Training | inbound marketing | content marketing | copywriting

Click on the topics that interest you, or scroll down to read them in order:

Why it pays to develop your own marketing team
When you can benefit from outside help
Who needs coaching or training
Challenges of training
Why you may prefer coaching
How Redwell can help with coaching
How Redwell can help with training

Why it pays to develop your own marketing team

You're better off doing your own marketing work in house. You have more control and independence. You develop key capabilities. And you probably save money.

Not many providers of marketing services will tell you this, but it's generally true--provided you have the staffing and the in-house skills you need to do the work yourself.

And even if you don't have all the in-house talent and skills you need, it's often better to hire and develop than to rely on outsiders.

When you can benefit from outside help

Even so, outsiders can offer value in these short-term situations:

You don't have the right skills in house.
You're not sure what skills you need.
You can't hire fast enough.
You can't get your people trained fast enough.

Who needs coaching or training

The world of B2B marketing is changing fast. A stream of technical innovations have enabled buyers to shop very differently from the way they did just five years ago.

Most B2B companies are shifting their marketing from traditional print or paper media to digital and online media.

But today’s digital media require knowledge and skills that barely existed just eight years ago. Here are a few examples:

Social media
Conversion optimization
Web strategy
Advertising on social media
Conversion copywriting.

Chief marketing officers (or CMOs) say their teams aren’t adapting fast enough. And their teams don’t have the resources they need to do their job properly. Demands on marketing teams are growing faster than marketing headcount.

Experienced marketers may not have the mindset or all skills they need to execute digital strategies effectively.

Younger marketers who do have the right skills are often in short supply. And they may lack the business experience you need to have on your team.

Marketing leaders have a hard time finding the right people. They can’t just fire the staff they have and hire “digital natives.” They also need the business experience of their more senior staff.

In this environment, it often makes sense to upgrade the skills of current employees. That’s where training or coaching can add value.

But don’t count on advertising or marketing agencies to help you develop the new skills. They’re in the same boat as most CMOs. They have a hard time finding the right talent for their own transition to digital. In addition, they’re in business to do things for you. They won’t want to teach you how to succeed without them.

Challenges of training

It can be hard to find good sources of coaching or training for B2B marketing--especially in areas that are changing fast. Paper books on marketing are often out of date by the time they're published.

Packaged training programs also tend to go out of date fast. And off-the-shelf training, by definition, isn't tailored to your needs.

You face four common challenges in building the skills of your marketing team. The training programs available to you are often:

Irrelevant. In the fast-changing areas of B2B marketing, it can be hard to find a packaged training program that’s right for your needs and circumstances.
Inappropriate. Some training programs (including courseware from many “internet marketing gurus” who sell themselves online) may lack the tone, taste, or production standards you and your team members expect. Or their training may be more appropriate for B2C than B2B marketing. It may use examples or suggest approaches that aren’t appropriate for your industry segment. Or it may be too generic and not be specific enough.
Obsolete. Packaged training materials, including videos, audio recordings and books, are likely to be dated. Some of the best information about B2B marketing changes too fast for big training companies to keep pace.

Ineffective. Conventional classroom training--by lecture or by digital media--may not teach useful skills in ways that change our behavior or performance. Training occurs for a short time, and then it’s over. Most of us learn better by doing than by listening or watching passively. We need repetition for the learning to stick.
Inflexible. A training program may cause confusion if it isn’t adapted to your company’s policies, methods, practices, processes, or needs.

The best training is the opposite of all these things. It’s relevant, appropriate, current, effective, and flexible.

But even the best training still has the big limitation of being a one-time or occasional event. Most of us quickly forget the lessons we learn from occasional training.

Why you may prefer coaching

Coaching can be a good choice when you want to surpass the limitations of training and don’t have appropriate mentors on staff to coach your own team.

Coaching can improve performance, mindset, and skills in ways that aren’t possible through training. Coaching involves one-on-one interactions that help people grow by doing, asking, and receiving feedback. It occurs within the context of a specific job or project. With coaching, your people can ask plenty of questions as they work through their day or week.

We watch over your shoulder. We help you do real work from day to day. We stick with you. It’s a longer involvement.

Here are the benefits:

Coaching offers a deeper learning experience than training. It provides ongoing interaction and feedback.
Your people learn while they work. It's not a separate process or environment.
Your people learn by doing. They retain what they've learned.
It's like getting both training and consulting at the same time. An experienced person recommends all kinds of improvements along the way.

How Redwell can help with coaching

Redwell offers coaching in these areas:

Research. How to research your target audiences through interviews
Buyer personas. How to research and develop buyer personas
Website strategy. How to develop a strategy for your B2B website
Copywriting. How to improve your copywriting
Content marketing. How to do content marketing. How to distribute and promote your content.
Blogging. How B2B companies can manage corporate blogging
Inbound marketing. How to get found online through search and inbound marketing
Keyword research. How to identify the keywords most important for getting found online.
Social media. How to us social media in B2B (with focuse on LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, and SlideShare)