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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.

Lead generation can be simplified by changing the approach and by taking a few steps backward to analyse some of the underlying and subtle factors that could be working against your goals. Looking closely may help, and you may be surprised to find out how some of the not-so-obvious factors can actually play an important role in converting leads.

In one of our recent blogs, we talked about ‘Reasons why B2B Marketing leads fail to convert.’ This blog talks about some more reasons that could be responsible for failed lead conversions.

Lack of quick response:

The market situation is unpredictable, the competition is tougher than ever before and the customer is digitally active and well aware of what he wants and where to get it from. In this situation the last thing any B2B marketer would want to do is a late response to the customer. Any delayed response can lead to lesser conversion.

If you respond immediately you will most likely be able to keep the customer in the loop and retain his interest and thus successfully engage him

Being prompt is as good as converting a lead, so that way you could only be a response away from converting a lead! And it’s true because a response will not only impress the customer, but further encourage him to communicate and even be interested in setting up a meeting. This is the golden chance every b2b marketing person would wait on for and a quick response might just do the trick.

Inefficient lead nurturing

• Lead nurture emails get a higher response as much as between 4 to 10 times (source: DemandGen)
• Companies that do focused lead nurturing have 50% more chances of generating sales-ready leads that convert (source: Forrester research)

These figures are proof that lead nurturing is a quintessential strategy for converting leads and why not? Any sales person who is adept and is aware of the sales and market climate would know that nurturing is indirectly about acquiring sales, because at the end of the day it’s all about building long term relationships.

Any lack in nurturing is pushing the customer away rather than taking him forward towards conversion

Nurturing gives the scope for any sales team to develop a rapport, offer what the client needs in terms of outstanding content and other offers and keep at it proactively to maintain interest and further engage the lead. Many marketers have a tendency to focus on the top of the funnel that can definitely produce positive results; however if you want the results to keep coming in consistently; then focusing on nurturing the leads is the way to go about it.

Inflexible price models:

This is probably the non-negotiable part of the sales deal; but it can change the game if the prices are made agile and are customized as per the lead and as per the need to convert the lead.

Having price models that are inflexible can make a customer go to your competitor who might be offering the same service at a different price. This is where customization plays a vital role and a flexible price model will definitely help you convert more leads. 

Apart from the above, there are other reasons such as producing high quality content in a strategic manner, having at least a few highly experienced sales people in the team who have dealt with different types of customers earlier and can guide the team for better results etc. These things can change the way you convert leads and the way you do sales.

Conclusion:

Each business is unique and each customer wants something different. Agility and versatility plays a big role when it comes to sales success. There isn’t a better time for cultivating long term relationships by being empathetic than it is now. So, as a marketer you can make the best of this opportunity and tune into your own strategies in a better way to see where things can be fixed for better results.

Everyone knows how effective email marketing can be a boon to B2B sales and marketing. While there are number of ways to optimize email marketing; it is the finer details that one needs to look at to make email marketing really work for any b2b organization.

This blog discusses some of the best ways to leverage the power of this email marketing channel to augment b2b sales.

B2B can get increasingly challenging at times; especially when the need to get more and more good leads increases over a period of time. Owing to the changing climate of the market and the complexities of B2B; marketers should avoid making the mistake of putting all the eggs into one basket when it comes to creating a strategy. The plan should be to take into account several touch points to make the plan work while creating a more comprehensive sales and marketing strategy.

Email marketing is instrumental in creating positive sales results and more and more marketers are keen on using it:

• 35% of marketers choose to send 3 to 4 emails every week to their customers
• An average of 80% of marketers have experienced an increased email engagement in the past 12 months
• By the year 2024 the average email users across the globe is estimated to increase to a whopping 4.48 billion users (according  to research from Statista, 2019)

Here’s how you can make the best out of your email marketing campaign:

Define the ideal target customer:

This is one of the best ways to start off any of your email marketing campaigns. It’s creating a strong foundation to facilitate a smooth take off. If there’s any ambiguity in this area; chances are that it might hamper the results of your email marketing campaign. Hence having maximum clarity in knowing and defining an ideal customer is the first step towards effective email marketing

This can help in many ways:

1. You can effectively segment lists for your campaign for better results

2. Having a clearly defined ideal target customer list is a great opportunity to personalize all your e-mailers and communication. Giving them exactly what they might be looking for with relevant offers and services can increase your chances of getting your customers engaged and also for creating long-term relationships

3. Addressing key pain points and challenges to provide specific solutions and thereby creating good leads that convert

Segmenting your email lists:

Segmented email lists always bring on the best results when it comes to creating successful email marketing campaigns. Segmenting always increases the relevancy with appropriate customization. It further breaks down the list into sub-sections to make it more specific and thus helping you to narrow down the list for better results. The sub-sections can be based on various segments of the industry, the role of the decision maker etc.

Conclusion:

There are various techniques of email marketing that can help you accelerate sales or even reduce your sales cycle. But a lot also depends upon your business goals and how you want to align your email marketing campaign with your business goals.

Lead generation has evolved and so have the customers. Each customer is different and therefore marketers today have to tailor or customize their sales and marketing strategies with the needs of the evolving customer.

There are number of reasons why certain b2b marketing leads do not convert and the answers are deep-rooted at times. A deeper analysis of each and every aspect of your sales and marketing plan can reveal the solution.

Here are a few reasons that throw light on the factors that can be responsible for the failure of lead conversion and how you can fix them.

Broken Landing pages and lack of call-to-action:

Lead generation is a team work in the sense that there are various elements that are working in the background that are responsible directly and indirectly for both success and failure of lead gen. A more comprehensive sales strategy almost always works in favor of the results of lead generation and amid other crucial elements of lead gen such lead nurturing, use of right content etc. landing pages and call to action can make or break a deal too.

As much as the site architecture is important; a flawless landing page never fails to impress the prospect. After all, a landing page is like a launch pad for your prospective buyer and a golden opportunity for you to convert those who have chosen to land on your page. A malfunctioned or broken landing page will only  give the impression that you are using outdated services and are not investing enough in your own products  and services, thereby making them assume that you would probably fail in delivering results to them too.

A call-to-action is actually going to reduce the sales cycle. How? Well, your call-to-action is going to encourage your prospect into taking a quick action or make a quick buying decision. Hence having a strong call to action is a must for leads to convert.

Less elaborate data:

A lot of marketers have had to give up their dream of having good leads and having good leads convert because of their broken or lack of quality data. If you have done everything in your capacity to get those leads converted without success; then the problem might be in the data. The more intricate and elaborate data you have; the better the results! In B2B; the data is pivotal when it comes to lead generation; because it’s really worth knowing your audience well.

Incorrect buyer Personas:

If your data is incorrect it will naturally affect the buyer persona details. Buyer persona is paramount in all communication or in any lead generation strategy. Personas are used not just for direct sales activity but also for creating various other entities such as the collaterals, content, communication, landing pages and much more. Therefore a very well-defined persona is almost like a foundation to a rock-solid lead gen campaign and demand gen strategy. In order to engage with sales rep effectively; one needs to have accurate buyer persona. One can have a great mix of fiction-based and fact-based persona that can lead to a better response.

Conclusion:

This may not look like the most obvious reason; but disconnect between sales and marketing can be one of the other crucial reasons why the leads may not be converting into business. Many more reasons can affect your efforts, so it’s best to have a comprehensive analysis to fix things on many fronts for better lead generation results.

Amid all the changes in the market, what has also predominantly changed is the buying process of the customer. With most businesses operating virtually and leveraging tools to have a better outreach; the customer too seems to have adopted new ways of buying and purchasing. Today’s customers are not only tech-savvy; they are also very well aware of what they want and they have ample amount of information available on digital platforms to a make a well informed decision.

Today’s customers make their buying decisions way before their first contact or communication with you! This means that as a marketer and a lead generation evangelist; you need to know the customer journey very well and have enough data with you about the customer to help him navigate and encourage him to make a purchase from you.

This is where the best lead generation tactics help! This blog discusses 3 such practices that will sway the customers towards buying from you.

1. Accurate Buyer Persona:

Since we talk about customers and how to sway them into the direction that you want them to while making the buying decisions; the first question you need to ask yourself is, are you well equipped with the right knowledge based on strong data support about a particular buyer persona. And the answer to this should be a definitive yes if you want to succeed in lead generation.  When you know what to offer to your buyer personas and when they realize that you know them well; they will most likely prefer to make the purchase from you.

2. Perfect identification of success metrics:

Your past lead generation strategies and most importantly the results, offer you an opportunity to fully know where you are headed and if the direction you are headed is right or wrong. The metrics and the analysis can give you a deep insight into what’s working and what’s not!

So how do you measure the success of your lead gen campaign?

There are several ways to do that. One of them is identifying the organic traffic; something that can help you to understand how many people have found you rather than you having to find them. There are also other ways to measure the effectiveness of your efforts such as the cost per lead, bounce rate, click through rate etc. These are small entities that have the power to define the bigger picture when it comes to lead generation.

3.Clear Objectives and Goals:

This one probably comes first, but sometimes when you have outlined the process or a roadmap, it’s always best to go back to the pre-defined objectives that you have outlined at the beginning of the process. This helps in perfectly aligning each step of the process with the goals.

Having clear and well-defined goals is highly essential for successful lead generation. So having clarity about what exactly do I want to achieve out of this campaign, what numbers am I looking at to be able to say I am achieving what I set out to achieve, how is my strategy road map aligned with the objectives, are the sales and marketing teams on the same page, are the goals and processes in-line with the budgetary allotment, is the management agreeing with the goals and how much time do I have to reach my goals.

These are critical questions and the answers to these questions is the best strategy you will ever have, as it will help give you a more realistic picture of the lead generation goals that you would be striving hard for to achieve!

Conclusion:

Best practices can be different for different organizations, but if you make sure the above three practices are a part of your lead gen campaigns; you can be sure of the results.

In the B2B landscape, the overall sales opportunities and leads that have the capacity to convert, determine the financial health of the business. While the sales and marketing functions do operate with differently; there common aim is it to get more business, more ROI! And this can be determined by the SQLs (Sales Qualified Leads) to a large extent!

The most enabling functions of a b2b organization; the sales and marketing teams; if not aligned, can also become the reason for not achieving the desired business outcomes. This is a known fact and many organizations are therefore striving to bring coherence, coordination and collaboration between these two teams.

Though the sales and marketing processes are different; the marketing department’s job is to ensure that the good leads are discovered and passed on to the sales funnel and the job of the sales department is to ensure the organization, that all the good leads will be converted into business with nurturing and other strategies.

However; according to research here are some startling stats that are eye opening in terms of the need to focus on the SQLs:

• Almost 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales
• Nearly 61% of B2B marketers send all the leads directly to sales; but only 27% of those leads get qualified
• Only 56% of b2b organizations verify leads before sending them to sales
• Almost 65% of companies have not established lead nurturing processes
• A whopping 79% of organizations have not established lead scoring

All these statistics proves the need to have a more coherent process for both sales and marketing teams and how identifying sales qualified leads is the need of the time.

So why is SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) so vital for better ROI?

A lead that is ready to buy, right away, is the golden opportunity for the sales team to achieve the desired b2b ROI. An SQL is usually defined as the lead who is interested in buying your services. It is therefore important that the Sales and Marketing teams identify these potential leads and engage them further for more actionable decision making.

So how do you perfect the SQL performance or conversion rate?

This is where the lead scoring comes in. The quality of an SQL reflects the quality of the MQL and lead scoring processes and so on. When all these beads are woven with a common string that makes sure the MQLs are qualified to be the perfect SQLs and so on; the results begin to appear. So how the sales team can effectively engage the MQLs determine the success of SQLs too. Without the coherence of both the teams and clear communication regarding goals, this cannot be achieved.

An effective SQL framework enables marketers to make a timely sale to the right prospect. In order to achieve this, one needs to understand certain factors. Precise identification of prospects is one of them and a very important one at that!

Your target audience is important and aligning your business goals with the need of the audience is crucial. What this means is that one should put in all efforts in identifying the sales-ready leads from amongst the prospects. Also align nurturing strategies such as great content and communication for the right leads at the right time. Focusing on long-tail keywords is important too.

Conclusion:

There are many ways in getting good leads and converting them. But if you focus on the most crucial part of your sales cycle i.e. the sales qualified leads and have a workable plan to convert those leads, you won’t be too far away from your lead conversion goals.