Resource
We’re talking about engagement on the blog this month, focusing on three key groups: your prospects, customers and employees. Today we continue the discussion on your customers, a group that must be nurtured to inspire repeated purchases and long-term advocacy. Even when the first sale is closed, your work isn’t done.
Keeping the customer journey simple is often challenging for B2B marketers, thanks to the complex products and services offered by many companies in the space. Despite that, it’s crucial that the customer’s trip through the end of the sales funnel is streamlined as much as possible, even when dealing with large enterprise solutions.
Think backwards.
To keep customers engaged, start at the end of the sales funnel and think backwards. Streamline and simplify each interaction with your company, so the customer’s experience is exactly what you want it to be: easy to understand, easy to commit and easy to close the deal. There are typically many places that present opportunity for simplification. Reducing complicated online forms to simple clicks, for example, will improve customer happiness over the long-term and keep them committed to your company.
Have a plan for after the sale.
Continue engaging customers even after they’ve purchased your product. Make sure your customer service or sales team has a plan in place to systematically reach out to customers. They can ask if they’re pleased with their purchase, if they need user support, or even if they were happy with your company’s sales process. More often than not, customers who are asked for their opinion are happy to provide feedback and in turn, feel like a valued member of your community. Perhaps most importantly, if your company’s service expires at some point and has to be renewed, it will be more natural for your sales team to invite them to repurchase if they’ve been in touch all along. Many customers will appreciate your attempt to make their lives easier by streamlining the renewal process.
Has your company simplified customer experience?
Image via (cc) DennisM2
Resource
To continue our discussion on engagement, today we’re focusing on customer advocates. Some B2B marketers consider this category to be more prevalent in B2C, but that’s not necessarily the case. Recruiting B2B customer advocates is simply a matter of knowing where to look and planning your approach.
In our age of social media and peer review, the B2B buying process has changed. The shape of the sales funnel is no longer straightforward and predictable. The internet has empowered buyers to conduct research and seek recommendations from colleagues they trust. Prospects have access to more information than ever before, and when they seek answers, customers advocating for your product can make or break a sale. B2B devotees might not be as easy to cultivate as their B2C counterparts, but they are powerful allies.
Here are three ways to build advocacy for your company:
1. Identify committed customers
The first step in cultivating advocacy is to identify your company’s most committed customers. There are a variety of places to look for this – perhaps in email marketing data or by careful social listening. Who’s opening your messages regularly, and who’s referencing you on Twitter? Repeat buyers and long-term customers are often a good place to start if your customer base isn’t yet engaged with you on social media.
2. Connect them to each other
Once you’ve identified your most committed customer base, it can be strengthened by helping them connect to one another. Many B2B companies have successful user forums that enable customers to interact and discuss what they love – or maybe what they don’t – about your product. It helps you improve your customer service and product offerings and gives customers a place to strengthen their relationship with your company. Creative use of testimonials also connects customers and builds advocacy. Consider asking loyal customers to share success stories with prospects who are close to purchase, or host a testimonial contest on social channels.
3. Offer brand co-ownership and participation
The user forums and testimonials mentioned above are excellent examples of brand co-ownership. In our digital and social media-driven world, customers love to interact with brands in quick and immediate ways. This relates just as strongly to B2B companies as B2C. Think outside the box to discover new ways your company can have authentic conversations with customers, involve them in design or creation contests, or perhaps include them in survey-based decision making. The possibilities are endless, but the goal is the same: be engaging with your customers, and advocates will emerge.
How does your company encourage customer advocacy?
Image via (cc) Second Judicial Circuit
Resource
To continue our exploration of engagement, we’re letting you in on a little secret. Today’s simple piece of advice might surprise you, but it works every time. Companies want to keep leads engaged from the first point of contact to closing the sale, but with the twisting shape of today’s sales funnel, that can be hard to do. To keep prospects engaged, get them thinking for themselves. This strategy is key:
Ask your leads questions.
Sales and marketing teams should present questions to prospects rather than push their products in one-sided conversations. Brand interactions with leads should be dynamic and engaging, just like a discussion with a friend. These questions can be posed in a number of different formats, but the goal is the same: in the end, the prospect identifies his needs and guides himself to your company’s product as the solution.
Ask questions in these places to get your leads thinking for themselves:
Face-to-face
In-person conversations with sales representatives almost always include a pitch. It’s up to your company to make the interaction more human by focusing the conversation on the prospect’s needs. How? Ask questions. Discover their pain points and offer solutions.
Phone Calls
Though lead nurturing has evolved in a variety of ways in the digital age, phone calls aren’t dead, especially in B2B. Professionals responsible for B2B purchases take their investments very seriously and are often willing to devote phone time to understand a product further. In this case, the same thing applies. Ask questions and focus your approach on the customer’s needs.
Email
In B2B marketing, a lot of conversations happen over email. This often starts with email marketing strategies and evolves to more personal engagement with customer service or sales representatives. These email exchanges should be initiated by your company to engage prospects and demonstrate that you care about their perspective. Use email to conduct personal, one-person surveys that can improve your product offerings and approach. Leads will appreciate the personalized attention and become more likely to buy from your company in the future.
Social Media
Social channels are an excellent place to pose questions to leads. They might be in the form of personalized responses to individuals, or simply broader questions as part of your social content strategy. Either way, your company is likely to get high response rates. People like to engage; you simply have to provide a platform for them to do so.
What questions do you ask to engage your prospects?
Image via (cc) Richard Stebbing
Resource
This month on the blog, we’re talking about engagement. Today we’re explaining the number one secret to keeping prospects engaged, which might surprise you. It’s not new or revolutionary, but it’s essential. One of the most critical pieces of the lead nurturing puzzle is this: follow up. Follow up often, and be consistent. Companies who have adopted an aligned sales and marketing strategy are often best equipped to engage their target in continued communication.
Following up doesn’t necessarily mean a series of check-in calls or emails, because your company is more engaging than that. In a world of constant chatter, it’s important to stand out however you can. Lead nurturing is a perfect opportunity to do just that. When you build a follow up plan, think outside the box to make every interaction educational and valuable.
Here are four refreshing ways to follow up and keep prospects engaged:
1. Supply relevant information
Few things are more powerful than receiving helpful information at the right time. When a company provides the answer a prospect is seeking, that person is more likely to be intrigued, become engaged and turn into a customer. With smart social listening and data-driven insights, companies can provide highly relevant white papers or case studies, turning leads into sales.
2. Offer a product trial
When it’s time to follow up with a prospect, offer something they can’t refuse. For some, this might be a discount or incentive, and for others, it might be a product trial. Either way, create something exclusive that only your engaged network has the privilege to enjoy.
3. Use success stories
One thing that B2B and B2C companies have in common is the power of testimonials. Peer to peer advice is highly respected, and your follow up system should use it. Provide prospects with testimonials related to their industry, or connect them to your community’s user forum. Real life success stories of your product or service might convince a lead to stay engaged or take the next step.
4. Answer questions in unexpected ways
Why put a lead on the phone with a sales rep when you could answer questions in a more dynamic way? Try starting conversations with leads on social networks, or offering video testimonials from customer advocates. Be visual, responsive and conversational – in a word, engaging.
How does your company follow up with prospects?
Image via (cc) Angelo DeSantis
Resource
Today, we begin our series on engagement by discussing one of the most important groups: your target. Engaging prospects is an art that’s been long explored by marketers, though it’s changed a lot in recent years thanks to the internet and social media. While it might be easier to engage leads at some points in the cycle with those tools, at other times it seems nearly impossible to break through the chatter. In B2B marketing, the process of engaging targets is particularly complex.
B2B buying cycles are long and involve multiple people, so keeping prospects engaged from start to finish is no easy feat. Marketers are faced with the challenge of not only attracting potential buyers to their content, but inspiring them to take action. Believe it or not, the secret to engaging prospects is something that some might associate more closely with B2C marketing:
Provide interactive experiences.
Here are four ways to get started:
1. Know your customers
Here at Movéo, we believe firmly in data-driven strategies. With that in mind, it’s important to remember that no engagement plan is complete without a careful examination of the information you have relating to prospects. Whether it’s part of your database or an analysis of your site traffic, there is much to be discovered before you can engage targets on their terms. To go a step further, remember that B2B buyer personas can be more powerful than ever, if used correctly. In the words of Ardath Arbee, don’t let them stay in the closest.
2. Make interaction simple.
B2B prospects are balancing a lot at work and weighed down by the importance of their decision; after all, their professional reputation might be at stake. With that in mind, make it simple and enjoyable for them to engage with your brand. For example, make forms that require an easy click rather than multiple fields.
3. Invest in content.
B2B content requires extensive strategy and planning, because it needs to be irresistible to your target. Make sure it’s relevant to their needs and solves their problems. Your company should know what they need before they realize it themselves. For more help, check out our content series on the blog.
4. Be human.
B2B companies who humanize the marketing process find great success. To get there, think beyond the technical nature of your niche, and consider the people making the decisions. Put yourself in their shoes and understand their fears and questions related to the industry. Social media has made it easier to start these conversations in a human-to-human way that’s healthy for any brand.
Does your brand provide interactive experiences for prospects?
Image via (cc) Pete
Resource
Recently, the word engagement has been getting a lot of attention among marketers. It’s certainly important, but what exactly does it mean, anyway? Some companies apply it to employee engagement, and others make the focus external, to customers and prospects. While one business believes internal culture is the path to success, another spends more time and energy meeting customer needs.
The truth is, engagement is essential across the board.
Increasing engagement is key to increasing sales. Companies can’t afford to focus all their energy on one of the three groups; instead, they must all be balanced in a cohesive approach. Lead generation is important, for example, but it won’t get you very far without productive, engaged employees. Put simply, successful companies make sure they’re firing on all cylinders when it comes to engagement.
This month on Get There, we’re covering engagement from every angle. By following along, you’ll learn to engage targets, turn existing customers into long-term advocates and simultaneously inspire employees to bolster the brand. Combining three approaches will make your brand engaging and most importantly, increase your bottom line. Best of all, we’ll offer advice that relates specifically to B2B companies.
On Monday, we’ll begin by discussing your prospects. We understand how to engage your target, so we hope to see you there.
Image via (cc) Véronique Debord-Lazaro
Resource
Today’s guest post is from Dave Cannon, Vice President of Creative Technology at Movéo.
As we wrap up our focus on email marketing for the month and close in on the mid-year mark, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some of the predictions and trends that were noted about the future of email in 2014.
One resource I like to check in with from time to time regarding all things email are the good folks over at EmailMonday. An article they posted, “The Future of Email Marketing in 2014 — All Email Marketing Trends,” includes a nice, succinct list of predictions on email marketing from a variety of industry-leading sources.
Particularly exciting for me was the concept of custom audiences and how organizations can leverage their email marketing lists to target those people on social networks where an email address is used for the login. With custom audiences, you can turn those database contacts who seem like dead weight — because they don’t respond to your emails — into direct targets on these social channels, where hopefully they’ll be more inclined to respond.
Do you see these predictions coming to fruition from your perspective? Let us know in the comments.
Image via (cc) Otto Nassar
Resource
Here on Get There, we devoted the entire month to email marketing. It’s still one of the most important aspects of a multi-touch lead nurturing program, and it’s not going anywhere. Newer digital marketing tools and constant brand chatter have only made inbox real estate more valuable. Like anything else, it’s important to stay up to date and keep your strategy relevant in the current marketing landscape.
Today, we’re sharing four of our favorite email marketing posts from around the web, and we hope they’ll be helpful.
In this post, Buffer takes a look at email marketing’s ten most important question. All of their answers are backed by research, and it’s a great place to refresh your email skills or get started for the first time.
Like us, this post points out that email is not dead at all – it’s actually thriving. It offers ten tips to making email a relevant, powerful conversion tool.
This SlideShare presentation looks at email marketing’s past to help us understand how to shape its future.
Supported by data, this post outlines a report suggesting email marketers aren’t making the most of automation and explores the barriers that prevent them from doing so.
For more email marketing insights, check out our April blog posts.
Image via (cc) Jon Gosier
Resource
Everyone in digital marketing understands the importance of compelling subject lines. Getting emails opened is essential to conversion, so there are endless advice posts on the internet to help marketers make subjects more clickable and appealing. Despite the buzz, sometimes it’s still difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes a subject line work for your audience. They have a unique set of interests, after all, which is exactly why they’ve signed up to communicate with you.
B2B companies often find it particularly challenging to craft engaging subject lines. Faced with highly technical products, marketers feel confined to complex, serious language. Thankfully, B2B communications can be just as engaging as their B2C counterparts.
Here are six ways to make B2B headlines just as sexy as anyone else’s:
1) Always address audience concerns
Subject lines can address the concerns of your audience by incorporating any number of things: industry, company, location or product interests, to name a few. Whatever you choose, make it clear in your subjects that you solve your customers’ problems.
2) Stay short and sweet
Your prospect’s inbox gets very full, so competing for opens is no easy feat. According to this data, 28-39 characters is the ideal length for an email subject line, so increase opens by keeping it short and sweet.
3) Don’t get too clever or complex
In subject lines, direct and easy to understand is the way to go. While it might be tempting to be vague or clever, customers prefer to know exactly what you’re offering if they choose to click.
4) Ask questions
Prospects like to be engaged with questions. Use them in subject lines to demonstrate understanding or start a conversation that will continue in the email.
5) Add B2B personalizations
Don’t be afraid to customize subject lines with the data you’ve collected from prospects. In B2B, this might mean calling out product interest or referencing the lead’s company by name. Go ahead and use the space to tell them exactly how your product will enhance their company.
6) Stress benefits
Not unlike B2C communications, B2B prospects want to know how your email, product or company will be of value to them. Your 28-39 characters can be used to directly stress a benefit of purchase.
Our most important tip? Get creative. B2B prospects are human and like to engage in human conversations.
Are your B2B headlines engaging?
Image via (cc) Samah R
Resource
In email marketing, A/B testing is the best way to communicate more effectively with your company’s audience. Although it’s a frequently used method, it can be intimidating to marketers who haven’t had the opportunity to use it. The truth is that despite the marketing jargon, it’s pretty simple to do. Even better, it’s the best way to gain understanding of customer preference as it relates to your emails.
A/B testing, or split testing, is defined as a method of experimentation using two variants on a group of users. By trying two versions of one thing on a group of people, marketers can measure which one generates the most interaction. After using a small group to determine which option is preferable, the full campaign can be launched using the customer favorite. Tailoring aspects of emails to user preference will increase open and click-through rates and inch leads closer to conversion.
Going out of your way to cater to customer preference, even in small ways, strengthens relationships and engagement. The good news is that most useful forms of A/B testing aren’t necessarily complicated.
Here are four examples:
1) Optimal delivery times
One key element of email marketing is identifying optimal times to send your emails to get them opened. These times vary according to company and industry, so it’s important to get personal. Test your email list to find out when they’d like to hear from you most.
2) Subject lines
Have you ever wondered which subject line will get your email opened by more people? Run an A/B test to find out. Then you can send your email confidently with the knowledge that you’ve optimized your open rate.
3) “From” name
Regardless of who manages email marketing for your company, prospects like to hear from people they know. Experiment with the “from” name attached to your email. You can try the sales representative associated with a lead, or even the CEO. Testing will help you determine what your leads find most friendly or intriguing.
4) Text-heavy vs. image-heavy
It’s no secret that email marketing is veering more towards the visual, but especially in B2B, text might still be important to your readers. Testing can help you strike an optimal balance.
Is your company A/B testing to get the most out of email?
Image via (cc) Marc Levin
