Race conditions have changed. It’s time to pitstop and retune the engine, change tyres and take a few, deep breaths.
Likewise, in the B2B world, covid-19 spurred organisations to pit stop and recalibrate; to retune lead generation engines for the ‘new normal’. It was a catalyst to revitalise go-to-market strategies. How will you adapt your capabilities better for the new normal in future?
The majority of B2B customers want both human and digital interactions on their buying journey, with their specific preference at any given time correlated with the stage of the buying journey. Today’s customers, regardless of segment, expect to engage with companies using their channel of choice at any given moment in time and at all the different stages of the buying process.
Here are some retuning options:
1) Run a Brand Sprint
Your brand is the lifeblood, heart and soul of your business. This and the propositions and CX that hang off it are key to your differentiation strategy. Whatever your business, your brand proposition makes it both meaningfully different from your competitors and more valuable in the eyes of your target audience. If your proposition’s weak, or needs an overhaul, consider a brand sprint workshop. Here’s the overall process:
A brand sprint workshop gives you;
· Your brand story – as they say ‘the company story is the company strategy’. It’s what your prospects and customers connect with. It’s the unifying quality between everything you put out, from your logo to your tagline to your content to even the way you talk about your company. It’s your differentiation. Also, it’s the green light to develop differentiating campaigns so prospects can answer 3 key questions of your story:
Is it true?
Is it relevant?
Is it provable ?
2) Build a Customer Journey Map
A journey map opens up new avenues to help drive CX and drive sales. You’ll get an in-depth view of your B2B customers’ needs that ultimately helps you match your relationship management and sales process to their business type.
The process can be single step – tapping into your sales team’s knowledge - but ideally should be a double-step process, beginning with a mapping workshop with your internal teams. The second step is with your customers and prospects, where a similar customer process is conducted. With the two-pronged approach, you can uncover new areas for growth with a full, 360 degree view of your B2B selling process. You’ll then develop a journey as a group to produce a final journey map.
The map gives you:
Customer experience insight
Key interaction illumination
A personalised touch for your brand
A framework to tailor resourcing
A tool to educate and train employees
A roadmap for customising your content and martech delivery
3) Market to Who Matters Most - Pilot an ABM (Account Based Marketing) Campaign
Typical campaign targeting strategies are:
- At an ABM 1 to 1 level: using account intelligence and content insight to target individual contacts and accounts who are highly engaged, with specifically personalised content.
- At an ABM ‘Lite’ level or ‘Inbound or Outbound to ABM’ level; where data and information is at a less personalised persona or job title level.
Whichever the strategy, there are key stages to negotiate as follows:
Key is to test your propositions developed in the brand sprint. Spend time honing your content and consider time frames. How urgent is your demand generation? Weight your pilot to outbound if leads are required in the short term – especially as sales cycles may involve several months and weight to inbound and search generated if you’re seeking leads in the mid to longer term. Most of our clients blend and optimise a combination of the two.
A pilot campaign gives you:
A way to test, adapt and optimise before scaling
Understanding of ABM activities and outcomes
The ability to set realistic goals for the next year
A highlighting of ABM’s value for your organisation to secure exec buy-in
The proof you need to pivot your marketing for higher ROI
So if you you’d like to retune your own growth engines, whether it’s with a sprint, a map or a pilot or any combination of these - do get in touch for a chat.
If you’d like to re-appraise your CX and demand generation strategies and implement better prospect and account based marketing - do get in touch for:
BRAND INSIGHT, POSITIONING AND PROPOSITION DEVELOPMENT Our experienced researchers conduct brand perception surveys, insight programmes and phone interviews for businesses to discover what challenges their prospects and existing clients face, what they are looking for in service and product providers and how they make their buying decisions. Our strategic marketers and creatives then bring this to life.
DEMAND GENERATION CAMPAIGNS & RESOURCING Fire NBM Digital works with companies to develop B2B prospect personas, content marketing strategies, brand propositions, campaigns and creative execution. We assist clients to optimise the best mix of outbound and inbound techniques to drive new business growth with specialist marketing resourcing. Our social media specialists ensure messaging and content works well across all digital media, with our our content team including qualified journalists.
INTEGRATED DIGITAL SERVICES Bringing our extensive knowledge of attracting and engaging customers to well defined digital relationship models, both standalone and integrated to offline channels. We assist clients in a range of digital areas from UX design workshops and web design and development to conversion optimisation, SEO, PPC and social sellling.
Fire NBM Digital. Take the dull out of B2B marketing.