by gabriel_sales | Nov 27, 2012
A landing page is where your potential customer is sent after he or she clicks on one of your ads, an email, or a search engine result. A landing page can be your main website, your blog, a specific product page, etc. But, while it is possible to simply send someone to your homepage, it will be much more effective to create a specific landing page that is meant to match the link that was clicked on.
When people click on an advertisement, they are only willing to stay on the page they are sent to if that page contains further information that interests them. If you force people to look around for the information they want, they will leave your site before they even know who you are.
For this reason, landing pages are extremely important for B2B lead generation. Because landing pages are usually your first point of contact with new potential customers, you need to set up a well-designed and organized page that catches their interest.
The best way to make a successful lead generation landing page is to present information that is directly related to the ad, email link, or search engine result clicked on. This information can vary depending on the exact intent of the landing page, but you should always include a call to action, like a downloadable offer with lead capture form. Because you need to tailor your lead generation landing page to match your specific advertisement, this means that if you have multiple ads, you need multiple landing pages.
While it may be easier to send everyone to your homepage and have them go from there, this is not an effective sales approach. The more clicks it takes for people to find the information they are looking for, the more likely they are to leave your site altogether. It is therefore your job to make the information they want as easy to find as possible by making separate pages for each ad.
When designing landing pages, it is important to keep in mind that their intent is to push people along in the sales cycle. So, your lead generation landing pages should contain information and tools that will help this happen. You should design each page to give readers key information about only the product or service featured in the advertisement.
The goal of designing multiple landing pages for each advertisement is to simplify the process of giving and receiving information. By creating a separate page for each of your products or services, you make it easier for your customers to find the sales content they want and for you to get their contact information in return.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 30, 2012
One question we keep hearing around the B2B sales world is, “Does blogging work for B to B?”. This is because recently, many B2B companies have started catching on to the trend of blogging. Forrester reported that in 2010, 49 percent of B2B companies kept a corporate blog and in 2011, 114 Fortune 500 companies were regularly updating their blogs. So, why are corporations taking part in this social media trend? Because it works!
Here are 12 reasons blogging works in B2B sales:
- Blogging Makes You Human. B2B customers like to interact on a personal level and blogging helps you seem more personable. Blogs can be less formal than e-newsletters or white papers and therefore give you the opportunity to express your humanness and unique personality. By putting out a public and personal face to your customers, you can interact with them on an individual level, motivating more people to purchase your product or service.
- Blogging Gets People to Your Website. In your blog, you should have links that go back to your main website. These links are one of the most effective ways you can drive traffic to your website.
- Blogging Generates Leads. HubSpot recently found that 57 percent of organizations with blogs report having gained new customers through their blogging efforts. Blogging is arguably more effective at generating leads than either Facebook or Twitter.
- Blogging Keeps Your Website Fresh and Relevant. The basic information on your website is likely pretty static. Mission statements and contact information do not change often. However, with a blog, you can give your potential customers a reason to come back repeatedly by mirroring all of your blogs on your website. If a potential leads find something new and fresh every time they visit your site, they are likely to think you are informed and up-to-date on market trends.
- Blogging Improves Search Engine Optimization. Blogs are great for SEO because, unlike your website, each individual blog you write can end up as a separate search result. Having multiple blogs with similar keywords increases the likelihood that you will show up multiple times on a search results page.
- Blogging Synergizes Social Media Efforts. Blogs should have links to your social media sites and vice versa. A recent study found that companies with blogs have two times as many followers on Twitter than companies without blogs. This shows that blogs are an effective means of driving people to your various social media sites.
- Blogging Improves Branding. With a blog, you are able to control the information that goes out to the public. Therefore, you can use a blog to exercise control over your brand image in a way that is impossible on other social media sites.
- Blogging Shows You Are an Expert. Informative or educational blogs can be used to position yourself as an industry expert. If you can demonstrate expertise to your readers, your product or service starts to look much more appealing.
- Blogging Captured Media Interest. If you are successful in positioning yourself as an expert and have something timely or interesting to say, your blog can become news. The media is always looking for the newest, greatest ideas and media coverage of blogs is a great way to expand brand awareness.
- Blogging Provides Feedback and Builds Community. Blogging creates a two-way communication model through the opportunity to leave comments. It is therefore an excellent tool for gaining understanding of your target audience. Comments let you have instant feedback on the blogs you write, allowing you to make constant adjustments to your message based on your readers’ reaction. These comments can then turn into lively conversations, which also can help you build a network of relationships with potential customers and other industry leaders.
- Blogging Distributes News & Information. This is one of the main ways a corporate blog is used. Blogging lets you share news about changes in corporate policy, a new location opening, or information about future seminars or trade shows. Pretty much anything you want your customers to know can go in a blog.
- Blogging Promotes Your Products/Services. You can also use blogging in a purely promotional manner. Similar to writing a press release, you can translate ad copy into a news style article and promote new products, services, promotions and more all through your corporate blog.
If you still need convincing that blogging works for B2B sales or would like to discuss a strategy for creating a corporate blog of your own, please feel free to request a review.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 25, 2012
Audience segmentation, also called market segmentation, is an important aspect of creating an effective sales or marketing strategy. Most basically, it is about finding better customers. In past decades, marketing has generally been directed at mass audiences, sending the same message to all potential customers. Audience segmentation works to divide your target audience into groups that have similar interests or buying behavior.
By dividing your audience into segments and crafting marketing messages targeted to each segment, you are able to reach each customer with marketing that is relevant to him or her. If your potential customer feels that your message is not relevant to them, you will most likely be ignored.
Segmentation also helps you build a better relationship with your potential customers because people are more likely to respond positively to messages they feel are directed to them personally. The more targeted your message, the more likely it becomes that your customer will engage with you.
With time, segmenting can also help you uncover potential market opportunities you might have otherwise missed, allowing you to create products and services better tailored around the specific needs and interests of your various customer segments.
What this means is that in today’s world, sending out a generic or mass message is no longer worth your time and could even end up costing you business. When you send out a mass-message that a customer has zero interest in, not only will you be ignored, but your customer may also see you as incompetent or uncaring.
What you want to do instead is give your customers information that is directly relevant to their personal needs and known buying behavior. If you do this correctly, audience segmentation can yield a substantial increase in response and engagement and, consequently, rates of conversion.
The most crucial aspect of implementing b2b marketing audience segmentation effectively is coming to understand what types of information each segment likes to consume and how each segment likes to consume it. With this information, you can create and target messages using the forms of media most in line with a segment’s purchasing behavior. For instance, if you know that a particular segment likes their content via videos, you’ll want to provide them links to your YouTube channel. Similarly, if you know an audience segment prefers to read text, you send them text in the form of emails, blogs or white papers.
The overall goal of audience or market segmentation is to avoid sending irrelevant messages to unreceptive customers. By understanding that different people (and different businesses) have different needs and media-consumption preferences, you can set up a marketing strategy that operates more efficiently and much more effectively.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 23, 2012
In our last post, we discussed audience segmentation and why it is important for B2B marketing. To summarize, audience segmentation involves dividing your customers into groups based on their specific needs and purchasing behavior so that you can craft marketing messages to match each targeted group.
When executed successfully, here are the 5 benefits of audience segmentation:
- Less Negative Feedback. When you stop sending messages to people who do not want them, you are much less likely to annoy people to the point of complaint.
- Increased Rates of Response. People are much more willing to respond to something if it is relevant to their interests.
- Decreased Marketing Expenditures. When you know who your target audience is, you do not waste time and money marketing to those outside the group.
- Decreased Long-term Costs. Audience segmentation also saves money by decreasing the amount of time spent following up on less qualified leads.
- Higher Rates of Conversion. By providing your customers with relevant purchasing information, you are much more likely to close.
Overall, audience segmentation is a key aspect of a successful sales and marketing strategy. For more information on the benefits of audience segmentation, please feel free to request a review.
by gabriel_sales | Oct 18, 2012
Quite obviously, business today is increasingly being done over the internet. This means that to succeed as a business in today’s globally connected world, your marketing strategy must have a significant digital component.
The answer to the question, “What is digital marketing?” is not as complicated as one may think. Digital marketing is essentially the same as traditional marketing; the only difference is the platform from which you send your message. Instead of communicating only via print outlets, your message now needs to come from multiple sources such as websites, blogs, emails and social networks.
The great opportunity that comes from these new forms of media is that they allow for a variety of new and highly effective ways of finding customers. We can now relay our message directly through e-newsletters; or we can reach customers by inviting them to watch self-made videos and podcasts. We can also find potential customers by creating websites and blogs that are relevant to our service or product. Finally, creating well-crafted pages on social networks can also find you potential customers.
There are many ways you can implement marketing online, and you must consider each of them carefully if you hope to create an effective marketing strategy.
It is first important to understand what is different about each of these platforms and how to use each of them to your advantage. For example, it is a very different thing to start a Twitter account than it is to send an e-newsletter. Another aspect to consider is that the digital world creates a two-way communication model that operates in a way that traditional one-way media never could. Negotiating this two-way form of communication requires you have knowledge of the new platforms so you can best exploit them to your advantage.
Overall, we should not see what digital marketing is as a vast departure from traditional marketing. The overall intent is still the same: we want to present potential customers with information to make an informed purchase. So, the difference is not what we do, but how we do things. Each new form of media carries with it its own internal logic; once we understand that logic, we can incorporate these media into our overall marketing strategy.
by gabriel_sales | Aug 21, 2012
The best approaches for digital b2b marketing
A great deal of the clients Gabriel Sales works with as an integrated outsourced sales and marketing company are smaller businesses without a highly recognizable brand. However, when the brand is recognized in the market (at least for most of our clients), that brand is associated with quality, professionalism and, in most cases, a premium or mid premium service. This blog talks about how Gabriel Sales uses email marketing to increase B2b lead volume (to maximize budget because cold calling while effective has gotten much more expensive check out Cold Calling is Not Dead but You Need To Be Smarter!) while not disrupting the delicate dance between increased volume and brand reputation and positioning.
Here is a list of Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing from Gabriel Sales:
Make Sure Your Email Offer has the Best Interest of Your Customer/Buyer in Mind
Provide some content that has some genuine educational value for your buyer. We have the most success with content that can help the buyer do their job better whether they choose to work with you or not. Your chief aim needs to be helping your customer define their problem. The win for you is that at the same time you are simultaneously establishing your credentials as a thought leader to help them.
Make Sure Your Email Gives Your Customer Educational Value Quickly
Help the customer to quickly compare your solution to other solutions in the market. So they can quickly to evaluate their alternatives.
Make Sure Your Graphics (if you use them at all) are Relevant
Use your logo to support the brand. Don’t use additional graphics unless they are totally specific to the offer and educational in nature. So for example:
- Video Screen shot that gives them a sense of the video.
- Use recognizable logos like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn so they are clear on the platform you are suggestin
- Photo of Presenter if its Webcast (Makes it Human)
Keep it Conversational
Don’t use sales language. Don’t talk about ‘our’ company, ‘us’. Talk about your customer’s needs.
Keep it Simple
Get to the point quickly and directly.
Keep it Uncluttered
A case can be made that it may make sense to give someone multiple offers in one email so if the first offer is not of interest there is a secondary offer or even a tertiary offer your recipient can click through. We just don’t typically approach the market this way. We come from the school of thought that one offer is typically enough:
- Buyers are smart and can quickly evaluate if you can help them do their job more effectively with your specific area of thought leadership
- If you lead with educational thought leadership it shows respect for their interests and needs
- If you keep it short, simple and uncluttered it shows respect for their time
- If you keep the tone of the message conversational even if this is not the right conversation, they will remain open to future conversations and not consider your message and foray into electronic conversation as invasive but helpful
For more Best Practices for B2B E-Mail Marketing, we invite you to check out our Blog Series on Integrating Sales and Sales Content Marketing
For some tactical examples of what our approach to email looks like in action feel free to check out some of our actual b2b email marketing templates.
