B2B sales funnel is a significant part of your business. But it is also the most difficult to measure in terms of efficiency. As technology advances, the behavior and needs of your leads are also constantly evolving.
Are you bugged by articles that mention AI, ML, ABM repetitively? More so, when they keep telling you what to do but not how to do it? As an industry leader, one has to battle constant challenges to efficiently transform B2B leads into converting clients. To combat these challenges, leaders must ground their marketing efforts in proven best practices. This article will guide you on how to scale your B2B efforts to the next level.
According to Gartner, “B2B buyers spend nearly 27% of their buying process independently researching online. As the process gets more personal, this number keeps plummeting to 18% when researching offline, 17% when engaging with potential suppliers, and possibly only 5% or 6% when meeting a sales rep.”
Consumers these days carry out online research before they make a buying decision. The B2B process is no different. B2B software and SaaS providers, especially, have had to adapt to customers’ shrinking budgets. But as providers begin to transition from surviving a crisis to recovering, they need to put their best digital foot forward using the right tool to make a strong impression on the B2B buyers and stay on their radar. Prioritizing impactful inbound marketing channels with effective B2B marketing strategies can improve efficiency.
Without further ado, let us understand some B2B marketing strategies that can improve digital presence and strengthen the effectiveness of marketing efforts.
1. Effective Website Sales Funnel Optimization
B2B sales funnel is a significant part of your business. But it is also the most difficult to measure in terms of efficiency. As technology advances, the behavior and needs of your leads are also constantly evolving. So, how do you win them over each time and every time?
It does not help to suddenly expect hundreds of potential B2B leads to turn up for a sales demo or a webinar to understand your product/service without being nurtured. The key is to understand that while every customer will have different requirements regarding compatibility, integration, and user experience, everyone is looking for the same thing – how easy it is to get information about your products, their prices, and more.
Capturing customers’ attention is more complex than ever. So, delivering personalized messages at the right time can help. First-time website visitors don’t make a purchase right away. It takes many visits for a lead to feel comfortable about your offering. It can take up to several months for a lead to move from the top of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel. So, what do you do and how?
Once you identify the lead, having a lead nurturing strategy becomes indispensable. Lead nurturing increases the propensity of lead conversion while building brand advocacy. Implementing an effective lead nurturing strategy impacts a customer’s decision about whether they want to convert into paying customers or not. Targeted content, multiple touches, multi-channel nurturing, timely follow-ups, and personalization are some of the ways to nurture your leads.
Regular, customized drip campaigns with relevant content such as webinars, videos, or eBooks can move these cold leads through the funnel with accuracy. This can address the pain points, inform the leads about your product offering, and ‘warm them up’ for making a buying decision.
2. Account-Based Advertising
We are a highly connected digital world. B2B strategies such as Account-Based Advertising (ABA) have ushered in new possibilities and the chance to engage with diverse audiences. With ABA, you can align marketing efforts towards accounts with higher revenue potential. It allows marketers and sales teams to create more opportunities, improve engagement on landing pages, and increase click-through rates. Here is how it can be done –
● Choose the Clicks that Matter the Most
ABA software such as Celsius ABM Platform and Recotap uses data-driven techniques to help you place advertising assets before identified, targeted account contacts. It saves you a lot of money, lowers your CPC, and improves your ROI with higher CTR.
● When in Doubt, Personalization is the Key
Serve highly personalized landing pages and ads to the high revenue potential target accounts based on marketing attributes, such as engagement, CRM data, and more to improve engagement.
● Automate Ad Delivery and Measure Results
ABA software such as Metadata helps B2B marketers automate the recurring tasks while running paid campaigns to focus more on targeting, strategy, ad creatives, and campaigns. Trigger the ads across social media platforms and top business websites. Track buyer interactions for actionable insights.
● Opt for In-Built Brand Safety
Ensuring ads to only appear on reputed business publications is brand safety assurance for advertisers. It reduces the risk of ad misplacement and protects brand reputation.
3. Take Analytics to the Next Level
It is critical to analyze your hard-earned traffic to understand its implications. It would help if you had tools to collect data on your marketing efforts on websites, SEO, or social media.
With software such as Mouseflow, you can find out what goes on between visitor clicks with the video session recordings, understand what is getting their attention, why they drop, launch feedback campaigns to find out the visitors’ pain points, and improve lead generation with analytics.
Google Analytics measures and analyzes your site traffic. MOZ helps you improve SEO results, and tools such as Hootsuite offer social media analytics in detail.
Another significant B2B lead generation software is Leedfeeder. The cloud-based tool, Leedfeeder, allows Visitor Tracking and Website Analytics to identify companies visiting your website using Google Analytics data. Features such as Source Tracking, Target Account Identification, Time on Site Tracking, and User Interaction Tracking enables timely follow-ups.
Features like Lead Capture, Database Integration, Distribution, Lead Management and Nurturing, Lead Qualification and Segmentation, and Lead Verification/Validation facilitate filtering the most promising leads. The leads are automatically positioned at the top of the lead list with the Prioritization feature.
Leadfeeder integrates with various CRM such as Zoho, Pipedrive, WebCRM, and Salesforce. Its integration with MailChimp allows Behavior Tracking so you can understand the browsing patterns of email recipients.
Analytics puts in perspective what is working and what is not. Use the insights, embrace them and take analytics to the next level.
4. Improving Webinar Strategy
One of the productive ways to spread the word about your product is through webinars. Webinars allow your product/service the exposure it needs among the target audience to boost sales. But it doesn’t imply that hundreds of people will show up to attend a webinar the very next day. It is also essential to understand that there is no one-stop formula for successful webinars.
Planning & Choosing Topics Meticulously
Webinars require meticulous planning. The topic, structure, and content you offer are your make-or-break factor. The webinar topic you choose should attract a large audience, deliver value and drive action. But how do you select a webinar topic?
● FAQs make great webinar topics as your audience is telling you what they want to learn about.
● You can also consider repurposing the content from popular posts, turning them into webinars, or expanding them for an in-depth presentation.
● Uncover your target audience’s pain points by looking into negative feedback online for similar products/services and address that in your webinar.
Best Practices During a Webinar For webinars to be a success, they need to provide value to the audience, be engaging, and offer actionable insights. So how do you engage your audience during a webinar?
● When your audience joins the event, welcome them with a relevant anecdote or an interesting fact.
● Explain the offerings of your product/service and ask them to participate in a poll.
● Deliver what you promised and ensure people leave with actionable recommendations and insights.
● Make it exciting by keeping it interactive.
● Make space for ad-hoc discussions and not to make it sound like a monologue. Engage your audience with impromptu conversations.
● Use slides to illustrate your points, and don’t read out the content from the deck.
● Allow participants to ask questions during the event. It will feel real and relevant.
● Wrap your presentation by leaving your audience wanting more and make sure they know what to do.
● Provide contact information of the key speakers and key contacts within your organization.
Post-Webinar Follow-Up After the webinar concludes:
● Within 24 hours, provide attendees with whitepapers, a recording of the presentation, and a copy of the presentation with links to information the speaker referenced for nuanced learning.
● Encourage questions and further discussion. Establish and promote an online forum for idea-sharing on the webinar topic.
● Ask for feedback about the webinar content, the experience of the technology, and the kind of topics they would like to know about in the future.
Communication is a significant aspect of inbound marketing efforts. Webinars provide the opportunity to connect with prospects, provided you implement best practices.
Wrapping Up
Technology leaps forward every year, but B2B brands are still recovering from the impact of 2020. Speedy revolutions demand dynamic B2B marketing strategies in place. Consider all the trends mentioned above as tools that will help you prepare a marketing bomb. So stay up with the latest trends and strengthen your marketing efforts. Because, a trend that does not kill your B2B marketing strategy only makes your digital presence stronger.
Source: Business World
