The concept of lead nurturing is marketing 101. Whether you’re part of a SaaS or Management Consultant company, the objective is always to move prospects through the sales funnel. As we discussed in our blog post, The Impact of Demand Generation on Sales Cycles, demand generation strategy is all the activities that bring attention to your company in an effort to bring prospects into your sales funnel. Closing a deal isn’t a one-size-fits-all situation, so the way you nurture your buyers plays a huge role in your strategy’s success. Drip campaigns are probably the most popular method of lead nurturing. Typically in the form of emails, drip campaigns are automated and are sent to your leads regularly in an effort to stay at the top of their minds. While this such a popular method of lead nurturing for a reason (it’s pretty darn easy) there are a few drawbacks that should keep you from relying too heavily on them. If your emails are overly promotional, without actually offering anything of value, not only will your leads stop moving through your funnel, but they’ll probably unsubscribe. Think about how many times you’ve opened your inbox and seen yet another sales email from a store you’ve only casually shopped at. No coupons, nothing of value — did you scroll to the bottom and unsubscribe? Or better yet, check your spam folder and see how many marketers your email provider already made that call for you about. Luckily, there are many more effective ways to nurture your leads.
1) Make it personal
While you don’t have to personally write a tailored email to each of your leads, a little bit of personalization can go a long way. At the very least, it’s helpful to choose an email template in your CRM that allows you to include your recipient’s name. That’s not all you can do, though. The great thing about paying such close attention to your demand generation strategy is that you likely have a general idea of specifically how you can be of service to each of your leads. If you’ve identified potential client’s pain points, don’t hesitate to make them known in your lead nurturing efforts. Nobody likes to feel like a number, so if you’re reaching out and expecting them to open your emails, make sure what you have to say to them is relevant. While you might think this seems like a wasted effort, HubSpot, found that leads nurtured with targeted content produce an increase in sales opportunities of more than 20%. There are plenty of segmentation options in all of the main CRM systems that you don’t have to cast such a wide net.
2) Use more than one medium
Sure, email is most common and it’s certainly a medium to make sure you pay attention. However, it’s not the be-all, end-all to lead nurturing. Honestly, even though content marketing has become associated with digital marketing, the internet itself isn’t even the limit when it comes to nurturing your leads.
In addition to mail, both e- and direct, you can use social media, blogs, webinars, and videos to help move your leads along their buyer’s journey. Be active and engaging on your social channels, keeping in mind that while it might feel mundane to devote time and energy to your Twitter presence, this is a common way that leads might actually discover your brand and product. You can also look into targeted ads or initiate connections with leads on social media yourself. This also gives your brand a personal edge that can help you build relationships.
3) Check your stats
Your lead nurturing efforts are only worth it if they’re actually doing something for your demand generation strategy. Sure, you can automate some emails and tweet some Tweets, but if you’re not checking in on how effective these things are, you’re probably wasting your time. If you’re finding that only 5% of email recipients are actually opening your messages, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. Very few people get their audience’s needs right on the first try, so there’s no shame in starting over. Play with different subject lines, put more of an emphasis on personalization and see what makes a difference in your engagement levels.
4) Retargeting
How many times have you taken the plunge from a casual browser to a full-blown customer in a single website visit? You can probably count those instances on one hand. Impulse shopping isn’t as common online as it is in person when you can think about a product revisit a website at any time. Of course, it helps push you along when you happen to come across an ad for exactly what you were looking at the next time you’re on your phone. Sorcery? Mindreading? Nah, just retargeting. Retargeting is a form of paid advertising that puts your brand in front of bounced traffic even after the person has left your website. This is a great way to keep yourself at the forefront of leads’ minds, without actually having to do anything yourself — not because you don’t want to put more effort in, you’re just too busy with personalizing your campaigns, obviously.
5) Follow up
We all know how frustrating it is to continuously have to press certain numbers on our phones when all we really want to do is talk to a human who can help us with our problem. What a relief it is when you finally get to talk to someone. Be that relief for your leads. When your potential customers are nearing the end of their buyer’s journey, engaging with your emails, taking an interest in what you have to offer, don’t make them reach out to you. Nudge them along with a human contact. Of course, this will usually be over the phone or via a personal email, but Databox suggests attempting to actually meet with potential leads in person when it’s possible. “Technology helps advance the conversation, but it will never replace those human interactions that build trust over time.”
Writing a B2B case study can seem like a daunting task. The title ‘case study’ infers hours upon hours of research to create a big, thick document of dry information in the end. While that may have been the case back in the day, it’s a much quicker, exciting process now — that is, if you do it effectively.
Why You Should Prioritize More Case Studies
A survey from the Content Marketing Institute found that the most important marketing tactics for B2B companies are in-person events, webinars, and case studies. If you want to ensure they get the memo that you’re the one they should do business with, your successes must be easy to find – and in as few places as possible. You don’t want to leave a trail of success breadcrumbs scattered around the internet in the hopes that future business will follow it. Development company Devrix suggests making your case studies visible on your website, even on your main navigation menu. You might be asking, “Can’t I just include them in my blog?” Or, “Why dedicate a whole page to case studies?” There are a couple of answers to those questions.
You could include your case studies in your blog, but they aren’t really blogs. Your blog likely consists of industry news and how-to posts, acting as a catch-all. Your case studies serve the purpose of being all about work your company has done. So let them stand out!
You might be hesitant to dedicate a whole page to your case studies because you still think a case study is a bulky project that nobody outside of your organization will want to read. However, it’s common now to use a case study to focus on a single takeaway or two. If you have more that you want to write about — you probably do — then you write more case studies.
B2B Case Study Etiquette
The most important thing to keep in mind about your case study is that the success outlined is attributed to the customer. Not you. Use case studies as a platform for your customers’ successes, not an excuse to show off how you helped get them there.
Involve Your Customers
There are a few ways to obtain the necessary information you need from your client. But a lot of it depends on how hands-on and responsive they are. Some clients like to be kept in the loop and want to be involved in any projects you’re working on that concern them. Others prefer to talk to you only when you’re working on a project for them. If your client is more of the hands-on type, interview them either in person, over the phone, or via email. If your client is a bit more reserved, you will want to ask for the materials you need before you get started. Then, send him or her a draft before continuing to make sure you’re on the right track before committing more time. Sending a draft ahead of time is also an excellent route to take if your case study contains any information that might be considered sensitive or confidential. A way to avoid getting too detailed without omitting necessary data is to use growth percentages instead of specific numbers.
What Should You Include?
Oh! Did you want to know the literal way to write your B2B case study? The format? Well, there are a few ways to do that, as long as you include all of these crucial aspects:
A detailed headline: Don’t just use your client’s name. What project or results is your study actually about?
The process you used: How did you solve this client’s problem? You’re not a magician. You can reveal your tricks.
The results: Be as specific as the client allows you to be. Brag brag brag!
Quotes: Try to get quotes from your client about the work that you did for him or her.
Call to action: Allow anyone who’s reading to reach these same results by getting in contact with you. You don’t want them to have read the whole case study just to be confused about how to hire you!
If you need help getting started on writing an effective B2B case study, check out our free Smark Toolbox’s case study template.
When it comes to creating a content strategy, it’s essential to prioritize video. It may not be cheap or easy, but we can help you with that. B2B video marketing is well worth the investment in both money and time. Don’t believe our words? We have the numbers to back it up
HubSpot found that 87% of consumers would like to see more videos from their favorite brands.
So obviously, HubSpot deduced that 99% of marketers who already use video plan to continue doing so, and 88% plan to spend more.
90% of consumers find that videos help them decide whether or not to make a purchase, according to Social Media Today.
People stick around on a webpage for approximately two more minutes when there is a video present than when there is just text to read. Crazy Egg also states that these consumers are also 64% more likely to make a purchase.
Getting Started with B2B Video Marketing
If you’re not on the video train yet, it’s about time you get started. If you’re looking for ways to get those wheels in motion, you’ve come to the right place. Here are some video ideas to help you get started with your video content strategy.
Video blogs
Do you already have a blog? Congratulations, then you already have plenty of video blog content. While the fact that a piece of content you’ve put time and effort into writing isn’t getting the traffic you’d hoped is a tough pill to swallow, a good consolation is that you can repurpose it into video content. If the piece you’re working with is long, take a single point you make in the post and elaborate upon it for the video. If the article is short or easy to segment into bullet points, you can summarize the whole thing in a video blog.
Executive interviews
Do you have a CEO with a real personality? Is the founder of your company a compelling storyteller? Put them in a video! Whether the purpose of the video is to tell the story of your B2B company or to announce an exciting new campaign, putting real people involved in your business in front of the camera is a great way to humanize your web presence and get people engaged.
Explainer videos
What do your customers tend to struggle with? Ask your customer service team what questions they answer most often and be proactive by creating a video that directly addresses them. Not only will this take a little bit of pressure off of your customer service team, but it’ll also be handy for your consumers to be able to troubleshoot some of their issues with a simple Google search.
Testimonials
Do you look for reviews of a product before you make a purchase? Video testimonials from past customers are a way to spread the word about your business. They also help people who are still deciding whether they want to spend their money with you the little nudge they might need.
Animations
If you have a great animator on staff — or are willing to bring one on board, your video possibilities are endless. Animations are an excellent way to explain something on the more technical side and bring some personality to a topic that might be dry in front of a camera.
Where are you posting these?
Will these videos you’ve created live on your website, or are they a part of a more extended content strategy to create a more robust social media presence? If you’re going to post your content to social media, it’s essential to make sure people will watch it. It’s not as simple as just taking the video and uploading it to all mediums. Format a square version for Instagram, cut a quick clip that’ll intrigue people enough to head over to your website for the full version. For reference, HubSpot recommends keeping your Instagram videos below 30 seconds, Twitter videos below 45 seconds, Facebook videos below a minute, and YouTube videos below two minutes. And as for anything in the B2B marketing space, don’t forget optimizing your video content for search engines, by using captions and turning on autoplay. Don’t autoplay the sound, though! Think about the last time you had a random video playing in one of your browser tabs. Did you go to the correct tab and actually watch the video, or did you mute the page? One more thing that shouldn’t come as a surprise to any B2B marketer: include a CTA! Even if it isn’t clickable, end your video on a note that tells your viewers what to do next.
Your B2B video marketing should elevate your content strategy. Let us help! Learn more about our award-winning video production services and capabilities.
Like most industries, B2B marketing is loaded with a lot of acronyms and jargon. Sometimes you feel like you’ve been nodding along for so long, and now it’s been too long that you can’t even ask what something means. Perhaps nothing is discussed more than “brand strategy,” though. It sounds self-explanatory, but there’s more to it than determining your logo and your signature colors. If you’ve been smiling along with a vague understanding of what your colleagues are discussing, you’ve come to the right place. We’re going to discuss what B2B brand strategy means and how you can use it.
…so what is it?
Your brand strategy is the method that you take to build and shape your brand, as well as how you spread the word! It’s the plan you put in place to make your business recognizable to anyone who may need your services. The biggest, most successful brands have an almost formulaic strategy in place. It practically allows customers to understand what’s being sold to them before the brand even reveals itself. Establishing a well-defined brand may be a bit more difficult for a B2B business than for a large corporation, though, especially if it’s still pretty small. Most B2B companies (and businesses in general) don’t have the backing of a centuries-old brand like Coca-Cola or the hip, trendy recognition of brands like Supreme or Glossier. However, that doesn’t mean you should push branding to the back burner. Most people wouldn’t say that the most recognizable brands in the world are B2B. But Harvard Business School marketing professor John Quelch says that B2B brands should invest more in their brand-building for these three reasons:
Most B2B marketers can’t economically address thousands of small businesses using the traditional direct sales force.
If left unattended, individual managers will each do their own ad hoc marketing.
B2B marketers realize that developing brand awareness among their customers’ customers can capture a larger share of channel margins and build loyalty that can protect them against lower-priced competitors.
Have you established your buyer personas yet?
No? Then head on over to our blog, “How to Build a Quality Buyer Persona in Five Easy Steps.” Yes? Congrats! Now you can reference them when determining what kind of brand strategy will most resonate with your customers.
Brand strategy in a B2B world
According to HubSpot, the seven componentsfor a comprehensive branding strategy are:
Purpose: What is it contributing to the world?
Consistency: Do all of your outlets – from your marketing materials to your website, to your social media presence – all seem like they’re coming from the same entity?
Emotion: How are you making your customers think that you’re the answer to their questions?
Flexibility: Are you paying attention to the ebbs and flows of your industry and willing to tweak your strategies to stay relevant?
Loyalty: Do you acknowledge customers who keep coming back or refer you to other companies?
Competitive awareness: Are you paying attention to the marketing strategies of businesses in the same industry as you?
Employee involvement: Is your staff on the same page as your marketing team? While you might associate your brand with your outward appearance to your customers, your company culture is also a large part of it.
These components are essential for any business to keep in mind, B2C, or B2B. If anything, they’re even more important to keep in mind if you’re marketing to other companies. After all, they’ve worked on their own B2B brand strategies, so they’ll be the first to notice if yours seems to be half-baked. So really take some time and brainstorm where your business stands on all of these aspects. I know, these are a lot of questions to keep in mind. Wouldn’t it be easier if your brand strategy did just consist of “What colors should we use on our website?” and “Are we going to be professional or irreverent on the internet?” But trust me, your hard work will pay off when it comes to establishing a lasting, cohesive brand for your B2B business.
The keyword there is “lasting”
Market research firm AYTM warns against focusing too much on the short termwhen working on your brand strategy. Yeah, it’s cool to see results right away, but you want to make sure these results don’t start to wane, leaving you right where you started. They suggest your marketing team become “brand architects,” and build a foundation before working on strategies to “bridge brand strategy and brand messaging.” Think of this foundation as your first step each time you want to expand upon your company’s branding. You’ll always have a head start!
A well-crafted B2B buyer persona can provide tremendous structure and opportunity for your company. What’s a buyer persona? A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on your company’s market research and data on existing customers. They help align your marketing and sales departments by setting a clear picture of who exactly your firm should be targeting and serving. In order to be effective, buyer personas need to be based on real-world information and not assumptions. The more specific you can be, the better. Create a customizable buyer persona in minutes now with HubSpot’s “Make My Persona” tool. Here is a five-step process to follow when creating a buyer persona for your company.
1. Research your audience
Let’s pretend you’re back in school for a second… You’re taking an exam that you didn’t study for. We’ve all been there. You miss classes, you don’t turn in the homework, and just show up on test day. It probably didn’t work out too well. Similarly to creating your buyer personas, you have to do your homework. Just like you can’t expect to do well on a test without understanding the concepts, you can’t possibly create an effective buyer persona without knowing your audience. Study the market. Ask yourself, “Who is already buying from me?” This includes demographics, behavioral patterns, goals, and buyer trends. Another way to learn about your audience is by using social analytics. These buyers may not be customers at the moment, but the point is if they are searching and interacting with your brand or industry online, there is certainly data to be collected.
2. Identify customer pain points
Find out what problems your customers are facing. What’s holding them back from reaching their goals? A great way to find this information is by simply asking your customer service team what questions they get the most. Figuring out these pain points customers are experiencing allows you to generate content tailored to resolving those issues. And don’t forget, not every firm has the same company size and goals. So a strategy that may seem fitting for a company with 50-100 employees, can certainly be different for a firm with ten.
3. Identify customer goals
When creating personas, you need to put yourself in the buyer’s shoes. What motivates your customers? What are they actually trying to reach? These goals don’t necessarily have to align with a solution that your firm can provide, so don’t sweat it. This step is about better understanding your customers and looking for similar goals to what other firms may have. What’s the purpose? Data. Remember, the more information you can find about your clients, the stronger B2B buyer persona you can create.
4. Why you?
Now that you understand who your customers are, potential challenges they face, as well as goals they may seek, ask yourself, “Why would a customer choose me?” Because you’re the best!? Well, maybe so, but customers want to experience and generate those thoughts on their own — another reason buyer personas are so important. Buying personas help flip your thinking and consider your products and services from a buyer’s point of view. A tactic most marketers don’t even think about doing. If you truly want customers thinking you’re the best, you must know what they like and need. Once you understand why buyers would choose you, crafting personas tailored to your market becomes much easier!
5. Creating the persona
Now that you did your research, it’s time to start organizing your buyers. Look for characteristics and similarities as you begin creating your first buyer persona! Keep in mind, your persona is not just some folder on your computer containing all of your customer data. But rather a single, semi-fictional person that you can actually speak to and identify with! Make sure to give your persona a name, age, and job title. From there, you’ll start filling in more job-specific data such as the number of employees, responsibilities, challenges, goals and any other data you collected from your prior research! Here’s an example of a buyer persona created from HubSpot’s “Make My Persona” tool. As you can see, Marketing Mary appears as a real person and not just a group of people. She is a business worker with very similar qualities and challanges other marketers may face on a daily basis. For further questions about B2B buyer personas and how to make them, check out HubSpot’s free creation tool or get in touch with us today!
I get it, sales team, you’re frustrated. You’re spending long hours at work desperately trying to close deals with under-qualified leads, thanks to your marketing team. To make matters worse, maybe your marketers are accusing you of not properly following up with leads, resulting in lost deals. If that scenario sounds familiar, I’m here to tell you it’s all avoidable. According to HubSpot’s State of Inbound Report, just 26% of businesses operate under a marketing and sales service level agreement. That percentage is way too low. You are all a part of the same company, right? Everyone is trying to get to the bottom line and improve overall growth, right? Then why are we competing with each other! Now, I know what you’re thinking… How are we supposed to know who is performing best and where we need help if we all work together? Well, that’s where smarketing comes in! Smarketing is the alignment between your sales and marketing teams, created through shared goals and executed through a collaborative strategy. The better you are at smarketing, the lower your cost of customer acquisition will be. This means increased leads and more closed deals at a lower price. Here are a few facts every salesperson needs to keep top-of-mind when discussing marketing.
You need marketing to tell a story
No matter how great your product or service is, you should never rely on selling features alone. Creating a desire for your product helps bring more value and interest to your buyers. That’s where marketing steps in.
When you buy a car you will almost always have some sort of emotional connection tied with the one you choose. Before finalizing the deal, you need to be connected and know the product is right for you. Feelings and emotions that just can’t be felt from a salesperson’s persuasion alone. This holds true with any sale that’s not an impulse buy. Things like blogs, testimonials, social media efforts, and videos are just a few of the many ways you can use marketing to help tell a story and increase emotional appeal — ultimately easing the sales process.
Marketing helps build trust
“Nobody likes to be sold, but everyone likes to buy.” The old fashioned, high-pressure sales tactics no longer work. Even if you have won the sale, that doesn’t mean you’ve garnered a long-term relationship. When was the last time you bought something from a company you didn’t trust? Odds are, most of your purchases feel comfortable because you trust a firm or brand. Buyers want to conduct business with people they know, like, and trust. Lucky for you, you can get your prospects closer to these goals with help from your marketers! Present your marketing team with questions and objections that often arise from your conversations. As a result, marketers can develop content that addresses how your product/service will help serve these needs.
Marketing helps determine when a person is “sales-ready”
Your marketing team can use data and tactics to help determine which prospects are actually sales-ready. Instead of cold-calling 500 prospects, marketing can help strip out the “noise” and provide a clearer direction for the sales team. Out of those 500 prospects, marketing may identify 50 that could use a hard sales pitch, while the remaining 450 require further nurturing. The point is, sales can direct their time and efforts to those prospects who are actually interested. Monitoring behaviors like email opens and click-throughs, social media engagement, and downloads are all great tell-tale signs that a prospect may be sales-ready.
You need each other
Simply put, sales without marketing is difficult. Without marketing, you’d have to make up for lost ground — tackling the tasks of storytelling, being persuasive, and finding emotional appeal without the assets you really need! As a result, it’s a lot harder to grow the company and increase revenue without the support of marketing. The bottom line is this: Marketing provides the roof over the sales force while they’re inside working hard to close deals and increase revenue. When used correctly, your marketers will help eliminate any outside noise and funnel quality leads to the sales team. Proper alignment between the sales team and the prospect is what ultimately closes deals. What’s vital to remember is that the “sales team” is actually made up of both salespeople and marketers. After all, you serve the same function and should have the same goals. Now that you have a better understanding of how these departments should align, gather your sales & marketing teams together to bury the hatchet and start fresh! For more tips and insights like these, check out our blog or get in touch!
