Even in 2021, there are still a lot of businesses who haven’t yet tapped into the potential for digital marketing as a source for incremental leads. However, the point is very much around the incrementality of digital leads – traditional methods are still just as important, and 9 times out of 10, you’ll still need that human interaction.
The opportunity for growth lies within the fact that your target audience is changing; they are getting younger, they have grown up with Google, and while referral and recommendation is often huge part of a high value contract, the first thing your potential clients are going to do is jump online and see who’s solved their challenges before.
In this blog, discover why a digital focus is right for high value sales
3 ways to make sure you get it right
81% of B2B purchase cycles start with web search, and 90% of buyers say that when they are ready to buy, “they’ll find you.” (Earnest Agency).
The great news is that you don’t need to go totally crazy to test the water and, in any event, the content you’d be looking to create would be great ammunition for the traditional sales team to refer to and share on a one-to-one basis (if it isn’t, then you haven’t picked the right topics!)
#1: Target audience research: Conduct polls/surveys or telephone interviews to identify your target audience’s specific “pain points” and challenges.
#2: Stakeholder interviews to validate the pain points, identify how we mesh them with business needs, and create relevant case studies.
#3: Create dedicated landing pages and/or whitepapers in response to those specific pain points detailing how to overcome the common challenges that the sales team are responding to.
Getting those bits right mean that you are giving your target audience value before you’ve asked for anything back – and they know that you can help; they are primed to hear more – you’ve already opened the door!
From a digital marketing perspective there are a few baseline channels to consider as a solid starting point:
• SEO
• PPC
• Paid Social (E.g., Facebook/LinkedIn ads)
Measuring and understanding the impact of your activity
The final piece of the jigsaw is tracking/attribution and understanding the longer tail of influence – if you operate on a ‘last click’ model where all the credit is given to the final converting channel then you can make some bad decisions, but setting up correctly in the first place means that this data will gather for you.
There’s no time like the present!
In B2B, when cycles are slower anyway, there really is no time like the present!
So, the big question is not whether you can afford to run a test such as described above across 6-9 months, but whether you can afford to be in the same place in 12 months when the competition and your target audience will have moved even further on.
Find out how we helped Domino Printing Sciences increase their year-on-year website leads by 150%!
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