Is It Back to the Future for B2B Marketing? (Finally!)

April 26, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Buyer Persona, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Strategy /by Susan Mitchell

Have you noticed how disjointed some B2B marketing is? Over the last ten, and especially five, years this seemed to be a growing trend. Article after article talked about and many B2B marketers implemented digital, social media, inbound marketing, SEO, etc. as though each can stand alone. And sadly, in many cases, each has stood alone. Many marketers gave little thought to an overall integrated marketing strategy. As a result, these marketing efforts delivered less than stellar results. However, last week I attended a conference that gives me hope we may finally be seeing a return to strategic integrated marketing. Read on to learn more about this and other takeaways from the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit (MAM Summit). Read more

4 Tips for Conquering the Top Decision Stage Challenges

April 13, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Buyer Journey, Buyer Persona, Content Marketing /by Susan Mitchell

Part 3 in a 3-Part Series on Content Marketing for the B2B Buyer’s Journey

I discussed in Part 1: Awareness stage challenges and in Part2: 6 Tips for Conquering Consideration Stage Challenges. In Part 3 of this 3-Part series, I’ll discuss the Decision stage of the buyer’s journey and provide tips for overcoming the top B2B content marketing challenges in the Decision stage.

Decision stage buyer activities

The buyer moves into the Decision stage once they know the best type of solution for solving their problem or opportunity for improvement. They are ready to buy, but haven’t decided exactly which vendor to use, but your company made their short list. During the Decision stage the buyer is typically researching their short list vendors online. They want to understand which vendor’s specific products, services, and capabilities are the best fit for their needs. They are looking for content that helps them:

compare vendors and pricing
sell the solution internally to upper management (return on investment, ROI calculators)
purchase and implement the solution

The content marketer’s goal during the Decision stage is convincing the buyer your solution is the best fit.

Content marketing in the Decision stage

For most B2B companies, the Decision stage is where others such as purchasing and upper management become active participants in the buying decision. So it’s important Read more

Challenges in the Consideration Stage: 6 Tips for Conquering

March 28, 2017/0 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Buyer Journey, Buyer Persona, Content Marketing /by Susan Mitchell

Part 2 in a 3-Part Series on Content Marketing for the B2B Buyer’s Journey

In Part 2 of this 3-Part series, I share the top challenges B2B marketers face when developing Consideration stage content. I also provide tips for overcoming these challenges. In Part 1 I reviewed the Buyer’s Journey and provided tips for conquering challenges in the Awareness stage. The buyer moves into the next stage, Consideration, after clearly defining their problem, or opportunity for improvement, and determining it’s worth finding a solution. Now let’s take a look at the Consideration stage to understand the top challenges B2B marketers face.

Consideration stage buyer activities

The buyer in the Consideration stage first researches and evaluates the different approaches, methods, or solution strategies available for solving their problem or making improvements. The buyer wants to understand and think about which approach best fits their needs, so they are comparing solution strategies (make or buy, hire or outsource are two examples of solution approaches). They also begin comparing specific solutions, vendors, and suppliers within the approach that best fits their needs. They are looking for content that helps them understand the pros and cons of available approaches and why it would be the best fit for them. Content should also begin comparing product/service features and functions. The goal for a content marketer during the Consideration stage is to convince the buyer your solution method is the best fit for them and that your specific solution should be on their short list.

Tips for Conquering the Top 2 Challenges in the Awareness Stage

March 9, 2017/3 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Buyer Journey, Buyer Persona, Content Marketing /by Susan Mitchell

Part 1 in a 3-Part Series on Content Marketing for the B2B Buyer’s Journey

B2B content marketing seeks to provide helpful and compelling content for each stage of the Buyer’s Journey. By thinking about what actions a buyer is taking in each stage, B2B marketers should provide content that educates. Your content should help the buyer progress to the next stage in the Buyer’s Journey and toward your product or service.

In a three-part blog series, I address the primary challenges B2B content marketers face during each buyer’s journey stage and provide tips for how to conquer these challenges. So let’s jump in!

Review of the buyer’s journey

First, a quick review of the buyer’s journey which defines the typical actions and steps a prospective buyer takes. The buyer starts by first understanding their problem to finally purchasing a solution. By defining specific phases or stages along the journey, we can better understand what information the buyer needs in each stage. There are many different buyer’s journey concepts available, some more granular than others. I prefer HubSpot’s Buyers Journey, shown in the graphic below, because it is easy to understand and more than adequate for content marketing purposes.

The entire journey has only three stages, Awareness, Consideration, and Decision. In this blog, Part 1 of 3, I discuss the Awareness stage.

Awareness stage buyer activities

During the Awareness stage, the buyer is just becoming aware there is a problem that may need to be solved. Or they may be discovering an opportunity for improvement. The buyer is typically researching online and offline to better understand if they have a problem, or opportunity, that warrants further investigation. They are looking for trustworthy educational content. This is content that is not trying to sell. It is content that helps them more clearly define their problem or opportunity. The goal for a content marketer during the Awareness stage is to gain the buyer’s attention. The successful content marketer does this by offering educational and helpful content in the places where the buyer is looking and researching.

Customer Retention: From Sticky Relationships to LTV

February 24, 2017/4 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Retention /by Susan Mitchell

B2B customer retention marketing focuses on strategies and programs designed to retain your existing customers and optimize lifetime customer value. In my previous post, B2B Retention Marketing: The First Thing You Must Do, I discussed why B2B customer retention marketing is worth doing and where to begin. Now let’s talk about some strategies B2B marketers can use to retain their existing customers and gain additional revenues throughout the relationship.

Strategies for customer retention

At a fundamental level retaining your customers boils down to keeping them happy enough to continue doing business with you. Many customers, though of course it varies by industry and product/service, will simply maintain the status quo. Change involves the risk, real or perceived, of an unknown provider. Most importantly, changing providers also involves switching costs. Switching costs are actual costs the customer incurs (financial fees for early termination) or personal costs (career risks, time required to research providers and negotiate an agreement) to stop buying your product or service and begin with a new provider.

Create “sticky” customer relationships

To prevent your customers from defecting to competitors who will eventually upset the Read more

B2B Retention Marketing: The First Thing You Must Do

February 10, 2017/4 Comments/in B2B Digital Marketing, B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Customer Retention /by Susan Mitchell

Have you ever found yourself writing B2B marketing copy with fingers crossed, hoping your company could actually deliver? You know the copy I’m talking about that describes how great your product and the customer experience is using phrases like:

our product has the lowest total cost of ownership
we deliver premium customer support
easy payments with detailed monthly reporting
quick spare parts delivery and expert troubleshooting
product/service reviews to ensure you get the most value

As a marketer you should be confident making promises like these to prospective customers. After all, the messages marketing and sales communicate to the customer during the sales cycle sets customer expectations. However, if expectations don’t match reality, then you’ve likely got low customer retention rates. And what marketer wants to work hard acquiring new leads, only to learn your customers defect to the competition after a short time.

Retention data

Losing customers isn’t only frustrating for marketers, it’s really bad for sustaining business growth. Consider the following data:

From Bain & Company:
- Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits 25 – 95%
- The likelihood of selling to an existing customer is 60 – 70%, versus 5 – 20% to a new lead
It costs five times as much to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one according to Lee Resource Inc. Although I’ve seen numbers as high as 10 times depending on your product/service and industry.

Check out this infographic Customer Acquisition Vs.Retention Costs Statistics and Trends for even more data.

The point is, if your customer retention is low, don’t assume that a retention marketing program will improve your numbers. Before you start a retention marketing program, Read more

8 Cheap & Easy Methods for Gathering Competitive Intelligence

December 20, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B Marketing, Competitive Intelligence /by Susan Mitchell

In my previous post, Competitive Intelligence: 8 Ways B2B Marketers Should Use, I discussed what competitive intelligence is and how B2B marketers should be using it to stay ahead of their competition. In this post I want to share ideas for gathering competitive intelligence.

The Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals defines competitive intelligence as: The legal and ethical collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of a business competitor.

According to Benjamin Gilad, president of the Academy of Competitive intelligence, “Companies spend about $20 billion on market research annually and about another $2 billion on analyzing specific competitors.” I don’t know about you, but I never worked in a company that spent anywhere near that on competitive intelligence. In fact, most of the companies had no formal system or process and no people devoted to gathering competitive intelligence. As is typical in most small and medium (and even large ones if the truth be told) B2B companies, competitive intelligence is an ad hoc word-of-mouth sort of thing. Typically sales and marketing send emails or have phone calls whenever anyone sees or hears something about a competitor.

As the marketing leader for a medium size B2B product manufacturer, I led a CRM implementation. This included creating a process for gathering and maintaining competitor information in the CRM. I’ll share ideas based on this experience, along with many years gathering competitive intelligence. For instance, gathering competitive intelligence for specific sales opportunities, analyzing the competitive landscape for strategic marketing plans, ongoing business development, and creating competitor tools for the sales team.

Here are 8 inexpensive ways you can gather competitive intelligence for your B2B marketing:

Competitive Intelligence: 8 Ways B2B Marketers Should Use

December 11, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B Marketing, Competitive Intelligence /by Susan Mitchell

Maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s not much discussion about competitive intelligence in B2B marketing circles lately. However, competitive intelligence should be an ongoing effort, not a one-time snapshot, even in small and medium sized companies. According to the Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), competitive intelligence is the legal and ethical collection and analysis of information regarding the capabilities, vulnerabilities, and intentions of business competitors.

A 2014 study by Global Intelligence Alliance (now M-Brain), Market Intelligence Trends 2020, reported that 42% of respondents said competitors will be the most important area of focus for market intelligence with regards to the business environment in 2020.

Here are 8 ways B2B marketers should be using competitive intelligence:

B2B Buyer Personas: 6 Easy Ways to Research & Develop

November 23, 2016/0 Comments/in B2B Marketing, Buyer Persona, Content Marketing, Lead Generation /by Susan Mitchell

In my previous post I shared 7 reasons B2B marketers need buyer personas. B2B buyer personas describe your ideal customers so that your social posts, emails, website, blogs, and other marketing content attract, convert, and nurture the right people.

Now that you’re convinced you need buyer personas, these tips will help you get started. According to Cintell’s Understanding B2B Buyers: The 2016 Benchmarking Study high-performing companies use a variety of methods to compile insights about their buyers, while underperforming companies reported using fewer sources of data. So use as many of the tips below as you can to research and develop your B2B buyer personas.

Here are 6 tips for researching and developing B2B buyer personas:

1. Create (steal) a persona template – The first thing you need to know is what information will describe and personify your ideal customer so that it’s meaningful to internal users in marketing and sales. Create a buyer persona template with sections for the types of information you want to collect.

Why start from scratch when you can get persona templates for free. Just do a quick Google search and you’ll find many more in addition to these – HubSpot Buyer Persona Guide, Content Marketing Institute Target Persona Template, Content4Demand Buyer Profile Playbook. The HubSpot and CMI templates are simple to use, but I like the Content4Demand templates which are downloadable from within their Playbook because they are more comprehensive, providing a richer description of the persona. As you review the templates, take what makes sense for your situation to create your own custom buyer persona template. With this in hand, the rest of your B2B buyer persona research will fill in the blanks.

2. Analyze customer and prospect data – According to the B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America 64% of marketers use a dedicated email platform while 51% use a marketing automation system. That’s a lot of contact data. Plus you’ve likely got a CRM system with even more customer and prospect data. Mine your contact data for things like contact titles, company types, gender, and vertical. Use this information to focus in on specific LinkedIn profiles (see #5 below). You can also use this data to segment and send a survey to your contacts to gather insights.

It is concerning to see that only 47% of B2B marketers use buyer personas according to the B2B Content Marketing 2017: Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends—North America even though more than half use a dedicated email platform or marketing automation system. Apparently these marketers aren’t convinced they need buyer personas.

3. Interview sales – Your frontline sales people know who they want as customers and who have made the best customers in the past. The same goes for Key Account or National Account sales people. So interview your sales team to learn who they see as your ideal customer. Be sure to pick sales people from the different geographies you sell into and with experience in the persona’s vertical. It may also be insightful to interview sales support or account managers. Depending on your product/service and company structure, these people probably know your existing customers better than anyone else.

Attending regional or national sales meetings is a great way to get in-person interviews with sales. Of course picking up the phone works too, especially if timing is an issue. Interviewing sales team members has the added bonus of helping align sales and marketing.

4. Interview your customers and prospects – There’s nothing better than hearing firsthand what your customers and prospects think, how they find information, and who they look to for advice. If you have time and access, conduct in-person or phone interviews with customers and prospects.

Trade shows can be a great place to do quick in-person interviews, as are sales ride-alongs. Or review your CRM database with guidance from sales to find suitable customers and prospects to interview over the phone. Be sure to keep the call less than 30 minutes, 15 minutes is better.

5. Use LinkedIn – Search LinkedIn to find real customers, prospects, and others similar to them using titles, companies, and verticals. Look at individual profiles to learn their education level, interests, “typical” background, certifications, associations, and years of experience. See what LinkedIn groups they belong to and who they follow.

LinkedIn job postings for the titles/roles you are researching can provide additional insight. For instance, things like education, background and experience, certifications, plus their responsibilities and goals. You may need a LinkedIn Premium account to see the information you want, but can drop back to a free Basic account afterwards.

6. Interview customer service – You may need to understand and describe those who actually use your product, a user persona, especially if your marketing efforts include customer retention goals. The user of your product or service often has direct influence on renewal/repurchase decisions. Your customer service reps know better than anyone else in your company what describes your ideal user . They know their challenges, typical titles/role in the company, where they go to get information, and how their input factors into the buying decision.

You may only need one persona to improve your marketing results and can add others later. Developing buyer personas is a bit like exercising — it can be hard to get going and there’s many ways to go about it. But like the Nike slogan – Just Do It! Using these tips can make getting started on your highest priority persona easy.

What techniques have you found effective for researching and developing B2B buyer personas?

Posts