Many marketers spend time and money building personas so they can “speak” to B2B buyers. But too often, they use generic content that doesn’t deliver results. Target your top customers with personalized messages that drive engagement and convert leads. Leverage:
- Core principles of account-based marketing
- Best practices for onsite and offsite personalization
- Real life tactics from successful companies to drive growth
- Generate more revenue by personalizing for accounts that matter the most.
It’s a challenging time to be a marketer:
Buyers are media savvy and immune to the same old “tricks”
We all have numerous demands on our attention and time
And there are increasing amounts of competition and noise from all sides…
Specifically, for B2B, there are 4 main areas that are part of our mandate, but where there still seems to be a fair amount of struggle:
Attract the right audience…potential customers/buyers…and bring them to the website – In our work and analysis of 200+ clients’ website traffic, 2 billion+ website visits we’ve seen that an average of 82% of B2B website visitors aren’t from identifiable companies at all (Residential, Wireless, Bots, SOHOs, etc.).
Engage that right audience with the right content – On an average B2B website, around 60% of B2B website visitors visit one page and don’t complete one interaction (bounce). –Marketo (and others)
Product better leads…and make Sales happy – 97% of website visitors will never complete a goal, or fill out a form…remaining anonymous. –Based on industry average conversion rates (2-5%, Adobe)
Understand whether programs are working, and prove ROI – 67% of CMOs struggle to prove the long-term impact of their spending. –The CMO Survey, Sept. 2014 http://www.marketingcharts.com/traditional/us-cmos-dogged-by-roi-questions-45708/attachment/dukecmosurvey-measuring-biz-impact-social-mktg-spend-sept2014/
Have you heard these common complaints?
Advertising doesn’t work!
The website sucks/is inefficient!
All the leads are bad!
Many marketers work hard defending their ability to attract, engage and convert new opportunities for the business. But no one (especially Sales) ever seems to be happy.
Most of the time, marketers are missing a key strategic focus…they’re marketing to masses of individuals, looking for anyone to show interest. Using tactics that originated with consumer marketing…We like to call that mass backwards
ALSO:
In a recent survey of more than 1,150 B2B sales executives only 31 percent of marketing generated leads were considered suitable.
-Sales Speaks: Perceptions & Ponderings on Marketing Leads, The Bridge Group and Vorsight
What’s clear is that your website is increasingly important – for taking prospect accounts from research/inquiry and moving them toward sales leads.
Think about it…before our call today, you visited our website, or thought about checking it out, right?
It’s proven with research too. 70% of B2B buyers say your website in the most influential channel for making a purchase
No matter what your job is (Website centric or not), we allow you to take advantage of the activity on your website and its importance in the buying process.
ALSO:
80% of buyers listed the B2B website as an integral part of their educational and decision making processes. – “B2B Buyer Survey Reveals Impact of Social Media on Vendor Selection Process,” -DemandGen Report, Sept. 11, 2012
“…all roads eventually lead to the company Web site – buyers use company Web sites as a primary tool during the decision-making process... Since Web sites are such an important stop for buyers, and it is imperative that they have a good experience during their visits, vendors must not lag in this area.” - IDC, “2012 CMO Tech Marketing Barometer Study” (April 2012)
80% of respondents report the corporate website is not performing to its maximum lead generation potential. -Demandbase 2011 National Website Demand Generation Study
Often the root cause of disconnected and siloed marketing is a lack of alignment on how the company’s two most important revenue producing teams focus their priorities…almost the language they speak
Marketing = Individuals first
Sales = Accounts first
TRANSITION: Subconsciously, we’ve always known that accounts are the standard unit of measure in B2B, but somehow, in marketing we’ve been lured by the siren song of B2C tactics and solutions.
So what’s the result?
How many of you have experienced this? You have had an incredible quarter. Mktg just CRUSHED it… You’re going to a meeting with sales and thinking, finally, for the first time since June
I’m going to have a good meeting with them. You get in there and report your results… We delivered over 1200 MQLs this quarter. Over 27% above goal. Check it out.
And what’s sales response?
Marketing isn’t supporting us…
What?? I’ve got data…
Hmmm, that’s strange, because I just talked to Bob in the midwest, and he said he hasn’t gotten a good lead from Marketing in like, a month…
As marketers, we’ve got 3 major problems…
2) We generate all these leads and throw them over the fence….Sales guys take a sniff and go back to what they were doing…
You could have success initially across funnel activity…
driving visitors to your website
interaction with your website
creating leads, Sales calling on them
measuring separate programs and silos with metrics that give the appearance of success
But if you’re not reaching the right accounts/prospects and connecting your relationship with them across the funnel, you are spending time, energy and money on individuals that will never buy from you
To be effective – you have to be able to:
Attract and build awareness with the right audience
Engage that same audience with content, mostly on the website, and develop a relationship
Convert the relationships you’ve built into sales interactions
Measure success and tie/connect everything together across the entire funnel
So how can you overcome these challenges and be laser-focused on the companies you can actually sell to?
It’s called Account-Based Marketing or ABM, and it’s quickly becoming the primary strategy for best-in-class B2B companies.
Account-Based Marketing can be done in several flavors, but is broadly characterized as targeting and marketing to specific companies or segments based on their business attributes (firmographics) like: industry, size, revenue, geography, account status, and more.
3A. ENTERPRISE
There are consultants, agencies, or solution providers that would paint ABM as complex and difficult…they may have a vested interest in that way of thinking.
It’s actually very simple and straightforward…
And not only helps alignment, but also makes things more simple and clear cut for marketers
Many large companies use the strategy to target and market to a specific set of existing customers, across marketing channels, for upsell and cross-sell
3B. MID-MARKET
You can’t afford to do something complicated and involved
ABM is a great way to focus effort in a specific vertical like tech, healthcare, finance, etc. Or can even include targeting businesses who use a competitive or complementary technology
ABM is a very straightforward approach that can help you “hack” revenue growth and get a competitive advantage
ABM Simplified:
Identify – the accounts that sales values most and is most likely to close
Market – attract, engage and convert those account to prime them for a sales opportunity
Measure – keep Sales in the loop, and show them which accounts are progressing, which need attention…collaborate on actionable insights
Still not convinced? There are some decided benefits to taking an Account-Based approach to B2B Marketing:
Focuses on the best opportunities to close
go for quality and not volume
gets rid of the waste
Builds consensus across the buying team
not just targeting an individual, but key stakeholders
Supports the Sales reality
delivers on their target accounts
Delivers optimal customer-centric experiences
focused on a specific set of companies
Ties marketing programs directly to revenue
How do we do it? What does it look like?
Demandbase offers the only comprehensive set of marketing solutions purpose built for the account-based needs of B2B. The Demandbase B2B Marketing Cloud is built on powerful proprietary and patented technologies that combine to help marketers get results:
Real-Time Identification Engine – our patented technology that resolves IP addresses and matches company visitors to our database of robust company information
Data & Audience Management – system that organizes all of our data, appends 1st party data for each of our clients, and makes it all usable for attracting, engaging, converting and measuring your target accounts.
We combine all of this in our solutions to create targeted and personalized marketing across the funnel:
Advertising – We’ve built a propriety real-time bidder to serve advertising to specific companies wherever they are on the Web.
Personalization – Demandbase plugs into your existing CMS, testing tool or website experience software to allow native website personalization.
Conversion – We plug into Marketing Automation, CRM and Chat to get better quality leads and buying signals into the hands of your Sales team, quickly.
Measurement – Across the funnel and throughout your ABM programs, we give you the ability to measure how your performing and see where to adjust…and clearly connect marketing efforts to revenue.
We’ve built an enterprise-class infrastructure to support the demands of some of the most active and successful B2B brands on the planet. We see:
10B+ ad impressions, 4B+ IP addresses, 2B+ website visits, 1M+ conversions, and much more
Company-targeted advertising is a new approach for B2B. It’s all about targeting and serving impressions to specific companies vs. individuals.
It’s more focused, less wasteful and helps you reach and surround the whole group of stakeholders to start engaging them and build consensus early.
Demandbase identifies the companies visiting your website in real-time and integrates with your CMS to personalize content based on your segmenting strategy.
Demandbase helps you personalize website experiences by:
1. Segment - Drive industry verticals or other segments to content relevant to them
2. Account Status - Serve renewal, upsell or support content to existing customers
3. Account Personalization - Personalize to companies visiting your website by name
…and many other ways that help drive engagement on your website for your target accounts.
Animation:
Zappos visits the website; Industry = Online Retailer; They get a personalized hero banner with relevant whitepaper.
NBC visits website; Industry = Large Media; They’re funneled to customer stories/case studies of similar businesses (or competitors).
Starwood visits website; Industry = Travel & Hospitality; They get industry specific research papers demonstrating capabilities.
Audi visits website; Industry = Auto; They get a relevant article with info about how other industry players are using similar products.
Demandbase Forms increases conversion rates by shortening forms without sacrificing important company information.
Demandbase gives you:
Company-specific attributes, enabling lead segmentation & routing
Fine-tune web forms, standardized company details from multiple sources (?)
Increase conversions, with higher qualified leads
Animation:
Many forms have 15+ fields and ask for detailed company information that is used to score and route leads.
Demandbase captures all that company information about each visitor, so you’re able to shorten forms significantly…which is proven to increase conversion rates.
The detailed company info is passed through for each lead and captured in the appropriate marketing automation or CRM tool.
It’s common knowledge that marketing works better when it’s targeted and personalized.
Looking across some leading companies and how they engage with customers on their website, we can see some unique approaches.
Amazon – #1 online consumer retailerPersonalized the experience with behavioral and registration, first party data…multi-billion dollar online sales. Individually focused, B2C, small ticket, impulse buying
GE Capital – Large B2B leaderSingle, static experience for all visitors. Low conversions. They rely on navigation and user experience to get visitors to relevant content and information about their offerings.
Salesforce – Red hot B2B tech innovatorTargeting and personalizing to accounts, industries and segments, Salesforce employs a model Target Account Marketing approach. It shows in their conversion results and revenue growth…BTW, Salesforce happens to be a Demandbase customer.