How to increase your B2B brand visibility and get outcomes

The healthcare and higher education industries are some of the most highly regulated and conservative sectors in the U.S. market. For B2B marketers, it’s a delicate balance to develop creative, high-impact campaigns while maintaining compliance. When traditional marketing tactics feel stale and undifferentiated, how can marketing leaders create better brand visibility and long-term B2B growth?

That’s why we’re talking to Mariah Tang (Chief Content Marketing Officer, Stamats), who shares proven strategies on how to increase your B2B brand visibility and get outcomes. During our conversation, Mariah discussed the power of leveraging thought leadership as a trust engine. She also discussed practical steps on how marketers can activate “hidden storytellers” within their organizations to humanize their brands. Mariah shared some of the common pitfalls that marketers should avoid, and encouraged teams to tell authentic, forward-looking stories that feature both leaders and people in critical behind-the-scenes roles. She also encouraged marketing teams to challenge conventional thinking with “why” questions to co-create better strategies. Mariah also disclosed her 90-day plan to generate results using subject matter expert (SME)-led content strategy and asset remixing.

https://youtu.be/9aKj1-Cys_4

Topics discussed in episode:

[02:35] Building Trust: How getting subject matter experts and researchers in front of the audience dramatically increases earned media.

[05:31] Unlocking Hidden Stories: Practical tips for coaxing insights out of highly technical subject matter experts.

[09:36] Selling Solutions: Why B2B marketing must focus on solving human challenges rather than promoting institutional features.

[14:40] Future-Facing Storytelling: Moving past dry press releases by focusing on the future-facing impact of your work.

[20:45] Justifying Value to the Board: Addressing “vanity metric” pushback with a combination of hard data, analytics, and agile experimentation.

[25:47] Balancing Creativity and Compliance: How to involve high-level stakeholders early on to secure creative leeway and approvals.

[29:24] The 90-Day Playbook: How to convert a single high-level interview into a cross-channel content engine.

Companies and links mentioned:

Transcript

Christian Klepp, Mariah Tang

Mariah Tang 00:00

I like to with my groups, just jump right in to the deep end. So a lot of the time, the first piece that we’ll do with a group, whether it’s a video or an article or a web page, what have you, involves one of their higher up stakeholders. So if you can immediately show the value and the benefit of the work to that higher tier, you know, on the political scheme of that organization, it generally ripples down. So you know, if the Dean trusts you, then the people that are underneath them in a reporting structure tend to get a little bit more leeway, and then they can work with you, and you can kind of expand upon what you’ve done in that initial start.

Christian Klepp 00:34

The health care and higher education industries in the US are sectors that are highly regulated and at times conservative as a B2B Marketer, it’s a delicate balance to come up with creative campaigns for clients while being compliant at the same time. So how can B2B Marketers increase B2B brand visibility and get outcomes? Welcome to this episode of B2B Marketers on a Mission podcast, and I’m your host. Christian Klepp, today I’ll be talking to Mariah Tang, who will be answering this question. She’s the Chief Content Marketing Officer at Stamats, specializing in content writing and strategy for healthcare, higher ed and research institutions. Tune in to find out more about what this B2B Marketers Mission is. Okay, and here we go. Mariah Tang, welcome to the show.

Mariah Tang 01:22

Thanks, Christian. Happy to be here.

Christian Klepp 01:24

Glad to have you on. And shout out to Chris Raposo, thank you so much for the introduction. And I’m really looking for this conversation. I know this is going to be interesting because this is, this is up your alley, in your wheelhouse, whatever analogy you want to use, but, um, if you don’t mind, let’s just dive right in.

Mariah Tang 01:40

Sounds great.

Christian Klepp 01:41

Fantastic. All right, so Mariah, you’re, I’m gonna say you’re on a mission to deliver focused and intentional experiences for clients in healthcare and higher education. So for this conversation, I wanted to zero in on the following topic, which is um, which is a pretty meaty one, if I do say so myself, and we’re going to unpack it from there. So that topic is how to increase your B2B brand visibility and get outcomes. So I’m going to kick off the conversation with the following question. In our previous conversation, you mentioned something along the lines of health care and higher education being industry segments that are highly regulated and at times, or oftentimes, conservative and traditional. So how do you think, just from a top level perspective, how can marketing teams in these segments increase brand visibility without sacrificing the trust factor?

Mariah Tang 02:35

Yeah, I love this question Christian and it’s one that we get pretty frequently across both higher ed and healthcare. So one of the ways that we’ve seen organizations grow their trust with their audience and that that back and forth communication is by providing thought leadership. And that’s not a novel concept. People have heard about this all the time in the B2C space, but in B2B, you don’t find that as often. So when you can get your subject matter experts, your your brand champions out there in front of your audience, sharing their insights, sharing what works and what doesn’t work, it can really be impactful for endearing your brand to your audience, to your your buyers, or your your dealers, or whoever it is that you’re trying to connect with so for example, we work with several research institutions across the US. Some of them do patient care, some of them do just research, some of them do a combination of both. And one of our groups has shared with us that because of their thought leadership programs that they run with standards as their support. They have really increased their earned media, which is when organizations reach out to you and ask for your opinion, ask for your subject matters, experts, opinions, offer to give insights. So you know, Forbes morning brew, publications like that, that that deal in these different types of stories, and need those expert insights. Our client has told us that 70% of their earned media comes from the articles that we help them write. So thought leadership can be very impactful, not just in the B2C space, but also in the B2B space.

Christian Klepp 04:17

Yeah, absolutely love that with Thought Leadership. I mean, I know that term gets thrown around quite loosely. I did have a follow up question for you, because I know that this can be a challenge regardless of the vertical that we’re referring to, certainly a research institution or certainly a healthcare institution, or, in fact, higher ed. They have their subject matter experts, right? They have people on staff that are very knowledgeable. They have a they have they have so much knowledge. And I think it’s also a question of being able to package that and being able to communicate that to the to the broader market. Sometimes it’s not easy to recruit these subject matter experts, right? Sometimes it takes a little bit of prodding, right? There’s a little bit of reluctance for them to be put into the spotlight. As it were, from your experience, how do you convince these subject matter experts that it’s not just in their interest, but it’s in the interest of the organizations they represent, to put themselves out there and to, you know, to communicate that thought leadership piece like, you know, in your experience, like, how do you how do you get them over to your side?

Mariah Tang 05:31

Have you been spying on me? This is what I do. Well, you’re exactly right. So we’ll stick with the researcher, for example. So a lot of the times research individuals, I’m not trying to paint too broad of a stroke here, but a lot of the times, they have their specific niche, they have their interest, they have their little edge of science that they feel comfortable talking about, whether that’s basic science, completely behind the scenes clinical, which is more in in the space with the with the students and with the patients, or translational, you know, bench to bedside is kind of what they call it. So if you have a basic scientist who is maybe doing research with fruit flies or worms or mouse models, they’re pr...