Every morning, sales and marketing teams wake up with one conviction—to drive revenues.
Digitally enabled customers, on the other hand, are overloaded with (often contradictory) information that they need to make sense of, to make purchases.
Not only does this lower consumer confidence but also overly lengthen the sales process and may even reduce purchases.
To improve your chances, you’ll need to identify digital strategies that build credibility and mimic the easy and informative processes that constitute B2C sales platforms.
Here are several options worth considering
1. Data and Analytical Tools
Despite embracing digital tools, many businesses aren’t effective users of the analytics their tools collect. This hidden superpower allows you to assess your team’s performance, detect critical trends, boost productivity, and forecast results.
It also sheds light on which offerings outperform others, selling issues, and untapped market opportunities.
How can this strategy serve you?
- Proper market segmentation. Data and analytics allow you to get really granular with your messages and offerings to make them relatable to specific segments. This may help reduce inefficiencies and encourage engagement from prospective customers leading to purchases.
- Getting the pricing right. Price negotiations are part of the deal, and in some cases deal breakers. Data analytics may help you understand pricing options to help you price your offerings competitively.
- Facilitate accurate product recommendations. Through data analytics, you can deduce consumer needs based off their searches or compare previous customers to similar potential customers to suggest relevant products/services.
2. Account-Based Marketing
This strategy is defined by building customer-centric experiences that progressively profile engagement behavior to reach potential buyers timely.
It goes beyond just targeting “accounts” by focusing on connecting with prospects, learning their propensity to buy, and informing their journey.
To help make your strategy successful, consider the following:
- Align the team. Not just sales and marketing but also the customer service guys. Synergy among these teams ensures seamless transitions from initial contact to purchase and after-sales. Facilitate clear communication and a middle ground that ensures the marketers acquire leads that the sales guys can sell to effectively.
- Research key accounts. Consider the account’s business objectives, firmographics, spending partners, the tools or platforms they are currently using, and if they are already engaging your brand. Ensure the teams agree on key considerations when identifying a target account.
- Build account plans. When mapping your account plan, find out who comprises the decision-making committee and the content needed for each member. While you may find that some customers have similarities, be sure to personalize your plan for greater relatability.
- Go on and attract contact persons associated with your target account. From industry publications to social pages, and targeted ad placements, identify and prioritize channels that get you the best visibility with the contacts.
3. Cold Calling
Unlike other strategies where careful thought goes into what’s written for propriety, cold calling facilitates raw interactions between you and the prospects.
This one-to-one interaction allows you to gauge interest, pick up and address “unspoken” concerns and assess their willingness to buy. There’s no waiting for days or weeks on end for responses. It’s either “yes, let’s move forward,” “not right now,” or at worst “no”.
Best practices include:
- Spend time on research. Contacting the right person timely is crucial to getting the nod. Use data and other marketing intelligence to build a custom list of potential customers. Look up the contact person to identify things that will help make the call personable.
- Know your reason for calling. Seeing as you’re interrupting your prospect’s day, you’ll need to give them a reason to continue the conversation. That reason is the value you can offer and its impact on their business.
- Prepare a script. This invaluable set of lines allows you to have smooth conversations and helps guide the conversation toward your aim. Practicing and internalizing your script makes you sound natural, which is crucial when conversing with people.
- Objections aren’t necessarily bad. Audit the areas where listeners shut you down. Is it at the beginning? You may need to refine your opener or recheck your list of prospects. Is it along the conversation? What can you tweak to improve reception?
4. Video Marketing
With visual elements painting entire pictures and the audio aspect telling the story behind your offerings, videos aren’t just memorable, but also effective sales tools.
There’s research to prove it—a Wyzowl survey shows that up to 81 percent of B2B marketers directly attribute video to their sales increase.
But for this tactic to convert, you’ll need a plan. A plan that takes into account the following:
Create videos for the different stages of the process.
- Draw in potential customers by customizing videos to their place in the sales journey. Introductory videos are fantastic for first-time visitors, while those familiar with your brand may benefit from videos that illustrate your solutions’ effectiveness.
- Customer testimonials work. Authentic testimonials allow prospective customers to see your solutions working for other businesses. They can then envision these solutions, creating similar or better scenarios for their business.
- Experiment with 3D animations. They are perfect for breaking down sophisticated products/services. They make it easier for the viewer to get a closer look at multiple features and how they work. You can even make these videos interactive to allow viewers to rotate or zoom product prototypes as needed.
5. Influencer Marketing
For a time, most people considered influencers a fad that would fade with time. Well, contrary to these thoughts the influencer marketing strategy continues to hold its ground—with good reason.
People trust those they deem credible and knowledgeable in their field and pay attention to the suggestions they make.
While there aren’t many mainstream influencers covering B2B topics, here are some ways to help you identify them
- Topical-based influencers. They are thought leaders, futurists, and innovators who hold plenty of expertise in their industry. They craft posts around their topics of interest to educate audiences on the latest developments. Their followers comprise people who are passionate about this topic of interest.
- Channel-based influencers. This group specializes in building authority and audiences within specific platforms. They have a rock solid understanding of the platform they use, its capability, and algorithms. If your target audience heavily relies on a particular channel, you can partner with these influencers to reach them.
- Function-based influencers. Here you’re looking at industry analysts, CEOs, founders, and other influential persons. They are highly respected for their experience and knowledge and command a large following across channels.