This isn’t going to start off like a B2B Marketing topic, but stick with me. Honey bees

I have somehow gotten the bee bug. OK, sure, I  love honey, nature, gardening, and am always open to adventure… but mothering 6000+ bees in hopes of producing a few pounds of honey is still a strangely random interest.

And strange it is. Beekeepers are as varied and vocal a community as Harley Davidson riders …with some decidedly different expletives.

Living in the internet age, I felt fairly confident that I could learn, rapidly and relatively easily, from the avid bee keepers around me. I went to beekeeping school, I found and follow blogs on the topic, I joined a local beekeeping association for those (fool)hardy enough to try to keep bees in an inner city. I ordered my 2 NUC’s (a nucleus of a bee hive each holding ~3000 bees, a queen, and the basic start to a bee colony).

But now – where do I put them? What type and size hive? What about the placement? Do I feed them to help them get established?  Or as many beekeeping hobbyist say “Let them bee”?

I”M SO CONFUSED!!!

So afraid of doing the wrong thing! Of wasting time and money and worse still – killing a whole bunch of bees because I don’t’ know any better…

And that’s when it hit me – like any inexperienced, under-informed, over-achiever that wants to do the right thing – I’m going to latch on to whomever makes me feel the safest – the least scared – through this journey.

The website that talks to me the best – that offers comfort and a sense of “You can do it!” is the one that I’m going to listen to and the one from whom I will either buy – or will go wherever, and buy whatever they recommend.

I knew it the minute I was placing orders for a boat load of equipment – from a site that I knew next to nothing about – except that a beekeeper with an “Authentic Voice” said “Here’s what I did, here’s what I learned, and here’s what I recommend.”   Good enough.  Granted, this isn’t a multi-million dollar investment that my career is balanced upon.  But the emotional angst is still the same.

So – if you are a company that understands that your potential buyers (including B2B buyers) start their education and buying process on-line.  If you want to get to them while they are finding their way…when they have a desire – a need -  then you need to remember that they learn, and they make buying decisions with their hearts with as much, if not more than, their heads.

Which means you need to be the Authentic Voice they hear.  The voice that says, “I went through this.  I was scared. I learned.  And I found this approach worked best.”

Then you won’t be a voice in the wilderness.  You won’t be the voice preaching to the choir. You will be the voice building new colonies.

Bee Happy and Prosper.