't want to actually be clear, but man, I would love to have more and more leaders who know exactly what they're saying and say it right, say it simply, say it briefly so that we actually know where we're going.
Have you enjoyed today's journey? Let us know, use that hashtag #mpb2b on whatever platform you are joining us on.
