Reasons to Consider Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Operations

Reasons to Consider Outsourcing Sales and Marketing Operations

by | Jul 15, 2024

outsourcing sales and marketing

For many businesses ready for growth, it’s fairly typical to consider outsourcing sales and marketing operations along with other various business functions including: human resources, accounting and IT. Historically, when it comes to scaling sales and marketing operations, most companies initially consider building a team of dedicated in-house sales and marketing professionals.

But over the past several years, the requirements of B2B buyers have significantly changed. Buyers now expect to be able to educate themselves digitally online across multiple channels. Once they demonstrate interest, they also expect marketing to continue to support their buyer journey with continued digital education.

Buyers changed expectations, needs and desires which has blurred the line between marketing and sales functions. It has changed accountability and responsibilities for generating leads, developing opportunities and qualifying buyers ready to engage with sales. First, we will discuss how this has created multiple complexities for the historical model for sales and marketing operations.The rest of this article will then build on these complexities as we discuss:

Marketing operations and marketing automation

How do we decide if we should outsource

What functions can be outsourced

What are the advantages of outsourcing specific functions

 Why Marketing and Sales Operations Is Getting More Complex

The lines between marketing and sales operations are becoming increasingly blurred. Marketing is no longer limited to brand awareness and lead generation. During the pandemic, the Fortune 500 shifted towards a digital-first sales process, tasking marketers with generating leads and then developing them through a combination of content marketing and marketing automation.

As a direct result, B2B marketing organizations are taking on expanded tasks and responsibilities. Sales and marketing leadership, including Chief Revenue Officers (CROs), executives, and creative teams, are tasked with:

 

  • Creating content strategies
  • Creating lead generation strategies
  • Selecting media vendors
  • Continuing to generate leads across multiple channels
  • Creating quality content and developing thought leaders
  • Planning and running events
  • Generating leads
  • Nurturing leads
  • Crafting personalized journeys
  • Transiting leads to sales when they are educated and ready to buy
  • Selecting and managing tech platforms
  • Maintaining quality data
  • Expanding their volume of reports
  • Measuring ROI across channels
  • Making smarter decisions
  • Forecasting
  • Supporting existing customers
  • Cross selling
  • Upselling
  • Creating brand strategies

Marketing Operations and Marketing Automation

What is modern marketing and sales operations today?

Marketing and sales operations encompass the processes, technology, and human resources needed to execute strategies that support sales and marketing efforts with quality and consistency. Marketing operations serve as the backbone, leveraging people and technology to execute campaigns, manage the technology stack, and oversee databases, data governance and reporting. Marketing and sales operations enable:

    • Marketing leaders and managers to concentrate on high-value strategic tasks, creative development, and content creation
    • Sales teams to dedicate their time to advancing high-quality leads through the pipeline

Marketing and sales operations is an organizational approach that enables marketers to generate more demand for their products and services, support the buyer’s journey, guide buyers further into the sales funnel, and spend more time on analysis and continuous improvement. It establishes a foundation for excellence and growth, ensuring strategies are executed using best practices to drive growth and achieve both marketing benchmarks and sales targets.

The key to successful B2B marketing and sales operations is the effective daily use and integration of marketing automation and customer relationship management systems.

The growth of marketing automation makes it challenging to find proven talent

As of this year, 60% of B2B organizations intend to increase their spending on marketing automation in the coming year (Statista)

 

Between 2021 and 2024, the global marketing automation industry revenue grew by an estimated 22% to 5.86 billion U.S. dollars. The market is expected to more than double by 2030, surpassing 13.7 billion U.S. dollars (Gartner).

Additionally, 72% of marketing operations and marketing automation specialists have less than two years of experience, and 41% are learning on the job.

Finding quality talent with legitimate and proven experience will continue to be challenging.

How Do We Decide if Outsourcing Marketing is the Right Solution for Our Company?

As businesses continue to expand, invest in digital marketing and sales processes, create more content, and enhance productivity to all designed to help them survive, thrive and compete more effectively in the coming years, they will eventually face the following questions:

  • Should we build and staff digital marketing and sales operations in-house?
  • Should we consider outsourcing sales or marketing?
  • Should we consider outsourcing sales and marketing operations?
  • What areas or functions should we consider outsourcing?
  • What are the benefits of outsourcing?

It’s a difficult question to answer because there is no turnkey solution that works across all industries and for businesses of all sizes. The decision to outsource depends primarily on:

 

  • The existing internal resources of the business
  • The proven focus areas of current partners
  • The skill sets of employees and management
  • The technology experience and expertise of existing employees and management
  • Most importantly, where existing employees and managers can provide the greatest strategic value for the organization

What Functions/Parts Of Sales And Marketing Operations Can We Outsource

Most companies committed to a digital-first go-to-marketing and sales strategy have created leadership and management teams that are highly skilled and experience in:

  • Developing strategies across multiple channels
  • Creating content tailored to various channels
  • Generating the volume of inbound leads needed for success
  • Making intelligent decisions to maximize investments when armed with reliable data

But as discussed above, experienced marketing and sales operations talent and marketing automation technology experience is hard to find. And according to Robert Half finding skilled digital marketers and experienced marketing automation talent are two of the top three employees companies are challenged to find.

With the evolution of CRMs like Salesforce and the rise of marketing operations and Salesforce consultancies like Gabriel Sales, companies can now explore marketing automation support and outsourced sales and marketing operations to help take their organizations to the next level. These functions fall into two categories:

Outsourced Technology Implementation and Optimization – The technical delivery of specific marketing automation applications, marketing technology integrations, and Salesforce integrations ensures that your sales and marketing systems are customized to execute the strategic goals of the organization.

Marketing Operations Managed Services – Once your systems are optimized, they must be leveraged daily, weekly, and monthly to produce the desired results in specific areas such as campaign execution, content management, database management, project management, and reporting.
As discussed in detail above, different companies have different needs based on existing internal capability and capacity.  To learn more about how Gabriel Sales can help immediately augment your day-to-day execution capability and capacity visit our outsourced marketing and sale operations managed services page.

If you want to stop struggling with technology. Or want to maximize your tech stack investment so your current team can drive even more marketing value and higher quality leads for sales, you can learn more about how we support you with increased capabilities by visiting our Salesforce and marketing automation consulting services page.

9 Reasons to Consider Marketing and Sales Operations

1 – Immediate Access to Experienced Salesforce and Marketing Automation Specialists

Most companies utilize a variety of platforms and technologies integrated with Salesforce to bolster successful lead generation, guide buyer journeys, execute lead nurturing campaigns, and enhance sales enablement. However, if you’ve been procuring these software solutions for any length of time, you understand that in order to leverage the capabilities of these softwares they need to be built out correctly as well as continuously monitored and enhanced based on business changes and the latest updates and features.

When you entrust your marketing and sales operations to Gabriel Sales, the potential of Salesforce and Marketing Automation becomes tangible. We immediately provide you with access to certified Salesforce and Account Engagement (Pardot) specialists who seamlessly integrate into your organization.

These professionals are adept at utilizing and implementing the latest proven tools and features available within these systems for marketing, analysis, automation, sales enablement, and more. With our assistance, you can cease struggling with the technology, mitigate the risks of underperformance and system errors, all without the need to invest countless hours in recruiting and training talent or attempting to navigate these complexities independently.

2 – You Immediately Align and Bridge the Gap from Marketing to Sales

Most marketing teams, including conventional digital marketing agencies, excel in managing budgets, crafting strategies, brand management, and producing creative content to support top-of-funnel campaigns and retain existing customers.

Specialized agencies in marketing automation and lead nurturing immediately enhance your team’s capabilities, enabling the development of deeper buyer relationships further down the sales funnel.

One of the unique advantages of outsourced sales and marketing operations, particularly with Gabriel Sales, is the access to sales operations professionals proficient in lead nurturing, lead scoring, and effective lead management in Salesforce. Their expertise ensures seamless integration of technologies and processes, facilitating the transition of leads from marketing to sales funnels.

3 – Immediate Access to Best Practices

When you hire a team of specialists with experience across various industries, you can immediately benefit from tried and tested best practices. Implementing these practices from the outset and consistently executing them are essential for long-term success. These best practices encompass data management, governance, campaign workflows, reporting, lead scoring, and transitioning leads to sales.

4 – Strategy Improvements

“You don’t know what you don’t know.” Partnering with an agency proficient in sales and marketing operations ensures precise implementation and ongoing enhancements.

By engaging with an outsourced provider, you gain access to seasoned marketing and sales specialists with extensive experience in executing hundreds of implementations, overseeing thousands of campaigns and staying up-to-date on the latest technology changes. They offer the advantage of benchmarking your performance against competitors and diverse companies. This facilitates the integration of successful strategies and technological features across your organization as you scale and diversify campaign volumes and types.

5 – Fast, Reliable and Consistent Campaign Execution

Outsourcing provides immediate access to a fully-managed team of trained and experienced professionals specializing in Salesforce, Account Engagement, database management, and content management. This team handles all functions and executional tasks necessary for successful marketing and sales operations. Your chosen provider maintains a singular focus and accountability for timely and precise execution of day-to-day activities, ensuring a consistent flow of sales-ready leads.

6 – Better Quality Data, Faster Analysis and Increased Insights

Salesforce and automation specialists are adept at establishing policies to enhance data governance, enabling more efficient data addition and collection. They excel in tagging and managing data across core systems and third-party integrations.

Their expertise, coupled with a wealth of experience in creating hundreds of automated dashboards, forecasts, and reports, results in heightened insights, expedited analysis, and more informed decisions.

7 – Boost Your Existing Team’s Focus and Performance

Many marketing teams juggle multiple roles, including brand management, creative design, media buying, analysis, and strategy development. They often have a backlog of new projects aimed at improving results.

In such scenarios, it’s more beneficial for your core marketing team to focus on high-value, strategic, and creative tasks. By outsourcing repetitive and technical tasks essential for daily operations, you can instantly free up their time for strategic activities.

8 – Reduced Stress, Overall Improved Performance and Higher Quality Leads Ready to Talk to Sales   

Enhance your team’s focus effortlessly, eliminate tech hurdles, implement proven best practices, ensure data accuracy, and access a turnkey support team to elevate your entire marketing team’s performance and outcomes.

With Gabriel Sales’ additional expertise in sales operations, swiftly translate this performance boost into an enhanced and expedited sales funnel. Leveraging our 20 years of Salesforce end-user experience, we empower you to enable sales effectively. Through reports, prioritized lists, lead views, and alerts, your sales team can concentrate on pre-qualified leads ready for engagement.

 9 – Lower Costs and a Variable Expense

Outsourcing marketing and sales operations can save you from the expenses associated with hiring, training, staffing, and managing full-time employees. Instead of bearing the fully-loaded cost of employing one manager, you gain access to a diverse team of specialists, helping you optimize your campaigns and technology investments at a fraction of the cost.

This approach offers the flexibility of a monthly variable expense, contrasting with the fixed headcount cost associated with traditional employment models.

About Gabriel Sales

Gabriel Sales™  has been successfully helping companies grow for over 20 years. We specialize in helping B2B companies with a multi-step sales process, build modern sales and marketing operations. We currently support sales and marketing organizations with 5 to 500 sales reps. We also work with startups or companies launching new products that are serious about growth. Learn more about our team, approach and proven track record on our About Us page and/or view our Customer Success Stories and ROI Case Studies.

 

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B2B Buyer Trends

B2B Buyer Trends

by | Apr 26, 2024

B2B Buyer Trends — Seven Things to Know

(Watch Time – 8:00 Minutes)

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Summary of B2B Buyer Trends video

In this short educational  video we will give you a quick overview of B2B Buyer Trends, including:

  1. Why B2B leads and buyers need and want lead nurturing and digital pre-sales education
  2. Why buyers now expect ongoing lead nurturing and content marketing at every stage of their buyers’ journey
  3. The specific types of contents buyers use during their pre-sales education and buying process
  4. Buyers increased desire to avoid sales development reps (SDRs) until they feel educated and are ready to buyer
  5. When video is the most preferred and successful type of content
  6. How far and committed the top sellers are to sales automation and digital first sales
  7. The ROI companies committed to lead nurturing and a digital first sales are experiencing

This video (an expert from our extensive four part On Demand Training Seminar – The Digital First Transformation and Sales Automation)

Transcript of B2B Buyer Trends Seven Trends — Seven Things to Know.

Why Leads/Buyers Need Lead Nurturing

First, most buyers are not ready to buy when they first start their digital education. Initially, most buyers are just trying to figure out how to solve a problem. Less than 3% of initial email opens are ready to buy, and even more surprisingly, less than 20% of your pay per click or SEO leads or active buyers. But the positive here is that about 80% of all these early stage leads, we call them marketing qualified leads, will spend money within three to 18 months. So once they engage, you have a short list of potential buyers that expects you to educate and nurture them for an extended period of time, which means your marketing team can’t just run lead gen campaigns and expect the same sales results.

Buyers Now Expect Ongoing Lead Nurturing and Content Marketing at Every Stage of Their Buyers’ Journey (0:48)

Buyers now expect you to share content at every stage of their buyer’s journey to help them move systematically through their process. This starts by you helping them to identify and understand what problems your solution is designed to help them solve through their shortlisting process and even into their validation and consensus building stages. This means you need lead generation campaigns to create awareness to help the buyer understand what problems you solve. Then buyers also expect you to run nurturing campaigns, including both buyer education campaigns and sales automation campaigns to help them with their consideration stages and their preference stages.

Successful Lead Nurturing and Sales Automation Requires Multiple Types and Formats of Digital Sales Education (1:33)

And during these different types of campaigns, buyers want you to share the appropriate type of content in multiple channels so they can control their own buyer’s journey, and they expect you to be prepared to touch them at least 21 times for you to earn their brand awareness and initial trust in to start that process. Most buyers still overwhelmingly prefer to learn about new solutions in email marketing campaigns that are supported by educational content.

However, if you don’t eventually support these email campaigns with paper per click, social media and SEO campaigns, you’ll miss 33% of the market who prefer these channels. And at this stage, the type of content buyers prefer in all three channels are short. How-to videos, educational blog articles in industry insights and stats that help educate the buyer and also help you to demonstrate thought leadership. Then once that lead is generated, you need to be prepared to share multiple types of content to nurture and create demand for your solution. Because buyers leverage all types of content to move a decision forward if they’re consideration and preference stages to become educated enough to make a decision. So what’s required for success? In a recent Merkel survey of B2B buyer trends, 78% of buyers stated they used case studies and use cases in their process, 76% used webcast educational videos and educational blog articles.

68% used white papers, and in 20 21, 50 4% of B2B buyers are now using podcasts. So you need to be prepared to use a wide variety of content in multiple channels to make it easy for the buyer to buy using your buyer education in sales automation campaigns

Buyers Want to Avoid Sales Development Until They Feel Educated and are Ready to Buyer (3:43)

Perhaps the biggest impact of this digital transformation is that buyers now want to avoid sales reps until they feel educated. As a result of this buyer preference for digital first education, 64% of sellers state, they’re now less dependent on sales reps. 80% of buyers don’t want to speak to an SDR until they have completed their pre-sales research. 33% moving to 44% for millennials want to avoid sales completely if possible, and most buyers won’t engage with a sales rep until they’ve consumed at least six to 12 pieces of content. Digital content is now replacing some of the most time consuming in historical tasks of the sales development rep, first and foremost, being all the time and money it takes for pre-sales education of the buyer.

Video is the Preferred Content for Pre-Sales Education and Mid-Stage Buyer Education (4:33)

And in large part, most of this pre-sales education is now being done with video because when it comes to content, we’re both video and text are available on the same page. 72% of buyers would rather use video to learn about your solution using video and email campaigns boost open rates and clickthroughs and video posts have the highest engagement in social media campaigns. And probably the biggest bonus of video is that it leads to conversions or at least predicts conversions because 25 to 45% of buyers that watch a webcast convert into a sales opportunity, and most buyers state they’re ready to engage with sales after watching three to five videos.

Your Most Successful and Largest B2B Sales Competitors are Already Striving for Sales Automation (5:22)

The next thing that’s important to understand about this transformation is the competitive landscape. So Gabriel Sales has been dealing with tech and tech marketing for a long time, and we’ve seen the pendulum swing back and forth between giving SMBs an ability to compete effectively and giving the enterprise the advantage. And right now, the enterprise companies have an edge because they’ve taken meeting the needs of the digital buyer seriously and have driven digital content deeper into the sales process faster.

This was one of the really big changes that occurred during the pandemic because the enterprise was better equipped to immediately be able to deploy their existing marketing resources to digital marketing to support the virtual and remote sales process, and they were able to fund new technologies faster and more effectively when travel budgets were cut. As a result, 75% are now leading with Digital First to support their entire pre-sales process, and in a few short years, the majority of enterprise companies already believe that these new sales processes are as or more effective than their historical processes. In a full 85% of enterprise companies are now committed to building a digital first go-to-market sales process moving forward. And over the next several years, digital spend is once again predicted to double Gartner’s future of sales. Research is now predicting that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions will occur in automated in digital channels.

To compete for and win business will require a commitment to content marketing and nurturing.

Sellers that Implement Lead Nurturing and Digital First Sales Automation Win More Business and Drive More Revenue (7:13)

Finally, what can your business expect when you embrace this digital first transformation? Buyers are already dramatically rewarding sellers for a digital first sales and nurturing process. Sellers that are committed to content marketing after the initial lead has been generated, see their sales team’s opportunity pipeline grow by over 450% in nine to 18 months. It’s harder to get a seat at the table with your buyers if you don’t provide content after you generate that initial lead. And most importantly, and most exciting sellers that do a good job helping buyers buy digitally are now closing at two x the rate of sellers that don’t.

 

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Demand Generation vs Lead Generation

Demand Generation vs Lead Generation

by | Mar 16, 2024

In this video you will learn the difference between lead generation vs. lead nurturing and demand generation

Watch Time – 4:00 Minutes

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Summary

This short video is packed with hard data and concrete numbers as we compare Demand Generation vs Lead Generation and explain the strengths and weakness of both a lead generation process and demand generation process.  In this educational video we detail:

  • The different purposes of lead generation and demand generation
  • The results you can expect if you are running a lead generation process
  • The results you can expect if you add a lead nurturing and demand generation process
  • The impact lead nurturing has on creating well educated sales ready leads and increased conversions
  • The cost savings you can expect automating  your pre-sales process  

This video is an excerpt from The Differences Between Lead Gen vs. Demand Gen and the Impact on Your Sales Funnel Part 4 of 4 of our free comprehensive free 4 training seminar on how to effectively sell to the modern The B2B Digital First Transformation Webinar Series.

 

Watch Our Free On Demand Digital Transformation Educational Series

Transcript

Defining the Role of Lead Generation and Demand Generation

When you examine the entire sales funnel, Lead Generation is the first step in the sales process and buyer’s journey. Lead Generations job is to move buyers into the top of the sales funnel by creating awareness and curiosity about your solution, and then Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing takeover to automate the pre-sales education process as the buyer goes through their second step of consideration and their third stage of preference.

This process keeps you top of mind as the buyer moves deeper into the funnel and, when the buyer is ready, sales takes over to help them make a decision.

The Stages and Sales Funnel Conversion Results of a Lead Generation Process

Lead Generation is primarily a sales driven process because the seller controls the majority of the buyer education. Marketing or a cold caller targets and generates the lead. The lead is then passed to sales regardless of how ready they are to buy. Then sales invests time, money, and resources with one-on-one pre-sales education, demonstrating the solution, explaining its value, and qualifying that buyer for need, interest, and fit.

After all this time and effort, about 10 to 20% of leads are turned into opportunities and about 80% are either not the right fit or too early in their buying process and not ready to buy. These leads are discarded, with sales promising to follow-up at some future date, which only happens about 20% of the time. This is a continuous cycle requiring a continuous investment in new leads.

The Stages and Sales Funnel Conversion Results of a Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing Process

In sharp contrast to Lead Generation, Demand Generation is a buyer driven process because the buyer engages on their timelines.

A Demand Gen process starts the same way by targeting potential buyers to create awareness and collecting as many leads as possible. But then marketing, not sales, nurtures those leads, sharing educational pre-sales content the buyer can engage with on their timelines.

Demand Generation digitally automates your pre-sales process to make it easy for the lead to consider how your solution can help them solve their problems to become a marketing qualified lead until they learn how your product works and what success looks like so they prefer your solution. While all this is happening, your marketing tech stack is scoring your buyer’s engagement to predict purchase intent until they become a sales ready lead.

The first big difference is pre-sales automation and lead nurturing gets rid of all the time, money, and expense of the one-on-one pre-sales education that’s required in a standalone Lead Gen process.

The second major difference is the quality of sales ready leads. Typically, your sales team can convert about 50% of sales ready leads into opportunities versus the 10 to 20% of a Lead Gen process. Sales will only discard about 10% versus the 80% that are discarded in the Lead Gen process.

A final major difference is that they can recycle 40% back into the Demand Gen engine for extended nurturing to keep them warm until they’re ready to buy. This recycling is a major advantage Demand Generation has over a competitor running a Lead Gen process that discards 80% of their lead investment because most discarded leads buy from someone in three to 18 months so nurturing eventually turns another 25% of these recycled leads into opportunities.

Conclusion

Over time, all these incremental gains stack up, and this is why companies running a Demand Gen process generate 450% more opportunities and close two times the deals over their competitors when compared to companies that don’t.

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Seven Trends For Lead Nurturing

Seven Trends For Lead Nurturing

by | May 2, 2023

What’s Are the Seven Things You Need to Know About Lead Nurturing for Successful B2B Sales and Marketing Operations? 

The world of sales and marketing is transforming at an unprecedented rate. This change is being driven the B2B Buyer’s desire for a Digital First sales process. This article will discuss the seven trends for lead nurturing and B2B demand generation every business owner should know to help their business thrive.

This shift in B2B Buyer’s desires has caused businesses of all shapes and sizes to rethink how to sell more effectively. And the Fortune 500 moved to meet the Buyer’s desires first. To address this new set of expectations, Enterprise companies took responsibility for pre-sales education away from the traditional role/responsibility of the sales development rep and passed that accountability to the marketing operations team.

This change is so rapid, that according to a recent Adobe research project, 82% of marketing professionals overwhelming agree that marketing has changed more in the past two years than in the past 50.  And 89% to 92% of these same marketers agree on three other facts as they take on these new pre-sales education responsibilities:

  • You need to focus on digital education first
  • Marketing operations needs to educate Buyers much deeper in their buying process
  • Marketers will need to keep learning on the job as new trends and patterns emerge

Smart Decisions Require Understanding the Modern B2B Buyers’ New Behaviors 

In this current environment, it’s difficult enough for even the most skilled marketers to keep up with all these changes. As a result, business owners and sales professionals are at even greater disadvantage.  Most sales professionals are confused and struggle how to most effectively fill their sales funnel with well-educated Buyers in the short term while making critical long term strategic marketing and sales operations decisions that will allow them to thrive in the long term. 

Fortunately, for today’s small and mid-sized businesses owners, we now finally have a great deal of information about what these new Buyers want from Sellers, expect from Sellers and how these Buyer’s behave when their needs are met. 

And – after launching over 150 successful sales and marketing automation implementations and sales and marketing ops teams – there are two things we know about business owners and entrepreneurs.

  • First – once business owners understand the needs of their Buyers, they know how to meet the needs of their Buyer.
  • Second – once business owners are armed with the right information and insights, most can make smarter growth decisions quickly and can prioritize their budgets intelligently.

With both of these facts in mind, we wanted to share the most recent information on how the Digital First Transformation has permanently altered Buyer behavior. And why the Modern Buyer prefer.

 

The B2B Digital-First Sales and Marketing Trends Everyone Needs to Know and Address

One – Most Buyers Start Their Digital Education Months or Years Before They Are Ready to Buy

First, most Buyers are not ready to buy when they first start their digital education. Initially, most Buyers are just trying to figure out how to solve a problem. According to the most recent research by Aberdeen Research, less than 2% of initial email opens are close to being ready to buy. And even more surprisingly, less than 20% of your pay per click or SEO leads are active Buyers.  

On the negative side, this means ad hoc lead gen campaigns, awareness campaigns and appointment setting campaigns have lost a great deal of their effectiveness and impact.

But the positive fact is that about 80% of all these early-stage leads, we call them “Marketing Qualified Leads” (MQLs) will spend money within 3 to 18 months. So once a lead engages with you, even if they are not ready to buy immediately, you will have a short list of Buyers:

  • That you know will be spending money within the next 3 month to 18 months
  • That expect and want you to educate and nurture them for an extended period of time

You know these future Buyers are receptive to your thought leadership. You know that some will welcome your support as you help them move systematically through their buying process.

Two – Buyers Don’t Really Want to Talk to Sales Reps Until They Are Digitally Educated (And Ready to Shortlist)

According to Forrester, your typical Buyer now consumes 7-15 pieces of digital content prior to engaging with a sales rep. And they do this with 3 to 5 different solution providers.  And as noted in the intro of this article:

  • 80% of Buyers want to delay dealing with Sales Reps until they have completed their initial research and are ready to short list for a decision. (Marketing Sherpa)
  • 62% will try and reach a decision without talking to sales rep, if possible. (Content Marketing Institute)
  • And in 2022 33% to 44% want to avoid a sales rep completely, if possible. (Merkle B2B Study)

This further impacts the long-term effectiveness of ad hoc lead gen campaigns and means nurturing your later stage funnel is now required for Digital First success.

 

Three – Buyers Rarely Short List Sellers Without Sustained Lead Nurturing and Digital Pre-Sales Education

As Gartner’s latest survey and chart above clearly details, “Content is King”.  This now applies to the entire sales funnel. Success now requires Sellers to continue to market the entire funnel after the lead has been generated.  This means you need to use content marketing tactics through the pre-sales process because this pre-sales process is now often happening without the direct involvement of your Sales Development Rep.

This nurturing process is no longer optional because according to the 2022 Demand Gen Report,  95% of Buyers short list a solution provider that “Provides them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process”.

If your content marketing campaigns don’t move beyond the appointment setting and lead gen stage, it will be exceedingly difficult to survive and you will have little chance to thrive in the near future.

 

Four – Buyers Overwhelming Prefer Video and the Trend is Accelerating

During the pandemic lock downs, with face-to-face meetings impossible to execute and with Buyers moving to home offices (and with direct lines typically going straight to voice mail), video adoption was an experience all B2B Buyers and Sellers shared during the pandemic.

Zoom normalized video for all of us.  It also normalized video adoption for pre-sales education.  According to both Wistia and Vimeo, downloads jumped by 380% in 2020.  And if you thought this adoption would slow down exiting the pandemic, you would be wrong.  In the first quarter of 2022, video consumption increased by another 148%.  Video is growing because video works.

  • Video is more convenient for the Buyer – 64% of Buyers stated they prefer video because its more convenient for education. (Gartner)
  • Video drives better engagement – Video posts have the highest engagement in Social Media (AdWeek) and using video in the email subject line, boosts open rates by 19% and increases click through rates by 65%. (Pardot)
  • Video is preferred over text when exploring solutions – Given the choice between text and video, 75% of Buyers will choose video to learn more about a solution. (Hubspot)

And according Vidyard and Vimeo, this shift to video is going to continue to accelerate in 2022 and 2023.

  • In 2022 80% of the Fortune 500 is moving towards internal vs. external production.
  • Video is being used later in the sales funnel, with the average video created coming in at 9 minutes and 48 seconds in length.
  • And the average company that has been using video as part of their nurturing process is planning to double to triple their use of video in 2023.

To learn more about how to leverage video as part of your sales and marketing operation check out our two articles –  Six Important Videos to Fill Your Sales Funnel with Sales Ready Leads and What Videos Are Most Effective B2B Lead Scoring and Sales Automation.

 

Five – Buyers Reward Sellers Committed to Digital First Lead Gen, Pre-Sales Education and Lead Nurturing

B2B Buyers are already dramatically rewarding Sellers for a Digital First sales and nurturing process:

Sellers have more opportunities to do business – Businesses that implement a content workflow and use marketing automation to nurture prospects, experience a 451% increase in qualified leads in 9 to 18 months. (ANNUITAS Group)

Sellers win more business – 95% of Buyers chose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process.” (DemandGen Report)

Sellers win more business more frequently – You are 2X as likely to win business over your competitor if you provide a substantive digital education experience for your prospects throughout their buying process. (McKinsey)

 

The Impact of Lead Nurturing vs. Lead Gen on Your Business (Watch Time 4:00 Min)

 

Watch this 4 minute video to learn what the sales impact is of an effective lead nurturing and demand gen engine

Six – Enterprise Companies are All In on Digital First

According to McKinsey’s survey, “The Future of Sales”, close to 9 in 10 enterprise companies confirmed that the new Digital First go-to-market sales practice was going to be a fixture of their business moving forward.  And 85% stated they were going to stay committed to this process throughout 2023 and beyond.

They are committed to this process because it works; i.e., it meets the desires of their Buyers.

Trends For Lead Nurturing

And they plan to accelerate the adoption of this Digital First process by their Buyers because they are planning on almost doubling their spend over the next 4 years. 

Seven – This Will All Lead to Pre-Sales Automation

Among the important trends for lead nurturing is the combination of B2B Buyers preference for Digital First pre-sales education over speaking with a sales rep, combined with the success of this process, and the investment being made by the Fortune 500 is why:

“Gartner’s Future of Sales research shows that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between Suppliers and Buyers will be automated and occur in digital channels”

Conclusion

Replacing your historical sale rep driven process and ad hoc lead gen tactics with a comprehensive content marketing strategy and nurturing process  is not an “if” decision – it’s a “when” decision.  The B2B Buyer and the Enterprise market are both driving towards Sales Automation and the cost savings that this shift will represent.

Many small businesses, young companies, mid-size companies, and even under-resourced sales and marketing groups are struggling to keep up with this Digital First transformation.  Many have an initial lead gen program in place, but that program is not producing the results it used to, or it’s not producing to expectations.

In many cases, SMBs struggle to craft a solid strategy deeper into the funnel, or they’re flying blind with a scattershot strategy.  They lack the bandwidth to make informed decisions around the right marketing and sales tech to leverage.  They lack the talent and resources to create quality content on a consistent basis, or they lack the time or can’t afford to assemble an experienced team of proven sales and marketing operation experts that are required to run a sales engagement engine consistently.  To learn even more about the advantages of outsourcing you lead nurturing and demand generation process you can read Why Outsource Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing.

When you’re ready, we have developed Digital Demand Center™ , a turnkey solution designed specifically for SMBs that turns the Digital First Transformation into an opportunity for SMB Sellers to survive and thrive.

 

How it Works – Turnkey  Lead Nurturing and Demand Gen with Digital Demand Center

 

(Watch Time – 5:00 Minutes) – Quick overview of how a our turnkey demand generation engine fill your CRM with well educated sales ready leads.

If you feel like you would like a much deeper crash course on all challenges and tactics required for success, we invite you to check out our Educational Video Series on The Digital First Transformation.

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Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen & Lead Nurturing

Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen & Lead Nurturing

by | Feb 9, 2023

Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen — a Critical Tactic for Lead Nurturing Success

Background – The Adoption of Demand Generation and Marketing Automation

During the pandemic we witnessed a dramatic shift towards content marketing and the pursuit of multiple digital channels to generate leads. And according to Gartner’s latest survey, we also witnessed a dramatic shift to a Digital First sales process to replace the historical pre-sales education tasks of the Sales Development Rep with extremely positive results. That’s where lead scoring for B2B demand gen comes in.

 

Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen

The Impact on Leads

As a result, Buyers have now started their digital education far in advance of being ready to buy.

  • Less than 5% of Email Click Throughs are Ready to Buy – 96% of leads are not ready to buy when they first hit your website or landing page. (Aberdeen)
  • Less Than 25% of Inbound Form Fills are Ready to Buy – 78% of buyers requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least 3 to 6 months – and 28% will take 12 or more months to buy. (Sirius Decisions)

And simultaneously, Buyers started to expect Sellers to provide digital pre-sales education much deeper into the sales funnel.

  • Buyers conduct over half their pre-sales education online. 74% of business buyers conduct more than half of their research and solution education online before engaging with a sales rep.
  • 80% of Buyers want to avoid Sales Reps until they have done their pre-sales research. 80% of Buyers want to delay dealing with sales reps until they have completed initial research and are ready to shortlist for a decision. (Marketing Sherpa)

Lead Nurturing and Marketing Automation Are Now Requirements

As a result, successful marketing operations teams have moved beyond content marketing for lead gen and are now accountable for providing well educated buyers to their sales reps as part of an integrated pre-sales and content marketing process. These marketing teams now implement Digital Demand Generation programs to nurture buyers through the pre-sales process to provide their sales team with well-educated buyers.  

Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen

According to Gartner, over 58% of successful B2B sales and marketing operation teams are now leveraging a marketing automation platform to manage this nurturing process (and another 12% are planning to implement an automation platform within the next twelve months).

They use a marketing automation platform because it is the central technology required to successfully execute Demand Generation with the sustained nurturing that is now required for success.  A marketing automation platform is critical for demand generation because it allows you to do four things:

  • Email Marketing – Send sustained email nurturing campaigns to targeted leads
  • Track a Buyer’s Digital Engagement – The platform allows you track the digital engagement of your lead’s activities, as well as their interaction with specific pieces of online content
  • Lead Scoring – Allows you to score leads and they engage with your digital content and nurturing campaigns
  • Alert/Prioritize Sales to Hottest Leads – Send alerts, notifications and prioritize leads for your sales team once a lead is “Sales-Ready”

What is Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen and How Does it Work?

Lead scoring is the process of giving each lead a numerical score to predict and rank the sales-readiness of each lead.

That numerical score is calculated in three ways:

  1. Explicit Contact Data
  2. The Buyer’s activity
  3. Predictive Content Engagement

 

Video – Nurturing, Lead Scoring for B2B Demand Gen and How it Works with Digital Demand Center™

(Watch Time – 3:00 Minutes)

One – Explicit Contact Data

Targeting the right market should already be a top priority for your sales and marketing operations team. Great targeting leads to better results and a better ROI on your marketing investment. A well-built database of targeted leads can help make this easier, but having a perfect lead database is not a realistic goal.

If you are targeting a broad market or generating a great deal of suspect PPC inbound leads, the first step is to give the best targets a higher score. This can be done directly in the Marketing Automation Platform based on your ideal fit. Below is a quick example of the customization that can be programed in the Marketing Automation Platform.

Two – The Buyer’s Activity

Lead scoring allows you to track a Buyer’s activity in a number of ways including:

  • Email Opens
  • Email Clicks
  • Video Plays
  • Duration of Video Watched
  • Form Visits
  • Number of Page Views
  • Visits to Your Website
  • Repeat Visits
  • Time on The Website

These scores continue to accrue over time every time your potential buyer comes back to your site(s).

Three – Predictive Content Engagement – The Most Critical Lead Scoring Step

Not all types of activities and engagement are created equal. An effective demand generation program requires that you nurture a buyer deeper into their pre-sales journey using different types of content to meet the buyers increasing needs as they get closer to a decision.

The deeper the buyer moves into the sales funnel the higher the numerical score associated with that that specific type/piece of content becomes.

Lead Nurturing Engagement Model

Your marketing automation platform then allows you to weight your content score based what stage the content indicates they engaged with as part of their Buyer’s Journey. If the buyer is still at the “Awareness” stage that engagement will get a score of 10. If they move on to checking out a piece of content (like a Demo Video) that indicates they are at the “Preference” stage they will get an additional score of 250”.

In addition to prioritizing leads that may be “Sales Ready” directly in your CRM. Lead Scoring also allows your marketing team to trigger alerts for leads that are Buyer that are demonstrating buying signals for quick and/or immediate follow up so they never miss an opportunity.

One of the most effective ways to score leads and predict when a buyer is ready to buy is a buyer’s  engagement with video.  You can learn more about this in our article –  What Videos Are Most Effective B2B Lead Scoring and Sales Automation.

These alerts are typically shared via email and are predominantly one of three types of notifications.

  • Predictive Engagement – The lead is engaging with content that typically indicates they are moving from “Consideration” to “Preference” or “Decision” stages.
  • Predictive Score – The lead is engaging with digital education in a meaningful way. The “Buyer” is becoming a “Well Educated Buyer” and their engagement and activities indicates they are trying to solve a problem in a way in which your solution looks like a potential fit.
  • Inbound Request – Sales team is immediately notified when any inbound requests are made by a potential Buyer.

Conclusion

Lead Nurturing is quickly becoming critical to the success of B2B Sales and Marketing Operation because B2B Buyers reward Sellers for a Digital First Pre-Sales Education process.

  • Businesses using marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified opportunities.
  • 95% of buyers short list a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process” (DemandGen Report)
  • You are 2X as likely to win business over your competitor if you provide a substantive digital education experience for your prospects throughout their buying process (McKinsey)

And Leads Scoring is the critical process to capture the most sales value from this process. Nurturing without Lead Scoring is like ordering food and then leaving the table when it’s time to eat.

 

About Digital Demand Center™ (and Gabriel Sales)

 

Gabriel Sales has been helping companies build successful sales and marketing operations for over 20 years.  As part of these efforts, we have implemented marketing automation platforms over 150 times for companies ranging in size from Start Ups, through Small and Mid-Market businesses as well as serving the Fortune 500.

Digital Demand Center is a turnkey solution designed specifically for the small and medium sized businesses.  Our cost effective solution is engineered for companies that are serious about meeting the challenges and capturing the rewards of executing an automated digital first sales process.   DDC allows us to deploy our expertise and lead scoring best practices (cross pollinated) across all the successful organizations we support and serve.  For a detailed overview of the needs of the modern buyer, more about the problems we can help you solve and how that happens you can watch the video below and read our quick article Why Outsource Demand Generation and Lead Nurturing?.

 

 

Video – The Modern Digital First B2B Buyer and Digital Demand Center™

 

(Watch Time – 10:00 Minutes) Learn How to Successfully Meet the Needs of the Modern B2B Buyer with Digital Demand Center™ and Provide Your Sales Team with a Steady Flow of Well Educated “Sales Ready” Leads

If you are still not convinced nurturing, pre-sales automation and lead scoring is critical or feel like you would like a much deeper crash course on all challenges, budget, technology and tactics required for success, we invite you to check out our Educational Video Series on The Digital First Transformation.

 

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