B2B Marketing Blog

5 Examples of Great B2B Content: Strategy Break Down

By |2023-04-05T11:20:34+00:00October 19th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

5 Examples of Great B2B Content header

In 2017, we thrive on information. Indeed, we are living in the information age. This has inevitably led to the emergence of new approaches to advertising – in particular, content marketing. This exciting and effective form of inbound marketing shows no sign of slowing, however, some find it difficult to discern its impact. 32% of B2B marketers say they have a documented content marketing strategy, but 55% say they are unclear on what content marketing success or effectiveness looks like (Source).

So while they strive to follow the latest inbound marketing trends, the reality is that many B2B marketers feel like they are shooting in the dark. If you’re struggling to create engaging content for your B2B audience, then it’s time to turn your attention to those who have mastered the art and absorb their strategies. Here are 5 examples of excellent B2B content that will educate and inspire.

Evernote

Evernote

Cross-platform organizational app Evernote uses email and video marketing to great effect in order to maximize conversions. Evernote users get occasional emails that share information, give useful tips and let them know what’s going on. Rarely, if ever, do you see a hard sell from Evernote – even when it’s talking about its premium service.

Evernote uses its email marketing campaigns to draw attention to its latest video case studies, like this one with MailChimp. When you’re reaching out to business clients, video case studies speak volumes, especially when your service is being recommended by a well-known company. 4X as many customers would rather watch a video about a product (or case study) than read about it, and in 2015, marketers who used video grew revenue 49% faster than non-video users (Source).

 

By including links to video case studies in its email strategy, Evernote draws attention to its previous successes and helps potential customers to realize that they can achieve the same positive results.

Basecamp

Basecamp

Project management software company Basecamp allows teams to work collaboratively together from wherever they are in the world, with a range of different plans available for businesses. Of course, business project management software is nothing new. But what’s different about Basecamp compared to other startups is its belief in the benefits of ‘slow and steady’. Jason Fried, the founder, attributes Basecamp’s ongoing success to its slow growth strategy – unlike that of many new businesses who dream of overnight riches.

Basecamp puts out a monthly podcast, known as ‘The Distance’, all about longevity in business. It features businesses that have been going for 25 years or more. In a world obsessed with hares, Basecamp’s content marketing strategy reminds us of the valuable lessons of the tortoise. A refreshing reminder to its users that with a reliable service like Basecamp, they too can go the distance.

Point Blank SEO

Point Blank SEO

Founded and written by blogger Jon Cooper, Point Blank SEO is a popular link building blog that has grown in readership over the years, “empowering ordinary marketers to build extraordinary links”. One of the reasons that he started getting so much traffic to his website was through guest posting – writing articles and having them published on powerful, relevant websites. Not only is guest posting a great way to get your name out there: it also gives your domain authority (a crucial SEO metric) a huge boost.

Jon Cooper wrote an article on 5 Pro Link Building Tips to Improve Scalability, which was published on Moz.com. He introduces himself in the opening paragraph: “I’m a consultant who blogs over at Point Blank SEO, my link building blog” and, one day after the post was published, he started receiving upwards of 400 new visitors every day.

Even now, a few years later, Jon Cooper still receives referral traffic from this post and many others. So when you plan your content marketing strategy, do not only plan for your own blog content. Consider where you can reach out to influential sites and offer them something of value, in return for a powerful link.

FireRock

FireRock

FireRock, a leading manufacturer of pre-engineered masonry fireplaces, is a rare example of a B2B organization who really know their way around social media – in particular, Pinterest. Just look at all those boards! FireRock understands that customers want to see a product in context, so they can imagine it working for their own projects, rather than endless pictures of bare fireplaces. Of course, it helps that their products look good.

People generally use Pinterest for inspiration, and that’s exactly what photos of finished installations help to do. It’s less of a stretch for the imagination. FireRock also tags its images by geographic location, so users can easily find photos filtered by area.

B2B suppliers can learn a lot from FireRock, who are on top of their game when it comes to embracing new channels. One such channel is Houzz, another visual community that provides inspiration for the home, founded in 2008. In using Houzz, FireRock has direct access to its perfect audience – people looking to revamp and redecorate their homes.

Shopify

Shopify

Shopify is a popular ecommerce store builder that gives entrepreneurs everything they need to easily create an online business. It’s mission is to make web-based retail super simple, so new starters can get up and running and build professional-looking websites from scratch. It’s comprehensive content marketing strategy is aimed at ecommerce entrepreneurs of all levels.

First off, they have a blog that covers case studies, niche products, ideas for growing your business, financial matters, productivity, marketing and company announcements. Then on top of that, you have all of the resources: guides, videos, podcasts, success stories, forums, tools, and access to experts. Shopify answers every question you could possibly have about the service, and what’s more, they rank for hundreds of thousands of ecommerce-related keywords. This is the power of having a huge backlog of content that is regularly updated.

Hopefully these examples help to inspire your B2B content strategy in 2017. Think we missed anything important? Why not share the B2B content that has inspired you this year? Victoria Greene is a brand marketing consultant and freelance writer. She writes over at VictoriaEcommerce where she likes to share tips to entrepreneurs looking to make the most of their ecommerce brands.

Victoria Greene is a brand marketing consultant and freelance writer. She writes over at VictoriaEcommerce where she likes to share tips to entrepreneurs looking to make the most of their ecommerce brands.

 

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How to market your SaaS product

By |2023-04-05T11:21:04+00:00October 17th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing Content Marketing Inbound Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

how to market your saas product header

Update: we just published a new comprehensive guide for marketing your SAAS product, go check it out!

 

I speak with many B2B CMOs who tell me online marketing isn’t relevant when it comes to B2B. Such companies stick to traditional methods such as trade shows, cold calling and god forbid – traditional media such as billboards or even TV. SaaS marketers don’t have the privilege of disregarding online marketing as a core platform for generating customers.

By the inherent online SaaS nature, SaaS marketers are “forced” to hack their way to growth online. So, what do most SaaS CMOs do? They spend money on media, sending traffic to salesly landing pages that rarely convert visitors to leads (and even when converting, those leads almost never become customers). After a while they realize that’s not the way to go and start searching for solutions. The purpose of this post is to help you avoid wasting your investors’ money, and tackle SaaS marketing like a pro.

 

First things first – who are you selling to?

A good starting point to learning your target audience is to learn all you can about your current customers.

Evaluate the following: who are those people whose problem you’re solving? How old are they? What’s their professional background? What challenges are they dealing with and how do you help them solve those challenges?

Understanding your buyer personas is the foundation of an effective SaaS marketing strategy. Without that, you’re working in the dark.

Understand your prospect’s buyers journey

Once you’ve mapped out who your ideal buyers are, it’s time to put yourself in their shoes and understand the journey they go through leading up to a purchase. First, I’ll tell what their journey isn’t (though wouldn’t everyone’s life be easier if it where) :

dream buyer journey.png

a dream buyer’s journey

I’m surprised by the number of B2B marketers who still think that by interrupting their target audience with ads intended to sell them something they’re not ready to buy, from a company they don’t trust – can actually generate positive ROI. The brutal reality is that interrupting will not get you far. Selling to people who don’t trust you and aren’t ready to buy is annoying, spammy and a waste of your money.  Here’s what a realistic buyer’s journey looks like:

buyers-journey.png

A typical buyer’s journey includes 3 stages:

 

  1. Awareness – the prospect realized and expressed symptoms of a potential problem. For example “how do I drive the right kind of traffic to my website”
  2. Consideration – the prospect clearly defined and gave a name to their problem and is now committed to researching and understanding all available approaches to solving their problem. For example, a prospect whose problem is driving the right kind of traffic might research “how to do Inbound Marketing” or “what you should look out for when outsourcing Inbound Marketing”
  3. Decision – the prospect defined their solution strategy and is now comparing vendors.

Many companies are trying to sell to prospects at early stages of the buyer’s journey when in fact what they should be focusing on is adding value and positioning themselves as experts in their fields. The secret lies in distributing valuable content, building trust and creating lasting relationships. Turning visitors to customers will happen on your visitors’ terms. Just as you can’t force a social relationship, you can’t force a business one. The days of salesmen knocking on doors (both online and offline) asking for a glass of water and then pitching to death (or closed deal) are gone. We’re in an era of value. By placing the right content at the right place and the right time, you’ll be amazed at the quality of leads you’ll be generating. Those leads will be called inbound leads and the method – inbound marketing.

helping you navigate your startup to marketing stardom

 

Convinced? Let’s get practical

  1. Make sure you have a company blog, and keep your eye on the goal – adding value, helping and educating. The blog isn’t an extended sales deck, it’s your chance to position your company as professionals.
  2. Align your blog content with the buyer’s journey. Awareness blog posts should be about high level challenges your buyer personas are experiencing. Consideration stage posts should tap into possible solutions, including yours of course. Decision stage content is the time to start selling. This is the time to convince your prospects why you’re the best choice, and it shouldn’t be too difficult since they already trust you and have gained value from your educational content.

applying content to the buyers journey

  1. With respect to awareness stage posts, make sure to conduct a keywords research and to include relevant keywords in your blog post titles and content. This is important – you need to make sure your prospects will find your content when searching for solutions at the awareness stage of their journey. You can learn more about how to optimize your content here.
  2. In order to progress prospects down the buyer’s journey, use calls to action at the end of each blog post inviting them to download gated content that is most relevant to their stage of the journey. Technically speaking, these calls to action should lead to landing pages where they’ll be invited to provide their email and further info in order to receive the content. Once they do that a magic moment occurs – those visitors have now become leads. Don’t make the mistake of transferring those leads to sale just yet. Make sure to nurture them and to keep building their trust. Email them consideration stage content, invite them do download more gated content and nurture the relationship with them all the way down to the decision stage.

Only once you’ve seen the leads have engaged with your content at a suffice level (subjective per company and product), transfer them over to sales. This way, instead of the regular complaints you’re hearing from them, they’ll suddenly thank you as they’ll be receiving leads who actually want to hear from them and don’t experience them as intrusive.

Leverage SaaS directories and review websites

For maximum exposure of your SaaS product, you should consider adding different SaaS directories and review websites to your strategy. You might get some traffic or conversions from the websites you submitted to (someone might stumble across your product) or at the very least, get some quality backlinks that will help down the line.

Be wary, though. Some directories are labeled as spam due to misleading and/or false information – these will get you nowhere. Some websites like Pandia require you to pay for the placement, while others such as SoftwareFindr, Capterra, and Crunchbase are free. In any case, SaaS companies should consider building their presence on these software listing and review sites so buyers looking for products in your category can easily find your solution.

Wrapping up

By adopting a marketing strategy that revolves around adding value instead of interrupting, you can start generating customers from your online marketing efforts. Learn who your buyer personas are, understand their buyers journey and tailor content specifically for them and their challenges. Now you understand inbound marketing in a nutshell. Time to learn more and step up your efforts to market your SaaS product.

Good luck!

 

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Startup Marketing Growth Hacks to Bolster Your Business

By |2023-04-05T11:19:12+00:00October 17th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing Inbound Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Startup Marketing Growth Hacks to Bolster Your Business header

You have a great idea for a new startup. You’ve identified a need in your industry, and have a killer product that has the potential to disrupt the market.

However gone are the days where a great idea will simply attract customers and clients. With all the startups in the world these days, creating a unique, comprehensive startup marketing strategy is critical for success.

But with limited resources and funding, especially in the early days, startup marketing can prove to be a difficult task. Marketing efforts often take a backseat to product, R&D, and development needs.

Thing is, you can have the greatest product in the world, but if you don’t have the tools to market your product, no one will ever get the chance to see it.

This post will give actionable growth hacks to boost your startup marketing strategy and get your awesome product on the eyes of your public.

Startup Marketing Growth Hack #1: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has changed the way we look at celebrity, social media, and how they intersect with technology. With 70 percent of consumers saying they are influenced by peers in their buying decision, leveraging the power of influencers is a startup marketing strategy that can result in huge returns.

helping you navigate your startup to marketing stardom

 

Look no further than Maybeline, who teamed up with 15 beauty experts during Fashion Week in 2016. By partnering with these influencers, they were able to reach 13.9 million consumers across the world, resulting in almost 4 million “likes” on social media. As growth hacking startup marketing strategies go, influencer marketing should be at the top of your list for 2018.

Startup Marketing Growth Hack #2: Product Hunt Exposure

Product hunt is a priceless tool for early age startups to gain marketing exposure. Widely regarded as one of the best places to launch new products, ensuring you have a prepared strategy for Product Hunt is a great growth hack for high intent traffic and customers.

Konsus, an on-demand outsourcing platform, achieved 500% growth from launching their startup on Product Hunt. They came prepared with both an impressive pre and post launch plan, and were prepared to handle the amount of traffic and buzz that they garnered after launch. By allocating limited, yet important resources to launching your startup on Product Hunt, this startup marketing growth hack strategy is one to have in your arsenal.

Startup Marketing Growth Hack #3: Quora, Quora, Quora

As high-intent social media platforms go, Quora may reign supreme for tech startups. With over 190 million monthly users, Quora has positioned themselves as the place to go for all your Q&A needs. From startup funding, lead generation, and social media advice, Quora has created an amazing community where your in-depth thought leader answers could turn into new customers.

Wishpond, a comprehensive lead generation tool, were able to generate almost 14,000 page views in a month from answering Quora questions. Their Content Marketing Manager offered some interesting insights as to how they accomplished this, such as linking back to posts with in-depth content, as well as trying to answer questions with more than 1,000 views per week for maximum exposure.

Startup Marketing Growth Hack #4: Get Early Users To Become Advocates

There are no better marketers than your own customers We inherently tend to trust more when other people give a positive review of something. In fact, consumer to consumer word of mouth advertising generates more than 2X sales than paid advertising. Having early adopters of your startup become brand advocates creates an air of trust and confidence around your product.

Hubstaff, a time tracker software, shared their story on how they generated the first 25 signups of their business. They found that a combination between word of mouth from friends and family, as well as inbound marketing methods were the key ways they signed up early adopters. It is clear that investing in your early adopters happiness and satisfaction is an important startup marketing strategy for both short and long-term success.

Startup Marketing Growth Hack #5: Consider Co-Marketing Ventures

A startup marketing strategy that is often overlooked in early-age growth are both co-marketing and strategic partnership opportunities. Co-marketing is a great way to collaborate with companies that share a similar audience to yours, but at the same time are not direct competitors. Offers such as eBooks, webinars, and list sharing are just some of the ways to team up with others for growth hacking opportunities.

A great example of a successful co-marketing initiative is between Hubspot and Linkedin. These two B2B behemoths teamed up to create an eBook entitled “How to Use Social Selling Throughout the Seller’s Journey”. By banding together and creating a shared content offer, Hubspot and Linkedin are able to reach a similar audience group, but also tap into each others core user base that they otherwise may not have been able to reach.

Wrapping Up:

Although many startup founders often focus on marketing efforts later in their company growth, certain marketing growth hacks are available early on that are imperative to implement for short and long-term success. Influencer marketing, leveraging Product Hunt and Quora, and participating in co-marketing activities are just some of the startup marketing strategies that can help you generate both early adopters and long-term customers.

What are some of your favorite startup marketing growth hacks? Let us know in the comments below!

 

 

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The 21 Most Effective Places to Share B2B Content

By |2023-04-24T10:41:06+00:00April 27th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing Content Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

places to share b2b content header

Introduction – Effective Places to Share B2B Content

In today’s world of cut-throat competition, the success of your business depends on the marketing strategies that you adopt. Content marketing is an extremely useful strategy in the world of business to business.

Successfully reaching out to other potential clients fundamentally means how effectively you display your content and the locations that you select for that purpose.

From social media to formal emails, as someone who is involved in the B2B industry, you cannot overlook any of the options that are available to you for sharing your content.

We are here to help you, by suggesting the 21 best places that you must try for sharing your content..

1. Flipboard

Started as a feed reader in a magazine-inspired style, Flipboard had around 90 million readers back in 2013! Readers mainly use Flipboard to discover new content and read about it.

This is one of the best places that you can choose for marketing your content to prospective readers.

Initially developed just for reading content, due to its popularity, Flipboard has become a personalized app. Readers can subscribe to any specific feed, follow a topic that they find interesting, and even keep a track of their social media life.

Flipboard’s main aim is to collect the best content and accumulate it all in one spot. So, it’s easy to create your own magazine on it now. This is a great idea if you wish to expand and attract more readers, as Flipboard is a sure-shot guarantee of excellent and well-curated content.

2. Advocate Driven Sharing

Just spending hours on your content and then hitting “Publish” is no guarantee of success. In fact, the mammoth task isn’t publishing your post, but actually getting the right people to see it. This is where brand advocates can be useful.

Brand advocates ensure that your content reaches the right audience. You can solely focus on shaping well-written content while they handle the marketing for you. Advocates will love being a part of your growth story; after all, your brand gives them a sense of belonging. If you write fun, light-hearted articles that enjoy social media popularity, your advocates will do a good job of sharing your content. Just make sure your articles are easy to understand and well-structured, and keep a close track on the sharing so that you can thank your advocates later on.

3. Outbrain Remarketing

The Outbrain network can target the correct customers within its community in an effective marketing strategy for your content. Their successful marketing campaigns use retargeting to target the visitors who have previously visited a website and expressed an interest in a brand.

And with a new product called Custom Audiences, Outbrain can enable your content to be recommended throughout its huge network of publishers.

This will again provide valuable content to those visiting the website. In fact, you can now break down the different types of visitors to your website and target them with content that matches their interests and needs.

4. Taboola Retargeting

If we’re talking about content marketing how can we forget one of the best content discovery platforms that markets over 360 billion recommendations to over 1 billion website visitors each month – Taboola?! It is one of the best publisher sites, used by famous names like USA Today and Fox Sports.

Taboola retargeting enables your content to be suggested on some of the best publishing sites. You can selectively target the audience that is interested in your area of expertise, based on your traffic, and you can also select the content that works best for you and build more awareness around your brand.

5. Twitter Remarketing

Twitter is a platform which just magnifies the power of words – those 140 characters can either make you or break you. With Twitter’s Tailored Audiences you can now reach out to customers who have already expressed an interest in your business, so you know that you are curating content for individuals who will be interested in your content.

Twitter’s innovative service can help you to create effective remarketing campaigns by enabling you reach out to those who have visited your website, indulged in any activity on your mobile app, or you can even use your email lists to reach out to potential customers.

6. Google Remarketing

Google has single-handedly changed the way business is done all over the world, so it is natural for Google to feature on this list. When it comes to ensuring that your B2B content is reaching out to the right audience you can always rely on Google Remarketing.

Google can help you in innumerable ways – you can just target people who have visited your website, or reach out to those who didn’t buy anything but did add some products to their carts.

You can also keep track of how your content or products are faring, where they are showing up and the price that you are paying. Your content can even appear on the screens of those people who are engaged in searching for your business.

7. Reddit Paid

Reddit is visited by over 250 million people and supports over 50,000 different communities that share different interests and ideas. The most relevant content in each and every field is shared every day and almost any type of content is highly likely to find an interested audience on this platform.

Managing your content campaign on Reddit is easy with its friendly tools. Getting started is easier than you think, as there are no technical requirements to fulfill. With just a daily budget of $5 you are all set to display your content to a huge audience, where the potential for interesting readers to discover your content is higher than ever!

8. Facebook Remarketing

Facebook Remarketing works very much like Google, except that your ads and content are displayed on Facebook rather than on the websites that fall within the Display Network.

When customers visit your website or express remote interest in your brands, they will be followed. Then, when they are scrolling through their Facebook home feed, your website ads pop up again, reminding them of what they’re missing out on.

With monthly visitors exceeding the population of China and billions of clicks every year, there is nothing to better Facebook Remarketing, and Facebook also gives you the advantage of having your friends and family on board!

9. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is a great way to make your business shine in a very short time span. The forum audience consists of experts and bloggers who are authorities in their field and are closely followed by thousands of people online. So, if they are attracted to your business, like your product and even as much as put out one positive statement about your brand, you will witness sales increase dramatically almost overnight!

10. Q&A Websites

In the case of small to medium businesses, Q&A websites are one of the most efficient ways of generating traffic towards to your site. These sites mainly consist of questions and answers that are asked and answered by different users.

Since there are usually long tail keywords in the questions, these sites can quickly collect search engine traffic along with their regular visitors. An example is Quora which is the 140th largest site in the world.

However, you must keep a few things in mind when using these platforms. Always answer the latest questions if possible, answer questions that have a greater number of views as this means that people are interested in that question, and also try to answer those questions which have not acquired many responses as this increases your chance of being spotted in a crowd.

11. Communities Marketing

Many organizations grossly underestimate the influence that communities can have in the successful running of a company. Communities marketing plays a very important role because it is an efficient method to reach out to the appropriate audience, providing you with feedback and even amplifying your reach.

Companies and marketers are only now re-discovering the role that communities play in marketing their products and services to the right audience. A great example for this is a rather new content discovery platform/feed for marketers called Zest.is, which lets marketers share articles and other types of content they enjoyed reading with other influencers and fellow marketers.

12. Employee Advocacy

Apart from the promoter or the owner, only the employees know an organization inside out. Thus, marketing content through your employees is a good idea, as they know about your products and services, and can tap into a huge number of interested customers through their personal, professional and social contacts.

Excellent knowledge, coupled with an audience that is interested in the niche, will give you the successful results that you are seeking.

How To Create An Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy Call to Action

13. SEO

It is not possible for a reader to go through all the pages of results that Google and other popular search engines produce when he types in keywords. Many readers won’t even venture off the first page of search results. That is why it is important to ensure that your website or blog ranks well and appears in the first few options, so that you have a higher chance of directing more traffic to your website or blog.

14. Article Roundups

Being a good content curator is not easy. If you can get ‘down and dirty’ and come up with amazing article roundups, then not only will the readers be thankful to you for helping them understand a specific topic in a particular industry, but they will also keep coming back to your site as their trust grows.

Using article roundups in this way, your work gets all the credit it deserves and also reaches out to the right audience.

15. Your email list

We are so busy looking for new ways to share content that the most simple, obvious and still effective technique skips our eye! We are talking about your own email list.

This has the addresses of everyone you know (perhaps some on a personal basis) who are very likely to share your posts among their contacts and ask them to do the same.

This enables your content to be circulated within a much larger group of people than you probably imagined. Moreover, you can feel sure that they will make the effort since they know you well.

16. Twitter

Twitter hashtags have become something of a trend nowadays. Any major event leads to the creation of a new hashtag. All related tweets carry the same hashtag, so just by typing in the hashtag, you can easily be taken to related posts in a matter of a few seconds.

So, if you are interested in any topic related to an important recent event, make sure your post has the necessary hashtags so the right readers can easily find it and read it!

17. Pinterest

Everyone is aware of the popularity that Pinterest enjoys! After all, it has millions of members who regularly surf for ideas on a subject or post their take on it. The attraction of Pinterest is that it contains something for everybody – from different styles of gift wrapping to wall painting ideas. Virtually every topic is covered there.

Since there are millions of people visiting Pinterest, it’s a great opportunity for your content to reach your target audience.

18. LinkedIn Groups

LinkedIn targets the professional world. However, LinkedIn can also help you to publish your content to an interested audience.

It can help you to find and target people based on their skills, the company that they work for, and several other factors, so that you can market your campaign accordingly. You can be assured that the campaign is being promoted to the right group.

19. Google+ Communities

This is very much like Facebook, but in a slightly more professional world, where people share their ideas and projects to those interested in that specific field. People can join different communities according to their interests.

At any given point, a community is filled with people who are keenly interested in a particular subject, so you can target any community that you feel is the best audience for your post, product or services.

20. Facebook Groups

In addition to specific Facebook marketing or remarketing, the huge Facebook population contains numerous groups or pages covering a diverse range of topics, interests and subjects.

Facebook users who are interested in a specific niche can post their thoughts or articles, comment, like and share content from time to time.

Since all the members of a specific page or group are interested in that particular topic, bringing your content to their attention is certainly a good marketing strategy.

21. Guest Blogging

Write a guest post for a popular blogger or ask a famous blogger to write a post for your blog!

If a well-known blogger on a specific topic writes something for your blog, he or she will be introducing you to his or her own audience. This will enable you to gain access to a wider group of people who are already interested in that particular topic.

Final thoughts:

We hope you learned of some new ideas and places to share B2B content and grow your reach. If you have any more suggestions, do share in the comments.

And if you found this of use, you might also find the Bold Digital Architects guide to inbound marketing relevant to your work. Click to download (it’s FREE).

Schedule a FREE consultation

 

 

 

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How to Leverage Amplified Inbound Marketing in your B2B Business

By |2023-04-24T10:44:07+00:00April 2nd, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing Inbound Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

b2b amplified inbound marketing header

Introduction to Amplified Inbound Marketing

All companies who adopt an Inbound Marketing strategy want it to be effective. Not all are willing to undergo the long process of indexing properly on Google before starting to generate ROI. Marketers reluctant to wait sometime make the mistake of spending large amounts of their budget on “money keywords” on Google AdWords at the hope of converting those (high intent) users into customers. At a small volume there’s no problem with that, but at a large volume  this always results in a struggle to maintain and scale online efforts while remaining profitable.

True magic occurs when combining PPC with an Inbound Marketing approach. When done right  you can create an amplified Inbound Marketing strategy that is manageable, scalable and most importantly  – profitable. This post will teach you how to do just that. Make  sure to read it before setting off to prepare your marketing plan.

The challenges search ads pose

Most marketers rush to set up campaigns on Google AdWords, using keywords that are directed to their exact solutions/services/products. Search volumes are a given reality that the advertiser has no direct control over – once maximized, scaling becomes an issue.

It’s then inevitable not  to encounter two substantial realities:

  1. B2B prospects typically don’t search for high relevancy keywords of exact solutions/services: B2B sales require trust and a relationship between two position holders at each company. Such relationships are rarely a result of a prospect searching for a product or service on Google and clicking on an ad.
  2. Extremely pricy keywords – exact solutions/services keywords will usually prove to be highly expensive due to be highly exepensive due to high competition. You are probably not the only marketer out there that thought about targeting those keywords. When many companies compete on a specific keywords two unpleasant results occur:
    • Costs per click raise (supply and demand)
    • Conversion rates drop (more supply = prospects browsing more options before filling out an online form or transaction).

The result: money is being spent → low quality/un-nurtured leads are generated → handed over to sales → sales waste their time on irrelevant leads that never become customers → classic sales and marketing face-off, blames are being thrown around → company business goals never end up being met.

The challenges Display ads pose

Once the search channel has reached its glass ceiling, the typical next step is to turn to display advertising and launch direct response campaigns on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, GDN, etc. But consider this – if search volumes for your exact solution are low and quickly maxed out, obviously, the number of users out there that have a direct interest in your solution is very low. What are the odds of placing yourself in front of them using display channels? You guessed it, low.

The result: people see your ads but don’t click → very low conversion rates (below 1%) → leads that do end up being generated rarely turn into customers. They simply weren’t ready to buy in the first place.

What would turn things around? Applying the core elements of your Inbound Marketing strategy and aligning your paid advertising efforts with the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to a purchase (a.k.a the buyer’s journey).

Top of the funnel (TOFU) amplification

If you have (or at least think you have) an effective Inbound funnel, amplifying the top of the funnel is usually where the most impact can be gained  (the more contacts that will pass through the funnel the more will exit it as customers).

The best way to start amplifying the TOFU is using search advertising.

Assuming you’ve already developed buyer personas, understand their challenges, and have created the best content offers to help them with their challenges, it now comes down to driving relevant traffic to your content offers landing pages.

Awareness stage keywords aren’t as competitive as bottom of the funnel keywords and have higher search volumes. It’s safe to say that when providing prospects with value when they are seeking for help, you can expect conversion rates of 15%-30% from click to content offer download.

Since awareness stage keywords aren’t as competitive, the actual cost per lead will be quite low. Once you generate such leads, please don’t be average and try to sell to them. Remember those leads aren’t qualified or ready to be sold to! Depending on how well you optimize your funnel and campaigns, you should be able to calculate what your cost per customer or cost per MQL should be (depending on your KPIs).

TOFU scaling is quite easy – you can always find another challenge your prospects have, create additional TOFU content offers and drive more traffic from different awareness stage keywords to your landing pages.

Look out for keywords that have high search volumes – their costs per click would be relatively low making them a great opportunity for amplifying your TOFU efforts until the post is properly indexed on google.

The second-best way to amplify the TOFU is via native channels:

Content discovery networks such as Taboola and Outbrain open a door to getting your best performing blog posts discovered. Note that leads generated through native advertising will most likely not be of the same quality as leads generated through search advertising. The reason is pretty straight forward – search leads are actively looking for answers, while native advertising leads may follow up on your suggestion to read a blog post and download a content offer, it may not be relevant to them in any way other than to satisfy their general curiosity. Such leads aren’t your target audience and will not become customers.

Lastly, you can use Display advertising to amplify your TOFU. This should be your last resort. As in native advertising, there is a good chance that these leads are just interested in your content but have no intent on taking any further action and will not progress down the buyer’s journey. This should be a last result because it will prove to be a more expensive method than native advertising, yet the context will be vague and the quality of the leads will drop.

Marketing Automation eBook

Middle of the funnel (MOFU)/ Bottom of the funnel (BOFU) amplification

Email marketing is a great way to nurture leads and drive them down the buyer’s journey.

If you want faster results and higher conversion rates you can utilize media in order to amplify your TOFU->MOFU->BOFU progression pace and rate. Create remarketing lists that are based on your leads website behavior or on data that you have at your disposal.

Pro tip: Since user behavior is very dynamic, your remarketing lists are bound to change constantly, making management of data based remarketing campaigns challenging. For example, if a prospect progressed from the middle of the funnel to the bottom of the funnel, you will need to update the remarketing lists they are part of, in order to keep your messaging relevant.  It’s possible to automate this process – some advertising channels have the capability to onboard audience data using API procedures making it close enough to real time. You would need to use a third party solution like LiveRamp or to create your own proprietary solution. Using audience onboarding capabilities, turns your CRM into a first party DMP enabling you to target contacts across various ad networks and placements around the web.

Measuring and Attribution – amplified inbound marketing

Measuring the success of amplified inbound marketing is one of biggest challenges. There is a lot of money invested in creating content, marketing tools and media spend. Longer sales cycles tend to make the calculations even harder.

For general ROI reporting it’s quite simple:

  • sum up all the money invested in all channels (including content creation, media spend, marketing agency ).
  • sum up the revenue derived from campaign
  • divide the two

The actual challenge is to figure out exactly which channel assisted the conversion more than the rest. Multi-channel marketing on different phases of the buyer’s journey poses great attribution challenge.

Attribution modeling is the science of setting rules defining how to attribute revenue to each participating channel in the conversion path. For companies with a short sales cycles (SaaS for example) using Google analytics can suffice. But companies with a long sales cycle and sales that occur offline, encounter difficulties when trying to measure the effectiveness of each channel. The challenge is both technological and logical.

Technologically, this can be solved using a variety of third party marketing tools such as HubSpot and Bizzable.

Logically, this can be solved by trial and error – testing different models to see which model best reflects your business model and sales cycle. One model could be a perfect fit to one company and a misleading report for another.

Conclusion

When done right, inbound marketing can be amplified using paid advertising. In order to scale and generate profit, it’s crucial to align your advertising with your prospect’s buyer’s journey. Don’t waste time generating leads that will never become customers and always measure and make sure you know what channel to attribute your efforts to.

Happy marketing!

If you found this useful, I invite you to download our Digital Marketing MUST Reports and Measures eBook. This is your guide to start measuring what truly matters in your campaigns and take control of your spend. Get your FREE copy now >>

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Facebook vs LinkedIn for B2B Marketing

By |2023-04-24T10:46:20+00:00March 29th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Facebook vs Linkedin for B2B Marketing header

B2B Marketing – Facebook vs Linkedin

This article takes a bit of a different approach from the dozens other wrangled ones out there when it comes to evaluating Facebook vs. LinkedIn for B2B.

The controversy of which platform is better for B2B Marketing has been chewed over and over in the last years by marketers, entrepreneurs and bloggers.

For years, LinkedIn has easily been the main ‘real’ player in the B2B Marketing space.

But lately, Facebook is focusing on improving their paid marketing campaigns and continue to develop new and innovative features appealing to B2B companies and marketers alike.

It is commonly thought that B2B Marketers should use LinkedIn first, which makes a lot of sense since LinkedIn is obviously a business network. But some marketers swear that Facebook is actually a better channel for B2B advertising. Although LinkedIn is still the platform of choice, Facebook is giving a decent fight and slowly becoming the first choice for more and more B2B Marketers.

Facebook vs LinkedIn in Numbers

LinkedIn has a large user base to tap into with more than 450 million users compared with 1.86 billion users on Facebook. Although not nearing Facebook user numbers – 94% of B2B Marketers still finds LinkedIn more reliable to use for distributing business related content.

The platform targeting capabilities are especially helpful if you plan on running an account-based marketing program, whereas it’s great for targeting people based on their job titles, employers, industry, seniority level etc.

Most B2B prospects are looking to LinkedIn for business opportunities, The LinkedIn stage is set for sharing content that adds value to these prospects.  Consider that the average decision maker reads 10 pieces of content before finalizing their purchase decision.  LinkedIn provides an opportunity to get in front of them at early stages of their buyer’s journey and help position your company as such that understands their challenges and can help them.

Engagement-wise, though it only accounts for about 2.5% of social shares of all content, LinkedIn drives more than 25% of shares for content focused on B2B topics.

Advertising-wise, LinkedIn launched a conversion tracking pixel at the second half of 2016, making it possible to launch advertising campaigns and  gauge your ad’s performance beyond impressions and clicks.

Facebook, on the other hand, has always been the premier social media platform for consumer goods and the more ‘fluffy’ verticals such as music videos and fashion. But when it came to leads, the focus was always consumers. Now, Facebook is opening its advertising and content to become more business oriented. It’s still quite a few steps behind LinkedIn, but it’s definitely becoming a force to be reckoned with. With its better targeting abilities, greater traffic volumes, better variety of ad types and cost effectiveness, and more efficient optimization algorithm, it’s no wonder advertisers believe it to be more efficient in terms of better Reach or CPA.

While Facebook seems like a network that’s separate from our work lives, it really isn’t. As with LinkedIn, Facebook also offers a growing number of professional groups B2B companies can engage and position themselves in and are a great source for consulting and finding business related content and personal tips from industry influencers.

Settling the argument with an Inbound Marketing approach

The highly competitive game of ruling the world of B2B Marketing is always changing and evolving and the topic is generating endless conversations and opinion articles around the globe. But when looking at the issue from an Inbound Marketing perspective –  one can come to an understanding that there wouldn’t and shouldn’t be just one ring carrier, but different rings for different needs and stages.

Lord of the Rings actors

Source: Esquire

Enter: the Buyer’s Journey

In short, the Buyer’s Journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to a purchase. In order to generate quality B2B leads, a business should create relevant content for its audience with respect to their stage of the buyer’s journey.

Regardless of the platform, trying to sell to a prospect that doesn’t trust you by using direct response ads is a sure way to fail. You need to figure out what your prospects needs and challenges are and be there to add value when they are searching for it.

With this in mind, it’s a lot easier to evaluate each platform strengths and weaknesses when planning your B2B Marketing plan.  That means using LinkedIn and Facebook in conjunction. And using them in the right way for each stage.

Both platforms are a great fit for distributing TOFU (Top-of-Funnel) content.

Typical content used by Inbound Marketers at this stage is aimed to satisfy the need for general knowledge on a specific problem, without mentioning particular solutions or vendors.  Creating eBooks and unique content offers and offering them as gated content in return for the prospects email address,  is a great way for providing value and generating leads who are interested in learning from you.

Ready to Step up your marketing?

 Conclusion

Having a deep understanding of who you are marketing to (your buyer personas) and how they use these platforms at each stage of the buyer’s journey, will enable you to become more customer centric in your marketing.

Instead of focusing on which platform is better for your marketing strategy, simply being aware of how and when to use each on the potential journey your prospects go through before they decide to buy from you can make a dramatic shift in your marketing strategy.

If you find this useful, you’re invited to download our B2B Marketing Best Practices that Every CMO Must Know eBook. Get your FREE copy now!

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The Do’s and Don’ts of Google AdWords For B2B

By |2023-04-24T10:53:37+00:00February 23rd, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing SEM

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

Google AdWords For B2B header

Introduction – Google AdWords For B2B

For B2B companies, campaigning on Google AdWords can often be a grueling and unrewarding experience. The process is different compared to B2C for a number of reasons. Perhaps the main difference is that business-to-business relationships are ongoing, require trust and the sales process generally takes longer than business-to-consumer relationships. Also, the B2B decision-making process often takes place on multiple levels within the company’s hierarchy.

For those reasons, generating quality leads that would potentially turn into customers using AdWords requires patience fine-tuning and a customer centric strategy that puts content in the center. This post will help you separate the good and bad practices of using Google AdWords for B2B purposes.

1. Do…

Generate the right content for your audience

In order to generate quality B2B leads, a business should create relevant content for its audience with respect to their stage of the buyer’s journey.

Buyer's Journey

Trying to sell to a prospect that doesn’t trust you by using direct response ads is a sure way to fail. You need to figure out what your prospects needs and challenges are and be there to add value when they are searching for them..

Google AdWords can be a highly effective way for increasing your content visibility. A thorough knowledge of your buyer personas and their typical buyer’s journey will provide you a more subtle and focused customer-centric approach. Placing the right content at the right place and time will help attract prospects, convert them into leads and then hopefuly customers.

One way to understand the buyer’s journey is to turn to your current customers and ask them about the journey they went through prior to choosing you as their business partner. How did they access your site (mobile or desktop), what are their goals, what are their biggest challenges, what formats do they prefer  and so on – these are all questions you can ask to gain valuable insights. This is perhaps the most insightful data that you can obtain because you already know these customers are a good fit for your company.

How To Create An Effective Inbound Marketing Strategy Call to Action

Boost content visibility 

Advertise your content so that it will show up on relevant search queries. Create eBooks and unique content offers and offer them as gated content, provide the content in return for the prospects email address. That way you will be providing value and generating leads who are interested in learning from you.

lead generation conversion path

Follow through with your content

Educating your prospects in only the first part of the buyer’s journey, aka the awareness stage of the buying process. Most buyers go through a consideration or evaluation stage next where they evaluate the potential ways of resolving their problem before reaching a final decision, which is when they are ready to buy. Successful businesses create content that accompanies the buyer all the way through from the initial to the final stage of the buying process. Use remarketing campaigns to amplify the process, nurture your leads and push them down the buyer’s journey.

match content with buyer's journey

Evaluate and test your content’s performance

Keep a close eye on your campaigns and see if they are generating the results you are expecting. Bear in mind that many factors have a role in determining overall content performance so you should steer away from using a single metric only. Any marketing metric you decide to use should correspond to the marketing goal of each piece of content you generate. Evaluating and testing will help you optimize your strategy based on actionable data.

2. Don’t…
Force the sales aspect

B2B is about building trust and creating long-standing relationships with both potential and current clients.

For B2B, Google AdWords should be used as a way to amplify Inbound Marketing with a clear notion to:

  1. attract (turn strangers to visitors)
  2. convert (turn visitors into leads)
  3. close (turn leads into customers) and
  4. delight (turn customers to promoters)

Generating results using AdWords campaigns to amplify Inbound Marketing takes time but will eventually pays off. Remember that your prospects are absorbing your content before your sales people even know who they are. Forcing the sales messaging and campaigning for your solution, rather than catering to your prospects, minimizes your chances of an effective AdWords campaign and ultimately costs much with low quality and un-nurtured leads.

Be too traditional

The same goes for being too traditional. You will only spend money and generate leads that are mostly irrelevant to your business. Gone are the days of measuring reach, views, likes etc. Those are vanity metrics – they’re not indicative of your true performance. A wider range of actionable metrics such as conversion rates, traffic sources and others provide a better focus on how advertising is driving revenue.

Be inconsistent with your campaigns

The main idea behind amplified Inbound Marketing is to help potential clients find an answer to their questions when they have them, not when you think you should be asking them. In order to do so, you need to consistently produce engaging content and make sure to advertise it so that your prospects will find you when they are seeking info (with time, your Inbound efforts will yield organic results, AdWords will help close the gap until the SEO magic happens)

Conclusion

Unlike their B2C counterparts, B2B businesses have a harder task when it comes to generating quality leads online. Google AdWords presents a strategic approach to developing more efficient and quality search results, which convert to relevant leads. Finally, those leads can turn into potential customers. However, there are certain principles to follow and others to avoid if you want to drive your audience toward the content on your website. Creating the engaging content for your targeted audience can be the difference between gaining a new customer and losing money.  In the ever-changing B2B environment, where your audience is searching specific queries, that might be easier said than done. Nevertheless, follow the guidelines in this post and your Google AdWords campaigns just might wonders for you.

If you found this useful, and you’re curious to learn more and find out how to create a long lasting B2B marketing strategy, we invite you to download our How-To guide for creating an Inbound Marketing strategy

 

 

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How to find the right B2B marketing agency

By |2023-04-24T10:56:45+00:00February 2nd, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

b2b marketing agency.png

Introduction

Turning complete strangers to customers is a challenge. It requires a deep understanding of the B2B sales cycle and its complexity. When searching for a B2B marketing agency, make sure to partner with professionals who understand your company needs. This post will help you learn what to look out for.

Is the agency goal oriented?

A proper B2B marketing plan requires evaluation and goal setting. A professional agency will not agree to work with you before setting specific measurable and realistic goals Goals aren’t random – you should have a clear idea on what digital marketing success means to your company. And no, “more leads” isn’t a proper goal. Leads are a means to an end – if they don’t become customers they’re useless to you. You should be able to back up your numbers based on your current efforts and on calculated projections.

Elements to consider:

  • What are the overall business goals of your company?
  • How long does it currently take you to acquire a new customer?
  • How much does it cost you to acquire a new customer?
  • What do you do with incoming leads?
  • How much do you pay per lead?
  • What are the steps in your sales cycle?
  • Customer life time value (LTV)
  • Current conversion rates from visitors to leads
  • Current conversion rates from leads to customers
  • What ROI have you seen on your current marketing efforts? What are you currently investing in?

Make sure the agency you work with is goal oriented.

Evaluate and discuss the goals with the agency and verify that they are confident the goals set are reachable.

Ready to Step up your marketing?

Is the agency customer centric?

B2B customers, typically become such as a result of a relationship between you and them. They will not do business with a company they don’t trust.

Two main things to consider in this respect:

  1. You’re not selling to everyone.Your target audience is specific and as such has specific needs and challenges. A professional agency will help you figure out exactly who your audience is by mapping out your buyer personas. Those are semi-fictional representations of your ideal buyer. Having an in-depth understanding of who your ideal customers are will help you tailor your messaging and focus on relevant people, not wasting time on irrelevant prospects.
  1. Your prospects aren’t ready to buy on the spot.There are three stages to a typical buyer’s journey:

    -Awareness
    -Consideration
    -Decision

Buyer's Journey

Trying to sell to a prospect who is only at a stage where they have realized they have a problem and have expressed symptoms, would be like asking someone to marry you on a first date – too soon!

Marketing strategies that are marketer-centric, focusing on cold calling and interruptive ads, stand a very low chance of succeeding. Make sure that your agency tailors your marketing strategy around your buyer persona’s buyer’s journey. That way, instead of interrupting, you will be building fruitful relationships.

Is the agency transparent and educative?

You should be clear on what you’re spending your budget on. Make sure to receive monthly reports that are goals oriented.  Make sure the strategy is evaluated and adjusted to the ever-changing digital landscape. A professional agency will always bring you up to speed on relevant marketing innovations and strategies that are worth looking into and testing.

Make sure your agency values transparency and is eager to make sure you understand every step of the process. Many times we see clients who have worked with an agency and are confused, not sure what questions to ask or how to measure success. That should be the foundation of any collaboration between you and an agency. What are the KPIs for success and how do you measure progression?

If you are under the impression that your agency is working around the clock for you – that’s great. But if you stutter when you need to explain to a colleague what they’re doing or if you’re not sure how to tell if it’s worth your investment, make sure to cure that ASAP. You’re not hiring an agency to work for the sake of work – you have goals in mind and you need to be able to measure them.

Who are their clients?

B2B is a specialty. Make sure the agency you hire understands the complexity and is experienced in generating clients for other B2B companies. Ask to speak with their current clients and make sure to run this list by them. Their clients should be hands on and educated, as the agency should keep them up to speed.

Drill down and ask about the process these clients went through with the agency:

  • What does the client’s business do?
  • What challenges did they try to overcome with the agency?
  • What was the scope of the agency’s involvement?
  • Do they have any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work and the impact of the engagement?
  • How did the agency perform from a project management standpoint?
  • What did they find most impressive about the agency?
  • Are there any areas the agency could improve?

What does their own marketing look like?

Remember a marketing agency is a B2B company. As such, they should be reflecting their B2B know-how in their own marketing. Are you under the impression that they understand you as their buyer persona? Do they understand your buyer’s journey? Are they customer centric? Are they building trust and creating a relationship with you? If so, those are all good signs. If not, consider it an alert.

What are their qualifications?

Among others, certifications to look out for are:

Summing things up

When looking for a B2B marketing agency, make sure the agency is:

  • Goal oriented
  • Customer-centric (understand your buyer personas and buyer’s journey)
  • Transparent and educative
  • Experienced
  • Not a barefoot cobbler
  • Qualified

If you found this useful, and you’re curious to learn more and find out how to step up your b2b marketing , we invite you to download our B2B marketing practices that every CMO must know eBook.

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The Best B2B Lead Generation Tactics That Actually Work

By |2023-04-24T10:57:35+00:00January 23rd, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

b2b lead generation header

Introduction to B2B Lead Generation

Almost every C-Level executive in a B2B company found themselves, at one stage or another, wondering if the money they’re spending on digital marketing is worth the investment. Otherwise put, is their investment generating quality leads that actually turn into customers eventually and they are seeing positive ROI on their investment.

B2B lead generation is a great challenge for most companies and marketers. The main reason is that B2B buyers go through a typical buyer’s journey that is much more sophisticated than a B2C buyer’s journey. This post will walk you through B2B lead generation tactics that are scalable.

The volume challenge

Most B2B Marketers rush to set up campaigns on Google AdWords, using keywords that are directed to their exact solutions or services. Such precise keywords will usually prove to be very expensive (prices per click are usually double digited and up) due to extremely low search volumes (thousands of monthly searches at the most globaly) and high competition (classic case red ocean vs. blue ocean).

Search volumes are a given reality that the advertiser has no direct control over – once maximized, scaling becomes an issue.

When hitting the search volume glass ceiling, marketers turn to display advertising and launch direct response campaigns on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook etc. The intent is to apply sales messaging that will catch the attention of relevant prospect’s and help turn them into leads.

Such campaigns rarely prove effective since the chance that the person clicking on the ads actually needs the advertiser’s solution, at the exactly time that they see the ads are very slim.

The result: money is being spent , low quality/un-nurtured leads are generated and handed over to sales. Sales waste their time on irrelevant leads that do not become customers. This situation causes the classic sales and marketing face-off, blames are being thrown around and the business goals never end up being met.

By that stage, most B2B Marketers start pulling hair off their scalps trying to figure out how to scale lead generation campaigns beyond the basic search terms solution, CEO’s are considering to abandon marketing and there is a total chaos in the company.

The solution: Zooming out

There is a way to broaden display campaigns to include people who are actively looking for a solution, or are on the verge of doing that (bear with me).

The secret lies in an in-depth buyer persona research aimed at unveiling your ideal customers’ unique interest, habits, daily challenges and needs. Figure out their typical buyer’s journey. What are the symptoms current prospects express to the problems that your business can help them solve?

Buyer_journey

Let’s take as an example a company selling CRM solutions. An average CMO would set up narrow campaigns targeting “CRM solutions”. A pro CMO would figure out what symptoms their buyer persona would express, and could lead them to consider a CRM solution. Those could be sales managers looking for “company sales pipeline management tips” or “how to segment leads and opportunities using Microsoft Excel” etc. By zooming out and understanding what prospects go through before deciding on a certain solution, new ways of generating quality leads become relevant. Think of the hidden potential you can fulfill by broadening your messages to entail all stages of the buyer’s journey (instead of focusing on the decision stage alone).

Application in search engines

Tap into your customer’s mind. Understand their buyer’s journey and create blog content for those stages of their journey that occur before they would search for your brand or exact solution.

Add CTAs to these blog posts, leading the readers to a premium content offer (such as an eBook) that’s contextual to the post they are currently reading.

lead generation conversion path

 

source: HubSpot

Organic traffic from search engines tends to have high conversion rates. Allocate SEO attention to getting ranked under longer tail, awareness and consideration stage keywords. This will prove easier than getting ranked on narrow terms since the competition on these terms will be much lower.

Don’t count on taking the blogging approach using PPC – driving traffic to a blog post will prove expensive. The conversion rate to leads will usually be low. With an average blog post CTR on CTA of 5% , and an average 50% conversion rate of a content offer landing page, you would need to generate 40 clicks in order to convert a visitor to a lead. That could sum up to 80-100USD per lead (depends on the keywords) – not super appealing.

Using PPC, the best option is to drive traffic directly to a content offer landing page via keywords that are related to the specific content offer. You should expect to see a conversion rate of 15-20% (depending on how well you know your way around the PPC field).

At an average of 2-4USD per click you can generate leads at 10-25USD per lead. Remember – those leads are not ready to buy. Make sure to nurture them properly and push them down the buyers journey before trying to sell them.

Application via display advertising:

After you mapped out who your buyer persona is try to target those exact people on LinkedIn and Facebook (LI will usually be more precise, but more expensive). Try to promote the same top of the funnel content offers you are trying to promote via your blog posts or PPC activities. Make sure to use vivid creatives and sharp copy to entice users to click. The CTR on Facebook and LinkedIn (especially on B2B) is a major factor for click costs and derived from that – the CPL.

Additional option for display advertising is utilizing native advertising such as Outbrain or Taboola. Driving low cost traffic(0.25$-1$ per click)  to your most converting blog posts could be very effective, especially when trying to scale further.

Using display advertising is a great way to push the user down the buyer’s journey. For companies with thousands of contacts at different stages, display could assist in pushing them further by using remarketing and promoting middle and bottom of the funnel content offers. If you can segment your contacts and understand exactly what phase each contact is at, this method will be very cost efficient for you.

Conclusion

B2B lead generation requires a different more subtle and customer centric approach. If you truly understand your buyer personas and understand their challenges and needs, you can provide them the value they are seeking for, build trust and authority in their eyes, and eventually be asked by them what you are selling, instead of trying to force them to buy from you at a stage when they aren’t ready or interested.

If you found this useful, and you’re curious to learn more and find out how to step up your b2b lead geneation, we invite you to download our 30 greatest lead generation tips, tricks and ideas. Get your FREE copy now >>

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B2B sales – cracking the code to success

By |2023-04-24T10:58:27+00:00January 17th, 2017|

topicIcon B2B Marketing Sales

John Doe

Architect & Engineer

We love that guy

B2B sales - cracking the code to success header

Introduction to b2b sales

Selling services or products to another business can be frustrating. You need to deal with endless rejections, cold shoulders and being flat out ignored. Your target customers are busy doing their job and they don’t want to be interrupted. This post will help you recalculate your route to closing B2B sales.

1. Get your priorities straight

Who are you placing in the center of your sales process? Yourself or the customer? You might think you’re customer focused, yet chances are there’s a reason you’re getting blown off by prospects. To paraphrase JFK “ask not what your prospect can buy from you, ask how you can help your prospect“.

At the end of every business is a human being. That person actually has a life. They’re busy, don’t know your business, don’t trust you, and don’t want to be interrupted. Respect that. Figure out who they are, what their needs are and how you can help them and tackle your entire strategy from that angle. This goes way beyond clichés such as “listen 80% and of the time and speak 20% of the time”. This is about a shift in attitude, it’s about building relationships, educating, answering to needs and only cutting down to business when the timing is right – for your prospect’s business (not yours).

b2b sales meme

2. Understand the buyer’s journey

The buyer’s journey is the active research process a potential buyer goes through leading up to a purchase. This is especially crucial to understand from a B2B perspective. B2B sales cycles are long by nature and requires a high level of trust. Decisions are far from spontaneous. In fact, 47% of B2B buyers consume 3-5 pieces of content prior to engaging with a salesperson. This means that some of your prospects are consuming your content before you even know who they are. By understanding the typical journey a buyer goes through before you speak to them, you can carefully figure out the right time to sell. This will help you avoid time wasted on pitching to prospects who are not ready to buy from you, as well as to avoid ruining what could otherwise evolve to a long-term relationship.

There are three stages to the average buyer’s journey:

1. Awareness

2. Consideration

3. Decision

Buyer's Journey

 

 

Look how the buyer’s journey correlates with a typical conversion funnel:

Buyer_Journey_SalesFunnel

 

Only 5-15% of leads are sales ready. Most lead require nurturing, relationship and trust building. It’s important to understand that and to only sell at the bottom of the funnel. In order to do so it’s important to qualify leads and pinpoint where they are in the funnel.

3. Qualify MQLs and SQLs

Make sure to set clear criterias of what qualifies a lead to be a marketing qualified lead (MQL) and further on, what qualifies them to be a sales qualified lead (SQL).

An MQL is a lead who’s relevant to your company as a potential customer, but who isn’t far enough down the buyer’s journey to be ready to buy. This is a lead that will potentially respond to being nurtured. For example, if your company is a SaaS company providing solutions for small businesses in the US, a marketing qualified lead would be a person who is a small business owner, a US resident, and who’s company is the relevant industry to your business. They will have expressed interest in your company but such that doesn’t reflect direct intention to buy.

You can qualify a lead as an MQL by doing a bit of intelligence work. Look them up on LinkedIn, visit their website, google them and use any relevant means at your disposal to eliminate and not waste time on irrelevant leads (if the lead was generated from paid media, the campaign would have ideally been targeted per demographics, location and other relevant qualification screening options). Then make sure to evaluate what you know about their specific buyer’s journey and behavior:

  • Did they express interest in your company?
  • Did they download an ebook or whitepaper? Was the content they downloaded awareness, consideration or decision stage type of content?
  • Did they view your pricing page?

When using marketing automation tools, you’ll be able to use forms, lead scoring and workflows in order to qualify a lead as an MQL. That being said, don’t let the lack of marketing automation stand between you and lead qualification.

An SQL is an MQL who is further down the buyer’s journey. These are leads that you can pick up the phone and call with an intent to sell to, as they are ready to speak with you. This would be a result of lead nurturing or a direct expression of intent to buy from you.

4. Align marketing and sales goals

When marketing and sales disagree on the differences between MQLs and SQLs, everyone loses. Both marketing and sales should focus on quality and not quantity. A typical complaint from sales is that the leads they’re getting are useless. A typical complaint from marketing is that the sales team can’t sell ice to eskimos.

This can be solved.

Setting clear criterias for MQLs and SQLs, and as a result a clear process of when a lead is handed over to sales, is a win-win situation. It’s tempting to pick up the phone and call an MQL, however they’re probably not ready to buy. They need to make some sales ready actions, or else you will be “jumping in” too soon.

Conclusion

The secret to B2B sales is to be customer centric. Understand who your target audience is, figure out their buyer’s journey, qualify your leads and only sell to them when they are ready.

If you found this useful, and you’re curious to learn more and find out how to step up your b2b sales, we invite you to download our 30 greatest lead generation tips, tricks and ideas.

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