The most effective methods of attracting customers in B2B segment sales are outbound marketing (telemarketing, active sales), event marketing (exhibitions and seminars), and internet marketing (bulletins Email, company website, search engine marketing and blogs). This conclusion was made in a recent report - one of the leaders in the organization and systematization of internal sales of client companies. And what is actually new in such a statement? The interesting lies in the details!
The specified company has made research of the 1000 clients among which NEC, Cisco, Seagate, Dell and others. The research was related to the analysis of 26 specific marketing methods used by b2b companies for customer acquisition and lead generation. 43% of sales specialists from the b2b segment, 45% of marketing specialists took part in the survey of the company. Among the respondents, 31.5% identified themselves as consumers of customer acquisition marketing services and 53.5% identified themselves as professionals in this field.
Only 12% of respondent firms had large marketing budgets that adequately
will allow them to carry out large-scale marketing campaigns. Respondents were asked to choose the 26 they think are the most effective methods to attract customers from five main categories:
- Traditional: ATL (TV, radio, press, outdoor), PR;
- Events: conferences, sponsorship, exhibitions, business lunches, webinars);
- Online marketing: Corporate website, e-mail, news feeds, SEO, SMO, RSS, rich media (podcasts, flash presentations, interactive PDF);
- Social Media;
- Sales: telemarketing and internal sales.
We see on the graph that more than any other method, companies use the website, which is not surprising. News circulation using E-mail and news feeds, as well as trade marketing, are also very popular marketing methods.
Surprisingly, in the wake of the popularity of interactive Web 2.0 tools (including podcasts, virtual events, interactive online presentations, viral tools) have been largely ignored by b2b marketers.
At the time of the study, respondents were asked to indicate their perception of the effectiveness of each leading customer acquisition method. The graph below shows the ratio of the reported percentage of the effectiveness of the method, against the percentage of those who use this method. For example (they use the "X" method - 60%, all the remaining one hundred percent of the respondents spoke in favor of 40% efficiency of this method, which allows you to indicate the point of this method on the graph in the coordinates: "application" and "efficiency").
One of the most interesting results was revealed in relation to social media. Despite the fact that more than half of the respondents named this method as applied, but all respondents pointed to the inefficiency of this method of attracting customers.
LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Pinterest are placed near the bottom border of the squares. Marketers make little use of Pinterest or Google+, while LinkedIn and Facebook use more than
50% of marketers, and therefore, use these methods excessively.
However, for me, this conclusion in relation to social media was obvious. What really interested me was the expressed attitude towards the popularity and effectiveness of such a marketing tool as internal sales.
Western and American companies in the conditions of crisis, formed markets and an excess of offers are forced to fight for each client, trying to increase the amount of the check and the number of checks per client. It is worth writing a note about this marketing method, because here, in Russia, the method is used one-sidedly and not effectively.
That's it, you draw your own conclusions regarding your b2b marketing, and I went to write.
To bookmarks
The B2B market is undergoing changes, which, among other things, have affected the methods of attracting and retaining customers. And online marketing plays an important role here. According to research group B2B Marketing Trends Internet marketing costs in the field of B2B products in 2017 increased by 14%, in the field of B2B services - by 20%.
Current situation
Almost all B2B companies today have corporate and product websites, but most of them do not work to achieve one of the main business goals - attracting and retaining new customers. There are two reasons for this situation:
1. B2B companies try to create their sites according to the rules of the B2C segment, because of which they lose potential customers. The problem is that the difference between the audiences of B2B and B2C markets is not taken into account: the first includes business representatives who make decisions on behalf of the company, and not end consumers who make purchases for themselves. Therefore, sections and special services of sites that have proven themselves to attract end users often do not work for business clients.
2. B2B sites have traditionally focused more on products and technology than sales and customer service. Therefore, most of them are at best well-illustrated product catalogs with little information about the company. However, in the field of B2B, it is very important to establish communication with potential customers, which are not so many and each client is especially valuable. Therefore, the lack of services aimed at organizing sales and feedback with clients often becomes a critical mistake.
Are B2B marketing recipients companies or their employees?
B2B Sites Are a Valuable Source of Recruitment client base, therefore, should contain both forms of a direct call to make an order, as well as forms that guide the visitor along the route of the buyer, for example, forms for subscribing to the newsletter, requesting a project calculation, requesting technical documentation and other services aimed at obtaining information and establishing contact with this client . It is important to remember that despite the fact that companies enter into business relationships in the B2B market, decisions about choosing a partner and placing an order are made by people - managers and employees of the client company.
In fact, we are talking about the H2H (human for human) model, in which the central place is occupied by the relationship between representatives of the companies of the seller and the buyer. Many experts note that in our time, products, and even business models, are copied very quickly. The only thing that cannot be copied and produced is customer relationships, knowledge about customers, which remains today the only competitive advantage many companies.
Therefore, a very significant factor for choosing a buyer is the reputation of the company and its products, confirmed by the reviews of unbiased persons - that is, real consumers. Almost all potential buyers most of all trust the opinions of consumers who already use this product. The more complex the product and the longer the period of its use, the more attention potential B2B consumers pay to the study of reviews: both the actual experience and period of use of the product by the consumer, and the official or expert level and authority of the person who signed the review are evaluated.
At the same time, of particular interest are the reviews presented not only in the form of letters of recommendation, but also in the form concrete examples successful use of products by other companies, indicating the benefits and benefits that they managed to get from cooperation with the supplier company.
How buyers look for suppliers in the B2B market
Speaking of customers, it should be remembered that B2B purchasing managers have changed, relying more and more on digital sources of information - supplier and third party websites, videos, reviews from other buyers, blogs and social networks. So, according to Forbes, almost 90% of B2B purchasing managers use the Internet to find customers, looking at an average of 10-12 supplier sites on the first page of search results. In this regard, more than 70% of B2B companies plan to stop printing catalogs in the next five years, switching completely to electronic catalogs.
Half of all buyers these days expect that the website of the supplier company will be informative, and, most importantly, a reliable source of information about the company and its products/services. Along with that, they expect easy site search, ratings, reviews, product personalization, service recommendations, and shopping experience. This trend will intensify as young people enter purchasing departments who grew up with the internet, are accustomed to online shopping for themselves and their company, understand the value of reviews and take them into account when making a purchase decision.
Where do customers find reviews?
Customer reviews can be divided into two groups - left by consumers on third-party independent resources and published on the websites of the companies themselves.
The first group includes:
Reviews on the websites of online stores, where the ability to add a review is offered directly on the product card page. On B2B segment sites, the feedback function is often supplemented by a service for selecting analogues and products for comparison, as well as examples of a real solution to a specific problem using the proposed product.
Reviews on sites with product catalogs with a service for posting customer reviews and sellers' responses to them, as well as the ability to transfer reviews to the sites of the latter.
Reviews on the sites of bulletin boards for the sale of goods with the possibility of reviews and mutual comments of sellers and buyers. The websites of the B2B segment offer services for reviews and ratings of companies that are formed by the participants in the transaction themselves.
Reviews on online auction sites that provide a review service and a rating system for sellers and buyers. B2B segment sites usually specialize on an industry basis and contain additional counterparty verification services.
Reviews on specialized sites where only buyers can post a review for a specific product or service.
Reviews on sites of search engines / sorters that collect reviews from all over the Internet, including social networks, with the ability to transfer reviews to the websites of sellers.
Reviews on sites with interactive maps and search and information services that allow you to find a company on the map and place reviews on its page.
Testimonials on consumer groups pages in in social networks, united by common interests and sharing experience of interaction with a particular company, product, technology.
The second group includes:
Official consumer reviews that are published on the company's website by the company itself. On B2B segment sites, as a rule, scans of official letters of recommendation with seals and signed by the heads of client companies are posted.
Informal reviews, proactively posted on the company's website by customers. B2B market companies rarely provide such a service to consumers and even less often leave negative reviews on the site.
Benefits of reviews for attracting and retaining customers in the B2B market
Along with the task of increasing trust in the seller company and its products, reviews perform a number of other important functions. For example, helping a potential customer identify themselves as the target consumer of a company's products. Reviews of companies close to the buyer in the market segment, especially well-known and reputable ones, remove concerns about the qualifications and reputation of the supplier, as well as the quality of its products. Another serious motivating argument for a potential buyer is the reviews left by its direct competitors, especially the market leaders.
Reviews also perform an important function of personalizing the seller's brand, distinguishing it from many others, opening access to real experience, emotions and results of the work of consumers with the supplier company. In traditional B2B sales, the personality of the seller plays a big role, how he stands out from the sales representatives of competing companies. Nowadays, the individuality of the seller replaces the individuality of the company's website.
Another important function of reviews is the proactive removal of objections from potential buyers: by reading the reviews of other consumers who, with the help of the supplier company, solved a problem similar to the problem of a potential client, they can discard the last doubts in choosing a supplier in favor of the seller company. According to Forrester research, 60 percent of B2B buyers prefer to do their research online rather than interact with a sales rep. This is due to buyers' confidence that the seller is focusing on the sales process rather than helping solve the problem. Customer reviews are a great way to showcase what a company has to offer to its customers and how they do it in practice.
From an online marketing standpoint, reviews are valuable and unique content. We must not forget that search engines index reviews, and often reviews are specifically shown higher in search queries.
Reviews are a practical tool to increase the loyalty of existing customers. Even if the reviews are negative, they allow the company to deal with the situation, make the necessary corrections and inform the customer who left this review about it. Constructive negativity implies that the client criticizes the real problems of the supplier company. All suppliers make mistakes from time to time, the main thing for the client is the willingness of companies to recognize and correct them. Such reviews are the most valuable for the company, as they allow not only returning and retaining customers, but also pointing out “weak links” in the chain of interactions with customers. If the client wrote a positive letter of recommendation, then in the case of a request for a supplier recommendation from other companies, he will undoubtedly name the seller company.
Solving the problem of credibility of reviews
A huge challenge for online marketing is the reliability of information, including market reviews and consumer reviews. In the case of posting letters of recommendation from customers on the site, the problem of reliability is in principle solved, but with unofficial reviews, everything is not so simple. Unfortunately, today the practice of buying reviews is common, and quotes posted on the site without indicating the author look implausible. Therefore, it is very important that the published review is not anonymous, but also reflects the real experience of using the product/service.
In the world
There have been review sites for the SAS model on the market for more than a decade. The main players are of course international. Some of them offer the authors of reviews authorization through social networks. This, of course, is better than anonymity. For example, the company TrustRadius, which specializes in the IT market, allows only registered users to leave a review through the Linkedin network. V North America this network is seen as a "business community". It can be assumed that in this way TrustRadius wants to show its B2B customers that they care about verifying the identity of the reviewer. But even this cannot guarantee complete reliability. After all, the fact of purchasing a product or service by these review services is not checked.
Market leaders
The situation is better with trading platforms that control payment themselves. Examples include Amazon, Booking, Airbnb. But even they have a high percentage of fake reviews.
What do we have
The Russian aggregator Yandex Market has also begun to pay attention to this unresolved problem. So, in 2017, a part of reviews on Yandex Market got the mark “Verified Buyer”. It means that the review about the store was left by the person who made the purchase using the service. And in the spring of 2018, they announced that they would change the approach to the formation of store ratings. And that in the future, ratings will reflect the actual experience of interaction between buyers and sellers. It is stated that the rating will take into account the ratings of users who actually made a purchase in the store. To do this, they will evaluate the probability with which the author of each assessment placed an order. And if the probability is high, the score will be taken into account in the rating. How this probability will be determined exactly, the Yandex Market team does not report. Allegedly, the probability assessment will be carried out using a special technology that uses Yandex data on user behavior.
As for Russian review sites, they mainly accumulate reviews left via email messages, that is, they are essentially anonymous.
A trifle, but an important one
Even one negative feedback can affect the effectiveness of a company's investment in online marketing. The rating systems of Yandex and Google are very sensitive to negative reviews, as they report problems in the company very quickly. At the same time, Google not only shows more often negative feedback when requesting reviews about the company, but also to everyone who is interested in the company by brand query, it shows its rating, and sometimes the rating of competing companies.
As a result, a situation is possible (on real example our company - a large Russian industrial and construction holding), when the company has been earning positive reviews about its products / services on the network for many years, and then a random passer-by with his complaint sharply spoils the entire rating, which from now on will be broadcast to thousands potential consumers Requesting feedback about the business. Our company's rating from 7 to 5 out of 10 was sharply downgraded by an ordinary resident of the house next to the office, who was angry that the company's employees were occupying parking spaces, which, in his opinion, belonged to local residents. Based on the fact that the company receives one or two “recommended” orders per day, and the rating was corrected only a week later, the company could lose from 6 to 10 potential orders.
Many services still advertise their solutions for verifying the authenticity of reviews, but in practice they do not always solve even the problem of anonymity. Indeed, testimonials from an unknown nickname, or even the name and surname of an unknown consumer, cannot be considered reliable until the authorship and reality of the author, his relationship to the buying company and the fact of purchasing the product is not confirmed from other sources.
The solution to this problem may be the new Trusted Reviews service offered by the TruView team. Their desire to leave fewer fake reviews for future generations is at least noteworthy. And the claimed unique 2-stage solution to the problem of reliability may just be what the market needs.
More information about the TruView solution for B2B users can be found on the company's website (https://trv.one/demo1vc1r1).
In the next article, we will look at the review site maturity model.
Ruben Chinarian
Director for Development and Marketing, Promstroykontrakt Group of Companies, Chief Editor magazines "Sales Management" and "Clienting and Client Portfolio Management"
Where to start planning email marketing? What audience acquisition channels work for B2B? How to find out in which channel there is a sufficient volume of the target audience?
In the previous introductory article, we reviewed all the key points of difference between B2B and B2C Internet marketing, sorting out the main terms and definitions.
Today I propose to start with the first point of our plan - acquisition channels and target audience. I will talk briefly, with examples and focus on managers and business owners, and not on technical specialists.
The standard set of Internet marketing channels today is as follows:
- Search Marketing
a) using all the opportunities provided by search engines for marketing purposes (organic search and snippets, contextual and contextual advertising, maps, marketplaces and more than 15-20 different tools)
b) often confused with SEO optimization and site promotion
- Social media marketing
a) Use of any social media resources for the purpose of marketing, both open and guerrilla (hidden)
- Mobile Marketing
a) Use of the whole variety of mobile technologies for marketing purposes
- PR on the Internet
a) Open or covert PR activity on any available sites
- Display advertising
This "standard" list can be safely supplemented:
- Special projects (specially organized websites, blogs, events at industry sites, and so on), which include several of the channels listed above.
- Third-party projects and services (marketplaces, specific ad networks, niche projects).
- Offline advertising ending, for example, on a website.
If you and your Internet marketing contractor (either personally or your marketer) are now sitting and choosing which channels will work effectively for your B2B segment and which guarantees you can “knock out” from the contractor, then I hasten to upset you - this is an occupation rather useless and doomed to failure.
Every time in my articles and speeches I repeat (and I will do it again): you need to go not from tools, but from your business.
Would you like to receive an offer from us?
Start cooperationThe channels of attraction are the hammer and the screwdriver. Without system knowledge and nails, you still won’t be able to build a house - you will simply rush at beautiful advertising slogans, guarantees and “results”.
To prevent this from happening, you need to follow a clear strategy built on your business, on your performance indicators, on your results and their analytics.
For example: what good is it to you that you are in the TOP-10 for 20, 30, 40 words in Yandex, when your business segment describes 9514 queries, half of which work only on Google, and the other half do not bring money in principle (true , you cannot calculate this, since your finances and clients are kept in Excel and there is no connection to the site - an ordinary exaggerated example of the fact that for B2B the result of Internet marketing can only be calculated if your business is automated).
Another example: why was it necessary to invest a large part of the marketing budget in media advertising with division by gender and age and payment for clicks and targeted actions on the site, when banner ads in principle, it cannot be measured by the method of clicks and targeted actions (which has already been repeatedly proven by such analytics leaders as ComScore and Nielsen), and your business, moreover, has not yet been able to properly process incoming requests, since you have not paid due attention to automation and the work of managers .
If for B2C you can deal with piecewise solutions for a long time and play with various channels without a thoughtful connection with the business (you will still see in 1C or in e-commerce from Google Analytics actual cash receipts), then for B2B such a clumsy approach will no longer work.
It is necessary to start planning B2B email marketing not with the choice of channels or conditions / guarantees / CTR / CTA / RTB / impressions (and other very conditional, and sometimes ridiculous indicators), but with your business model, business processes (albeit superficially) and segmentation of your customers (see examples below). From the data received, it will already be possible to understand how you will work in each individual acquisition channel and how to interpret success or failure (we will talk about KPI in the last fourth article of our series).
So, here is your business model, general business processes and a clear audience segmentation. Now and only now can we start talking about the selection of channels that can cover the audience segments we have chosen, taking into account your business model and processes in the company.
Who should determine the company's business model, its business processes and segment the audience?
This work is an obligatory stage of interaction between a professional Internet marketing contractor and company management. These issues are addressed in a series of briefings.
What audience acquisition channels work for B2B and are they different from B2C? The channels are still the same, but the way you capture your target audience segment is different. Example: A large B2B print shop couldn't get orders through either organic search or PPC. As a result, it was possible to “hook” the decision maker of potential customers through a well-thought-out PR strategy and targeted advertising in social networks (advertising strictly repeated the segmentation of the target audience performed at the first stage).
How to find out in which channel there is a sufficient volume of the target audience?
I was told that "these queries are ... selling, and contextual advertising will be ineffective."
Here it is worth asking only one question - how was it revealed that queries are "selling" and contextual advertising is "ineffective"? If "according to our experience", then we can safely drive such advisers into the neck.
Let's say the set of channels is more or less clear, what's next?
Next, pilot advertising campaigns on a limited budget with KPI analytics. You also need to make sure that your business and its processes fully process the flow of incoming calls (in my experience in Russia, at least 25% - 30% of calls “merge” immediately due to poor business automation or poor-quality work of service managers)
The following articles in our B2B series will explore the remaining features of B2B:
- Points of contact (website, blog, group, industry platforms, electronic materials for B2B and B2C are developed differently).
- The cycles of engagement, conversion, and audience retention at touchpoints are different for B2B and B2C.
- Performance measurement (ROI analytics) for B2B and B2C is built differently, using different KPIs and analytics methodologies.
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Content marketing is booming. In 2017, 39% of companies increased their investment in this area of Internet marketing.
Yet most companies do not create effective content. Do you want proof?
SiriusDecisions and Forrester claim that conversion rates from a request to a closed deal often below two percent in most industries, even for those using best practices.
There are many reasons for such low conversion rates. Every day, the internet is flooded with new content. And let's face it: there is not much good among him.
In short, the market believes that content creation is enough. This is not true. Do you really need right content.
Learn five important steps that will help you dramatically improve the quality and effectiveness of your content.
Step 1. Define your niche
Media companies, marketing agencies and our own egos often push us to expand our target market. I have heard this topic thousands of times from thoughtful, intelligent people.
We do this because we are afraid of losing income. Suddenly this business, what is, will be closed?
Do not do this. Focus on one. Start by taking a good look at your current customers to see if the solution you're trying to sell is right for them. Start with quality information gathering. Talk to your team and sales managers:
Who are your most profitable customers and why?
Which clients have been with you the longest and why?
What do they have in common?
Which clients are disadvantaged and why?
How can we avoid them?
Then do a quantitative analysis.
Share the results with your most relevant stakeholders to reach consensus on your ideal customer profile. Define characteristics. Divide your market into two or three segments based on their potential value. If you can afford to work with only one of the segments, choose the most valuable one.
Remember that everything changes over time. So do it annually, for every solution you sell. For new categories, finding the perfect customer profile will not be easy. And of course use various ways testing and optimizing your hypothesis.
Find doors for other things you sell
For example, Microsoft started with tools for programmers. They attracted tech-savvy people.
Then Microsoft created the operating system (well, Microsoft bought and licensed it to IBM, to be absolutely precise). Operating system created a platform for the sale of desktop products such as Word and Excel, and their relationship with developers allowed them to encourage the latter to create other programs and utilities.
Step 2: Understand Your Audience
Once you have clearly defined your target audience, and the value you offer, it's time to understand how your target audience makes decisions.
Do not forget that this is a B2B sphere, and your customers are other organizations.
Who is most likely to make the decision?
You really need to find one of those rare people within the organization who can influence others. Many try. Think about functional role, relationships, personality type, credentials, likely beliefs, etc. This person is who you will be speaking to. Even when your message reaches others in the company, they will find that person for you. Let them know who to look for.
What events are of interest?
Trigger events can be positive or negative. These events can take place internally or externally. They can happen within a day or over a long period of time.
The fact is that these events often force companies to resort to your services. In many cases, these are problems that your company can handle. You need to understand what trigger events are, such as layoffs, management changes, new rules, rapid growth, competitive intrusion, employee turnover, or customer churn.
You can then use one or more of these events as triggers to show how your company can help. You can also research the prevalence of these trigger events in your target market to estimate the amount of demand that might exist.
What non-obvious problems can you solve?
As a rule, in order to change something, people must feel that the status quo is not safe. And you have to show them what they can't see.
Help them see their situation with new eyes. This is the heart of the story you have to tell.
You really need to understand the implications of these unmet needs.
If you can quantify the problem financially, you endow your proposal with the universal language of money, a language that everyone understands.
What evidence can you provide?
Again, you are not trying to sell something here right away. You are only trying to nudge a potential customer into being interested in talking to your company.
However, you must provide evidence to make your promise convincing enough. To do this, you will need to collect facts in order to process key objections.
Ideally, you get most of this information through direct interviews and/or focus groups, supplemented by simple research. Usually 5-10 interviews will give you what you need. If the information you hear becomes redundant, you will know that you have spoken to enough people. One piece of advice: talk to these people during the buying process, or soon after, while the experience is still fresh.
Step 3: Be clear about your true value
How often do you see words like "leading", "exceptional", "biggest", "greatest" and other incredible, vague, empty claims? One of the reasons social media has become so popular is because people need another source of information they can trust: information from their friends or anyone other than the seller.
Part of the problem is that there are many things you can say about your offer and your company. But verbosity is confusing and boring.
To find your value, you need to look at your product objectively, and through the eyes of your customer. At the same time, look for something that your competitor does not have.
If your customers don't want it, your product is useless. If your customers want it and your competitors can provide it too, you will be left behind. Instead, look for something unique that your customers want and only your company can do.
Find the three values that make you different, and then craft your posts and stories around those three.
Step 4: Define your goal
This is important: Before you start creating content, find your purpose. But this is not brand building. It can certainly be something that happens as a by-product of your efforts, but that's not the goal. Content role - should not generate clicks, traffic, incoming calls, or even leads. It also doesn't sell your product or service.
The main goal is to create demand. Show values to get people interested in your product. Within the demand generation framework, each element must support this goal. If not, cut off the excess, using your target as a knife.
Step 5: Love Your Leads
It may seem obvious, but there's a reason sales and marketing often get a bad rap. Loving your customers means treating them with understanding, respect and sensitivity. And that means being authentic and honest, even if your tone should be playful. Treat them the way you would like to be treated. The deeper you connect with them, the more effective your content will work.
This connection with your audience will usually help you find the right tone and voice.
Using these tips, you can create and tailor content to the most appropriate contact method(s) (blog, social media…).
But you will good foundation to overcome the noise in an ever-changing market because what you offer will be rare, honest and true.