B2B marketers face many unique challenges, but the ever-evolving marketing landscape means it doesn’t have to be an uphill walk in the snow. Tools and concepts are being developed every day that are specifically for B2B marketers and help us do our jobs better.
Below, check out some of the biggest challenges facing B2B marketers and how to solve them.
Personalization of Content
Marketing campaigns tend to come across as cold, blanket pieces sent in mass to contacts. Because, oftentimes, they are. While this method is easy and saves time, it doesn’t generate good, qualified leads.
Personalization is important because it gives your brand a voice and builds trust with the contact. The trouble is, with B2B’s long sales process it can be hard to make content feel personal and many marketers only think of the concept post-sale.
No two visitors are the same, so they should not be marketed to in the same way. According to Hubspot, personalized CTAs convert 42% more site visitors than untargeted ones. This alone should be proof that personalization is worthwhile.
Multiple touches allow you to better understand the customer journey, which means you can easily personalize the content a prospect sees. But rarely do marketers collect the necessary data needed to personalize messages.
Reporting on Data that Matters
Collecting basic visitor demographics like age, income level and location, is just as important as knowing which blog post an individual clicked to find your website or which CTA got them to download an e-book or fill out a form.
Demographics allow marketers to accurately target the correct group of individuals, and knowing which clicks convert to customers helps the marketing team get the most bang for its (advertising) buck.
Obtaining Quality Leads
The information obtained by collecting data from attribution allows marketers to target specific stages of the funnel. Because potential customers spend more time researching in a B2B marketplace, they tell you more about themselves in the process.
Gathering this information means that leads can be scored so only the most qualified ones will be passed on to the sales team. The sales and marketing teams need to be aligned so an agreement can be made on which things make a contact more sales-ready than others. Passing only qualified leads on to sales saves the team wasted hours contacting individuals who are nowhere near ready to buy.
Navigating the Lengthy Buying Cycle
In a traditional B2C exchange a customer will visit a website or go into a store and purchase a product they’ve maybe spent a couple hours researching. That isn’t the case with B2B, though. In B2B, the buying process tends to be long and involves multiple parties at a company. It can take months or even years of research before a potential customer makes contact with a sales team.
The goal is to track each of these interactions and nurture the leads so they keep coming back and eventually turn into a paying customer. A W-shaped attribution model does just that. It tracks and assigns revenue value to first click, lead conversion click, and the click that created the opportunity.
Solution: Omni-Channel Marketing Attribution
Following leads as they bounce around and revisit your website is essential for a B2B marketer. Maybe a lead first clicked a blog post they saw on Facebook, read the article and left the website. A month later, they visited your booth at an event and completed a demo and then closed a deal a week later.
Omni-channel marketing attribution tracks all of these touches– without it, you’re left in the dark ages.
Personalize your content based on where the contact is in the funnel, use the data from attribution to target the correct individuals, qualify the leads based on demographics and what pages they’ve visited on your website, and keep track of the entire buying cycle so you know what gets the client to revisit your product and website.
Knowing what brings leads in and what keeps them around, means that the long buying process doesn’t have to be so scary anymore. Instead of a short stroll through the park look at it like a long walk along the beach and omni-channel attribution holds your hand along the way.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: Move Out of the B2B Dark Ages with Omni-Channel Marketing Attribution
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