by gabriel_sales | Jul 8, 2013
B2B Blogging will help your sales!
A 2012 study of Fortune 500 companies found that only 28% have corporate blogs. While this number is up dramatically from the same study in 2008, we think it is still quite low considering the amount of value a corporate blog can bring to a company.
B2B Blogging is great fit for web marketing for many reasons, but we think the main benefits fall into two categories: forwarding sales and marketing objectives and improving SEO.
Sales & Marketing Benefits
One of the biggest benefits of having a company blog is building awareness around your brand. Customers today want to know more about the companies they buy from and are looking for ways to build trust. A blog helps get your company’s name out there and at the same time humanizes your brand.
Through the content you post, blogs can be even more of an asset to your company. By asking people to subscribe to your blog, you can build an online community and foster intelligent discussions around industry trends and best practices. By doing so, you can position yourself as a thought-leader in your industry and build credibility for the products or services you provide. If you are able to provide valuable content to your readers, they will likely turn into leads.
SEO Benefits
The primary marketing function of a company blog is generally to help improve SEO. By having more pages (blog posts) with the keywords your prospects are searching for, you are more likely to show up in the top results of search engines.
Polaris B found that companies that have published 200 blog posts or more generate 5X as much traffic as those with 10 or less. So, the more you post, the better (while never sacrificing quality/content value). Having multiple blog posts also gives you the opportunity to use different keyword variations, thereby allowing you to penetrate more verticals.
In summary, B2B blogging is a great way to bring value to your B2B company while at the same time further your sales and marketing objectives. Blogs bring faces to the name of your brand and help you connect with more customers in new and exciting ways.
Bottom line: If you aren’t blogging, you should be.
For more on B2B blogging for web marketing, click here.
by gabriel_sales | Jul 3, 2013
This is the second half of a blog series giving three reasons for why you might be struggling with B2B sales in 2013. For the first half of the blog, click here.
2. You aren’t reaching all of your decision makers.
In the 80s and 90s, closing a deal in the B2B world usually required selling to just one decision-maker. Since the early 2000s, it has been common to sell to both a business buyer and a technical buyer. Today, many companies are bringing even more people into the buying decision including CMOs, HR executives and non-IT personnel.
These new and varied types of decision-makers need new and varied types of marketing content to reach a buying decision. For example, the head of HR is not likely too concerned with P&L figures, but the CEO definitely is. If you don’t have marketing content readily available for both types of decision-makers, one of them is going to feel that his/her needs were not met.
To reach all of your decision-makers effectively, you need to understand how each of them looks at the buying decision and what their main concerns or objectives are. You can then build segmented marketing campaigns for each type that speaks directly to their specific needs and concerns.
3. You are the only one telling your story.
A recent industry report by the CMO Council found that the most valuable source of marketing content in shaping buying decisions is professional associations and online communities. The second most valuable is industry organizations and groups. So, if the only place online advocating your products or services is your website, you aren’t giving your prospects any reason to trust you.
Buyers today are easily turned off by messaging that is overtly sales-y or that tries to close the deal right away. For this reason, many buyers are going to third-party or peer created communities to gather information about B2B product/services options. Getting your content promoted by an online community or industry organization usually requires a connection of some kind, but connections are what B2B sales in 2013 is all about. To start, join the communities or groups you would like to promote your company and become an active member; leave comments, answer questions, ask for advice. Once you have established a reputation as a helpful and insightful thought-leader, these groups will likely be more than willing to publish something to help with your marketing objectives.
Another great option is to ask to post a guest article on an industry leader’s blog or ask an industry leader to write an article for your blog. The key here is to get people and mediums other than you and your website involved in telling your brand’s story.
In summary, what these three reasons for failure have in common is a lack of connection to the customer. In order to succeed in today’s world of B2B digital content marketing, knowing everything possible about your customer and their online behavior is imperative. Once you know who your customer is, what your customer likes and doesn’t like, and what he/she needs to see to make a decision, the path forward is clear.
For more B2B sales tips, click here.
by gabriel_sales | Jun 30, 2013
Many B2B companies have started to catch on to the fact that marketing in the digital space is dramatically different than marketing of the past. Selling in this space means playing by different rules (i.e. the buyer runs the show), however, many companies have not taken the time to understand the complexities and intricacies these new rules contain.
So, if you have tried to adapt to B2B marketing in the digital world, but have found little success, here are three reasons your B2B sales and marketing strategy might be failing:
- Your lead gen campaigns lack intelligent strategy.
By now, many B2B marketers have learned they need to develop digital content to keep up with their competitors. Many marketers have now busied themselves by creating white papers, social media accounts, blogs, webcasts and more to reach their customers in the new digital space. However, the part that many B2B marketers have missed is the need for strategy and content management.
Simply throwing out a bunch of sales collateral and hoping for a sale is not going to work. Buyers are looking to engage with content that speaks directly to their needs and business challenges. This requires research and planning. By looking at data like customer demographics, SEO analytics and website traffic, you can create an ideal customer profile. An ideal customer profile is comprised of factors like geographic region, job title, industry, size of company, etc. and will tell you what type of prospects your marketing content should target.
Once you know the basic demographics of the buyer you would like to sell to, you can start thinking strategically about content. What are the main objections this type of buyer would have? Are they concerned more about price or quality? Does this buyer like to watch short videos or read long white papers? Once you have answered these questions, marketing content development is no longer random and is instead backed by logic and data.
For the second half of this blog, click here.
For more B2B sales tips, click here.
by gabriel_sales | Jun 24, 2013
As B2B sales and marketing continues to adapt to paradigm shifts in technology and culture, marketers are finding new ways to communicate with prospects and deliver engaging content.
One of the most popular ways to deliver messages in the new digital sales space is through the use of B2B sales or marketing videos. Videos can be effective for B2B sales for many reasons.
The first reason is that unlike a white paper or text-heavy blog article, videos can make use of color, motion and sound to grab and hold your viewers attention. Second, you can use infographics and visually engaging representations of data to tell your brand story in a completely new way. Third, by putting your voice and or face on screen, your prospects feel that they are getting to know you, which will help you earn their trust.
The first thing you need to do when creating a B2B sales or marketing video is determine what you want the video to do for your company. Do you want to educate, entertain, build trust, differentiate or sell? Once you have decided your desired function for the video, you need to pick a structure and format conducive to your choice.
Are you trying to position yourself as a thought leader in the industry? Then you need an educational video that talks about industry news, trends or insights. In the example below from Gabriel Sales, CEO Glen Springer addresses the recent purchase of SalesForce by ExactTarget. His video answers a question many people in the industry are currently asking (“Why did Salesforce Buy ExactTarget for 2.5B?”) in a way that also demonstrates value for Gabriel Sales’ services. This video is therefore able to showcase Springer’s industry expertise while simultaneously educating prospects for Gabriel Sales.
Another way to educate your prospects with video is to simply explain what you do. In the B2B world, many products and services are not self-explanatory and require a fair amount of education to get the prospect to understand value. In the example below, Gabriel Sales’ COO Carol Springer explains what B2B demand generation is and the process Gabriel Sales goes through to generate demand for our clients. While the video does attempt to sell Gabriel Sales services, it is still educational in tone and content.
Click here to watch the video.
If your aim with B2B video is instead to build trust or convince your prospect to transact, client testimonials are a great option. By having someone else sing your praises, you get to sell without being the annoying and pushy salesman that everyone hates. In the example below, Gabriel Sales’ customer Solution Dynamics talks about the value that Gabriel Sales services have brought to the company during their 18-month relationship.
Click here to watch the video.
In summary, creating B2B sales videos can be an effective way to engage new customers and even close deals. It is important to remember to determine the purpose or function of the video you want to create and then match the tone and content accordingly.
If you would like more information on B2B sales videos, or have any questions about Gabriel Sales services, please feel free to contact us.
by gabriel_sales | Jun 20, 2013
This is Part 2 of a 4-part blog series discussing the need for expert solutions for B2B sales and marketing in 2013.
In the third part of this blog series, we explained that sales expertise, technological capabilities, the ability to produce a mountain of marketing content, a little bit of storytelling and some social intuition are required for successful B2B sales in 2013.
In light of this daunting and expensive list, many companies have turned to experts for help.
Here are some analogies to illustrate this point: If you had a cockroach infestation in your home, would you buy the equipment and get the training to do the exterminating yourself, or would you call an expert? Or, if you or your partner goes into labor, do you think, “I can handle this on my own,” or do you call a doctor or midwife that has been delivering children for years?
Similarly, by hiring a B2B sales and marketing outsourcing company, you get the benefit of new insights, technologies and capabilities without having to learn everything yourself. Sales and marketing outsourcing companies have been paying attention to how the rules of buying and selling have evolved because that is the water they are swimming in.
At Gabriel Sales, we have been helping B2B companies increase sales and revenue and close more deals, faster for over 13 years. We have been closely monitoring industry trends and are using the most up-to-date and efficient internet technologies available.
We have a streamlined discovery process to help you quickly plan and execute integrated and scalable B2B Sales, Content Marketing, Lead Management and Pipeline Development Programs. We make the complex simple by combining your knowledge of your customer, market and business with our best practices, sales tools, marketing technologies, database expertise and industry benchmarks. We then create a program that meets your needs, hits your targets and gives both sales and marketing a shared “Sales Quota Scorecard” across tactics.
To learn more about how we can help, you can visit our services page or download our white paper called, “Integrate Sales and Marketing in 2013 & Beyond”.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.
