Jeff Kotran: 5 Tips for Your B2B Marketing Strategy

An Interview With Rachel Kline

Understand that there’s no such thing as “selling to businesses”: Never forget that at the end of the day you’re trying to communicate with human beings. You can’t “attract” a business or “convert” a business. It is people you’re dealing with. People with needs and fears and stresses and natural curiosity, just like you and me. Your “value proposition” and “key differentiators” are meaningless if you can’t explain — in clear terms — what is human about them and why a human should care.

The B2B marketing landscape is a complex and evolving space, with its unique challenges and opportunities. Navigating it effectively requires well-thought-out strategies and insightful tactics. With a myriad of digital channels available, what are the best ways to connect, engage, and convert potential business clients? As a part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jeffrey Kotran, VP of Brand Strategy for award-winning B2B marketing agency, Altitude Marketing.

Jeff is a graduate of Penn State University, has an MBA from Fairfield University in Connecticut, and thoroughly enjoys helping “underdog” businesses in niche categories tell brand stories like the pros. When he’s not writing for brands, he’s living the life with his wife and three little girls.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share your personal backstory with us?

I was born in Allentown, PA. My parents were teachers. I graduated from Penn State. Met my wife working in a restaurant (shoutout to Bonefish Grill) before moving to Connecticut. We lived there for about eight years. I got my MBA from Fairfield University, which is where I found a passion for marketing. Around that time, my wife and I had the first two of our three children so we figured maybe it was time to move back home.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful for who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

There have been many, including a therapist who really pushed me to go back to school. But honestly, all of them pale in comparison to my wife. She’s been amazing and supportive and patient. And all while running her own small business. When I went back to school, every night I’d come home from work for about 15 minutes before heading to class. Kristin took care of dinner and putting the girls to bed. I was able to pursue what I wanted to do because my wife delayed her own pursuit.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I’ll give you one I actually think about. “Some days are diamonds. Some days are rocks.” By the great Tom Petty. It’s the opening line of his song, “Walls (Circus).” I love this line. It’s so simple and pure. When things get stressful, it’s lines like this that help regain perspective.

Can you share with us three strengths, skills, or characteristics that helped you to reach this place in your career? How can others actively build these areas within themselves?

Curiosity, tenacity, and humility. Curiosity is how you discover what you like about life and what you want to do with it. I like writing things that move people in some way — ads, headlines, songs — that’s what I’m here for. Curiosity is probably why. Tenacity, then, is how you chase what you like and attempt to put your stamp on it. Humility is the most important. It gives you the necessary perspective for understanding and pulling from the human experience which is ultimately what gives stuff meaning and makes it worth something. Because if what you do has no meaning, then why are you doing it?

Which skills are you still trying to grow now?

Mentoring and pitching. I manage a department of seven, so I work with younger writers and creatives who are growing in their craft and profession. They all like different pieces and parts of marketing. I want to help them care about it and pursue it and make it their own. And then pitching — that is in many ways the performance side of the job. I want to get better at crafting not just the story we’re trying to tell but the feeling we’re trying to elicit in the moment.

Let’s talk about B2B marketing. Can you share some insights into how you perceive the current landscape of B2B marketing?

B2B is evolving. Brands are getting smarter about how they target and attract customers, and also how they retain them. Businesses ask more incisive and detailed questions than they used to, demonstrate more background knowledge in things like SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), and ABM (account-based marketing). But competition is always lurking in the background. Keep in mind, the vast majority of B2B companies are not the leader in their respective markets. Newer strategies and tactics are how they stay alive.

How have recent market trends and changes influenced your approach to outperforming competitors?

We’ve had to be able to hit the ground running a lot faster. Agility and flexibility are the name of the game. That said, what hasn’t changed and likely never will is our use of data.

B2B buying cycles can often be lengthy and complex. How do you maintain engagement and nurture leads throughout the various stages of the buyer’s journey?

This is a great question and one we get asked frequently. The reality is that you’re never going to convince a person or group of people to buy something if they’re not ready to do so. Marketing gurus have tricked us all into thinking we can ‘nurture’ our way into a prospect’s good graces and nudge them to purchase. This is foolish. The best thing you can do is observe. Observe what your buyers are doing. Observe when they ask questions and observe what questions they ask. Observe what their experience is like and then find ways to streamline it for them. Because once you understand that, it’s rather simple to put the right message in front of them at the right time.

Personalization is gaining prominence in B2B marketing. What are some ways marketers can effectively leverage data to deliver personalized experiences?

It’s all useful in some way, but here’s what helps me. If I know someone’s name, job title, evidence that they took some kind of action like downloading a piece of content or, even better, submitting a specific kind of form. This stuff is important because it gives me insight into the experience of the person I’m trying to communicate with — what their responsibilities are, what might be expected of them, what they’re trying to do, what obstacles they are likely encountering. If I know that, I can empathize with you. And if I can empathize with you, I can communicate with you.

ABM has also gained traction for its personalized approach to targeting high-value accounts. What advice would you give to fellow B2B marketers looking to adopt this strategy?

If you have a list of companies you want to go after — you know the name, location, who you would want to speak to that works there — then ABM is for you. My advice would be to work with someone who has experience doing ABM successfully, be it an agency or a consultant. It’s easy to waste a lot of time and money going after the biggest fish. Make sure you do your due diligence.

What are 5 Tips for Your B2B Marketing Strategy to Help You Beat Competitors?

1. Understand that there’s no such thing as “selling to businesses”: Never forget that at the end of the day you’re trying to communicate with human beings. You can’t “attract” a business or “convert” a business. It is people you’re dealing with. People with needs and fears and stresses and natural curiosity, just like you and me. Your “value proposition” and “key differentiators” are meaningless if you can’t explain — in clear terms — what is human about them and why a human should care.
2. SEO isn’t optional: Any B2B marketing strategy that doesn’t involve search engine optimization at its core is doomed to fail. Brands rise and fall according to their ability to demonstrate qualities like experience, expertise, authority and trust. These are also the criteria Google uses to determine which content to show users when they ask questions. The internet is the great equalizer. You can have the best price; the best sales team; even the best product. But if you are not the best answer to every question your buyer has, you’re not actually marketing.
3. Market ONE thing: B2B businesses are sales-driven businesses. By this I mean that their marketing strategies are heavily influenced by what the sales team is doing and experiencing. The upside of this feedback is that the marketing team gets access to a rich level of information and detail. The downside is that it creates a tendency on the marketing team’s part to MARKET EVERYTHING. And this of course never works. Be like Volvo. Volvos are fast, fun to drive and get great gas mileage. That’s what a Volvo salesperson will tell you. But the Volvo marketing team, through their ads and commercials, will consistently focus on one thing: Safety.
4. Creativity is your BEST differentiator: B2B businesses almost always have a larger number of competitors — and a smaller number of differentiators — than they think they do. And so when it comes to things like features and benefits and value propositions, the reality is that most competitors are saying roughly the same thing. The problem with this arrangement is that it inadvertently grants buyers free reign over how to categorize the market. You are all merely different flavors of ice cream in their minds — and completely beholden to the internal set of rules and prejudices they have for “ice cream.” Creativity is what allows you to break free from this construct; to go from selling “ice cream with better stuff on it” to selling “hot fudge sundaes.” From one of a category to a category of one.
5. Experiment is the sole judge of truth: No marketer is smarter than her customer. You can’t “outthink” your target buyer just as physicists can’t “outthink” the natural world. You can hypothesize. You can make predictions. But at the end of the day, your strategy will go in endless circles if you have no way to track, monitor, and measure how your buyers actually respond to what the strategy is doing. Without this, you cannot set goals. Without goals, you cannot grow. Test, test, then test again — or guess, guess, and guess again.

How do you utilize data or AI to refine your B2B marketing approach, and what tools have been particularly impactful in gaining a competitive advantage?

Generative AI writing tools like ChatGPT and Jasper are definitely changing things. The biggest advantage is agility. A skilled content writer using ChatGPT can work about 20–30% faster, depending on the specific piece of content they’re developing. This includes time saved in research, topic ideation, writing and editing. The best thing about these tools is that they take away the blank page. They give you something to start with.

Which digital channels have you found most effective in reaching your target audience, and how do you optimize your presence across these channels to outshine competitors?

We leverage a wide range of channels but the most consistently used are Google Search, LinkedIn, domain-specific trade publications and programmatic advertising. As far as presence, the more data we have on our targets, the more well-honed our creative and messaging, the more consistent the performance, and the more compelling the results.

Are there any underrated skills or qualities that you encourage others not to overlook?

Research, 100%. Whether your core talent is writing, designing, or strategizing, if you don’t know how to understand things like who you’re trying to communicate with, the complexity of their problem, and how your solution addresses that problem, you’re wasting your talent. At Altitude, we always remind ourselves that if you can’t figure out how to start the creative process, it’s because you haven’t finished the research process.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.

Any movement that reduces child hunger, abuse and suffering.

We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

Roger Federer. I always loved watching him play tennis. I was sad that he retired but on the bright side he now has more time to eat breakfast with a complete nobody like me.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.