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Every marketer knows that email is still a useful tool. Last week, we discussed the importance of using compelling subject lines to get emails opened, and it is clearly of utmost importance to develop relevant, meaningful content for your customers.
What we have not discussed is something that to some, seems obvious: the heart of any good email campaign is a good list. Subscribers who want to hear what you have to say will lead to engagement and trust and, eventually, sales. Take spring cleaning to another level this year and tidy up your email list.
Remove Duplicate Contacts
When a prospect receives an email from you twice, it sends a message of sloppiness and indifference. In the customer’s eyes, it seems unlikely that you could care to solve his or her problem when you do not notice their duplicate addresses.
Eliminate Bounces
Correcting your bounce list is tedious work, but it is worth it. High bounce rates attract attention from spam filters, and every ignored bounce is a potential customer you could be reaching. Categorize this step as “painful but necessary.”
Create Segmented Lists
After you clean up your email list, use it more efficiently. Subdivide the greater list into segments that can be used to send more personalized campaigns. As you get to know your list better and use it accordingly, you will notice growth in clicks.
Spring cleaning can be digital, too. How do you keep your email list nice and tidy?
(Image credit: Frederick MD Publicity)
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The success of any website lies in its conversion rate. Gone are the days when simply building site traffic was sufficient; today, those visits must be converted into something more – direct leads or sales. Though increasing conversion can seem like a daunting task for B2B companies, we believe it is not as hard as it sounds.
Here are five website features that improve conversion rates:
Prominent Opt-in Forms
This may seem obvious, but many companies camouflage their opt-in forms because they are under the belief that they are unattractive or that customers will take the initiative to seek them out. This is not always the case. A customer is more likely to sign up when the form is clear and the process is easy.
Videos
B2B companies should take advantage of every opportunity to showcase their product or services. Adding a video feature to the site makes visitors feel more engaged and, therefore, more likely to become a direct lead.
Testimonials
One of the easiest ways to increase conversion is to provide positive peer recommendations. Use your website to provide testimonials in whatever format works for you, whether it is video, reviews, or positive press.
Calls-to-action
Your call-to-action should be the most prominent thing on your site. All other content should be built around this, your foremost goal. Make it very clear to your customers what you are asking of them, and most importantly, make it easy for them to respond.
Proven Success
Your website’s content should be created with the intention of proving success. Offering white papers on topics in your field are a way to demonstrate your ability, and a case studies page allows prospects to get to know your work more deeply, from whichever angle interests them most.
For B2B marketers, increasing conversion rates requires consistent reexamination of your website’s functionality and content. With some attention, your leads and sales will directly benefit from your efforts.
What has been your website’s most valuable conversion tool?
(Image credit: Yahoo! Yodel)
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While navigating the new B2B sales funnel, prospective customers devote a lot of time to consideration and research before ever making a purchase. It is the marketer’s job to find a way to move them from problem to solution in the form of a sale. The only way to do this, it seems, is by building trust.
Prospects are more inclined to purchase when a sense of trust has been developed with a particular company. Marketers must consider whether or not they are building this confidence – and how to do it best.
Here are some ways to establish trust with your customers:
Demonstrate Thought Leadership
Identify yourself as a leader in your industry. Present solutions for the problems you know your customers face. This builds trust, giving customers the feeling that you actually want to help them, rather than just make a sale. Establish yourself as a generous leader in the field by providing resources and tips, rather than just a product.
Cultivate Brand Empathy
Last month on this blog, we discussed the importance of creating brand empathy – the perception that your company cares deeply about its customers’ problems and needs. Customers should feel that you have genuine concern for their challenges and want to help solve them. For more help in this regard, download Movéo’s Brand Empathy White Paper.
Listen to Customers
The most valuable way to build trust is to listen to your customers. Ask your sales force what problems customers are mentioning, and tune in to customer conversations taking place on social media. Most importantly, show customers that you are willing to respond. Answer their questions, improve your product, and meet their needs.
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While we focus on ways to master the new B2B sales funnel, email cannot be ignored. In a time when inboxes are inundated with marketing ploys, approaching email thoughtfully is crucial to success.
The most important part of email marketing is making sure that your message is opened. This is not always easy considering the number of emails the average person receives on a daily basis. The content of your email will not be useful unless your subject line is compelling enough to warrant that first click.
It may seem simple, but subject lines require careful consideration. Here are some tips:
Ask a Question
Your email subject line is the only thing you can guarantee the recipient will see. Take advantage of that opportunity to ask a question. More importantly, as a question you know your customer needs answered. Position yourself as the company who can solve that problem before the email is even opened.
Be Brief
Keep your subject lines short and to the point. According to Mail Chimp, 50 characters or less is the way to go, with 28-39 characters having the highest click rate in a study of 200 million emails.
Be Specific
Don’t shy away from your subject line. Go ahead and tell your customer what’s inside the email. Make it relevant for them, and it will be opened.
Use a Call-to-Action
Using the subject line as a call-to-action is another way to get your email opened. Even better, it aligns your company with the solution a customer seeks – even if he doesn’t realize it.
While you employ these tips, avoid numbers and length, both of which cause visual fatigue for the recipient. Good luck with your new, improved email subject lines. Let us know what works best for you!
(Image credit: Social Biz Solutions)
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Last week, we discussed switching from lead generation to demand generation as a way to master marketing within the new B2B sales funnel. The problem is that many marketers still don’t understand the difference between the two approaches. This, of course, prevents them from using either approach successfully. Here’s what you need to know.
Demand generation creates awareness
Demand generation focuses on cultivating awareness surrounding a particular brand or company. This awareness eventually results in leads.
Lead generation gathers actual contacts
Lead generation is all about concrete prospects. It involves collecting names from consumers or potential clients, giving those names to sales reps, and directly boosting revenue.
Demand generation has a broad focus
Demand generation seeks to create awareness with a wide net, casting it broadly across groups of potential leads. When one-on-one contact happens, it is because a prospect takes it upon himself to reach out to a company.
Lead generation is based on specificity
Lead generation is meant to gather specific names and data to be translated directly to sales. While demand generation makes sweeping efforts, lead generation targets individuals.
As you’ve gathered from this comparison, demand generation often stimulates lead generation at the finish line, when it counts. For marketers attempting to master the new B2B sales funnel, demand generation is essential. Its wide net guarantees that brand awareness is present throughout the twists and turns of research and consideration that play such a large role in today’s sales process.
How has your company focused on creating demand?
(Image credit: Mikael Miettinen)
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On Monday, we discussed the changing B2B sales funnel and how to address it as marketers. It’s important to understand how the funnel works for your company’s consumer base and how it functions within your industry. The key to good marketing – and sales – is understanding how your customer discovers your brand and enters the funnel.
Ask yourself – how well do you understand this process? If you have any doubts, here are some ways to find out:
Ask The Question
Consider something as simple as including a “how did you hear about us” line on the sales form, the contact form, or the email sign-up form. This will help you learn whether it’s word of mouth, content, or something else that brings in your best leads.
Pay Attention to Traffic
Google Analytics is your friend. It’s important to pay attention to website referral traffic, because understanding this important step can help you formulate a strategy to attract a larger pool of customers. Alternately, it can help you determine what potential lead sources need some attention.
Invest in Data
On Monday, we mentioned the importance of developing a robust CRM. It’s so important, in fact, that we recommend that you consider using a premium program such as InfusionSoft. The customer understanding you can glean from a program like this makes the investment well worth it, and it’s geared towards small businesses, making it easy to use and sort the information that is most usable.
What methods have helped you understand how your customer enters the sales funnel? What gets you discovered?
(Image credit: Dell’s Official Flickr Page)
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In April, Twitter announced the latest development in their advertising platform: keyword targeting. The feature is available in all languages and markets where Twitter ads are supported. Though user experience did not noticeably change, ads appearing in timelines are now potentially based directly on a user’s recent tweets and retweets. B2B marketers should take advantage of this opportunity.
Though most B2B companies use Twitter to engage their audience, fewer actually do paid advertising there. In the past, “promoted tweets” seemed out of place to a user — even nonsensical at times. Test groups showed that a user is more likely to respond to a promoted tweet when it has a close relationship to the tweets that have recently engaged him. These ads are more relevant and seem more natural.
Keyword targeting in Twitter ads enables companies to appeal to users when their mind is already on the topic at hand. This real-time interaction could be invaluable to B2B marketers in their attempt to present a solution to a prospect’s problem. The keyword targeting setup is user-friendly, which makes it easy for B2B companies to choose product or service-based ad words and gain leads that don’t even require a web search.
Does your company use Twitter to advertise? Have you tried the keyword targeting feature?
(Image credit: Rosaura Ochoa)
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The internet has radically changed the nature of the sales cycle. Traditionally, the B2B sales funnel was straightforward and looked like this:
Today, it is more convoluted, like this:
As this diagram shows, today’s sales funnel is full of questions, research, and answers. Endless comparisons are made from reviews that are written and repeatedly shared. Social media invites open discussion about a company’s strengths and weaknesses. Essential tools – the website, email marketing, and special events – are no longer important to only one phase of the cycle. Instead, they must stretch across the entire sales process.
To make this more complicated, leads no longer fall through a simple funnel to the sale; now, they must be constantly engaged through a twisting, turning process that doesn’t necessarily even promise a sale at the end. Potential customers must be encouraged to progress from awareness to research to consideration to purchase. As a result, marketers must get smarter.
Here are three ways to keep up with the evolution of the sales funnel:
Switch to Demand Generation
Transitioning from a lead generation to a demand generation mindset can be a difficult move for B2B marketers. While it seems promising to collect as many leads as possible, then push them to sale, it is more beneficial today to place an emphasis on demand generation. Cultivating this demand for your product begins with raising awareness and developing a community of interest around your industry — more specifically, around the problem you can solve. As customers build and explore the demand you create within the sales funnel, the end result will be sales.
Uniquely Engage
No longer can marketers focus on engaging the customer in the “interest” and “desire” categories of the old sales funnel. Today, it is necessary to connect with prospects before they even enter the cycle. To capture interest and remain desirable up until the point of sale, it is imperative that marketers find unique ways to get consumers’ attention throughout the selling process. Companies must interact with customers on social media, have active conversations, or offer helpful, industry-related blog content, to give a few examples.
Develop a Robust CRM
Today’s marketers have endless forms of data available to help them understand the customer’s experience. It is crucial that they use this analysis to their advantage, exploring when a customer feels the least engaged and finding ways to fix it. Use the data to determine which social media platforms work best for your consumer base; develop a robust CRM by studying clicks, responses, leads, and deals. This information is key to developing an informed strategic plan that combats today’s complicated sales funnel.
Throughout this month, we will provide you with more tips on how to deal with the complex B2B sales funnel. Stay tuned!
(Image credit: Proven Models, Pardot)
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Recent and continued shifts in the marketing industry have established content marketing as a core B2B marketing initiative. As marketers continue to learn and master this skill, its challenges evolve each year. According to a survey conducted by Curata in 2012, the greatest challenges faced by B2B content marketers are limited budget (27%), limited staff (25%), and creating enough new content (21%).
Here are three ways to overcome these difficulties:
Focus on quality over quantity
Creating enough new, engaging content often feels daunting for content marketers. It is important to remember that less is more. Fewer posts done well speak more meaningfully than daily posts that feel forced. Streamline your marketing plan to make quality the focus. For example, consider two or three blog posts per week, instead of five. Having that extra time is the key to planning, and then generating, better content. Consider a monthly newsletter instead of a weekly one, and try devoting two blocks of time per day to social media, rather than trying to keep up with the all day, every hour race.
Outsource
Outsourcing content is, in many cases, essential to its quality. Finding a partner or freelancer who can effectively communicate your business’s message will provide you with the time to plan a content-driven strategy that ends in success. Do not hesitate to find this support.
Track content with smart metrics
Along with quality and outsourcing, metrics are your biggest ally. Use them carefully, and respond to them as a resource. This information can be used to create content that is actually engaging, tuned in to your customer’s habits, questions, and trends. In short, pay attention to metrics, and do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
What challenges has your business faced in content marketing? How did you overcome them?
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A popular, current discussion among B2B marketers is the fact that they are prioritizing social media and search and content marketing above all else. Both have become vital tools in the digital age. While social media presents difficulty in measuring ROI, its ability to engage an audience and contribute to the total package, leading in the end to bottom line sales, is undeniable. Search and content marketing is easier to gauge but requires the development of relevant content in tandem. Done correctly, it can lead to sales in unexpected places.
What marketers might not realize is that maximized potential for these tools lies in using them together. This helpful video explains the emphasis placed on social media by companies like Google and Bing. For the past five years, they have slowly compounded social media and search function. First, blog posts showed up in search results, and eventually, features like the Google +1 button enabled them to base search results partly on popular vote. These developments opened the doors to marketers to combine social and search for optimal results.
For example, answering one customer’s question via social media, and having it indexed in search, can serve to answer hundreds of future customers’ questions at the click of a button. Active customer listening via social provides opportunities to find and answer those questions. Developing, and then disseminating relevant content via social now offers powerful opportunity to answer questions where they start – at the initial search.
This information proves that taking the time necessary to learn how to use social and search in tandem offers endless potential.
