How to get B2B buyers to respond with a more human-to-human approach with Adriana Tica

Eric (00:03.17)
Hey, if you're new to the show, I'm Eric Milcher, and I have lighthearted conversations with founders and marketers about their journey building and scaling startups here in Europe. My guest today is Adriana Tika. She is a No BS, zero hacks marketing strategist, and her digital marketing agency, Copyright Tech, helps tech companies reach their goals by providing SEO and copywriting services. And she also writes the ideas to power your future newsletter, where every week,

She teaches you in 10 minutes or less, ideas on how to build a sustainable business. I'm really excited to chat with Adriana. I've been enjoying her content now on LinkedIn for several months. And Adriana, if I was 10 years younger, I'd probably have a copy writing crush on you, Adriana.

Adriana Tica (00:53.567)
Hi Eric, I'm happy to be here and thank you for the lovely intro.

Eric (00:57.458)
Yeah, you know, years ago, yeah, years ago, I used to have like these crushes on a couple of copywriters. One of them was Laura Belgray from Talking Shrimp. Yeah. Okay, so it's not just me who has these like copywriting crushes.

Adriana Tica (01:07.118)
Oh yeah, yeah I know Laura. Of course one of my biggest crushes of all time, yes!

Adriana Tica (01:19.03)
No, she's fabulous. Yeah, I read everything she writes several times. I mean, everything she writes is a copywriting lesson in itself. Yeah.

Eric (01:20.725)
Yeah.

Eric (01:26.846)
Yeah, but she's so funny though. I mean, she's really, I haven't read her stuff in five years, but like one period I was reading it, I was hooked. I mean, she really drew me in. I think I bought a couple of digital products from her, but she is fantastic. Did you have any crushes on anybody else, any other copywriters, Adriana?

Adriana Tica (01:47.018)
I think she's actually the biggest crush I've ever had and other writers, her friend Marie Forleau is also a very good copywriter but Marie is a bit, she runs a video company so I don't know if everything I see from her is written by her but I know she's a very good copywriter in her own right as well. So yeah, I'm not surprised with her friends.

Eric (02:08.678)
Yeah, yeah. Now before, yeah, before I developed my crush with Laura, Ash Ambujay, have you ever heard of her?

Adriana Tica (02:20.203)
Uh, yes, but, uh, I can't remember anything from her. I just know the name.

Eric (02:24.882)
Yeah. Well, she has this project or it's a website called the middle finger project. And, uh, her stuff was really, really good too. She ended up writing a book and, uh, I fell in love with her stuff for a couple of years before, and I'm not even their target audience. Isn't that the craziest thing I threw out? I'm not. I mean,

Adriana Tica (02:41.906)
I think that's the market of a great writer, you know, they just draw you in. Maybe you're not going to buy it. I know I read a lot of stuff from Laura, a lot of her products, I'm not her target audience for them, but I still read it. It's enjoyable. Yeah.

Eric (02:52.427)
Yeah.

Eric (02:56.422)
Exactly. It's enjoyable. And that's how your content is too. I'm kind of in your target market, but I'm not really, but I still find your content very enjoyable and I get hooked. And I'm like, wow, this is good. This is really good stuff because I don't really have copywriters on the show. But I know what you're teaching and the knowledge that you're sharing. I find it very valuable. And if I'm finding it valuable, then I know my audience will find it valuable. So the first question I have for you, Adriana.

is innovation can be a new method, an idea, or maybe even a new product. For example, the startup ecosystem is a fairly new concept. It goes back maybe in the mid 2000s when he started hearing that term startup ecosystem. And for those who don't know, a startup ecosystem is a supportive environment that works together to support the community members and offer their resources to one another in order for each one to grow their business or idea.

So when it comes to content creators, what are you seeing now in the B2B space and what does it mean for B2B in general? A3R9.

Adriana Tica (04:04.99)
The biggest trend I've been seeing for a couple of years now is The blurring of the lines between B2B and B2C. I think we finally understood that there's no reason to create such a such a harsh line between the two, you know, because Essentially B2B buyers are also human So perhaps a better approach than this very clear division would be H2H human to human You know, you need to understand that between every B2B purchase decision

there's a human or several humans and you need to talk to them. A company whether it's a startup or a fortune 500 corporation is more or less a convention a fictional entity you know it's the humans that drive it so this is who you're talking to so whether you're selling shoes or whether you're selling technical products for companies you're talking to humans it's their needs it's their problems that you need to solve

Eric (05:02.174)
Yeah. This is one of those things that you need to be reminded of if you've ever taken a really good copywriting course. And I remember Ash saying that, listen, you write to one person and you forget that a lot. And I forget that all the time. And I'm thinking, you know, my client is a typical SaaS business, probably 200 minimum employees. That's how I'm really targeting. And so I just have that in mind when I start writing and I, I'm completely dropping the ball here. So what are some things that

When you work with clients that are in the tech space or even just clients that are copywriters that are writing like freelancers that are writing for those types of clients, any sort of tips, you know, to, to remind them that you're really reminding, you're really, really writing to one person, a human, a human approach.

Adriana Tica (05:47.574)
Well, there's the old approach, talking to your buyer persona. You know, it's a bit obsolete because we finally understood that marketing Mandy, who likes her Starbucks frappuccinos and so on, is maybe not the best person to talk to and maybe everything she likes in her spare time isn't relevant. But one of my go-tos, for instance, when I write my newsletter is to imagine that I write to a single subscriber.

I actually look through my list of subscribers, pick one name, and think, hey, I'm writing to you. It's like, hey, this newsletter, I'm writing it to Eric. What would Eric want to know? What would Eric not care about? Because this is a very big problem that most copywriters forget about. You know, you tend to cram everything into a single page, into a single blog post. Some stuff needs to go. You need to kill your darlings, as we like to say. Delete mercilessly.

Eric (06:31.786)
Yeah.

Adriana Tica (06:44.098)
But I think that imagining a single person that you're writing to and making sure that you know exactly what their pain points are and what you're talking about will help you zero in and write only what your audience needs to know, nothing more, nothing less.

Eric (07:03.234)
Okay, do you apply the same approach when you're writing LinkedIn posts, Adriana?

Adriana Tica (07:08.662)
Yes, but I will admit that LinkedIn is

my playgrounds, so sometimes I get a bit carried away and I throw the rulebook off the window and simply write what I want, because this is why I started my newsletter, this is why I started my consulting business, I wanted something that has my face on it and my voice on it. I didn't want to be constrained by a brand voice, so I want to write what I care about. And I was very happy to find out I'm not the only one who cares about those things, you know.

a lot of people resonate with them. So maybe this may sound surprising, but when you throw the rulebook off the window and you're writing your own voice without any constraints, without any frameworks, these things resonate more with your audience because they can feel that they come from a place of authenticity and honesty, which is very, very rare, even on social media.

Eric (08:07.282)
Yeah. Can we go back to about blurring the lines a little bit? What B2B is starting the, a lot of the marketing they're starting to do is kind of like the B2C. Can you give some examples like that? Any company stand out or maybe even specific people with that stand out that are, that seem to be doing a good job of this.

Adriana Tica (08:26.958)
So in the SaaS space, you can look at Groove HQ. They have a very transparent built-in public approach. Basecamp is also a very good example here. They are their companies. They're not personal brands, but they are personal brand-led, especially Groove HQ. Alex at Groove HQ, it's his Twitter, well, X handle.

He built his company fully transparently, he blogs a lot, he gives you everything behind the scenes, he tells you in-depth stories about the things they messed up, about the things that are working for them.

and through this approach they managed to attract a lot of clients. It's a very human-to-human approach. It's not your usual corporate lingo. This is what we're doing. We care about people. We care about the environment. It's not we, it's I. Mostly I. And at Basecamp it's pretty much the same thing. Maybe you don't have a single human that everyone knows about. Perhaps there are still more people who know the Basecamp brand rather than the founders names.

Eric (09:19.462)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Adriana Tica (09:35.19)
But their story from the very beginning, how they started Basecamp, what they're launching now, their new project ONCE, is very, very human. You know, they talk about what they saw in the market, the gaps they're trying to cover. They're very honest about it. And they talk to humans. You know, their newest project ONCE is going to be an anti-sauce. It's going to be a pay once and don't forever.

So it's a bit of a time travel and they explained very clearly why they're doing it because they started noticing that a lot of people started to hate their monthly subscriptions who quickly add up and you forget about them and you end up paying for 10 services that you haven't used since last Christmas. So it's these approaches that give you a little bit of an inside view as Nick peek into the company's operations.

And it's more than usual. It's, you know, it's not the cryptic approach you usually have with big corporations. Like, does anyone know what's happening at Unilever? What they're testing now, what they're doing? Or I don't want to call them out. I have nothing against Unilever. It's the first name that popped in my head. The same goes for the big tech companies like Meta or Google or X. Well, that's...

Eric (10:48.681)
Hahaha

Eric (10:55.402)
Yeah.

Adriana Tica (11:00.654)
good example for anything good or wrong right now. I mean, the founders talk about what they're launching and why, but it's still very press release like, even if it's in a social media post, you know.

Eric (11:13.066)
Yes. You know, when I used to work for corporate America, like big companies, um, back in Texas, I used to love the CEO where every Friday he had started with just like an email and it was like maybe three or four things that he covered that the company that they were focused on that he was focused on, but then he turned it into like this, this blog video and you just go to YouTube and it was a private link and it was typically a five minute video and he was talking, um,

about the things that he was thinking about or just the company in general. And I love that, I love that. And that was, oh God, maybe less than 10 years ago, but a lot of companies haven't moved to that in terms of external communication and sharing it with the public, right? And I think maybe a lot of people are just uncomfortable doing that. Maybe they feel like it's not really worth it, or maybe they feel like I just don't have the time. So the brands that you've mentioned,

like Basecamp and some of the other ones who seem to be getting it right. Right. Have you ever worked with companies where you've tried to like nudge them toward that direction and have you been successful and what were you successful in getting them to do in terms of taking that approach or in that mindset? Like where would they start if they've never done anything like that before?

Adriana Tica (12:33.402)
So I would say that my success has been moderate. Some people have completely refused to take a more transparent approach. For instance, I briefly worked, well, my agency briefly worked with a client who wanted to create content to become a thought leader in their space. And their definition of thought leadership was cramming a ton of fancy phrases and words into a single blog post. And whatever we created for them, they said, but no, we need to crank it up.

but it means nothing anymore. It's just a lot of synergies and seamlessness and it means nothing anymore. Why would you do that? But yes, I've also had clients who are very, very open to this approach, even though they themselves weren't comfortable on camera or weren't comfortable talking about themselves and why they got into business and they prefer to let the brand shine on its own.

Eric (13:07.882)
Hahaha

Adriana Tica (13:30.514)
They were open to sharing more of their operations, more than was, you know, required to keep the company going. I, we now have a client in, uh, in the IPS industry, uh, integration platform as a service, their name is Sync Apps, and they're doing a great job at putting themselves out there and explaining everything they do with, with its ups and downs and, um, their entire journey is very, very transparent in the way they support their customers.

What I think is very interesting about this approach is that when you start doing it, you also start doing what everyone says they do, but they actually don't. You actually implement the feedback from your customers. If you're transparent about what you do and why you build this feature and why you decided not to build the other feature, you're actually creating those feedback loops that you stick with. Most companies are going to tell you, well, I think all companies are going to tell you,

for them. But that's just PR talk. When you become more transparent and let people in, I mean actually let them in, then you also start implementing feedback because it's a dual communication relationship. It's a two-way street.

Eric (14:48.83)
Yep. Okay. Love it. Okay. Next question for Adriana. Since being, becoming a solopreneur, I found it beneficial to create checklists and playbooks for different functions in my business. For example, when a B2B podcaster joins my network, I go through a series of steps like inviting them to my Slack group, sending them a calendar invite to our monthly meetups, adding their details in a Notion doc, things like that. And these checklists have been a big help.

in terms of protecting me from forgetting a step or forgetting to do something. What are some tools or things that you do to help avoid needless menial tasks or delegate or automate parts of your business?

Adriana Tica (15:30.906)
Oh, I love processes and SOPs. I think they're so important to keeping your business on track, especially as a solopreneur where you don't have as many people to delegate to, you know? So one of the things I started doing recently is I created a spreadsheet that's called Problems. It's a very ominous name, but the spreadsheet itself is very, very helpful. The way I use it is that is after each call or

whether it's a strategy session with my client, whether it's a Zoom call with my friend, whether it's a podcast like this one, I take five minutes to write down every problem my chatting partner talked to me about. I try to identify...

the bigger picture around it for instance if someone asks me about finding the right product market fit I make sure I label it with

with a larger problem, okay, for instance. And I write down the name of whoever asked me about that, when they did it, what was the context. And at the very end, I think about a piece of content that I can create for that problem and maybe a product eventually. This is one of my most helpful resources right now because if you keep at this for a couple of months, you're going to see patterns

from different people. And this is a very strong signal that you need to either create more content around that topic or create a product to help people solve them.

Adriana Tica (17:10.886)
I have various spreadsheets and calendars and frameworks and templates that I use for pretty much everything I do from newsletters to content writing to the way I approach a strategy session with my clients because it's very important when you show up for your client to know exactly what you need to do, what you need to ask, what you need to tell them, your pre-session prep and so on.

Eric (17:39.826)
Yeah. Instead of waiting to being on the actual call, um, and like, like the discovery phase, uh, what sort of pre-work do you do before the call that you have with the client, with the potential new client? Do you ask anything like on the Cali invite, like, are there any field tech, you know, boxes or any questions that you asked beforehand?

Adriana Tica (17:58.262)
Well, it depends. If it's for my agency, I typically stalk them a bit before the session. I make sure I know everything there is to know about them, at least the public information. I check out their competitors. So during the discovery call, I have a few pertinent questions to ask. If it's a strategy session in my consulting business, I have a few questions in my calendar that help me prep.

Eric (18:05.046)
Hahaha

Adriana Tica (18:27.222)
before the session. So before the session starts, I'm going to have a Google document with suggestions for my client and we're going to discuss them during the call. So I don't show up empty handed, you know, and tell people, hey, can you please remind me your name? I think that's so off-putting, you know? Yeah.

Eric (18:46.974)
Absolutely. Yeah. Minimum, I mean, minimum 30 minutes, at least for like a potential client minimum. You could probably do a lot more than that. Yeah. Okay. So Adriana, I just launched B2B pod pros. We provide SaaS companies an easy way to reach marketing leaders in the B2B space by a podcast. I'm trying to build an audience that could be potential clients. You recently conducted the audience accelerator workshop where you teach people actionable frameworks.

Adriana Tica (18:55.498)
Absolutely. Yeah.

Eric (19:15.69)
they can use to build an audience. What are some things that you teach and hope students take away from your workshop and implement?

Adriana Tica (19:26.363)
Oh, do you have a couple of hours?

No, I'm joking. So there are a ton of frameworks and of course, there's no one-size-fits-all in marketing or in audience building But if you're trying to build an audience for a podcast, I think the best The best two ideas you can start implementing are creating an email list that complements the podcast You can use that email list to send a transcript of your podcast to announce the new topics to announce the new guests and so on

And lastly, the favorite thing I taught in my recent workshop is to create self-feeding growth loops. We tend to think about audiences in silos, like here's my audience on LinkedIn, these are my email subscribers, these are the people who listen to my podcast.

And if you have more than one platform, you're going to mainly focus on one of them. For me, for instance, it's my newsletter. I use all of my other platforms to draw people to my email list.

But also from my emails I send people to my social media platforms where I tell them about the podcasts I've been a guest on. And I think these self-feeding growth loops can be incredibly helpful no matter what you build. So you can use your podcast to ask people to connect with you on social media, to ask people to subscribe to your email list, you can use your social media to get people to your podcast, and so on and so forth. The goal of these self-feeding growth loops is that no one...

Adriana Tica (21:00.808)
is that none of your messages are going to reach everyone in your audience, not even your emails, because not everyone opens all your emails, right? So you want to make sure that every audience member follows you on more than one platform, so that you have a chance to target them with everything you put out there. And this is especially true on social media, where you know how organic rich is these days, you can hardly count on it.

Eric (21:08.298)
Right, right, right.

Adriana Tica (21:29.05)
So yes, this is if you want to build a strong community around your podcast, self-feeding growth loops are a great idea and also perhaps a private community to connect people because you're talking about B2B marketers and B2B founders and typically these people are a bit isolated and they could always benefit from a strong community of peers.

Eric (21:58.066)
Yeah, yeah. No, that's one of the reasons why I created the B2B podcaster community, uh, and, and everybody enjoys it. We learn from each other. We support one another. Uh, what are the things like you were saying I started doing, and I don't know if it's going to work or not, but in a new blog post that I publish, I'll actually like in the blog post itself, I'll include a screenshot of a LinkedIn post that I wrote about that pertains to whatever that topic is in the blog and if people found it interesting in the screenshot includes

comments and engagements and in likes. And it was a pretty popular post. Maybe they'll read that and think, oh, okay. I'm not following this guy on LinkedIn. They click it and they go to my LinkedIn profile and maybe they'll, they'll see more of my content there or decide to follow me there. Um, but I just started doing that recently. And I think it's one of those growth loops that you mentioned where you're trying to draw people from maybe one platform to another platform where they could follow you. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Another question for you. I'm not as famous as you online.

Adriana Tica (22:52.606)
Absolutely, yes.

Eric (22:57.834)
Uh, from a LinkedIn engagement perspective, but I do believe that as your audience starts to grow, so do more sales, more proposals, more friends and partnerships. And that's definitely worked out for me, uh, with the podcast because the majority of guests that I have on the show, I've met through LinkedIn. Uh, Adriana, is there a dark side to growing an online audience? And if so, can you give some examples?

Adriana Tica (22:58.554)
Oh, well.

Adriana Tica (23:23.334)
Oh yes, so I think the most common dark side is the hate you're starting to get. We have this penchant for hating popular people. We love to root for underdogs, but the moment they start becoming real dogs, we kind of hate them and we try to figure out how they game the system, what did they do, and what did they do wrong to get there.

So yeah, there's definitely a lot of hate, a lot of weird, lewd DMs that you're going to get, including marriage proposals or unsolicited. Oh, yes. Yes.

Eric (24:00.426)
You've been proposed to, aetherona? See, you have crushes!

Adriana Tica (24:07.958)
Well, yeah, that actually happened before I became a solopreneur. I was a freelancer and I was proposed to. I was along with a marriage proposal came a job offer of running a clothing factory in Pakistan. I declined. So this is why I'm not a retail mogul right now. But yeah, joke aside.

Eric (24:23.414)
Okay.

Adriana Tica (24:37.506)
Another dark side of having a large audience is that it can pretty much eat up all of your time. If you still want to reply to every comment and every DM that you get, you won't have time to do anything else. I really don't want to show you what my LinkedIn notifications look like right now. I have really old DMs that I'm trying to get to. I do want to reply to everyone, but I also need

Eric (24:50.698)
Yeah.

Eric (24:57.471)
Yeah.

Adriana Tica (25:05.72)
stop to my social media activity because otherwise, you know, there's no time to sleep.

Eric (25:13.106)
Yeah, no, absolutely. I put like a little clock on my iPhone, like a countdown timer and say, okay, this is how much I'm going to spend, but once it goes off, I need to walk away. Yeah. Okay. There you have it, folks.

Adriana Tica (25:24.234)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but it's hard, you know, because, yeah, because, uh, you know, people take time to engage with your content, to send you a message and you kind of, you want to reply because, you know, they're nice and they're part of your audience and you want to show up for them. But after some point, you really can't reply to everyone. It's, it's unsustainable. It's unrealistic.

Eric (25:30.428)
Wait

Eric (25:48.946)
Yeah. And it's so true about once people get like, like a certain level of success, whether it's measured by the number of followers or something, you do tend to hate them, I guess it's just, it's being human. I tend to not really follow anybody with more than 20,000 followers and it's not so much the number. It's just more of like, you know, I've read some of their posts more than one and it starts off with, Oh, you know, I've made $500,000 now for my business and

Okay. You're in a different place than I am. And that's not exactly what I'm going for. The kind of content that I want to read. And I just thought following that person all together, even if they're trying to share valuable tips and stuff, it's just sort of puts for me, it's just putting off. Okay. I've got some rapid fire questions for you. Are you ready? Adriana.

Adriana Tica (26:37.878)
Yes, ready as I'll ever be. Shoot.

Eric (26:39.846)
Okay, what is the most interesting thing you have done in the last 26 days?

Adriana Tica (26:45.486)
26. Wow. I've been to a really cool wine tasting. It was set in Bucharest, really close to my home. I'm very lucky to have the best wine bar in Bucharest next to me. And yeah, it was amazing.

Eric (26:54.706)
Okay, okay, where was this at?

Eric (27:03.275)
Yeah

Eric (27:06.662)
Okay, good, good. I'm going to have to ask you about that when we start recording here. Okay. Uh, let's see. When you were a kid, you wanted to be blank. Fill in the blank.

Adriana Tica (27:11.726)
Okay.

Adriana Tica (27:19.614)
I wanted to be a sales clerk because I thought that if you... I thought that sales clerks had access to all the sweets in their shop for free. I was really, really disappointed when I was told I can't have all I can eat.

Eric (27:30.385)
Hahaha

Eric (27:37.621)
So you did get a job at such a place at one point in your life?

Adriana Tica (27:42.214)
No, I did not. If it didn't come with the perks I wanted, I didn't want the job either.

Eric (27:45.554)
Yeah. Yeah, I was talking to my wife the other day and she was saying that her dream job would be working at, Oh God, what was it? I don't know if it was Louis Vuitton or one of those like fancy things, just so that she could get the discount off the clothes. Okay. All right. Uh, next question for you. What is the best advice that your mom or dad or somebody close to you ever gave you?

Adriana Tica (28:01.943)
Yeah

Adriana Tica (28:15.403)
To pass the exam you have to show up. It's the first condition. It happened when I was in college and I was really dreading this complicated exam. My mom told me, you know, if you don't go, you're definitely not going to pass. So at least try. And it's something I've carried with me throughout my career because the first thing you need to do is show up. You'll figure it out once you show up.

Eric (28:42.606)
Okay, what's the biggest win that you've had in the last 12 months, Adriana?

Adriana Tica (28:48.946)
I think it was my audience accelerator workshop that I held recently. I kind of blew through all my goals and I had a fantastic session with amazing people who gave me amazing feedback and they made it actionable and it was more than I ever hoped for.

Eric (29:06.559)
Yeah.

Well, it was last night. I signed up for it and unfortunately I couldn't attend, but how did it go?

Adriana Tica (29:15.39)
Oh, it went great. If you signed up for it, you're going to get the recording. We went a bit over time, but it was great. I really, really loved it.

Eric (29:25.698)
Okay, okay, last question for you. Blank is a contest or a game or a challenge. I have one.

Adriana Tica (29:38.915)
I didn't win many things in my life, so I won a journalism prize when I was in college. I submitted a small article on a TV contest and it got read in primetime and my name was on national television.

Eric (29:41.451)
Ha ha!

Eric (30:01.299)
Adriana, where should people go if they want to learn more

Adriana Tica (30:08.842)
The best way to get my best resources is to sign up to my newsletter. You can find it on adriannatico.com slash newsletter. You can also find me on LinkedIn, X and threads. I post almost daily on LinkedIn. And yeah, I'm very easy to find online. I made sure of that.

Eric (30:29.822)
Yeah, we'll include links to Adriana's LinkedIn profile and as well as her newsletter. For me, if you want to get examples of B2B podcasts, add some really good examples. Just go to b2bpodpros.com. Adriana, this was a pleasure having you on the show.

Adriana Tica (30:47.81)
Same here, Eric. Thank you so much for having me here.

Eric (30:50.002)
Yeah, no, my pleasure for everybody listening. You enjoy this, please pay it forward, tell others about it and subscribe to the show. Hit that subscribe button on YouTube or Spotify or Apple until next week. I'll continue interviewing, innovating marketers and founders here in Europe. Thank you.