Will has been an experienced marketing and sales coach at IMPACT for 5 years. He has helped nearly 100 companies design scalable revenue processes that enable sales and service teams to grow in healthy and repeatable ways.

Will has helped hundreds of teams worldwide scale their sales departments using video and content communication strategies built for the modern buyer.

In this episode we discuss

• How sales and marketing have developed in recent years.
• Why don’t organizations manage to get their message across?
• How important it is to build trust with your customers
• How important it is to build trust with your customers
• How to build trust with your customers

And much more..

We’re all familiar with ads that pop up on our screens when we’re shopping online, watching something on YouTube, or watching a trending TikTok video. While some are interesting, others are just plain boring, and some actually irritate you so much that you tend to close the video or webpage you are watching or reading.

Well, all these ads are a form of digital marketing and they play an important role in the marketing process, especially lead generation.

Knowing how to create the most engaging and effective ads is an art you can excel at by experimenting with different ad formats, styles, content, visuals, etc. and using your learnings to create better, more responsive ads .

All of this is easier said than done, however, which is why we took the opportunity to invite one of the world’s leading digital marketing experts, William Schultz, to share his insights into digital marketing and creating the best campaigns on our podcast today.

But before we dive deep into his podcast transcript, let’s take a minute to learn more about digital marketing.

What is digital marketing?

Digital marketing is a form of marketing that brands and businesses are increasingly using to connect with their customers online. It includes email marketing, social media channels, and websites.

Digital marketing is nowadays the preferred marketing medium as it is flexible, easily measurable and most importantly adaptable to specific audiences compared to traditional advertising mediums such as billboards, rations, print media, television etc.

Transcript of the podcast between William Schultz and Crispino Santamaria

Crispino (C) The industries are developing so quickly. Based on your experience, how do you see the development of sales and marketing in recent years?

William (W) I see the buyer or the user gaining more and more power as information has become more publicly available.

There is more transparency and information out there than there was a few years ago. This has led to buyers themselves expecting and demanding more information.

If you want to be a leader in your field, you must be 100% transparent, open and honest, and try to provide as much free information to your buyers as possible. This will help you keep up with all your information competitors.

What are the biggest challenges organizations face when it comes to getting their message across or speaking their truth?

I’ve encountered many organizations that struggle to understand how to talk about themselves. This happens mainly because they make themselves too complicated right from the start.

They strive to be different from everyone else. But before you’re ready to talk to your customers, you need to think like them, and they don’t need to see you as differently from how you see yourself. So the crucial step is to keep things simple, clearly understand your niche and work on it first.

Is it easier to work with startups than with established organizations?

Both have different challenges. I prefer working with small companies because people in small companies are more nimble and willing to work. It just feels shoddy, and I prefer shoddy to bureaucratic and slow.

Which industry do you focus on B2B or B2C? Is there a difference between the marketing strategy of a B2B and a B2C company?

We do both, 75% of my customers are B2B and 25% B2C.

Every marketing strategy is very different, and to formulate it, the first question we ask you is: “How does your industry buy? How are people in your space educating themselves?’”

Because rule number one is that you as a company will never change how people shop in your industry. People always want things for their business like good online searchability. You want to be the answer to people’s questions.

But they don’t realize that their industry is still run by trade shows, referral-based marketing, handshakes and cowboys. You should be able to recognize and accept this in order to grow your business and you need to be doing more relationship oriented things with your business.

This is a great insight when it comes to marketing, where to identify where the marketing strategy is changing the most, and to figuring out where to hit your market and how your marketing is buying.

Why is it important for a company to build trust with its customers?

Confidence is at the core of whoever is willing to take money

out of your pocket and give you what comes from trust. Unfortunately, three things in the digital marketing industry kill the deal; Lack of trust, ambiguity and bad personality.

If you don’t manage to hit these, mainly the first two, you’ll never close a deal.

Which company is the best example of winning the trust game with their customers?

One of the toughest markets to break into is buying used cars. There was always the factor of investing in something that could be a total waste and the dodgy seller always added that.

This was one of the toughest industries to deal with and this company called CarMax managed to handle it quite well. They managed to instill so much confidence in the process and used cars that they changed the game!

They did the right thing to earn their customers’ trust. They announced the prices in advance. The customer didn’t have to deal with any seller and inspected the cars themselves. In addition, they also gave free training courses about cars that managed to build the kind of trust that people wanted before investing in a car.

So this is an excellent example of an organization that completely transformed into an industry that was shoddy and difficult to invest in without prior knowledge.

What is the core problem why companies do not inspire trust?

At their core, all companies think they are different, but in reality we are all in the same business of building trust. Many factors influence this. For example, we are talking about costs or prices, your competitors in the same space as you.

It feels wrong to talk about some of these things when you want to talk about your business as it throws off everything we’ve learned about doing business so far.

For example, talk about the overall cost breakdown on your website and let people know what they are paying for and how it is. Educate people about their buying options and be upfront with your competitors, for example by suggesting your direct competitors while talking about your business.

This indicates that you are helping the buyer with their process rather than just selling your business to them. Give them more options to consider, but most companies or businesses are reluctant to do this or talk about their competitors.

In reality, your buyers are smarter than you think.

What services does IMPACT offer? Can you explain that to us?

At IMPACT, we provide training and curfew services to help organizations create world-class content in their field or industry. We train companies to hire marketers, videographers, content writers, and CRM admins to syndicate all of that content.

We also train the sales team to use these people most effectively. So our process takes about 12 to 18 months in which we change a lot of culture within the company to help them hire marketers and turn those marketers into sales enablement people.

Can you provide some detailed procedures that you follow at IMPACT?

We start by hiring a content writer or a content marketing manager whose job is mainly to publish sales or marketing tools three times a week.

This content is primarily based around the sales team’s insights as they ask the most common questions people ask them or what type of conversations happen during the first meeting with a lead?

If the content writing manager answered the questions a lead asks during the first meeting, what would be the outcome and how will that meeting go?

This helps change the tracking of how leads interact with the sales team at meetings. For example, instead of having basic questions, leads ask questions that an executive about to convert would normally ask.

So the trick is to practice writing meaningful content and using that information in sales communications or information that is publicly available to people on their website.

Use trust to your advantage!

Why is trust important? If you want a customer or a company to invest their money in your product or service, you have to convince them. Trust is one of the biggest factors in marketing! Successful brands in the market are more reliable to their customers because they have been in the industry for a long time, which increases confidence in the minds of their existing customers and potential customers.

Giving importance to the right things, e.g. For example, being transparent about pricing and making your customers understand why you charge what you charge is a great way to start in the right direction.