Buyer Intent Data
Article | June 20, 2023
Understanding how a B2B buyer’s journey naturally progresses is key to designing a digital marketing program that works in any economic climate. When we do this with our clients, it allows us to see their marketing as a whole, rather than looking at isolated marketing tactics and getting overly focused on minor issues. Once we understand what’s already working for a client, we can then apply an informed strategy to amplify their successes. Occasionally, we may also recommend that a client step back from a few marketing tactics that might not be working well enough.
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Buyer Intent Data
Article | October 7, 2022
In any company, there is a sales function and a marketing function. They are supposed to work together to help the organization secure business, earn revenue, and facilitate growth.
Oftentimes, because of the nature of their business, sales and marketing work at cross purposes and they lose focus on their ultimate objective of identifying, creating, and retaining customers.
In this article, we will discuss how sales and marketing can work together to form an effective B2B sales funnel.
But first, let’s explore the roles of sales and marketing within an organization.
Sales are the function of driving revenue with salespeople who follow a defined sales process. A typical sales process involves a research phase to ensure that the intended customer is a good fit to the company’s Ideal Customer Profile, a discovery phase where the salesperson gets to know the customer, understand their needs, and see where their solution can help solve the customer’s problem, a demonstration phase where the seller lets the buyer envision how their solution for a product or service can satisfy the buyer’s need.
A proposal phase is proactive and where the seller provides the customer with an outline of the work they will undertake and at what price. Sometimes a seller will instead be responding to a buyer’s request for a proposal (RFP). Up until this point in the sales process, prospective customers are referred to as “suspects,” meaning that they may be a good fit, but they have not expressed any interest in the company’s solutions and the company has not proposed any ways in which it could be of service. However, once a salesperson provides the prospective customer with a proposal, that prospective customer becomes known as a “prospect.”
In sales, the measurement of potential revenue and its progress towards realization is called a sales “funnel.” In a sales funnel, the probability of the salesperson closing the sale is now weighted with percentages demonstrating the likelihood of success. In the sales process, opportunities are weighted based on their probability of closing. This is called opportunity management and it looks something like this:
0% of the prospect is identified by researching the intended sales target company.
10% of the prospect is prequalified as a potential good fit in alignment with the company’s Ideal Customer Profile (I.D.C.).
25% of the prospect is qualified via a discovery call, and the opportunity is loaded into the sales funnel.
40% is when the buyer agrees to a demonstration, shows genuine buying interest, and is open to receiving a proposal.
50% is the assessment phase where the seller determines if the buyer has Budget, Authority, Need, and the Timeframe for implementation, (B.A.N.T.). Another component of the sale to be addressed at this phase is “why,” as in, “Why is the buyer making this purchase decision, why is my company being considered, and why is this timeframe for implementation important?”
60% is when a proposal is submitted to the buyer for consideration. (Pro tip: A good salesperson will have the boilerplate components of the contract pre-vetted by legal and IT when the proposal is initially submitted to the buyer so that the contract does not get held up at the bottom of the funnel by any issues not within the buyer’s control when it is ready to close).
75% is the negotiation phase where the buyer/decision-maker(s) asks clarifying questions that show an intent to purchase or express some objections that the seller will need to overcome to move the sale forward.
90% is when both parties agree to all the conditions of the purchase and the final contract is submitted for signature.
100% is when the sale is closed and the revenue can be recognized.
If the funnel can be trusted, and oftentimes that’s a big “if” because salespeople are not always disciplined in opportunity management, then revenue recognized can be forecasted beginning at 75% of probability.
At every phase of the sales funnel, sales are conducted by calling, emailing, texting, or other outreach to prospective and existing customers to guide them towards making a purchase. The process might be consultative, taking place over a long period and involving multiple decision-makers in which the salesperson learns about the customer and their pain points, and then helps them understand how their product or service offering can provide a solution.
Sales could also be tactical and a very short process involving just a single conversation with a salesperson before an agreement is finalized.
Although technology and social media have certainly influenced how sales are conducted, the essential steps of the sales process have pretty much remained the same.
Whereas sales are hands-on, marketing is a much more comprehensive process that does not generally interact with an individual customer but is designed to increase awareness of a brand or product to target customers as a group.
Unlike sales, the methods, tactics, and channels used by marketers have evolved tremendously over the last fifteen years. Marketing today is primarily digital and includes content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, organic website traffic, search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and the use of influencers and brand ambassadors.
The objective of the marketing department is to generate leads for the sales department. These leads start as “marketing qualified leads” (MQLs) and although these prospective buyers are not yet ready to purchase, they have expressed interest in a company’s product. When properly nurtured by the marketing department, these prospects become “sales qualified leads” (SQL’s) and are handed off by the marketing team to the sales team when they are likely to make a purchase.
This nurturing can occur via social media, email distribution, or other communication from the marketing team to keep the prospective client interested and engaged.
It would seem so easy for marketing to cultivate leads and hand them off to the sales team. However, this is often not the case. Too frequently marketing and sales are simply misaligned.
Just consider these statistics:
According to Upland, 55% of marketers don’t know which collateral their sales colleagues are most likely to use.
LinkedIn reports that only 46% of marketers describe sales and marketing as “highly aligned” at their company.
The Precision Marketing Group states that 25% of businesses describe their sales and marketing as either “misaligned” or “rarely aligned”.
This lack of synchronization between marketing and sales causes poor execution and lost opportunities.
According to LinkedIn’s Art of Winning Report, an estimated $1 trillion a year is lost due to a lack of sales and marketing coordination in the US alone.
An industry survey by InsideView found that the six biggest obstacles to sales and marketing
working together were:
Lack of accurate/shared data on target accounts and prospects (43%)
Communication (43%)
Use of different metrics (41%)
Broken/flawed processes (37%)
Lack of accountability on both sides (25%)
Reporting challenges (21%)
Simply put, marketing and sales need to collaborate more effectively to better manage today’s sales funnel. But how?
According to digital marketing strategist, Sujan Patel, there are three levels of marketing alignment:
The Emotional Level: Your Sales and Marketing teams should be working cohesively together and supporting each other. They should not be working at cross-purposes.
The Process Level: There need to be clear, measurable, sustainable, and repeatable processes in place to ensure that everyone within both the marketing and sales teams is pulling in the same direction and working in the same way.
The Feedback Loop Level: Marketing doesn’t always produce awesome leads. Sometimes they might suck. Nobody’s perfect. That’s why sales need to communicate back to marketing so there is a feedback loop between the two teams to either encourage good leads or stop wasting company resources on bad ones.
An effective partnership between sales and marketing is the #1 success factor attributed to achieving revenue goals. (Source: Heinz Marketing - Performance Management Report)
So, how can we get sales and marketing to work better together? It starts with having a project plan in place.
The first step is for sales and marketing to agree on what the ideal customer profile (I.D.C.) of a target customer should be. They need to agree on the characteristics that define the type of company (not the individual buyer or end-user) that will find the most value in their product or service offering. If done correctly, prospects that are aligned to the company’s IDC are most likely to become long-term customers who will give significant value back to the business in the form of possible subscription fees, upsells, and referrals. An easy way to identify the IDC of a company is to look at a list of their current best-performing customers and determine what attributes they have in common.
The next step is for sales to explain to marketing the steps of the sales funnel, how it works and what marketing resources are needed to migrate the prospective customer through it. Too often, marketing is concerned with branding and outreach, and they do not allocate sufficient resources to the sales team to give them the resources and collateral they need to expedite their sales.
Once sales and marketing are aligned regarding who the IDC of a company is and what marketing resources should be allocated to support the sales team, an organization can take its game up a level and begin to pursue account-based marketing (A.B.M.) opportunities.
Account-based marketing is when marketing and sales teams work together in a focused approach to target best-fit accounts and turn them into customers. When done correctly, marketing and sales teams meld their expertise to locate, engage with, and close deals with high-value accounts that offer a high ROI to their company.
The primary components of account-based marketing include:
Reaching the right accounts
Engaging across marketing channels
Determining effective metrics and measurements
According to LinkedIn research, businesses with strong sales and marketing alignment are 67% more effective at closing deals, 58% more effective at retaining customers, and drive 208% more revenue as a result of their marketing efforts.
So, whether an organization is pursuing a traditional marketing approach or a more targeted account-based marketing strategy, it is essential for marketing to work more closely with sales in vigorous and meaningful ways.
Today’s buyer is more knowledgeable and has access to more information about a prospective seller, their competition, and the marketplace than ever before. As a result, sales leaders need to demonstrate subject matter expertise in their area of commerce and leverage the content, tools, and resources that the marketing department can provide them to enhance their sales efforts.
Although good salespeople will find a way to close business, having the support of a well-synchronized marketing team behind them will help accelerate the sales process, increase revenue, boost profitability and facilitate greater customer satisfaction.
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Account Based Data
Article | June 29, 2023
When a package arrives at your doorstep, you get excited as a child, no matter what age you are! Some people express their excitement, while some are really good at hiding it. But inquisitiveness and curiosity are natural feelings.
Imagine building up these feelings in the mind of the decision-makers of businesses that you are targeting. So, yes, you will stand out in the crowd and, they will notice the gesture, no matter how small or big it is!
Coming back to the point, we are talking about the strategy of direct mails in account-based marketing. This strategy has proved to be a success for many organizations practicing ABM.
So what exactly is direct mail in ABM and, are there any successful ways or ideal examples to follow? Let us see in detail.
What Is Direct Mail in ABM?
We are aware that account-based marketing is a strategy that involves targeting, personalization and conversions. But what happens when we make tangibility a part of the above process?
Well, the results are impressive.
An Infotrends report stated that the e-mail response rate increased from 7.5% to 9.5% with a multi-channel ABM strategy.
But, the biggest challenges of ABM are delivering a personalized customer experience, choosing the target accounts, and deciding on the correct content.
Thus, direct mail can help you deal with the challenge of delivering a personalized customer experience.
A direct mail strategy delivers personalized objects, messages, and more to the targeted organization’s decision-makers. The best part about direct mail is that you can get as creative as you want. Plus, it ensures that the top team notices your efforts.
“Direct mail is the new black in B2B. There is nothing more personalized than a handwritten note with a personalized direct mail that is fully customized for your prospect or customer.” - Sangram Vajre, CMO of Terminus.
Let us have a look at the best ways to incorporate direct mail in your ABM strategy.
Ideas to Implement Direct Mail in ABM
Remember, no matter what personalized goodies you plan to send to the concerned people, ensure that:
You have a bold, clear, and obvious call to action.
Your message is short, simple, and direct.
Your strategy should be less is more.
You have added the extra personal touch in your mail.
Once you have devised the direct mail strategy, here are some things that you need to keep in mind before implementation.
Determine the Stage in the Buyer’s Journey
Before sending direct mail to your target account, know where they stand in their buyer’s journey. Let us consider these three stages.
Awareness Stage
If your buyer is in the awareness stage, you need to target all the organization’s decision-makers. Sending them goodies that get them together might be a good idea.
For example:
Send a box with a personalized message about your company to one and send the key to another. Or you could gift puzzles pieces to each one that needs them to come together to decode the message.
Demo Stage
Congrats! If you reached the demo stage with the target account. Now, if you’re finding it difficult to set an appointment with them, use direct mail to get their attention.
For example: Send them a box with a clock ticking and a surprise to be opened at some given time. As if a demo can be scheduled at that time and claim the gift!
2.1.3 Final Stage
You have closed the deal and are all ready to start the dealings. But some small things seemed to be stuck from the buyer’s end. This is where your research will prove handy. You need the search for a particular likeness about the decision-maker and lure them. It will help you get their attention and close all the pending work.
For example:
Send them a password-protected gadget and, they can access that only after the deal is complete.
2.2 Know the Decision-makers
It is an essential aspect in determining the direct mail that you need to send. You should be well aware of the receiver's likes, dislikes, hobbies, and personal traits.
Thus, use social media and everything possible from the sales team to create the best effect.
Determine the Factors for Conversion
Lastly, when the package opens, it should immediately connect to the individual. Thus, when you design or assemble the package, ensure that it connects immediately. Moreover, it should address the pain points and challenges and align with the company’s goals.
Thus, determine the factors that directly affect them and, you will provide the best solutions.
For example:
If you are a hiring agency, give them a complete puzzle with just one piece missing. And a couple of options for the missing piece. Once they fit the right piece in, your puzzle says, “Having trouble finding the right person, we will help your hire!”
And ensure that you send a personalized note to every individual along with the common goal of the message.
Benefits of B2B Direct Mail Marketing
No doubt, personalization will elevate your direct mail strategy, thus promising enhanced customer involvement.
But there are other prominent benefits of B2B direct mail marketing. Lets us have a glance at them.
Higher account engagement
Less wastage of resources
Higher win rate
Shorter sales cycles
Create strong connections
The improved success rate of ABM strategy
Ideal Examples of Direct Mail in ABM
Some organizations have nailed it correctly when it comes to direct mail marketing.
Here are a few examples.
The Perry Process
(Image Courtesy: Pinterest)
The Perry Process is a renowned company that deals with used machinery and equipment for 80 years and continues to do.
Thus, it wanted manufacturing companies to sell their unwanted and excess equipment in return for cash.
So keeping this message in mind, they included fake money inserts with a flyer that said, ‘Don’t throw away your money.’
Hence, it succeeded in sending across its message most realistically!
Schott Solar
Schott Solar is a company that produces solar panels. Their solar panels came with a 20-year warranty.
(Image Courtesy: D&AD)
To amplify the selling, they included a 20-year warranty calendar along with the solar panel. The calendar stuck out 60 centimeters from the wall, thus delivering the desired message!
Wrapping It Up
So no matter what business you deal with, innovation and creativity are the way to easy conversions!
Thus understand your customers and give them what they want in a quirky style.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is direct mail in account-based marketing?
Direct mail is a tangible ABM strategy wherein products are mailed directly to customers. These products are personalized and have a direct marketing message.
Examples of such products are postcards, catalogs, personal goods, coupons, samples, and more.
What impact does direct mail create on the receiver?
A study by scientists reveals that if a person receives a physical product, it leaves a deeper footprint on the brain.
Thus, a direct mail strategy is sure to get you noticed by your customer. And the best part is that the more creative and personalized you get, the better impact it creates!
Can a simple postcard count as a direct mail strategy?
Of course, it can. If it sends a clear message of your marketing campaign, is personalized, and instigates the customer to take action, it is a successful direct mail strategy.
Always remember, the size or price of the direct mail does not matter, but the impact it creates does!
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ABM Accounts
Article | November 20, 2021
The pandemic has changed the marketing world to a great extent. Customers have tremendously adapted to online buying.
The pandemic has forced B2B customers to adapt to new ways of buying and selling. Customers are ready for online meetings and connecting digitally as far as the buying approach is concerned. The only thing that matters to them is that the solutions should answer their hurdles or challenges like personalization and strategizing marketing so
But for the selling process, B2B marketing strategies needed creativity. Companies had to put their heads together to convince a buyer through conversations on digital platforms. It was not easy. But B2B companies have taken up the challenge and managed to come out with flying colors.
Let us look at the changed scenario of B2B marketing.
The Changed Scenario for B2B Marketing
In 2020, when the world came to a standstill, people expected it was just a break, and they might return to their lives in no time. But this myth was busted when people had to adopt the new normal instead of going back to normal.
Every industry faced challenges, including the B2B industry. Imagine the industry, which had the habit of meeting decision-makers and convincing them with presentations, had to do all the work digitally.
But they found solutions after some months of struggles, and the businesses were back on track. Of course, there were difficulties on the way, but they answered every obstacle with time.
B2B marketing best ideas include account-based marketing, conversational ABM, personalized campaigns, correct use of data, and more. These paved a path for successful B2B marketing amidst the pandemic.
Thus, learning from them, we have curated a list of tips for successful B2B marketing.
Tips for Successful B2B Marketing
These best ways to market B2B are listed after diving deep into the struggles of B2B marketing. The experts of this area have experienced hurdles and implemented these solutions.
Have a Buyer-centric Approach
In an interview with Media7, Dmitry Chervonyi, Chief Marketing Officer at Belkins, stated that,
“If you don't solve your customers' problems and make their lives better, then it is a waste of time to do this kind of business.”
So, you understand how essential the customer is! These days it is more about the customer than about sales. Therefore, you must have a 360-degree alignment with the customer’s needs and preferences. Through this, you have better chances of conversion.
Take Risks
The market is very unpredictable post the pandemic. The companies that you thought may not require your service can be the ones changing the game. So, do not refrain from taking risks. First, of course, calculate the risks, but they take them.
For example, before the pandemic, some businesses may have invested massive resources in digital marketing. As a result, they might not see the results immediately. But meanwhile, the pandemic erupted, and Boom! They were the only ones who survived in the market.
Thus, the results of a calculated risk may be harmful or positive, but you either earn profits or learn something valuable from it!
Implement ABM
If you are a B2B marketer and have not implemented ABM in your marketing strategy, you need to do it immediately. Account-based marketing has the best conversion rate compared to the traditional methods.
And this is the best strategy to be implemented post the pandemic. The reason is that companies have various challenges and need immediate solutions. Thus, if you filter the best clients, address their struggles, and target them, they will waste no time in approaching your sales team.
But this is possible only when you design the best ABM strategy. Click here to know more about account-based marketing for B2B.
Have an Agile Approach
Clive Armitage, CEO at Agent3, believes that,
“We have to act as the eyes and ears of marketing innovation for our clients; they trust us to help them navigate the pace of change in the way that the process of marketing is evolving.”
It means that Agent3 changes its strategies and services as per the clients and market demands. They also keep the clients in the loop of the changes and innovations happening in the market.
Thus, have an agile approach. Be ready to change your marketing growth strategies and plans according to the conditions around you.
Be Future Ready
The example set by the rental car company Hertz shows how future-ready they are with their latest investment. Despite their business being affected by the pandemic, it resurfaced itself through trusted investors. But instead of following the age-old techniques of rental cars, they ordered 100,000 Teslas to electrify its fleet.
Not only did Tesla’s shares hit sky-high but, Hertz was all over the news. This critical investment defines how Hertz is making itself future-ready as it knows the future is electric cars.
This example explains how important it is to invest for the future, considering the changing customer demands. Hence, implementing the latest technologies like AI and machine learning in marketing campaigns can make you future-ready. Plus they also create a great impression in the mind of the customers.
And We Conclude
Remember, marketing is all about understanding your customers and delivering what they want. Once you know your customers, you have hit the bull’s eye. So hit targets by taking risks, investing in technology, and developing a personalized approach.
And most importantly, adapt to the changing world to thrive in it!
Frequently Asked Questions
How to identify a successful B2B marketing plan?
Analyze your marketing performance
Perform competitor analysis
Define your marketing goals
Identify your marketing budget
Implement the latest B2B marketing trends
How successful is ABM strategy in B2B marketing?
Account-based marketing guarantees a better conversion than traditional marketing methods. Plus, it is one of the most trending strategies in B2B marketing. As a result, companies have saved many resources and fulfilled their sales targets by incorporating account-based marketing.
Does ABM guarantee a 100% success rate?
Well, ABM guarantees a success rate that may be not 100% but surely more than any other marketing strategy. The success of account-based marketing depends on the personalized content and the tailored approach you provide to your clients.
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Identify your marketing budget
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