In this episode of B2B Business Class, host Robb Conlon sat down with Bart Caylor, Founder of Caylor Solutions, a marketing agency specializing in higher education.
During their conversation, Bart provided some actionable B2B marketing advice and tips on becoming an authority in your space.
He also shared his predictions for the LinkedIn creator economy, which B2B content techniques work, and which ones you should avoid doing.
The Importance of Niching Down
As they say, “The riches are in the niches”, and Bart admitted that he learned about that the hard way.
He began his career at a B2B agency working with key accounts like AT&T and NCR. They collaborated with clients across multiple industries, and because he was responsible for business development, their industry-agnostic approach sometimes made it challenging to win new business.
Based on these experiences, Bart learned quickly that the more you can niche down in B2B, the more successful you will become.
He eventually made the switch and decided to start his own business which focused on providing marketing services to the higher education sector. He also began developing content on LinkedIn regularly to establish his authority in his respective niche.
“My advice is [that] the more that you can niche down to really follow your passion, the more successful you can be, because you can end up being a big fish in a small pond.”
Lead By Being a Student and Learning from Others
Bart always tells B2B marketers to be wary of people who call themselves “experts,” as humility is a key virtue that experts should have.
He also emphasized the importance of having a learning mindset. “To really establish an expertise or an authority in your space, you [have] to be willing to be a student. [You have] to be willing to be humble and be willing to learn from others,” he explained.
Bart also believes that success in becoming an authority in your niche comes down to relationships. He stressed the importance of building meaningful connections with people in your space, and that you should lead by helping instead of selling.
Establishing your authority happens because of the relationships you’ve nurtured and the way that people engage with your content.
“If you live by the Golden Rule, [where] you just treat everybody the way [that] you'd want to be treated, and you provide good quality content and you're helpful, [success is] going to come.”
AI’s Impact on The LinkedIn Creator Economy
Bart also elaborated on his predictions for the creator economy on LinkedIn in 2024.
He believes that the creator economy is going to be influenced by ChatGPT and other forms of AI. After having conversations with many people, he believes that the largest challenge for anyone in the space is going to be change management.
Bart has many clients in higher education who don’t understand AI and don’t feel the need to learn anything about it. This may lead them to make poor or “knee-jerk” decisions that could negatively impact their companies. It could also result in a “merge or purge” situation.
“The only way they're going to survive is they're either going to go out of business and not survive, or they're going to have to merge with somebody else to just survive.”
From a more constructive perspective, he believes AI will provide creators with some incredible opportunities to do more with the time they have. It will allow small businesses and colleges to amplify their work and enable them to become more effective with the same resources already available to them.
Understanding Your Target Audience is Key to Social Media Success
Bart also highlighted which B2B content techniques he thinks work and don’t work, especially for social media.
One thing Bart feels doesn’t work on platforms like LinkedIn is if you use it as a megaphone to be too self-promotional. If you’re just focusing on your company’s products and services, you’re missing out on some important opportunities on social media.
“If you are not developing content specifically for your audiences, you might be missing some things.”
Bart also explained that the key to success on social media is having a deeper understanding of your target audience and the market you’re trying to appeal to. Find out who they are, what key challenges, pain points, and questions they have, and develop content that helps to address these.
“Nobody wants to pick up the phone. Nobody wants to answer your cold email. Nobody really cares. What they want [are] solutions to the problems that they have.”
It’s also important to develop the relevant target personas based on research so you’re able to craft content that is relevant to those groups.
It All Starts By Building Relationships
Bart spoke about how the key to success in B2B marketing starts with building relationships with people.
“People want to work with people they like, and they want to work with people that they feel get them.”
When people talk to you about the challenges they’re dealing with, it’s crucial to listen, have empathy, and proactively find a solution to help them address these challenges.
‘If we really want to be helpful, build relationships, [and] if we want to see success for our clients, then we've got to build that trust, be empathetic, and be vulnerable ourselves,” he explained.
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