Some top tips for, *%company%*
As B2B marketers, we’re always looking for the edge.
It’s why we’re so curious to discover what other marketing teams are doing well. Why we constantly horizon-scan for new ideas, new ways of working, new MarTech. But for many of us trying to cut through in a hyper-digital world, the edge still feels slightly out of reach.
CMOs in all sectors share a cycle of high expectation, and as marketers, we all need to defend and grow our brand, create emotional connections with our customers and help our people do their best.
We ultimately need to be ready to expand our business, regardless of what CMO archetype leads our marketing. In fact, Deloitte has cleverly whittled this down to 5 archetypes:
1. The customer champion 2. The growth driver 3. The innovation catalyst 4. The capability builder 5. The chief storyteller
As marketers, finding different ways to resonate with and engage an overwhelmed buyer is our relentless quest.
You may have the perfect product, but getting it in front of the perfect buyer, at the perfect time is the ultimate challenge.
You know you need to level-up, but what’s a marketer to do?
In our personal lives, we make buying decisions every day, often without realizing we’ve been marketed to.
Consumer companies cleverly join the digital dots and present a seamless buying experience, without us feeling targeted. We may be mildly aware that the algorithms are hard at work as a selection of hyper-personalized content is put before us, but we’re very happy to accept this.
After all, the friction and time spent searching have been massively reduced (*collective applause for Netflix*). Let’s face it, we’re all secretly delighted that sellers really ‘get’ us (beyond just knowing our name, and spelling it right), and that they can cleverly tailor the perfect buying experience.
But, why should only consumer marketers reap all the rewards? As B2B buyers, isn’t this what we expect too, why would it be different? We’re the same emotionally wired person.
At work or play, we love it when businesses do the hard graft and work out exactly who we are and what we need. And by adding a level of authentic personalization when they sell to us, it doesn’t only make us feel good, but it makes our selection and decision-making process so much easier.
So, if personalization can drive sales quicker through the funnel (and deliver a whopping 15% increase in revenue) why aren’t more B2B marketing leaders getting value from this approach?
After all, we know it’s no longer a case of shall we personalise, but how shall we personalise?
According to Gartner, there are 4 key reasons for marketing leaders to use personalization: it drives engagement, conversion and brand loyalty and ultimately deepens relationships.
Music to a marketer’s ears, right? But even though 75% of us are personalizing in some form, here’s the rub… it’s not effective enough. And your marketing pipeline may well evidence this.
If you’re still using the classic marketing funnel and wondering why you’re falling short of lead targets, you’re not alone. 2020 has turned the traditional funnel on its head. While buyers still move through stages, the stages don’t look like they used to. Today’s journeys are messier, and buyers are in control.
Did you know... around 94% of B2B buying journeys start online
This means leads can enter the buying journey at any stage. Prospects no longer walk-through predictable steps linearly. Buyers often want little or no influence from a vendor, instead they favour independent research and reviews.
While there may be scary stats out there about the % of the buyer’s journey being complete before contacting Sales (yes, Sirius Decisions, we’re looking at you here), the reality is that the buyer’s journey for your solutions is unique to you. And you may have several versions of it.
However, there is no doubt we are all looking for creative ways to keep buyers engaged and deliver better results moving forward.
As B2B marketers we must attract, engage and convert leads – just not necessarily in that order.
Historically it has been easier to personalize outbound marketing – think named emails, geo-targeted social ads, persona-based content, beautifully-crafted direct mail. Where it’s worked, it’s worked well.
But today’s buyers seek out suppliers long before the ad finds them. Even before our Sales team has an opportunity to influence them, prospects have an impression of us.
Yet for most B2B marketers, we haven’t moved quickly enough to personalize this inbound experience. It’s been easier, and potentially more measurable, to focus on personalizing outbound activities. And inadvertently, we’ve created …The Personalization Gap.
We know that buyers want to be and are in control of their sales journey. And yet when they interact with us on their own terms – not only do we not deliver a personal experience, but we serve up something that is well… generic.
On inbound we’ve failed to join up the dots and it’s hitting our bottom line. So, if you’re still wondering about how to fix your pipeline problem, perhaps it’s time to mind the gap.
We all heavily rely on our corporate websites. Some of us get thousands of visitors a day, it’s literally one of the biggest drivers of B2B sales. And it’s why we spend so much time and investment looking at ways to better optimize our sites and drive prospects closer to demo.
Alongside our website investment, we sink huge effort into understanding our buyers, creating highly relevant offerings and deploying innovative tactics to capture their attention. Yet when a new buyer lands on our site (our ultimate sales tool), what do they get?
Be honest, in most cases, it’s not a highly curated page that personally welcomes them with industry-relevant language and imagery. It’s just the same mass-targeted experience.
Despite deploying personalized activities, including ABM, to drive buyers to our site – when they get there, they often see exactly the same content as everyone else.
It’s a bit like getting a hand-written party invitation, a personal phone call with directions door-to-door and then being blanked by the bouncer at the venue and told to wait in line. Where’s the VIP treatment? Why does this feel, so, jarring?
As consumers, we know personalized experiences keep us onsite longer, read more and progress to purchase quicker.
It’s not a surprise then, that more than 95% of respondents in a recent B2B Marketing survey cited they are ‘either using or planning to use personalization in the future'.
But with only 63% saying it’s effective or very effective, what are the barriers to success?
Available tech is unable to facilitate quality level of personalization.
Lack of understanding of how to use the tools that are available.
Inability to effectively measure success of personalized marketing on ROI.
Difficulty bringing together all personalized options to form one cohesive personalization approach.
Does this sound familiar, are these barriers stopping you from progressing with personalization? The good news is that it doesn’t have to be this way. There is highly advanced website personalization software out there that can address these misconceptions and deliver serious revenue. Plus, it’s not complex software and it won’t overwhelm your team. It’s measurable, proven and user-friendly.
You can easily build customer-centric experiences starting with your site. Every visitor can get a personal welcome that helps them know they’ve landed in the right place. And as they browse your site, relevant content, imagery and call-to-actions can be auto-adjusted. This isn’t some MarTech panacea.
The reality is that with B2B website personalization software there is now a way to create richer connections and turn visitors into leads – whether they’re outbound or inbound.
As online buyers, we are choosy, expectant and demanding. And we are visually wired.
Amid an information overload, we generally only spend a few seconds on a new page, before we decide to browse further or leave.
Seeing pertinent images or reading familiar language that resonates are enough to convince us we’re in the right place.
After all, we’re tribal animals. A personalized strapline can make a big difference in hooking us in. It’s all about companies humanizing their products and services. That’s the power of personalization - and it’s not just consumer sites that can now do it in real-time.
As B2B vendors, we want to take the website experience one step further and deliver-up the most relevant content assets to our visitors too. This is where personalization software comes in. This clever technology enables us to easily provide that by individual, account, segment, industry and so much more.
We simply identify the key firmographics and let the IP database and engine technology organize our website visitors, to show relevant and contextualized imagery and assets.
