B2B sales is a tough nut to crack. It involves a long, drawn-out process of finding and nurturing leads, and will never be a simple task. In fact, a shocking 80% of B2B marketers find that their lead gen efforts do nothing to bring in the desired revenue.
If your sales team is struggling to acquire new clients to grow your business, it may be time to rethink your lead nurturing strategies. Here are three critical tactics for improving your lead nurturing in the future.
Sales And Marketing Alignment
When it comes to lead generation, you must make sure that your sales and marketing departments’ goals and visions are all aligned. If the sales team is pushing a certain product or feature, but the marketing team is focusing on another, it could result in conflicting or confusing messages that don’t help the bottom line. The B2B sales process is infinitely more complex than the average retail sale because of:
- Larger transaction value;
- Methodical decision making involving more stakeholders;
- Longer purchase cycle; and
- Fewer prospects and even fewer customers.
Misalignment, in this regard, can easily lead to communication gaps, flawed processes and inconsistent metrics, which can wreak havoc on lead nurturing strategies. In turn, this leads to lost sales and diminished trust in a business. Research from Demand Gen Report found that lead quality and follow-ups were at the top of what sales and marketing departments want from each other:
As you develop strategies and marketing content, be sure that your team emphasizes the importance of sticking to a unified vision that creates value for all parties.
Content Diversification
A study by SiriusDecisions found that 80% of purchasing decisions are based on the experience that a customer has with the brand. By diversifying content, businesses can improve these experiences and reach new clients in ways they never could before.
Content diversification refers to expanding your messaging beyond your own platform to different channels. For example, in recent years, businesses that diversified their content by contributing on different blogs had 4.5 times more leads than those that didn’t:
Consider starting a content marketing campaign that discusses the current pain points in your industry (something you likely already do) and expanding to newer platforms and content outlets you’ve never tried before. Perhaps this means experimenting with a new social media network, or a new format for video marketing.
Not every client responds to content the same way, so it can be dangerous for a brand to solely rely on a single form of marketing material. This can alienate and limit audience and market size, therefore reducing the amount of B2B leads that a business can draw in. Strategize with your marketing team about various ways they can switch up the playbook to engage with more customers.
Video Emails
It’s common knowledge that:
- Videos are in the elite circle of online content; and
- Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to gain leads.
When these two powerhouses are combined, the results can be astounding. The process of nurturing B2B leads can be very long and cumbersome. Adding a dose of visualization can be a saving grace that makes life easier for your leads.
A GetResponse study reported that emails with a video in them saw 96% higher click-through rates than all-text emails. Videos are more interesting, and they save the viewer the time of sifting through lots of content.
Adding videos to your next email campaign is a great way to boost engagement and strengthen leads. Superimposing the play button over the video will also encourage more viewers to check out the clip, so be sure to include one.
In Conclusion
Nurturing leads for your B2B business doesn’t have to be difficult and intimidating. Pepping up your content strategy can increase your versatility and improve interactions with your brand. Tweaking your email marketing by adding in video is another way to boost engagement and encourage readers to learn more about your offerings.
Whatever you do, be sure to provide a consistent brand message for your audience. By employing these tactics into your lead nurturing strategy, your marketing team is sure to find new customers that are really ready to buy.
Josh Spilker is a writer and author living in Nashville, Tenn. He is the content manager and strategist for Workzone, a top project management software company. He also blogs regularly about the creative process at Create Make Write. Connect with him on Twitter: @joshspilker
