Traditional marketing techniques typically involved sharing brochures, dropping proposals, and making a couple of phone calls.
While these techniques worked (albeit slowly), their usefulness is diminishing.
Today’s B2B buyer wants more than just brochures and product information. They are spending time online researching and connecting with brands that offer measurable value to their businesses.
As a company, you can leverage this by introducing customer-centric digital marketing strategies into your strategic growth plan.
By setting yourself up as a credible brand interested in helping its customers attain their goals, you will attract your ideal customers. This will improve conversions and bring in new customers.
Let’s explore five tactics that may help you get there.
Video Marketing
A wall of text always seems like a good idea for providing information about your offerings, but a video is far more palatable.
You can create a video with online platforms like OneMob for the different stages of the buying process and pair it with other strategies like email marketing to increase effectiveness.
Video offers marketers an effective way to reach time-poor executives by highlighting the salient aspects of your offerings.
This may help shorten the sales cycle in your favor.
There are different video formats businesses can use to boost conversions, including:
- Explainer videos are great for diving deep into topics and covering different angles. Since these videos break down complicated stuff into bite-size pieces of information, they improve awareness and boost conversion.
- Customer testimonial videos. Since customers use their own words to describe their experience, it’s an opportunity to show genuine reactions to your offerings.
- On-demand demo videos are perfect for showing prospects how to leverage your product/service. The knowledge viewers receive influences them to your advantage. Research shows that up to 73 percent of buyers who watch videos that explain a product/service are likely to make a purchase.
Optimizing Your Website for Conversions
Gone are the days when companies uploaded their information on boring websites and hoped to receive calls.
You need to view your website as your most important salesperson.
One who is on the job 24/7 attracting and nurturing the prospects by helping them understand their needs and communicating the value behind your solutions.
But before your website can do all that, you need to optimize it for conversions. Here are practices to consider:
- Know your ideal audience. A website that speaks to everyone speaks to no one, really. Narrow down to your ideal prospect so you can provide holistic information/solutions.
- Use online tools to know the keywords and phrases searchers use to access information about your solutions. Add these keyword phrases to your content and paid search strategies.
- Use heatmaps to see what visitors are clicking on, ignoring, and scrolling through. This is especially important for critical pages like the homepage, product/services page, and checkout page.
- Have targeted landing pages to ensure visitors find what they are looking for quickly. This time-saving tactic may keep them from leaving in search of quicker answers.
- Work with chatbots. They provide quick and accurate answers, enhancing user satisfaction. Brands also use them to cross-sell products/services, encouraging further engagement.
- Use compelling call-to-actions whether they relate to purchases or getting visitor email addresses. Be careful not to overwhelm the visitors with too many CTAs, as they may cause confusion and result in fewer conversions.
Email Marketing
McKinsey & Company found that email is a more effective way of acquiring new customers compared to Facebook and Twitter.
Nothing’s wrong with social media, but email marketing still tops the charts.
For this reason, (and a couple of others) brands continue flooding our inboxes with marketing emails.
But then, the average worker receives more than 121 emails daily, which means many emails go to the bottom of the pile and may never be opened.
How do you create an email campaign that gets seen and encourages conversion:
- Optimize email campaigns for mobile devices. Create shorter subject lines, break up text to ensure there is plenty of white spaces, and use larger fonts for improved readability. Make sure the links are visible and easy to click on.
- Segment your email list according to their industry, demographics, behavior, preferences, and interests. Segmentation allows you to personalize messages, so they hit a nerve and encourage engagement.
- Have you ever received emails from “@no-reply? How many times did you open them? Customize your sender’s name for credibility.
- Use double opt-in (ask people to confirm having signed up to receive your emails) to create a high-quality email list. They will be people who have consciously subscribed and will most likely engage with your emails.
- Create behavior-triggered emails based on the actions of your subscribers. The automated email may be in response to content download, new subscription/customers, form submission, or page/cart abandonment.
Gating Valuable Content
Gated content refers to online content placed behind a virtual gate, requiring users to supply some information (name, address, etc.) to access it.
But should you put all your content behind a wall?
Ungated content (blogs, YouTube videos, infographics) increases awareness about your brand and offerings.
They give audiences a taste of the content you create. If people love your ungated content, they may offer their information to access gated content.
Here are some best practices:
- Create content that incentives audiences to provide their information. It should be relevant and offer actionable tips.
- Create a landing page for the gated content. Come up with compelling headlines, appealing copy, and strong CTAs. Remember to only ask for the information you really need to jumpstart the conversation.
- Think about how your audiences will access the content. Will you send the content via email? Share a link for immediate download? Redirect visitors to a new window where they can access the content?
- Use email marketing software, Google Analytics, or other tools to track the number of visitors signing up for the gated content. By measuring the conversion rate, you’ll know if gating the content was worthwhile.
Cold Calling
This “old-fashioned” strategy is used by Fortune 500 firms, small businesses, and startups to drive conversions and revenue.
Cold calling works because of its low-cost nature and ability to generate instant feedback. The person on the other end either wants to discuss business or not—no guesswork or finger crossing.
A great way to maximize conversions is by setting benchmarks. Ask yourself:
- How many calls should you make in a day?
- What’s the average call time?
- How many calls get answered, and how many decision-makers do you reach?
- What’s your conversion rate?
Knowing these numbers will help you identify the stages that need improvement.
Other tips include:
- Refine your calling list by identifying prospects that can profit from your solutions and eliminating those that won’t.
- Respect the prospect’s time. Use the first call to generate enough interest to warrant another call or meeting to discuss your offerings further.
- Avoid multitasking while making sales calls. A distracted caller is likely to miss what their prospect is saying. Besides, listeners can feel it if you’re distracted, which is annoying, and they may hang up.
- You’ll hear “no” several times, and this can dampen your spirits. Put some distance between yourself and the call by doing something uplifting, like listening to your favorite song. Then get back to the rhythm and call a new number.
Video Marketing
A wall of text always seems like a good idea for providing information about your offerings, but a video is far more palatable.
You can create a video for the different stages of the buying process and pair it with other strategies like email marketing to increase effectiveness.
Video offers marketers an effective way to reach time-poor executives by highlighting the salient aspects of your offerings.
This may help shorten the sales cycle in your favor.
There are different video formats businesses can use to boost conversions, including:
- Explainer videos are great for diving deep into topics and covering different angles. Since these videos break down complicated stuff into bite-size pieces of information, they improve awareness and boost conversion.
- Customer testimonial videos. Since customers use their own words to describe their experience, it’s an opportunity to show genuine reactions to your offerings.
- On-demand demo videos are perfect for showing prospects how to leverage your product/service. The knowledge viewers receive influences them to your advantage. Research shows that up to 73 percent of buyers who watch videos that explain a product/service are likely to make a purchase.
