Anyone who has done B2B marketing for more than 10 years will tell you that traditional lead-generation marketing doesn’t work as well as it used to. Technology has made it easier for prospects to ignore your attempts to contact them by filtering out communication from unknown or unwanted sources. As a result, email conversion rates are down, and it takes more dials to find a lead by phone.
It’s not just the ability to filter that suppresses response. Prospective customers have the tools to get much further down the sales funnel before they feel the need to speak with vendors. According to a Fleishman-Hillard report from 2012, 89 percent of B2B buyers begin the purchase process online. They research the available options and identify the best matches for their needs before contacting the solution providers.
If you want to influence their decision-making process as early as possible, you have to give prospective buyers something they value during the research phase: information.
Anyone actively researching a solution that you provide will have a lot of questions, and not all will be specific to your product or service. Answer those questions, and buyers will start coming to you. This is what content marketing is all about.
For content marketing to work, you need good content, of course, and you need to make it as discoverable as possible to sales prospects. You also need a process in place to capture information about those prospects so you can properly follow up with them.
An example of a company that does content marketing well is Continuum, which sells a software platform for IT management. [https://www.continuum.net/msp-resources] On its website you will find a variety of content, including a blog, webinars, how-to guides, and case studies. All of it is well promoted on the site, and it appears to be frequently updated. The content is peppered with keywords and phrases that are specific to the problem its product solves, which makes the content easier to find as buyers will likely use them as search terms.
Each item has some kind of call to action such as an offer to download a whitepaper, demo request, free trial, or request to connect with a representative. When someone takes one of those actions, Continuum collects key information such as name, company, and email address.
Presumably, Continuum is also using software that tracks each visitor’s actions on the website, and possibly even identifies the visitor or the company domain he or she is using. This information would allow the Continuum sales team to better qualify visitors as leads depending on the patterns in their actions on the website over time. It also gives the sales team talking points for following up with those individuals.
The content does not have to be on your company’s website. You can find Continuum content on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook, and they promote it well through all the social channels. Subject matter experts within your organization might contribute to popular blogs or online publications, or speak at events. This extends your content marketing reach, and you can often repurpose that content for other marketing purposes.
The best part about content marketing is that anyone can do it. A good marketing platform, proper web design, and support staff are great for those businesses that can afford to make the investment. Those with limited budgets can effectively use social media channels and outside content sites to use what you know to bring in the leads.
