B2B Marketing Strategies – The Bitter Business

In the world of B2B marketing strategies, CMO’s and marketing leads
are finding out that there is allot more to them than just content and
SEO.


Social media marketing companies seem to trot out the well worn lines
of, you must create a library full of content, recalibrate your SEO,
share the content on the social networks, and HEY PRESTO. Your business
will have a flow of low cost inbound leads from buyers interested in
buying your product or service. The logic around a content lead strategy
for lots of businesses stacks up as the lower cost of an inbound lead
against an outbound lead is sizeable, making it attractive to invest in
SEO, articles, blogging and content.





So it can be easy for any marketer to assume that we all use social
media. Most marketing people are active on the social networks as it
forms part of marketing tactics and we also have to be up-to-date on
latest trends. However, this is not the case for lots of senior business
people and buyers. I have worked with lots of CEO’s who do not have
profiles on LinkedIn or Twitter. Others in senior positions are not
actively engaged with social media to get a result on trying to build
awareness for your brand or even social selling tactics.


What lots of social media agencies will never tell you is that an
inbound strategy does not work for all market sectors and can be in fact
a waste of money, resources and time. For certain B2B companies
operating in certain markets or industries, the reality is the target
buyer audience can be too small or the products or services too
specialised to be worth over investing in SEO, Google Adwords or Content
Marketing. If your business is a new or disruptive product then maybe
buyers is not yet doing keyword searches on Google for the solutions you
sell.


You see most inbound marketing tactics try to hit multiple keywords
or topics to engage buyers. Most of these tactics really are inexpensive
to tee up and implement but the audience engagement is not an exact
science (you can’t stop anyone reading your articles). So it does take
some time to refine your tactics to narrow down sell-to leads.


When articles or blog posts are ranked in search engine results, the
relevancy to the topic is mainly down to the keywords it has been
optimised for. If your target is HR directors in the banking industry in
Ireland then content and even paid advertising cannot be specifically
targeted at them 9you cannot control who reads or clicks). There are
exceptions like social selling tools like LinkedIn or Connectors
Marketplace where you can specify buyer profiles.


Let me be clear, I am not for one second suggesting B2B marketers
should discount social media as part of their marketing strategy. The
thing to remember is to keep the purpose and goals in perspective, don’t
get carried away by stories, statistics and advice that may or may not
be relevant to your business proposition.


To make social media pay, you should:

• Evaluate the social platforms for their fit to your marketing goals

• Can you feed them with quality content and informative articles

• Train up the sales team in social selling so they can use social media to nurture relationships

So when does inbound marketing have limited returns?

• The buyer is a specific person within that company:
  If one buyer has the authority to purchase your product with little
  influence from other stakeholders as it is not a critical purchasing
  decision (e.g. paper) then it is a challenge to engage this person with
  inbound marketing alone.
• The target market is small: When the target
  prospects are defined by location, company size or a single buyer (see
  above) in a company, the list of prospects can be very small. My own
  rule of thumb is if your prospect list is less than 1000 companies then a
  heavily weighted inbound strategy may only be helpful to raise
  awareness as the buyer will probably be targeted via sales calls.
• Disruptive technology or products: Where inbound
  excels is when the buyer is on a journey of self discovery (reading
  articles, whitepapers or engaged with social conversations) and where
  they understand the problem and the solutions. When a product is
  disruptive in nature a business may have to create demand as few buyers
  will be seeking out information. Inbound marketing does NOT create
  demand, it harvest levels of buyer interest based on keyword nets thrown
  out by marketing content.

The reality is that for some companies, the keyword net on Google
searches and the social networks is simply too small to gather enough
sales leads. This leaves options like outbound sales and referrals to
harvest leads. We know referrals have a high conversion rate but this is
not a repeatable sales process. So this leaves outbound selling
(combined with social selling) makes for a repeatable, scalable sales
process.


As someone who champions inbound marketing, social selling and good
old fashioned sales techniques, I have to be frank and say if your
products or services meet any of the criteria I wrote about above, then
inbound marketing alone as a lead channel will have limited success. So
contrary to what lots of social media gurus preach, inbound marketing is
only part of the solution and it may not be a lead generation machine
to feed sales.

So what marketing and sales strategies will work?

Marketing and sales leaders spend endless hours asking and answering
this very question, “Where and how do we engage the right prospects?”
The good news is there are still lots of options when it comes to
reaching B2B prospects.


Embrace outbound prospecting: Hire in sales people
who can pick up the phone and prospect AKA cold call. A business can now
subscribe to automated lead generation platforms to give you large
lists of prospects based on titles, industry and location with full
contact details (email and telephone numbers) including social media
profiles for social selling engagement. This works great for SaaS
companies and companies with defined sales processes.


Still some life in events and trade shows: Attending
events can be another way to connect with your target prospects and
meet them in face-to-face. This can be a very personal approach that
creates trust and builds relationships. The big barrier  is that events
cost money, have higher cost per lead, take time to plan and are they
cannot scale in any major way.


Industry Webinars: If your own marketing reach is
too small to make hosting your own webinar an option, then maybe
consider trying to find a market research company, an industry
publication or forum or a contact where you can piggy bank on their
webinars to get access to their audience. It does take effort but can be
a great way to grow a prospect list while providing valuable content to
generate more awareness.


Customer Referrals: Some businesses do manage to
generate a large portion of their leads via customer referrals and word
of mouth. But a note of caution, this tactic is difficult to forecast
and scale. Also from a sales process, it is hard to have a programmatic
approach to word of mouth referrals. Even formal referral programs
usually have low level of leads in certain B2B sectors.


Exposure in publications: Online and print
publications are a B2B marketing channel worth exploring. Product
reviews, news and interviews can be a great way to reach an audience and
connect with prospects


We must all accept that the buyer’s journey is changing. Yes, social media marketing agencies
are right when they say business buyers are increasingly relying on
social media, social conversations, social reviews and other content as a
means of gathering information about vendor solutions. But regardless
of what B2B marketing strategy you pursue to generate leads or sales,
there is still a huge place for direct human contact via well trained
sales people. In the sales process there will always be a place where
questions will best be addressed in a personal way especially in higher
value deal sizes.



B2B Marketing Strategies – The Bitter Business