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The holiday season can get particularly tough for the sales teams for delays in closing certain deals or for not being able to communicate with some key decision makers because of their unavailability or due to other challenges that they might be facing. In such a scenario if the sales and marketing teams have already anticipated challenges way ahead of time it can help a lot to come up with solutions.

Being prepared for the future with some key marketing strategies that are not dependent on any one particular time or quarter of the year should necessarily be integrated into the core sales and marketing plans of the organization. Here are 3 key marketing strategies that you can easily implement in 2021 making you smarter and to keep you one step ahead of your competitors.

Optimization:

Transformation is an on-going process, there’s no timeline to it. So instead of focusing only on what could change or how to invest in accommodating change alone, marketers should think in terms of investing time in making the most out of what they already have and optimize the existing processes or strategies.

Optimizing marketing strategies or processes by reviewing the present tools and processes or re-defining the existing plans, approach and analyzing the results or metrics can be a good exercise to strengthen what you have and be more prepared for transformation.

Analysis can give you a clear picture of what’s working and what is not. For example, you can analyze the type of leads, the number of leads and the reasons why you are getting certain types of leads and that can answer a lot of questions. You can also analyze what are the reasons for decreased website visitors or those who landed on your landing page but didn’t move forward toward conversion and what can you do to avoid a similar situation. Analyzing can not only help with rectifying the negative impact, but also help elevate those things that are working in your favor, so that you can work recreating those strategies.

While investing too much in automated tools and other technological solutions may be necessary at times, none of these tools will work at their best if the basic strategies aren’t aligned with the tools. A clear-eyed picture can reveal much more about optimizing the existing plans before you run after new and transformative ways of doing business.

Investing in developing personas:

Accuracy of personas can determine the success or failure of your lead generation campaigns. A persona that was created at the beginning of the campaign many not be relevant after a certain period of time, hence what needs to be monitored is the need to make changes or fine-tune the personas that are to be incorporated in the plan. Following your customers’ social media journey consistently is key to knowing the shift in their preferences or likes and dislikes. This can help you to make the necessary modifications in the buyer personas that you wish to do.

Data driven decision making:

We all know how crucial data is in b2b sales and marketing! It plays a vital role in not only acquiring quality leads, but also in analyzing the overall results. Based on data we need to ask a few questions such as why did some leads qualify, why did some leads fail to convert, why a particular decision maker did not respond or why did a particular decision maker decide to do business with us. Answers to these questions can be revealed from data alone.

It’s important to have certain yardsticks to make things measurable, accountable and also to simplify things in b2b. Data is one of those important yardsticks that can give a direction to the sales and marketing teams. They can go back to the drawing board and fix certain things so that the future strategies don’t fail or so that they can simply repeat some of the successes and strategies based on data. Data can also help in studying the MQLs and SQLs and also in setting the future targets.

Conclusion:

Other than the above key prerequisites, there are others too such as breaking down the complex processes into smaller steps, attribution of revenue, performance analysis, market research, monitoring competitor activity and much more. Making the most out of what you have by optimizing it or with the help of data and persona building one can truly bring great results. Each business is unique and if the strategies are aligned with the organizational business goals it will most likely bring more sales and thus more revenue.

There are many lead generation techniques that are being used to generate leads. Optimizing a website is one such technique that has huge potential to generate leads consistently. A website is a central hub for B2B marketing and for accelerating many B2B sales activities too. Try the right techniques to bring leads through your website and you will never be disappointed.

A B2B marketer’s goal is to attract a lead, nurture it, and eventually convert it. Your website can act as a lead-magnet if you can get people on to your website using social media or other channels and get the visitors interested in using your services. Your website can act as an important tool for not just attracting leads, but attracting quality leads and quickly converting those leads, eventually bringing in more business.

So how do you make your website work for you to generate leads? Let’s discuss some excellent techniques that are also easy to adopt:

Landing Page:

A landing page has the capacity to bring in business through lead generation. Not having a landing page can now mean a serious flaw or gap in the sales and marketing strategy. A perfect landing page with a form to be filled-in and an appropriate call-to-action is a must-have if you want to make lead- generation work for you through your website.

Optimizing forms:

Forms have always been popular amid B2B marketers and there isn’t a doubt that they are commonly used by most B2B companies. However; the catch is that most users are not a fan of forms. Some see it as a ‘slow-downer’ and also as an annoying obstacle while navigating the website. Forms can be a pain to fill in, so if a form is not designed to be user-friendly, it can actually work against your goals of conversion.

So how do you turn around this technique into an actual lead-magnet? You can redesign the forms making them more user-friendly! Keeping the forms short and concise can create more conversions. Another way of optimizing your forms is by making them mobile-friendly. This way you will not lose out on opportunities and make the most of each user who visits your website through a mobile device.

The seamless website experience is definitely at the top of the list if you want your users to get engaged and eventually convert. Good user experience can be created through appealing and simple website design and also making the navigation as simple as possible. A website can generate leads if the users like to spend time on it and most importantly they get what they are looking for without having to spend a lot of their valuable time searching for things they want.

The challenges in B2B marketing can be reduced by innovative ideas and techniques that lead to better customer experience. Using smart techniques with your existing marketing assets and strategies can definitely make B2B lead generation an interesting experience for both marketers as well as the customers.

Let’s face it; B2B Lead Generation isn’t a cakewalk and it entails a lot of challenges! However, given the technological disruption and social media proliferation into our lives, it certainly is helping everyone to simplify the B2B journey!

If you look at options and techniques that might be slightly different from the ones that are more obvious; lead generation can still become a happy-experience for marketers.

To begin with, it can be a challenge to understand where and how a lead was generated. Was it an outcome of a single activity or was it a result of a combination or series of activities that are difficult to judge at times. Though it might be possible to track the lead, on an average, B2B leads can be quite unquantifiable. But that doesn’t stop anyone from generating leads and here are some proven techniques that can guarantee B2B lead generation for your business.

Social Media:

Being omnipresent on Social Media does help to bring in more leads. Though it may not be the primary source of lead generation, it is an effective channel to establish your brand’s presence online. Besides, Social media can help direct visitors to your website. Ideally, if you help visitors navigate to your landing page or website through multiple links it can certainly be a useful strategy towards creating leads.

You can create new opportunities for B2B lead generation by letting your users sign up for your company newsletters. By using either Facebook or LinkedIn, or both, the newsletter can be a good source for accelerating B2B lead generation.

It is also essential to rightly position call-to-action on your social media posts or on your landing page. This is another way of engaging your audiences for better business outcomes.

Giving Away:

The ‘give-away’ marketing technique may work for you if you want to engage audiences and also build long term relationships. Building relationships is crucial to successful B2B marketing and sales and hence this technique can work to attract and engage a prospect.

Thus, giving away some of your valuable resources such as an e-book, a step-by-step guide, free or limited free access to some tools, thought leadership advice, etc. can go a long way in getting leads and also converting them.

These techniques can surely get you started off if you want to generate more leads, but if you want to delve deeper into knowing how to attract more leads by using other techniques as well, stay tuned!

Many companies have transitioned to work from home mode due to the overwhelming lock-down situation in the face of COVID-19. The good news is that if you adopt certain prevailing marketing strategies with a new approach and an innovative edge added to them, your business can thrive in this challenging environment.

While these unprecedented times are bringing some challenges on to the surface; there are many B2B companies with established sales and marketing practices that are thriving and providing relentless business support to their clients.

B2B companies that provide demand generation services with integrated email marketing services have the capacity to bring maximum results to their clients in these challenging times.

Statistics show a realistic and optimistic picture of how email marketing can be an effective tool to drive revenue:

Research that 59% of B2B professionals say that email marketing is their most successful revenue-generating tool. Research also says that companies that share useful content via email receive a 44% return on investment.

Given the advantage of big data and intent data; email marketing can target specific customers or prospects and the information of services or products can be delivered straight to the inbox of a company’s best prospects.

There are many advantages to email marketing that can help businesses drive revenue.

Attracting the Right Prospects:

If you want to attract customers from a specific target audience; email marketing is one of the most effective tools to do just that. You can reach them anywhere, anytime email marketing campaigns.

Cost-Effective:

Email marketing when done with the help of the right experts can give you the highest ROI. Targeting of the best prospects is key and will achieve the best results.

Measurable:

Measuring the impact of any marketing activity is important, to determine the success of the campaign. With email marketing, a measurement can be done by tracking conversions and/or conversion rates.

Focused Target Audience:

Email marketing will achieve the best results by targeting the best prospects in the campaign. Targeting can be done by company size, job title, industry, geography, intent, installed technology and many other targeting criteria.

Conclusion:

Email marketing is proven to be one of the most effective ways to reach your best prospects and achieve maximum ROI. Email marketing can be an excellent combination with demand generation, b2b lead generation and content syndication.  Email marketing continues to be a successful marketing tool for many companies worldwide.

Have you been waiting to reach out to your target audiences through email marketing and have been looking for an experienced expert to do so? Get in touch with us now to witness how we can help you!

If there was a title for the most transformative year of the decade, 2020 would have been the undisputed contender of the title. A year of change and adoption of new-normal; 2020 has shown the world one of the worst faces of human debacle and at the same time it has also revealed the spirit of human courage, resilience, survival amid uncertainties at its peak. The business world was shaken to its core and while many survived, some thrived after the initial setback settled in.

While the most predominant theme of the year was change and adoption of the new normal, there’s a lot that has changed in the B2B market and several trends have shaped the new normal. This blog is all about the most significant trends of the b2b market in the year 2020.

The Survival-fix- Go Digital

While the whole world was going digital, the year 2020 accelerated it further. The best way to stay connected with customers was to go online and communicate virtually. Social media became the main stage for b2b and other marketers to connect with their potential prospects and maintain a dialogue with them for business.

Nearly 96% of b2b sales teams shifted either partially or fully to remote selling.

65% of B2B decision makers now say that the remote model is more effective than it was before the Pandemic.

Optimizing speed, accuracy and efficiency through personalized communication with customers has been one of the dominant trends of 2020 for b2b sales and marketing organizations.

Virtual events:

Face-to-face events- one of the potential opportunities for the sales teams to get leads and convert leads came to a sudden halt making ‘virtual’ the new normal. Webinars, virtual meet-ups and conferences, video marketing through social media became the hottest trends of 2020.

Virtual contact with customers enabled companies to keep their businesses going on and also provided customers with solutions for their challenges in business.

Customer-centric marketing:

The entire focus shifted from selling to identifying the new needs of the customer, addressing those needs and also creating a focused strategy to meet those needs became imperative. Some of the significant trends are as follows:

• Quick response to customer needs
• Agile sales practices
• Personalized offers
• Relevant content
• Empathetic communication

Email Marketing:

While email marketing has remained one of the popular channels for b2b sales and marketing it gained more leverage in 2020 due to the digital shift and online interactions with potential customers. Email marketing started becoming more and more popular amid both marketers as well as customers.

Better reach and personalized offers for getting more leads has proved to be a winning formula in today. Almost 73% marketers think email marketing as an important tool for success in marketing and 83% use email marketing as their most preferred mode of communication.

Hyper-Personalization:

Another popular trend of 2020 has been hyper-personalization. Customer centric strategies and hyper personalization now meant understanding the finer nuances of customer needs and requirements.

Personalization in communicating with customers and providing customized solutions to them has been one of the most dominant features of 2020. Marketing communication too became more empathetic in order to make it more about reaching out and less about selling.

Listening more and understanding the customers has benefited marketers a lot this year. Therefore, conversational marketing also became more popular this year with all the change and adoption of technology.

Technology:

Technology has always played an important role in b2b. Whether it is automated email marketing campaigns, or gathering data or reaching out through chatbots, technology has been a strong pillar of b2b sales and marketing.

This year’s virtual and online shift was enabled only due to technology. In fact, this forced adoption of virtual communication made many organizations realize that technology support could actually fuel sales and marketing to a great extent. Remote work model was possible only due to collaborative features enabled through technology.

Conclusion:

Several other dominating trends of 2020 include ABM (Account Based Marketing) which has now become a main-stream activity for b2b sales and marketing companies. It has enabled the sales team to further narrow down their focus and concentrate on account based activities for better results.

Remote work model, wherein work from home became a norm was another new-normal of 2020. Several trends from 2020 will continue into the year 2021 as they have proved to be not only beneficial but also better than the traditional marketing and sales approach.  

As a B2B marketer has it ever happened to you that you reached out to your prospects for selling your services but couldn’t get them interested in your company further or into initiating a conversation? Or did a prospect visit your website, spend some time on it but strayed away somewhere else when you were hoping for a solid engagement. If this is happening frequently then you can turn around the situation with the help of retargeting!

Several B2B organizations have huge number of followers through their social media pages but the same followers never engage further or simply never click on the CTA or do not download a content asset that was customized for them.

In the B2B landscape, this is not very uncommon. But what marketers often forget is that, the prospect could have become a promising customer at one point of time and could have got converted easily with retargeting. They forget about that prospect who had registered for the webinar or the followers who liked their posts on social media frequently. Maybe all they needed was a little more nudge to start a conversation. This is exactly where the need for retargeting gets amplified in B2B.

Retargeting is often converting these silent followers or curious observers into your loyal customers. One of the biggest advantages of retargeting is that you do not have to start from scratch or you do not have to do the ground work because it’s already done and they have shown some kind of interest in your services already.

Several factors affect these dynamics. B2B is more complex than B2C and most of the times a lot of decision makers at various levels slow down the process of buying decision. There are other factors such as tough competition or relevant nurturing from competitors or even budget considerations that stop things from moving ahead quickly.

In such scenarios there are few aspects that can help retargeting enhance the conversion rates:

Sales funnel:

If the duration of sales cycle is at least of 6 months then then it’s easier for the sales team to take full advantage of it. Most prospects are lost over an extended period of time and as the market trends change quickly, prospects can also quickly loose interest in your offers. Therefore it’s very important to monitor and analyse prospects in each stage of the sales cycle and keep offering them customized solutions through personalized communication and carry out nurturing consistently.

Content Assets:

Creating content assets is one of the effective ways of retargeting. Webinars that give away valuable insights or a free E-book download, whitepapers, e-mailers that communicate on a one on one level with customized offers are some of the examples of how content assets play a pivotal role in retargeting your b2b prospects.

Landing Page:

Landing page is a crucial opportunity for getting in touch or engaging with your most potential customers. A landing page could be your potential gold-mine where your chances of converting the prospect into a customer are very high. Those who have landed on the landing page can be sent emails with lucrative offers or content assets that not just remind them of you but also help them make a quick buying decision.

Conclusion:

Relevancy and timing play an important role in retargeting the prospects or even with past customers who would want to reinvest in you. It’s therefore important to be watchful, be aware and take quick action. Proper planning and a smart strategy that is in line with the current market trends and with customer behaviour can help convert prospects into customers.

The powerful combination of demand generation and lead generation can create incredible results for b2b sales. Complementing each other; these two provide the right fuel for creating a strong brand image and eventually augment sales and drive revenue growth. So how does one differentiate between these two complementary activities?

This blog helps you see the subtle yet significant differences between these two powerful elements of b2b.

Primary difference:

If you think of demand gen as a way to get your brand out there through brand awareness and brand knowledge transfer, then you would be right. Demand gen is all about generating demand! It’s more about creating brand awareness and then wanting people to come to you to take up your solution. Demand generation is more about creating relationships more than closing sales. It’s more about nurturing and establishing a human connection more than offering automated solutions. It all about introducing your company and its services/ products to the end customers, understanding the need of the customers, feeling the pulse of the customers and then going back and customizing those solutions for specific needs.

Lead generation on the other hand is a crucial part of demand generation and its main objective is to convert potential customers into buyers. Gated content works well to gather incredible data of good leads and it helps convert those leads into customers too. The main strategy is to get people interested in your services and then convert them into buyers.

So what are the major differentiating factors of both demand generation and lead generation?

Two important Influencing factors and enablers of B2B Demand Generation:

Amid other influencing aspects, here are two most important demand gen factors that impact business-

• Content syndication
• Email marketing

Content Syndication:

One of the best ways to increase brand awareness content syndication is a technique that can help optimize your content through various different channels and third party publishing. This can help generate demand by providing crucial information through valuable content assets so that they decide to come to you looking for solutions to their business challenges.

Email Marketing:

Email marketing is one of the best ways to get in touch with your prospects either to offer them with that which they are looking for or to get to know them well. Even social media is a great way to know the taste of your audience and to get to know their business challenges. Valuable emails with a perfect timing for the right audience can generate incredible results when it comes to demand generation campaigns.

Both content syndication and email marketing are great and effective ways to nurture and warm up to your leads.

Two important Influencing factors and enablers of B2B Lead Generation:

Amid others here are two most important lead gen factors that impact business-

Webinars:

One of the reasons why webinars garner more warm leads is because it attracts that crowd which is closer to making a buying decision. In simpler words it helps attract those customers who want to buy very soon and registering for your webinar could mean they are interested in further engaging with you. This is a potential opportunity for converting the good leads who are a part of the webinar into long term customers.

ABM (Account Based Marketing):

Getting acutely specific target through ABM enables better lead conversion. This is one of the most important channels for lead generation as it is targeted for specific accounts. ABM when based on intent data is the closest you can get to convert your leads successfully!

Examples of Demand gen and lead gen are as following-

Conclusion:

There are some subtle differences between demand gen and lead gen yet they operate differently but with the same objective. Lead generation is an important part of the demand generation process and demand generation in turn helps generate more leads for conversion. Complimentary to each other; they are both essential parts of sales and marketing functions and if done well can lead to spectacular results with great ROI.

Most lead generation techniques are direct and involve or suggest critical changes in terms of strategy to get the desired results. However; there are also other techniques or things to watch out for if you want to make lead generation work for you. This blog discusses some such aspects of the lead generation techniques.

Make your strategy buyer-centric:

No matter which technique you use; it’s the buyer who’s the decision maker when it comes to adopting your services, therefore one cannot forget the basic fact that the whole strategy needs to be buyer centric.

It’s best to start with recognizing the buyer stages. The discovery stage is equally critical as the actual buying stage. And the intermediary consideration stage can also help them take a faster decision. All in all, if your overall strategy is customer centric then it is bound to attract, delight and engage the customer regardless of the stage of their journey. For any customer to choose your service or brand, a comprehensive plan that can help them notice you and the nurturing process to keep them engaged and ultimately convert them should be planned out well.

Spend time building the landing page:

The importance of landing page has already been established time and again and the benefits are huge. It is one of the deciding factors whether your prospect will further engage with you or will the lead convert into business and so on. So spending enough time and efforts building your landing page is not just a part of your lead generation camping it’s like taking the prospect further ahead in the buying journey. It’s a bridge between your prospect and the bridge better be strong.

Call to action is a part of the landing page hence it makes it even more crucial. Though various versions of call-to- action exist, you can create your own, but most importantly they should make the prospect take action. You cannot afford to lose this opportunity of the prospect landing on your page and then letting him go off the track. It is the call-to-action button that directs him for a quick buying decision.

Apart from the above two crucial factors that can hugely impact your lead generation results, don’t forget the importance of nurturing. It is one of the most important aspects of lead gen process. Nurturing is about building relationships, and after the lead enters the sales funnel, nurturing is the thing that can provide neccessary ambience for the lead to eventually convert.

Conclusion:

Tactics or techniques; lead generation practices that involve a more buyer-centric approach and includes lead nurturing practices do well. It is also important to measure your lead gen campaign results or analyze them to know whether your strategy is working or whether you need to reconfigure it to align with changing goals of the market and the customer.

Content syndication can be one of the most successful lead generation methodologies for B2B companies. Yes, you heard that right. A strategic solution in lead generation; companies should tap the huge potential of content syndication to generate demand that can create interesting results!

Content syndication is yet to be explored to its optimal level. It is becoming more and more popular with B2B folks and why not; after all it’s showing spectacular results in terms of good leads and ROI. So how does content syndication make a difference for lead gen targets or goals?

Here are some aspects of content syndication that you can use to create more leads for your business growth.

So what exactly does Content syndication do?

• Help generate more demand for your services
• Create new opportunities with more visibility
• Help find good leads who are interested in buying
• Enhance sales and increase revenue

If these points aren’t good enough then what is? Aren’t these some of the major goals for lead gen companies? In fact these are some of the most sought after goals for many B2B companies and content syndication can help them achieve it!

Your content deserves an audience:

Content Syndication is an opportunity to expose your content to new audiences by publishing and distributing your content through various different channels via third-party platform. Through content syndication you have an opportunity to educate, delight, engage your audiences and make them come to you.
If your existing content is performing well, this is taking it a step ahead. In fact, good performing content deserves bigger and more audiences. It is time that your incredible content that has a lot of value deserves many more target audiences out there who are looking for some good content assets. Content syndication is the bridge between you and your leads and it can be a beginning of a long term relationship that can help you convert leads into customers.

Data that proves the growing importance of content syndication:

65% use content syndication as a core lead generation tactic

71% see interactive content delivery as an influential tactic

47% plan to increase the scope for content syndication

This data reveals that content syndication is definitely on a rise and companies should now see the direct benefits of this activity.

Here is how content syndication can help grow your business:

Lead generation machine:

With content syndication, you tap into third party platforms to directly expose your content, and increase your visibility for new audiences to notice you. Many of these users could be a target audience for you and this could be one of the best tactics for you to attract them to your services. With this you can directly connect with your audiences and get them to know who you are and give them an opportunity to discover you.

Brand awareness heightened:

More leads will come with greater brand awareness. Establishing brand awareness through content syndication has huge returns. Once more and more people start seeing your presence online through your content assets and your marketing efforts resonate with their needs; leads will start increasing and some very good leads might come your way.

Syndicating content lets people know you very well and also make you stand out amid this crowded competitive market. An established brand identity can surely pull your prospects towards you. This can also create an opportunity for you to understand who is interested in you and who your target audience is.

Here are some more benefits of content syndication:

• Increase in lead volume
• High return on investment
• Enhanced lead quality
• Expanded reach of target audience
• Increased lead nurturing

Conclusion:

Now that the role of content syndication is clear; its best you team up with a content syndication partner who is experienced in it or even better; a service provider in lead gen and content syndication; would be best to help you drive value out of content assets and thus increase sales. So the next time you think of content distribution think content syndication instead and contact the experts.

How to convert leads into customers, how to attract customers through different channels, how to most aptly communicate with your potential customers and how can this increase the ROI – these are some of the most common challenges being tackled by every B2B marketer. However; the answers can be simplified through smart and strategic approach with the help of data and the realization that instead of simply running behind the leads; the need to generate demand is essential to making successful conversions. This is where demand generation comes into the picture.

Here is a blog that discusses how demand generation can be a more sustainable solution for generating leads.

Create Awareness:

If lead generation is the destination; demand generation is the journey. Being aware of the problem is the first step towards creating and offering a solution. Going with the same logic; marketers are now mapping the digital footprints of the customers and their buying journeys to determine the need. Once the demand has been generated it is easy to target specific audience to attract leads that can convert. 

Design a sustainable solution:

If lead gen is about closing a deal; demand gen is about starting and nurturing a long term relationship. For a demand gen marketer; establishing long term relationship with customers is priority and it can be well done with a better reach. This reach should be strategic in a way that it is designed and based on enough data. The customers for any demand gen campaign can be very well reached through email marketing, social media, offering great content that helps them and much more. But the aim of demand gen is not a quick-fix solution, but to create a more sustainable model for lead generation and lead conversions.

Offer incredible content:

Content that adds value goes a long way in building powerful and sustainable customer relationships. The power of content cannot be ignored and the importance of content is paramount in any demand gen campaign. It serves to bridge the gaps between the problem and the solution by enhancing communication by building a strong relationship dynamic. This nurturing can encourage a prospect to reach out to you. Content also serves the customer with potential inputs, data, insights that he would have had to otherwise spend a lot of time and effort for getting it.

Conclusion:

Demand Generation has huge potential and it can be a great journey if you have a lot to offer. It is a good practice to get the prospect into the loop, nurture and then convert the lead with a more sustainable relationship as an end product.