Monthly Archives: February 2021

B2B organizations have realized that personalization is the key to getting more customers, retaining customers and building strong relationships that work long term. Marketers are now no longer looking for short-termed solutions. Acquiring new customers is a lengthy process, however, retaining customers and nurturing them with personalization creates stronger and long term business ties that can give better ROI.

Personalization has been in vogue for quite some time and b2b marketers and organizations are yet to see its full potential. Here is a blog that talks about some of the best techniques to strengthen personalization in b2b.
 

360 degree view of customer:

Having enough knowledge of the attributes of the customer, his inclinations, his likes and dislikes, his preferences, the buying history, geographical influences, family and their influences and much more can give a 360 degree view of the customer. This in fact is at the very core of b2b sales and marketing success.

The data you seek needs to be essentially about these details about the customer. For example, if a prospect’s family prefers a certain service provider for a longer duration, chances are they have developed loyalty toward that brand for some reasons.

As a marketer, if you look into their buying history and analyze details of why they prefer a particular brand, product or service, it can give a clear idea of their needs. This data can help marketers reconfigure their approach, communication and even customize services to suit the needs of the customer. Hence, personalization becomes significant when it comes to not only capturing the attention of the prospect but to also to convert them into business.

Content assets based on analytics:

Analytics and analysis of data plays a huge role in deciding the right strategy for the right customer. Technology too is invariably important in predicting and analyzing customer behavior. But when you combine technology with human instinct, experience and expertise, you will most likely get the best results when it comes to lead conversion. Analytics can help create buyer personas and mapping out buyer journeys etc.

Analysis of customer profiles and creating ideal customer profile helps in creating effective content assets to enhance personalization. Content assets and personalization are inseparable. Content assets such as white papers, e-books, infographics etc. can go a long way in starting conversations, creating scope of connecting on a personalized level for better understanding of the customer and much more.

Email marketing:

Personalization would be incomplete without email marketing! In fact, email marketing is one of the most effective tools when it comes to personalization. Email marketing can have a massive impact on ROI and this comes with effective messaging, communicating the right offers to the right prospect at the right time. Email marketing can widen the reach of your marketing efforts and can help you to tap the target audience for better ROI. It can help you to make to communicate in a more personalized way with decision makers so that you can influence their buying decisions reducing your sales cycle.

Conclusion:

Personalization is the key to successful marketing and sales in 2021. This is the most accepted and the most effective way to communicate with your clients, customers or prospects. It can help build long term relationships and can foster them for better results. Making a wise choice of channels or social media platforms to personalize communication can be a game-changer for b2b.

Customer is king! This is a well-known truth and it has been prevalent for as long as businesses have been in existence. The only thing that has changed is the approach of the customer itself. Today’s customers are quick to change, have dynamic choices, are tech-savvy and most of the times clear of what they want and whom they want to get it from. Whether it is a service or a product, they study many aspects before approaching a marketer. Today customers exhibit certain digital and social media behaviours which are valuable data for any marketer who wants to capture their attention.

Customer data captured from various sources can be instrumental in shaping marketing strategies and also understanding the needs of the customer thoroughly. The importance of customer profile is paramount in determining the sales and marketing success in B2B. Identifying target audience and creating an impeccable customer profile is an integral part of B2B sales and marketing.

So how does one optimize an ideal customer profile to leverage the potential in them to get converted into business? There are many ways to do it, but let us discuss some critical factors here in this blog.

Focus on the most potential customers first:

Look at what will most probably give you the fastest results, which means one must focus on customers that are most likely to convert. Going by the traditional ways to create an ideal customer profile can work well in the b2b landscape. After identifying the best customers, you can start analysing the characteristics such as age, region, company, designation, the authority level when it comes to decision-making, etc.

Determining the best customers and their characteristics can enable you to know which channels, strategies you must use to approach them and then nurture them to convert them eventually. These parameters help define the best customers and their probability to get converted and thus augment revenue growth.

Aligned approach:

Creating an ideal customer profile has several benefits. It is of great help to multiple functions across the organization. Sales, marketing, operations even finance if work in good alignment it can always lead to better business outcomes. It leads to more clarity, unison in decision making and thus can pave way to getting more revenue due to minimum internal errors or misalignment. Instead of relying only on the data or different versions of the same customer, once you create an ideal customer profile it eases the job of each one in the organization who is connected to it in some way.

Being target specific:

The job of any b2b marketer, whether it is sales or marketing is to break down the complexity of b2b and simplify it to augment ROI. This can be done when there is more clarity about the kind of customers you would be looking at. An ideal customer profile can help minimise the complexities and define the target very well. Once the target is clear, sales and marketing teams can then build plans around the target profile to capture the attention of the customer, delight and engage them further to accelerate sales and get more revenue growth.

Conclusion:

B2B is a complex market and the more specific one becomes, the more narrowed down approach one adopts it becomes easier to get the results quickly. Customer is important and the more your approach is customer-centric, easier it is to convert them into business.

Lead nurturing is one of the most sought after techniques in lead generation in b2b! If done well, it can give huge returns not only in terms of conversions but in building solid relationships with the clients. Focused and strategic efforts in lead nurturing can lead to the better results. So let us take a look at how you can make lead nurturing stronger and more effective.

With customers having access to technological innovations, digital tools and social media, the competition in the market is getting tougher each day. Customers are well informed, and they do intense research before deciding to buy from you. It is therefore important to strengthen techniques such as lead nurturing which is more about reaching out to the right customer with the right approach.

Tech-savvy and smart customers are looking for someone who is ready to put in the effort to understand their true challenges and provide customized solutions for better business outcomes. Therefore, marketers are now emphasizing on creating a robust lead nurturing strategy with aligned content strategy and content assets for best results.

So what exactly is lead nurturing?

To make a lead sales-ready by using techniques that involve content assets to engage leads is lead nurturing.  Lead nurturing involves hand-holding through various different stages of buyer’s journey in order to make them ready to eventually buy from you.

Lead nurturing needs a dedicated approach and focused techniques to optimize it in order to leverage its power. Here are a few things that you can do to empower your lead generation process by mindful lead nurturing –

Build a solid persona:

It’s best to start from the basics, hence investing time and effort in building a solid buyer or target persona makes sense and it will surely set you in the right direction. A persona is a fictitious thing and the more logical you are in creating it, the better the personas will be. A persona helps in determining the needs of the prospect, and to create an identity of the prospect that can be used as a good reference point. It can also help cross-functional teams to understand the prospect better.

In fact, building persona is more of a cross functional activity, wherein as much information across different functions can be gathered, better it is for building solid personas.

Understanding Buyer’s journey:

Mapping the buyer’s journey is very critical in any lead nurturing process. Being aware of the buyer’s journey enables marketers to create aligned content assets for better lead nurturing. There are several stages of buyer’s journey such as top of the funnel stage which is the awareness stage, then the middle of the funnel stage which is the consideration phase, and then the bottom of the funnel stage where the buyers are almost read to buy from you.

Each stage has peculiarities that determine that stage and thus content assets needed for each stage are different. Specific and relevant content assets provided to prospects at each stage enhance the chances of engagement. Hence knowing the buyer’s journey is very crucial for strengthening lead nurturing.

Conclusion:

Lead nurturing is a vital part of lead generation process and it can determine the future of leads. Getting leads can sometimes be less challenging than converting them and this is where lead nurturing comes into the picture. Create a strategy that is aligned with the prospect and it will be easier to engage them and eventually convert them into business.

ABM or Account Based Marketing is gaining huge popularity in b2b and for all the right reasons! It’s a great and focused way of nurturing and getting those leads converted. However, if your ABM campaigns lack strategy and analysis at various stages, then you could face a few challenges. Certain factors may not match up to your expectations when it comes to the results.

Things such as use of irrelevant content, too many expectations in less time, flaws in defining the target audience etc. can contribute to the failure in ABM. Marketers can take this opportunity to monitor, supervise and analyze their entire ABM campaign and make necessary changes to avoid future mistakes.

Here are some factors that could hamper your ABM efforts and how you can fix them:

Incorrect profiling of target:

ABM begins by choosing wisely. It is about making no mistakes when it comes to profiling the target audience, it is about Ask the right questions to get the right answers. The biggest mistake markets can make is in creating wrong or incorrect profiles of their target audience and a lot of loose ends when it comes to getting to know the target well. Make sure you know how your ideal customer looks like.

If you are not clear of the criteria you will not be able to focus on the right prospect or organization at the right time. Make sure you invest your energy in knowing the right answers to some of the questions such as the industry they belong to, the number of employees, the key decision makers in the company, the services that you want to propose to them, are they aligned with their business goals. If your answers to all these questions are appropriate then you can be sure that you are in the right direction.

Too many expectations:

Though ABM is a great way to get those leads rolling and conversions too, it is not an overnight success formula. It takes considerable time, efforts, consistency and perseverance along with the right techniques to make ABM is a huge success. So much has been written and being talked about the miracles of ABM that marketers are bound to feel that this is a sure shot way to success. It can be only if done strategically, but at the same time, having too many expectations and in less time would be a mistake. 

Irrelevant content assets:

Content is at the foundation of long lasting relationships in b2b. Content assets are instrumental in ABM success. If you think just having any content asset can influence your audience, then you are mistaken. Content assets make sense only when they are relevant to your target audience. Sending irrelevant content assets to your prospect can make your efforts in ABM campaigns go waste. Many times marketers wonder where things are going wrong, when they have not paid attention to content.

Make sure you choose the right content for the right audience or organization that is your target audience and you will reap huge benefits in ABM.
 

Conclusion:

Account based Marketing is a much focused activity in b2b. Any focused activity is bound to produce great results. But this in no way means that marketers can be complacent and put all faith in ABM without a proper strategy and understanding of the target audience.