Monthly Archives: January 2021

If you want to get more leads and convert them quickly, focusing on lead nurturing would be the right thing to do. A longer but more sustainable route to lead conversion; lead nurturing can be a very fulfilling technique to build long term relationships with your customers and can even be used in retargeting.

MQL or Marketing Qualified Leads are an important part of every b2b organization. These leads show an inclination or intent towards making a buying decision. They are the warm leads that can be converted with a proper lead nurturing strategy. Getting these prospects to know you better so that they decide to buy from you is at the core of any lead nurturing process. Unlike SQLs, MQLs are not ready to buy from you yet but they can become SQLs soon enough if you nurture them properly. SQLs or Sales Qualified Leads are those leads that are ready to buy from you and are about to get converted.

So how do you optimize nurturing for your most potential lead generation components including MQLs and SQLs? Here are some ways that can accelerate your lead generation process with appropriate lead nurturing:

Be a problem-solver:

The prospects that are looking for solutions urgently can get quickly converted, but if not captured and nurtured they will be the first ones to go to your competitors. So nurturing them and being a problem-solver for their challenges should become your top most priority. You can start with offering them with content assets or offers that can make them stay and get converted:

• Offer free product demos or free trials if you offer product based solutions
• Offer content assets that showcase your problem solving abilities
• Use focused email marketing to offer them what they are looking for
• Give discounts, coupons or gift vouchers if that is a part of your marketing mix
• Include client testimonials that speak about your expertise and how it helped them

Targeting with emails:

Email marketing can be one of the most personalized approaches when it comes to contacting or keeping in touch with your prospects. It is a tool that can enhance your chances of converting those leads that are at any stage of your sales funnel.

Email Marketing can help you to narrow down your focus to those leads that need to be contacted and nurtured on a more regular basis.

You can nurture leads with email marketing in the following ways:

• Personalize the messaging and offers for effective response
• List out those leads that are looking out for insights and information
• Email valuable content assets to make your outreach more successful
• Be consistent and be unique

Webinars:

Those leads who register for webinars are definitely more interested in your services. Registering for your webinar is a sign that the lead maybe inclined toward buying from you. A webinar is an important nurturing tool that presents an opportunity to marketers to get to know the prospect even better and can directly contact them for further engagement.

Webinars need to have following elements to make it a successful nurturing technique:

• Choose a relevant topic to make the webinar interesting and information based for your prospect
• Webinar is about having one-on-one communication with your prospect so make the most out of it by making it very interactive
• Ask questions to get to know your prospect more
• Gather enough data to be able to keep them in the nurturing loop even after the webinar

Conclusion:

Lead nurturing can make lead generation more interesting and less challenging.  There are many ways in which a lead can be nurtured and it all depends on several factors such company goals, prospect’s business goals, type of organization, products, services, target audience etc. However, most importantly if lead nurturing activities are aligned with business goals it can most likely bring positive results.

Constant flow of SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) is a good sign when it comes to measuring the financial health of any b2b organization. Marketers who invest in SQLs and MQLs are more likely to have a better ROI. Today, SQLs, that are more likely to be converted into customers is a guaranteed way to grow business.

If an organization is simply generating leads without actually converting them, one can monitor certain parameters around the definition of good leads, analyze MQLS and also study the SQL characteristics to see what exactly is preventing the leads from getting converted.

If you haven’t created enough visibility for your brand in the market or haven’t been able to design a good outreach program, chances are that your leads haven’t developed a liking for your brand yet. If you haven’t honed your lead nurturing skills to the point that you lack relationship building with your prospects, then they will most likely move away from your brand or turn into cold leads.

So what’s the magic formula to keep your ROI high when in b2b? There’s no one step magic formula to achieve this, but if you focus on your SQLs then you can turn around the fate of your business anytime of the year.

Here are a few tips and tricks to get more SQLs to keep the fuel for ROI up and running-

Make data priority-

If there’s one powerful tool to give you the best MQLs and SQLs it is surely data! Data is literally a tool nowadays that can make impossible things possible. Make data a priority while analyzing some of the results of your campaigns or the metrics based on which you evaluate your SQLs. This is one of the best ways to make sure that the SQLs that you qualify will give you the expected results. You should use data to track your efforts and see where things are going wrong of you aren’t getting the desired results. This also includes your decisions around revamping content assets that you are using for every outreach. Changing the way you look at data, treating it and using it to determine the SQLs can have a huge impact on your ROI.

Make content outreach effective:

The content assets that you deliver to your prospects play a huge role in the way they perceive your brand or the way they feel the need to connect with your brand. Content assets and content marketing add fuel to your lead generation campaigns and content can almost act like a bridge between your brand and your prospect. The stronger the bridge, the better would be the relationship building activity. This can have a great impact on the SQLs and your sales funnel thus accelerating your business growth and ROI.

Focused Marketing:

Any B2B sales and marketing program would be incomplete without ABM campaigns these days. ABM can be very effective in nurturing leads and making the sales funnel more robust and healthy. In fact, companies are looking at bigger revenue to come in from their ABM efforts.

ABM operates in a different way as compared to other sales and marketing activities. It needs and dedicated resources, metrics to analyze the progress, reports to show how things are advancing and what the weak areas in nurturing are or in the outreach programs. This helps marketers to learn a lot and to make more mature strategies the next time around. But when things are done as per the plan, ABM can boost sales qualified leads and thus help grow your business.

Conclusion:

SQLs as much as MQLs are an important part of sales planning and are also an important part of the sales funnel. It is up to the sales team to make the most out of this highly potential area in b2b campaigns and accelerate results, business and the overall ROI.

ABM (Account Based Marketing) has been a boon to the B2B industry and several organizations have optimized this power-house channel to get more leads and to reduce the sales cycle too. 2021 is going to be another year of ABM.  Use of proper techniques and knowledge can make ABM work for any b2b company.

Here is a blog that talks about how to perfect the art of ABM to get more leads this year!

Making lead generation a more focused activity through account based nurturing has helped to simplify b2b sales and marketing. Due to this narrowed down focus toward specific leads with specific needs, ABM is becoming hugely popular in the B2B space.

Almost 91% of companies using ABM were able to increase their average deal size

81% marketers who measure ROI say that ABM outperforms every other marketing activity or investment

Account Based Marketing is certainly the next revolutionary channel that can change the way b2b marketers have been struggling with lead generation.

So how does ABM really work?

• You identify the key, high value accounts
• Optimize efforts by dedicating resources to those accounts
• Create customized content and messaging to delight and engage the decision makers
• Use Omni channel approach in marketing and reaching out to the target company

The process if well-defined and implemented can get great results. So here are a few parameters that can help you strengthen the ABM process and make ABM one of the strongest pillars of b2b sales and marketing.

Having clear target definitions:

Knowledge of which accounts to target is the first step toward a successful ABM outreach program or campaign. You can start by combing through the existing accounts and filtering the most viable options. Based on the attributes on which you make this particular selection can give you an idea or point you towards many more such accounts that might be a best fit for your ABM efforts. A data driven approach can be the best way to optimize ABM planning. Data- sharing through all the functions in the organizations and not just sales and marketing can give a better view and perspective of which targets can qualify for the ABM campaigns.

Having Sales and Marketing on the same page:

ABM is all about having a cohesive approach towards a common goal for both sales and marketing- lead generation. Therefore having sales and marketing on the same page and having them aligned can work best for better results from ABM.

Capturing the key decision makers:

You can narrow down the focus better if you have more knowledge about the key stake holders or decision makers in the target organization. Knowing what can delight and engage these decision makers can make a great difference in your overall approach in terms of messaging and also in terms of the channels that you choose in reaching out. To achieve this, you need to have a proper plan in place to monitor and observe their social media behavior or to know their digital footprints.

Investing in building relationships:

ABM is all about conversations, talking, delighting and engaging the key decision makers. It’s basically about building relationships with the key persons in the target organization. The success of ABM is heavily dependent on what channels you use and when you reach out to the key persons. Knowledge once again can help you to know what kind of channels the decision makers are using. This will give you a direction and will help you map out an outreach strategy that can help you succeed.

Conclusion:

Other than the above, personalized content and messaging is very crucial for the success of ABM. There’s a lot that you can achieve from ABM. All you need to have is right techniques and knowledge to make the best out of ABM.

Trends that emerged out of the disruptive year 2020 have also left a lot of bright spots for marketers in 2021. There are a lot of b2b sales and marketing techniques that have been reformed in this process and can actually prove to be beneficial in the present year and in the future too. Let us see three such reformed sales and marketing techniques that can work in our favour this year.

Buying Signals:

B2B sales and marketing can work more effectively if one pays close attention to buying signals, which means that buying signals or responses given by a prospect are very important for lead conversion. Not just signals that are caught through website visits or forms filled, marketers should look further and be vigilant of other responses too through various different channels and take action on it. Any call to action will only prove to be valuable if you act on it at the right time.

One also needs to assess present plans and strategies and ask certain questions. How well are you equipped to tap these signals that go beyond the obvious, what plan of action you are armed with if you have to immediately respond or act etc. The answers to these questions will help you analyze a lot of things, for example, the content assets that you are ready to respond with, are they really relevant etc.

Enabling Buyers:

Marketing and sales is now clearly about going beyond just capturing and converting a lead. It is also about enabling a buyer into actual buying. Buyers have now become more conscious of their needs and requirements and they also know where to get it from. Today the customers are looking for responses that are quick, intuitive, proactive and empathetic that show that the marketers care to serve.

They are looking to engage with businesses that care for buyers. They want their marketer to be their navigator in the buying process and journey helping them to make that buying decision; something that goes beyond a simple form fill or a one-time conversation. Follow-up conversations or exchange of content assets and exchange of communication through series of e-mailers that are relevant are some of the driving forces when it comes to b2b buyer enablement.

The future of sales and marketing is going to be dependent on a two way solid response process and buyer enablement.

Adopting change:

2021 is going to continue being the year of change as there was a lot to learn from the previous year. The best strategy this year would be to spend time understanding what changes were adapted and how. This will make two things clear for marketers. One, how change was quickly adopted and what form of change will continue to dominate the market. Though transformation may be the theme of 2020, it has immensely helped organizations on various different levels. Some changes such as going digital, shifting sales to online activities majorly and similar trends have managed to instil confidence in the sales and marketing professionals. Now they can be confident about any change and that any adverse situation can prove to be an opportunity. The market is now ready for new methods to replace old processes and plans.

Conclusion:

Change can be good if reformed sales and marketing actually works in favour of organizations. Many factors contribute to the success of sales and marketing in the b2b domain. But few factors and aspects can be more influential and if organizations pay attention to these, any adverse situation even in the future can be turned into an opportunity.