MAIN INSIGHT 35
Natalie McLeod
HEAD OF MARKETING
What can vendors do to create a positive buying experience for their customers?
B2B marketing went through a significant, positive transformation during covid as buyers’ attitudes and expectations rapidly changed. B2B buyers are now, more than ever before, incredibly time-poor. Increasing pressure from restructures and lack of team & budget mean they no longer have the time needed to review things as logically as they once did. To overcome this, B2B vendors must be empathetic and make it as easy as possible for a buyer to build their business case: Consider each buyer’s pain points - bearing in mind that there will be more than one in each organisation - and proactively provide everything they need to show you can solve their challenges.
To create a positive buying experience, vendors must be there when a buyer needs them. This is across the whole journey. It starts with ensuring your content appears in relevant, initial searches so that buyers can successfully conduct their own research, all the way through to making sure that a company representative is available when questions arise. Continuously monitor at which points it’s appropriate to gate your content because too few will result in you missing out on quality leads, but gates at the wrong touchpoint will put people off. Much of the buyer’s journey is now automated thanks to digital technologies, but this is no excuse for the touchpoints to be cold or impersonal. An automated email that tells a personal story but also offers the chance to ask questions goes a very long way.
How has the pandemic changed your marketing priorities?
Events were previously our best way of finding new prospects and engaging with them. But as a result of the pandemic, we now have more of a focus on our digital channels. This has given us access to invaluable intent data, allowing us to build a better understanding of what our customers are really looking for alongside creating a series of smaller, more frequent touchpoints that build a story and relationship over time. As we learn more about our customers and their requirements through different stages of the buying journey, we have been able to have more meaningful conversations than ever before.
Top targeting is what separates the great from the good when it comes to marketing through digital channels. The process starts with finding the right audience and making it clear who your content is intended for as a CTO will have very different requirements and challenges to someone in Finance for example . When a prospect downloads your content, you gain insight on their intent and can connect them with the relevant expert within your business to improve the likelihood of converting the prospect into a customer.
As we learn more about our customers and their requirements in different stages of the buying journey, we have been able to have more meaningful conversations than ever before.
Sharing data allows you to build the insights needed to create successful sales processes.
How can businesses remove sales & marketing silos and create strong USPs?
The first step to aligning sales and marketing teams to prevent working in silo is to ensure they have access to the same tools. This means that both teams can see what content a prospect has engaged with, what stage of their buying journey they are at and then act accordingly. Sharing data allows you to build the insights needed to create successful sales processes. For example, understanding whether an email or a phone call is more appropriate for prospects at differing stages of the buying cycle as well as different levels of seniority, or cultural backgrounds.
How can B2B businesses stand out in crowded markets?
For any business to stand out, every person in the organisation has to understand what its USPs really are. For example, ‘About Us’ pages on websites that describe how lovely their people are, but have no unique differentiators, simply won’t cut it. Being nice should come as standard! If a business can’t figure out what makes them unique, then they can’t expect a potential buyer to do so either. This is why scattergun approaches across different channels don’t work. You need to personalise your content and your choice of channels to the recipient and follow it up with a meaningful, personalised conversation. This proves to the customer that you are listening to them and their needs, which is crucial when seeking to stand out from the crowd. This approach will take plenty of testing and learning to find the right combination of content and channels that best generates meaningful conversations. It takes a lot of graft to get everything in place, but a more generic approach is quickly losing its impact with buyers who expect more from businesses.
You need to personalise your content and your choice of channels to the recipient and follow it up with a meaningful, personalised conversation.
15below specialises in personalised passenger communications for the travel industry. Their messaging platform helps airlines, rail and travel companies stay connected with their passengers – from booking to arrival and beyond.
