Nonverbal Buying Signals in a Digital World

by | Jan 31, 2014

We all know that submitting a contact form, requesting a demo or consultation/review is a clear interaction and digital buying sign. However, we believe these to be verbal or explicit. The following, however, are more subtle and implicit buying signals that can be tracked (at the individual level) using marketing automation software:

1. Repeat visits to your pricing page is the one of the clearest website interactions that indicates a buying decision.

Learning the price/cost involved is an obvious steppingstone in the sales process, one that has value to qualifying a prospect. Finding out the price up front, you are using it as a pre-qualifier.  If someone checks your price and never returns, they’ve disqualified themselves – saving your sales team time. If a prospect checks your pricing page and then views more pages (and/or is a repeat visitor) they positively qualified themselves for next steps.

2. Navigating through a visitor flow that simulates your 3-5 call sales process.

This means content like your pitch video, about us page, features and benefits pages, webcasts, contact page, testimonials and services pages. All of these pages support buying decisions and were once part of the introductory sales pitch. Now that buyers are self-educating, you can map their online interactions to your traditional sales process and starting checking off elements they need to see and understand before moving forward.

3. Returning to your website through natural search.

If it’s a branded search, this shows they remember you enough to naturally look for you again. Checking the pages they view during this return visit can provide even more insight into their buying stage. If an identified prospect returns to your site through non-branded natural search (and the keyword is unavailable as much of it is today), it still shows a buying signal as they are in an active state of research (multiple visits).  Again, deep dive into the specific pages from this return visit to better understand where they are.

4. Viewing your company’s executives social media profiles (especially LinkedIn).

At this point, prospects are usually asking “is this person qualified, and do I want to work with them?” This is different than viewing or following your company profile, where that may only be someone wanting to continue to be educated on the space (or they are your competitor and are mining your content).

5. An email has been opened and clicked numerous (6 or more times) indicating that an item has been shared and viewed internally.

Related to this, watch for multiple hits to same piece of content over multiple days by the same prospect. Since buying decisions require multiple opinions now, this is a positive sign that the parties that need to be involved in the sale are becoming involved.

6. Downloading case studies, especially ones where the case study is in a comparable vertical.

Viewing these case studies not only provides social proof, but also indicates the prospect wanting a deeper analysis and understanding to see that what you provide (products/services) can work for them, too.

7. Re-watching videos or specific sections of videos.

Analyzing video heat maps show when videos or sections of videos have been re-watched. To best understand this buying signal, you’ll often need to look a little deeper at the section they are re-watching to be sure that the part that was reviewed is your value prop/business case/sales pitch/specific product feature and not industry education/general info.

If you are in sales or marketing, you know by now that the buying process has changed. Prospects are self-educating online and engaging in sales once they’ve “bought” what you offer.  Using marketing automation software, you can more accurately assess a prospect’s stage in the buying process through non-verbal, digital interactions with your content (“content” being a very broad categorization of emails, webpages, social profiles, etc.).

For more on how a marketing automation platform can help sales, click here. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

Improving Bounce Rates

by | Nov 7, 2013

Bounce rate (if you are unfamiliar) is the percentage of visitors who leave a site without visiting any additional pages. Besides goal conversion rates, improving bounce rates is an excellent starting measurement point for indicating improved landing pages.

For landing page optimization, the bounce rate is a gauge of how relevant, interesting or educational your content is related to the referring source. Look at your top landing pages by referring source and to see where you are providing a good inbound experience and conversely where you need to create a better experience.

improving bounce rates

As an example analysis, below we see that our bounce rate is higher than we’d like on our AdWords campaign:
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So we drilldown into the keywords to see which ones are performing least effectively (Hint: build a custom Google Analytics report):

By finding this information, we might decide to:

1)   Move the poor performing keywords to a different Ad Group and create a new ad/landing page that is more directly related to the keywords we’ve moved.

2)   Improve messaging to make the benefits more clear and share quantitative claims to better communication our offer.

3)   Add a stronger and simpler call to action (e.g. reduce form field requirements) that supports getting our visitors to engage.

4)   Split test headlines, images, call to action phrases and layouts.

Utilize the annotation feature of your web analytics platform so you know the start and end points for comparing performance and see results:

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Lastly, to further take advantage of your web analytics tool, schedule a report (daily/weekly/monthly) to be emailed to you so you don’t forget to do the follow-up analysis on improvement or degradation.

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As you can see working on bounce rate reduction can be a serious undertaking, especially if you are focusing on a page-by-page basis.  Start with your most heavily visited landing pages to have the highest impact in the most efficient manner. Hopefully the steps above make your bounce rate improvement project more manageable.

This article is part of a new series in which we feature specific ways to use inbound marketing analytics for improving your marketing performance.

Using Marketing Automation for B2B Lead Nurturing

by | Oct 2, 2013

Photo of green plant between male hands on a black background[/caption]B2B marketers today face a complex landscape.

Old marketing tactics have dropped in effectiveness (cold calling, trade shows) while technological innovations have created an entire new way of buying and selling (digital content marketing, customer relationship management). Buyers now control the sales process and selling to them now requires the ability to reach and interact with prospects in an entirely new way.

Evidence of this shift can be seen in the findings of a February 2013 eMarketer report that lists the top challenges from B2B marketers today. Apart from not having enough budget (59%), marketers largest struggle is the ability to “reach the right target at the right time in the buying decision” (39%).  This shows that B2B marketers have started to recognize that the buyer needs to be the main focus of all marketing efforts.

This also helps to explain why from 2011 to 2012, there was a 233% increase in the portion of marketing budgets allocated to marketing automation solutions (eMarketer).

Marketing automation platforms allow marketers to manage of all of their prospects from one database and track their prospects digital behaviors to help understand where each prospect is at in their buying decision at any given time. Within the platform, you can assign different numerical scores to each piece of marketing content you create—with lower scores assigned to early stage content and high scores assigned to late stage content like pricing pages or product comparisons. By looking at prospects consumption of all marketing efforts (website, blogs, email marketing, social), you can determine what “next step” is going to be most appropriate for each prospect.

This is why using marketing automation for B2B lead nurturing is so effective, as some of the prospects that come into your pipe are not ready to buy right away. You will know this because your marketing automation solution will tell you that the prospect is not engaging with any high-scoring digital content that signals he or she is near a purchase decision, which tells you the prospect needs to go into a lead nurturing stage.

B2B lead nurturing consists of sending your ‘not-yet-ready-to-buy’ prospects marketing content that educates them on your solution and industry in a non-threatening way. A quarterly company newsletter or educational email campaign are good examples of this. By tracking consumption of your nurturing efforts using your marketing automation platform, you will know when a prospect moves out of the nurturing phase and is ready to be engaged by sales.

When done correctly, lead nurturing helps to build trust and keep your company top of mind when your prospect is finally ready to make a buying decision.

To learn more about the importance of B2B lead nurturing, click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Best Practices in Sales in 2013

by | Aug 23, 2013

best practices in salesIn 2013, the world of sales belongs to the customer. Buyers now have control of the many aspects of the sales process and want to educate themselves for a large portion of the buying cycle. Best practices in sales are now focused on getting your customer the information they need, however they want it.

Here are 3 best practices in sales in 2013:

  1. Give your buyer everything they need to take themselves through their own education.

Todays buyer’s are much more independent than in the past and want to learn about products and services on their own.  You therefore need to have everything buyers need to know about your product or service readily availably in an online format. Modern buyers love ease and transparency, so make it easy for them to find what they’re looking for. Use simple clear navigation on your homepage and make sure your value proposition is immediately clear.

2.  Selling is only for the close. Offer value until then.

We generally like people who help us solve the problems we face. We generally hate salesmen. Apply this to your sales process by offering your prospects value in the form of informative blog posts, educational white papers and well-produced videos. If you are the one who has helped your prospects through the early stages of the sales process—discovery and education—then there is a good chance they will come back when they are ready to buy.

3.  Get your customer to talk about you.

Recent industry reports are showing customer testimonials as one of the most effective marketing tactics today. You can get great feedback from customers by sending out short surveys or asking them personally. Showcase your positive feedback on your website and over social media. LinkedIn has an option on company pages to request recommendations from your customers.

For more best practices in sales in 2013 , click here. If you would like to know more about how the rules of selling and buying have changed and what to do to adapt, you can download our white paper called, “New Rules for Sales and Marketing in 2013”.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

B2B Marketing Plans 101

by | Aug 20, 2013

b2b marketing planIn today’s technology-driven world, your B2B marketing plan is mainly going to consist of digital content marketing and web content management. In this blog, we give a very basic overview for how to build a B2B marketing plan to improve lead generation and drive revenue.

The first part of your marketing plan is about research and development. You need to determine what market you are going after and create an idea customer profile.  An idea customer profile contains information about the ideal demographics for your target customer; this can include things like region, title, industry, department, etc. Once you know who you are selling to, it is much easier to create marketing content for them.

The next part of your B2B marketing plan is actual content development itself.  Using the information you know about your ideal customer profile, consider what information would be relevant or valuable to your target customer. You also need to create content that is designed specifically for each stage of the buying cycle.  For example, early stage prospects need to be educated; late-stage buyers need to be convinced. By having different pieces of marketing content for each stage of the buying cycle, your prospects will feel like you understand their needs and begin to trust you.

The final stage of your B2B marketing plan is execution and refinement. With your content created, you can then push your messaging over blogs, your website and social media. With later-stage content, it is a good idea to keep it “gated” and require prospects to fill out a form with their contact information to get access. This way, you will know who your prospects are as they are nearing the close (with a marketing automation platform, you can track prospects from their first interaction on your website). Once your content is out there, you can use a variety of analytics to help you understand where have been successful and where you need improvement. You then make small adjustments over time by refining your messages or trying out different social networking or video hosting platforms.

If you would like more detailed content on B2B marketing plans, click here. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.

Soft vs. Hard Lead Generation for B2B Sales

by | Jan 16, 2013

lead generationMany B2B companies try so hard to generate more leads that they do not come up with a clear strategy for how to do so most efficiently and effectively. What these companies do not understand is that a successful campaign requires clearly defined goals and a well-articulated strategy.

This blog is meant to educate those with less experience in B2B sales and marketing about the fundamentals of lead generation. Specifically, we will address the difference between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales and when each is most appropriate to use.

The first step in creating a strategy for lead generation is to formulate your overall goals. You should ask the following questions:

• Who are you trying to target?
• What is the number of leads you want to generate?
• What do you want to achieve in terms of sales?
• Are you willing to pay for a lead? How much?
• Where do you want your leads to be in the sales cycle?

The answers to these questions become essential in determining which lead generation technique will be most effective for your business. Depending on what your goals are, you will usually choose either a soft or a hard lead generation strategy. Hard techniques usually generate a higher quality lead, while soft strategies tend to produce large numbers.

The soft offer:

Using an incentive with an apparently low risk factor, soft strategies will give you huge numbers of leads. For example, if you offer free tickets to the World Series, you are likely to get a massive number of responses. The downside of the soft lead, however, is that most of these respondents are more excited about baseball than learning about your business. So, while the soft lead may give you the numbers you want, most leads generated in this way do not progress any further in the sales cycle.

However, in our experience as an outsourced sales and marketing company, we have found that offering an iPad or a gift card can be quite effective, especially in terms of generating a quick opt-in database. We have also seen that the soft lead generation strategy is most effective for businesses trying to target leads early in their sales cycle. This method will take much more time because of having to sift through large numbers and so should be used primarily when attempting to generate activity or jump-start your sales.

The hard offer:

In a hard lead generation strategy, you offer something that is relatively higher risk than free tickets or an iPad. When you make this type of offer, which may require some type of commitment from your prospect, the leads you generate are usually going to be much further along in their sales cycle. Some things you can use as hard offer incentives are free consultations, preliminary audits, invites to webinars, etc.

When engaging with these types of leads, you should be aware they have a much greater chance of becoming closed deals. We have found that a hard lead generation method is most effective for businesses that have little time to weed through huge numbers of leads and are therefore looking to talk to leads much closer to making a purchase.

If you are still having trouble deciding between soft vs. hard lead generation for B2B sales, a good place to start is deciding who you are trying to target. If your goal is to reach marketing teams, a soft offer may be the most appropriate. On the other hand, if you are looking to speak to buying executives, you may want to go with the hard offer. Once you decide the kind of lead you desire and determine what will be of value to them, you will be able to come up with a successful strategy for generating leads.

Gabriel Sales has over 12 years of experience as an outsourced lead generation company. For more sales basics, please feel free to visit our Blogs on Sales and Content Basics.