Search Results for: marketing strategy

5 Steps for a Successful Business to Business Sales

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Prospects that are not buying from you, the ones who want to learn from you but not prefer being pitched by you, need a consultative approach. You will have to change your business to business sales approach. With regards to building significant relationships with customers, sales agents are basic players on the front edges. Be that as it may, would they say they are getting the basics right? Customers need to be reached simply enough, not besieged. Sales reps should know their products or services personally and how their offering contrasts and those of their rivals. Customers need data on precisely how an item or administration will have any kind of effect to their organizations. And keeping in mind that they may state cost is perhaps the greatest concern, a wonderful sales experience is eventually increasingly significant. If you adapt a consultative approach in your business to business sales for selling your products or services it will be very crucial since the way the people are buying has changed, dramatically. Previously, buyers needed to approach the seller right off the bat in the sales procedure so as to explore their buy. Once reached, the seller could apply impact over the purchaser and the deal. The seller’s influence depended on information. The seller had it and the purchaser required it. Each time the purchaser returned to the seller for more information, the salesperson could extricate another pound of substance from the purchaser and impact the deal. Buyers detested it. Must Read: 7 Tips to Design Your Business Growth Plan Presently, the buyers are exploring their purchases online. They can peruse item reviews, get estimating, and converse with companions (and even outsiders) about their involvement with your organization’s item or administration. Studies state that the business to business sales are affected since the seller’s information gathering has vanished. The reason for this is that now 70-90% of buyers go through their purchase before they even contact the seller. With buyers responsible for the purchasing procedure currently, attempting to apply weight on them doesn’t work. It frequently reverse discharges on the grounds that while the buyers need to purchase, they would prefer not to be offered to. The best salespeople nowadays adopt a substantially more consultative strategy. They tune in for chances to help, instruct and amuse the purchaser. Pitching is dead – educating is the new pitching. At the point when done right, selling doesn’t have a craving for selling. It’s progressively similar to a consultation. If you want to increase the business to business sales effectiveness, you can apply these five consultative approaches to selling. Must Read: 6 Proven Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales Research Each lead that comes in or that you generate should be researched. Things like organization size, what number of your site pages they have visited, and so on. Regardless of whether a lead gets you out of nowhere, begin researching them while they are on the telephone. And keeping in mind that achieving prospects has never been increasingly troublesome, the capacity to research them has never been simpler. The research stage will help with the five stages that pursue. Ask The more information you get, the more you can help, include esteem, separate yourself from your opposition and close sales. Questions are the most significant sales device. Ask open finished questions that start with words like what, how, why, where, when and who. Attempt to maintain a strategic distance from yes or no questions. Perhaps the greatest mix-up a salesperson makes is to expect something about the buyer. Asking questions limits the dangers of accepting. Listen When you ask, listen! Try not to consider what your next inquiry will be in business to business sales. Rather, rehash back what they buyer has said. This will make the buyer feel comprehended and will compel you to concentrate on what the buyer is truly saying. Strive to do just 30% of the talking. This may feel awkward from the start, yet you’ll be stunned at how well it functions. Must Read: Proven Marketing Strategies to Increase Sales Teach Teaching is the new pitching. Over the span of effectively listening to the buyer, search for teaching openings that can help instruct them. Teaching enables the buyer to discover that what they need probably won’t be what they need. At the point when a client discovers some new information that will support them, the mental intensity of correspondence helps manufacture preference and devotion. When teaching, abstain from discussing your very own product or services. Close On the off chance that you’ve done the initial five stages effectively, shutting will feel more like an understanding than an arm-winding manipulation (which doesn’t work in any case). The buyer will feel good and will know what they have to do straightaway and have less questions and less buyer’s regret. Buyers need to purchase, however they don’t care for being offered to, harsh but truth of every business to business sales. They do, anyway value being helped by a trusted advisor. In the event that you ask questions and listen to what the buyer is really letting you know as you qualify them, a consultative approach will prompt more sales. The sales experience matters, and a decent one begins by getting the essentials right. Organizations ought to analyze precisely how they are performing by asking the accompanying questions: What are the most powerful drivers of the sales experience? What things are your venders doing that could harm connections? How does the recognition your clients have of your sales power contrast with how they see your rivals? It is just by knowing and understanding the responses to these questions that organizations can start to recognize and seek after the privilege fixes. When you ask these questions to the prospects they will provide you answers and thus you can build your strategy for achieving the business to business sales success.

Tips for Small Business Growth Strategies

Posted on By Vikas Bhatt

Small business growth strategies are aimed at making smaller businesses grow bigger and better. Strategies are drawn out after a lot of deliberations given the fact that business strategies can make or break a business or they can revive a business when it’s going down the graph. A growth strategy is defined as a well thought out plan for future growth. It is different from a business plan. The differences between the two is defined as: A business plan defines the business by structuring the ideas for the business like what products and services to offer, promotional offers, sales target, etc. On the other hand, a business growth strategy, in general, prioritizes resources like time, money and people to grow revenue and increase the return on investment (ROI). The same holds true for a small business too. A few questions that make a small business growth strategy easy to understand are expansion plans into new markets, targeting new customers, new product and service ideation for service and product expansion to cater to a larger audience. Small business growth strategies are not really that different from the growth strategies of medium or large businesses. The only difference lies in the magnitude of the strategies employed and the scale at which these strategies are executed. Must Read: 7 Tips on How to Market Your Business Keeping in mind what small business growth strategies intent on achieving, here are the tips for developing the same. Existing Market Expansion Through Penetration Here a lot of brainstorming goes into deciding what new needs to be done to reach out to newer audience and a larger market. Market penetration is the strategy that aims at gaining a competitive edge, with competitors. Market penetration requires ideating ways to increase market share. There are various tried and tested ways to execute this intent. Some of the most practiced tips to do so would be lowering selling price, promotional offers, discounts, etc. New Product or Service Development This strategy will come to play once a business is established and has been in operation for a while. Even a small business in its growth strategy has to make room for new product and service development. These developments are however not meant for a new market.  These small business growth strategies are developed to cater to the existing market. What needs to be understood here is that a new product or service does not necessarily mean an innovation. It could be an addition of a feature or as simple as making the same product available in more color range. Product and Service Diversification This is a common word that businesses are always buzzing with. Diversification implies diverting from the current product and service portfolio. So why would small business growth strategies want to inculcate such a risky move? It is all about market capturing and opening up new avenues to generate more revenues. There are two ways of diversification. One is to initiate a whole new product or service range, which would be a completely new business. Or it could be a new service yet which caters to the same market. For instance, as a small B2B service provider, you could be into corporate maintenance. Either you enter a completely new service like catering to the customers or you may choose to cater to the B2B domain exclusively as a caterer.    Looking to Develop Other Markets for the Product Small business growth strategies must look at developing markets for their products and services. This would be diverting into another domain which will open up another market to bring in revenue. Market Segmentation: Many small businesses launch their line of products and services in the market only to get lost in the chaos. The mistake that is made here is the lack of understanding of the target audience. All products cannot be for everyone in general. Must Read: Top Advantages of B2B Marketing Plan Some of the products and services might be used by people in general. However, the target audience should always be defined. In the above example of launched product losing its focus, the redemption of the product position comes with segmenting of the market into smaller units.  This will help in appealing to a specific market, and a specific target audience. Looking for Alternative Channels This strategy is again about new markets and prospects. For instance, say your small business is now has a brick and mortar office. You have a business website and get quality leads off the website. It’s now time for you, as a small business owner to look at going online with your business, given the fact that you already have traffic on your website and people are already enquiring about your products and services.  Leveraging on various channels to reach out to your target audience is a way of ensuring that you’re the small business growth strategies are well planned and geared to make the business reach new heights. Do Not Shy Away From Business Acquisition As a small business entity when you churn out your small business growth strategies, you have an exclusive focus here. The central idea is to expand your business by market expansion. One of the most practiced yet risky and ambitious ways is an acquisition. However, as a small business, you might not think along these lines. Consider this: the small business that you currently have has flourished to an extent where you can expand your business. That would mean more servicing capacity or production capacity. This, in turn, will require manpower, more facilities, and infrastructure. If you have the funds and you can acquire another company which will be a valuable addition to your existing set, up go ahead. Expansion is always a key point in small business growth strategies. Small business growth strategies are designed to suit the SME sector. SME refers to small and medium enterprises, as categorized by international standards. This classification is based on the bracketing of business enterprises as small, medium or

What is Sales Qualified Lead Definition?

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

You should be clear about sales qualified leads definition and the definition of marketing qualified leads. You shouldn’t confuse SQL with MQL, as they are different terms. The sales qualified lead definition includes understanding the terminologies and the indicators (which may be equally important) within your process that will alert you to urge your potential customers to move down the funnel. When you know all the terms, i.e. prospects, buyer’s journey, but you have a hard time understanding how your company determines and breaks the leads within the sales process, you will end up losing some high-value potential clients. One of the most important things you need to make sure is to understand the MQL definition and the sales qualified leads definition. Without a clear array of events that alerts your marketers and then the sales rep of when a prospect is ready to be fit in the funnel and finally closed, you will be pitching the leads that aren’t even ready and lose out on the ones who were ready sooner. In simpler words, this is the most important step of converting leads into customers. Must Read: 7 Lead Management Strategy Best Practices Sales Qualified Lead Definition Sales qualified lead is defined as prospective customer or lead who has been researched and vetted by the organizations marketing department first and then by the sales team of the company and is deemed ready to move ahead for the next stage in the sales process. Ideally, this lead is someone who is interested in your brand and has come to you either by organic way or through outreach by showing interest in your products up to a certain degree. After your leads have expressed interest in your product, the details are shown to the sales team who will then vet the quality leads to further study the leads readiness to buy. At the final stage, the lead is cleared and then made to enter the next stage of the sales process. The overall process of the sales qualified lead generation looks similar in almost all organizations with both the sales as well as the marketing team. Must Read: MQL to SQL conversion rate Difference between Marketing and Sales Qualified Lead Definition There is obviously some difference between SQL and MQL generation. If you are the only one talking you are simply giving a lecture. When you lecture an audience to attract them to learn more about your product, you are giving out a grand image of a world which can be created with the products you sell. Marketing is nothing but giving out a grand lecture and when your prospects begin to ask questions, you begin to converse with them. The biggest indicator and difference that your marketing qualified leads might be sales ready is their desire and willingness to convert your lecture into a conversation. It’s not that marketing does not involve any interaction. Email responses, social media, opt-in forms, etc, are the types of communications that can happen during a marketing phase. These conversations are more commonly known as engagement. These are the things, amongst others, that help a marketing team to score a prospect to study their sales-readiness. However, the biggest difference between the engagement within the marketing lead and a funnel is when they are looking to start a conversation and who or what they are interacting to. This again will be different for each company. Must Read: How the lead generation strategies in USA market differ from the rest of the world The Step in the Middle As per the definition, the layout of both marketing and sales teams are involved before the lead is moved officially in status to SQL. In a lot of companies, this is done through a separate step called a sales accepted lead. Let’s see a quick break down of this usually speedy step. Once the scoring of the lead reaches a certain level, after which the marketing team alerts the sales team about it. Must Read: 7 Tips on How to Market Your Business A sales rep then schedules a call with the lead to ask other information required for some qualifying questions. This means that we have moved from the initial lecture to engagement and beyond to a conversation. Also, you may not necessarily pitch them in this call. It will be more of a direct call to learn if they are fit for your product. You aren’t establishing a club through the exclusion of prospects but you are trying to avoid the customers that don’t really need your product and may not buy it anytime soon or ever for that matter. Once the sales re-establishes, as per the sales qualified lead definition, that it is indeed qualified for the sales team it becomes an SQL. This means that they have not only accepted the fact that they want to buy your product but are also moving forward with the sales process. Must Read: Unconventional Ways to Generate Qualified B2B Sales Leads What’s Next? Now that you have landed the leads, what now, how do you go ahead with this? The best thing about setting a sales funnel process can also be if only sometimes, a traditional sales rep’s biggest nightmare. In case your company has moved the process, you can still use the reps to be all in one with marketing, customer service, and sales team. Your newly established SQL’s can come to a rep who thinks that the leads know nothing. If you repeat the information and treat the leads as though they are uneducated, this can be a big problem for you. The opposite of this can also be true. If the reps think that only people who say yes are going to make it through, they can get lazy and will not be able to close all that they could, fully. If this happens, the sales team can get irritated with the marketing team for not sending proper leads their way. Sales Qualified Lead

Demand Generation Etiquettes: 5 Best Practices Every Marketer Should Follow

Posted on By Arit Kumar Sinha

Just like life and business, demand generation also has its etiquettes and rules, if you break them, it will lead to poor results, wasted money and effort, and a frustrated marketer. Let us start with 5 basic demand generation etiquettes every marketer should follow.   Must Read: 9 demand generation books every marketer must need to know Must Follow Demand Generation Best Practices in 2023 We will be quick having a look at some of these demand generation best practices you should follow as a marketer. We will be sharing with you five (5) of them based on our experience: 1. Build a Strategy Around a Tactic Keep yourself updated, do the research. Learn maximum about the market, your customer, their responses and your competition first. Once you’re done with all the research, build a strategy around a tactic that has the greatest response in the market. What maximum marketers do is they build strategies based on no research and no tactics. Building a strategy around what you’ve learned is missing in the marketplace and how your product or solution can fill a void in the lives of the mass audience. Talk to your own salespeople who speak with prospects and customers on a daily basis. Take every possible suggestion to build a perfect set of tactic based demand generation strategies. Must Read: 15+ Demand Generation Statistics that Every Business Should Know 2. Having a Strong Demand Funnel Framework One of the good examples of demand generation etiquettes that most of the marketers lack is having a strong demand generation framework. Always keep in mind that demand framework is just like a factory – it needs to have a framework in place, a sales and marketing lead management process and a closed-loop reporting system that improves conversion rates. To make sure that everything operates effectively you need to have a well-documented framework. 3. Lead Nurturing that Maps to the Buyer’s Journey Once you score your lead and develop content for each stage of the funnel, always make sure that you have a lead nurturing system in place. As a lead scoring system comes under sophisticated “demand generation etiquettes”, so does a lead nurturing system in place that has blueprints and programs for each stage of the buying process comes under the demand generation etiquettes. Having a lead nurturing that maps to the buyer’s journey ensure that you have a solid strategy in place to make sure that the right content is getting delivered to the right people at the right time. Everything starting from nurture flows, content strategy, persona tracks and overall performance metrics comes under this. Must Read: 15+ demand generation statistics that every business should know 4. Think from a Buyer’s Perspective Companies think inwardly. Which is why the bulk of content created nowadays are focused on the product’s qualities instead of what your buyer really wants to learn about. To build a successful set demand generation strategies, you should be focusing more on what the buyer’s needs are rather than focusing more the product publicity. Create it so that your content can be easily found where they do their own research and craft it so that your messages resonate. For this, the research that you carried out earlier can be a tremendous help. Must Read: 5 Common Demand Generation Plan Problems to Avoid 5. Accept that You’ll Make Mistakes Making mistakes is what we learn from. No matter how many demand generation etiquettes, demand generation tactics and demand generation strategies you apply and follow, you are supposed to make mistakes. Using various demand generation best practices done nowadays like appointment setting, account-based marketing and much more you are going to get stuck once or the other. And with so many demand generation best practices marketers still do commit mistakes. What you need to do is accept it, learn from it and never repeat it. Once you learn about the mistake you committed, determine what it means, and then be willing to make adjustments.

The Importance of Business to Business Services

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Providing Support Services To Businesses In the B2B domain of business, business to business service providers, also called Business Service providers (BSP) refers to firms that engage in providing services in terms of back-office and front office support.  A business service provider extends its services in the area of HR (human resource), infrastructure, administration, security, mail delivery, and finance to name a few. The business to business services for back-office usually consists of off-site services. They include areas like: Customer support; Technical assistance; and Administration tasks like payroll and bookkeeping. Business to business service providers usually outsources back-office work. This is a major factor in making BSPs cost-effective and attractive.  The front office aspects on the other hand include: Sales; Marketing; and Services. The front office services usually are the ones that establish contact with the clients. Must Read: 7 Lead Management Strategy Best Practices How does Business to Business providers make it easier for businesses?  Responsibility Sharing:  A business will always have its core intent described. However, other than making a sale, and performing on the core business KRAs, some ancillary services are inevitable to an organization. However, these are crucial to sustaining the business. For instance critical departments like the payroll and the security, Human resources etc. Business to business service here makes life easier for organizations. For instance: Many mid and small-sized companies today outsource their payroll responsibility to Business to Business service providers. Flexibility: Flexibility refers to the adaptability of a business. This is evident from the back-office services that a business provider provides to a BPO. A BPO works on the outsourced work of a business. The pricing or billing is usually on the output. For instance, if it’s a lead generation BPO, the services provided to the business will be free. However, the charges will be levied on the leads generated. This allows the business the flexibility of dealing with a BSP according to their advantage. Legalities: An organization has to abide by many bureaucratic rules and regulations. These rules and regulations are legal hurdles and obedience protocols which are updated regularly. They also have numerous timelines and legal formalities that need to be taken care of.  Focusing on these parameters, which are to be mandatorily met, would mean taking away from the core business needs. Hence the legal responsibilities of an organization are usually outsourced. Given the fact that B2B services are making life easier for corporates, it would be interesting to see the types of business services provided by providers. Here is a list of Business to business services that are provided by the business to business service providers: Software Upgrades and Security: Though a business service provider does not provide any kind of software they, however, do have the expertise to upgrade the currently used software. Along with an up-gradation, the service providers also help with software enhancement. Such enhancements not only improve software performance but also modifies features and fortifies security. Software security upgrades are one of the many ways to counter illegal hacking of sensitive data. Management Services: These services span across domains and industries. Some of the management services include: Human Resources; Administration; Strategic planning; Debt Management; and  Event management Marketing Communication Services: Have you ever thought about who does the creative work in the advertisements? How are the strategically placed hoardings displaying different brands on its face every week? These are services rendered by the advertising agencies which are also Business to business service providers. Imagine a pan India launch of a product. This would mean working out the logistics across the venues, making reservations, coordinating with the media, getting the essential launch materials accumulated, getting the venue ready, etc. It is a whole process that takes months of preparation and constant traveling. This aspect of work is hence often outsourced to media houses and advertisers, which not only ensures effective execution of the work but also saves on time and cost for the corporate. Must read: 6 Best Strategies for Targeted Lead Generation Tours and Travel Services: Corporates and businesses that have a presence across the country and the globe or have clientele across, have to let professionals fly or travel often. Ticketing, confirmation and scheduling these travels can prove to be a handful of a job when people from different departments are traveling almost every day. Hence, travel arrangements of corporates are also outsourced for smoother operation. Food and Beverages: Along with travel, food is another crucial part of any event. Corporates often have clients visiting them and have events where they interact with stakeholders, dealers, suppliers, clients and the media. Lunch or Dinner along with beverages always remain a part and parcel of such events. Catering services, therefore, becomes a must for businesses. Most of the time this aspect of the events is therefore outsourced to a business provider in the catering business. Internal Security Services: Corporate premises are always vulnerable areas, as far security is concerned. It may be internal security in terms of thefts, ugly fights between employees, substance abuse, etc.  For financial institutions like a bank, security is of utmost necessity all the time, especially when big amounts are being transported physically. For instance, money transportation to ATMs. It is not surprising to be checked by security when we enter office premises. However, maintaining a security force becomes a huge liability for a corporate especially given the fact that many offices operate 24X7. Consequently, security services are always outsourced to security firms where they recruit people with relevant experience and exposure for the job. There are other business to business services that are rendered to companies across the industries and domains like software services, personal services, waste management services, infrastructure services, etc. Conclusion: Business to Business services are aimed at corporates. These services include serving almost all aspects of corporate life. The range of services can extend from transportation to catering services, insurance services to BPOs. Business to business services are optimized on and liberally used by the industries across, for

6 Best Strategies for Targeted Lead Generation

Posted on By Arit Kumar Sinha

You need a lot of high quality leads to make your business successful. Targeted lead generation is equally important and just putting your website together with a contact form is not enough. You will require various tools in your toolbox for enough lead generation to make your business profitable. We have put together 6 strategies in this article that will help you to target lead generation effectively. Use Email Marketing for Lead Generation The biggest question here arises is can you use email marketing for generating targeted leads? The reasons may be enough for questioning the liability like the ones who are already in your list also lead, right? The answer is yes, but they aren’t paying you, yet! Are they? It can also happen that they must have just signed up for a free eBook that you were giving away on your website. There are still in the first stage of your sales cycle.Must Read: 7 Lead Management Strategy Best Practices There are a few things that you can do for converting them into your customers. Great delivery: A rich delivery includes the use of better typography and the best images to attract subscribers. Human brains process images better than they process texts and things become even more interesting if you use images or human faces in the emails. Subject line: A subject line in an email plays a very important role in making people open the message. If you personalize your email, by using either the first or the last name of the prospect, you will have higher chances of getting increased open rates. An ideal email marketing does NOT start and end with sending emails 10 times in a week. Instead, you should focus on building a better relationship with your contact list. Give them quality content and let them trust you before you begin promoting offers. Let them see you as a friend or at least a next door neighbour. Use Effective Landing Pages This is directly related to the above technique. Like your content, your landing pages should also look like they are providing value to the prospects. You can use the tripwire offer, an offer that is hard to resist because it is full of value. It works something like this: Suppose you offer social media marketing services to businesses. To make them take up your service, you can make them a tripwire offer saying you will set up their social media page for $10 and will bring in leads for only $0.02. Trust me, plenty of offline business owners don’t even know how to set up a Facebook page, leave the targeted lead generation list for 2 cents. After you are done with your initial campaign, they will realize how effective your service is and would want more. This is where you offer them services as per your price. You need not use the tripwire element on the landing page but you can surely use it somewhere to get in more business. Must Read: 7 Tips on How to Market Your Business Use LinkedIn for Targeted Lead Generation The reason for using this strategy is that people not only consider LinkedIn to be a social media channel but also a platform where they can share their resume with others. They are also looking for information for growing their careers or for helping their businesses. Therefore, LinkedIn will have a more targeted audience than any other social media channels who are just waiting to become leads. LinkedIn Ads: Using LinkedIn can be a great way to flaunt yourself in front of your target audience.  Profile Views: You are required to have a premium profile if you want to see who has viewed your profile and it’s worth it. You will identify the leads that are stalking you. Send them a message and ask them if you can help them in any manner. Create Great Content What are the types of content that you think your audience values? The best place to determine such content is to go through the reader’s social conversations. You don’t need to learn rocket science to achieve this feat. All you have to do is use tools that allow you to see the information that the potential leads share around freely. Some of these tools allow you to specify a particular keyword and then read conversations that are taking place around that keyword. Now, determine what your target audience needs. Listen to their problems and then offer solutions in the form of your products by creating valuable content. To do this you need to give them exactly what they need. Speak at Events Events, mostly offline, can be a good way to acquire more leads. There is more honesty when you stand in front of your audience and talk to them about how you can solve their problems. People love immediate solutions and more so when they see the face behind it. They love face-to-face conversations. Incorporate Live Chat People struggle to find solutions that fit their needs and which is not costly. They tend to read the reviews and then trust a specific product. If you stand there and do not solve their problem your targeted lead generation list might wander and contact someone else. You can set up a live chat option where they can contact you and be quick to help them. The bottom line is that support emails are fine but nothing beats instant live chat or quick call (if feasible) option. A targeted lead generation list is like a lifeline for every online business. Try all or any of the strategies that can eventually get you the right leads.

Quick Guide: Retain Customers with Demand Generation Strategies

Posted on By Vikas Bhatt

One of the biggest challenges in saturated markets today is generating demand for your business. Big brands make it look so easy. And guess what, IT generation may be a tiny part of the bigger marketing plan, it is crucial to ensure that your demand generation strategies, tactics, and practices work along the sales funnel and result in customer acquisition.  Must Read: 9 demand generation books every marketer must need to know So, What is Demand Generation? As the name suggests, demand generation is all about creating a need for your product/service in the minds of your potential buyers. According to Sproutsocial, It is a multi-step process that shows your prospects a problem they face, acquaints them with your brand as a potential solution and illustrates the value of choosing you over others.   There are many demand generation strategies and tactics, like email marketing, free tool or resources, webinars, videos, apps, etc, which are known to have impressive ROI  Source: leadsmarketer.net  While implementing any of these strategies, you need to follow certain rules or best practices which are known to increase customer acquisition and retention rates. Let’s look at them one by one.   1. Remember, You Need Demand Generation We have met a few clients who thought they didn’t require demand generation strategies. Ooo! That one mistake always leaves me speechless! Many businesses start off planning their marketing assuming that customers will know and want to buy their products/services. Let me break it to you – Unless you are selling on Mars and have a monopoly, customers aren’t automatically going to come to you and buy. Always start with generating demand and do not skip steps   2. Understand the Difference Between Demand Generation and Lead Generation You may skip over this point thinking you know it but, countless marketers make the mistake of using lead and demand generation interchangeably.  While demand generation is focused on driving awareness for your product/service, lead generation focuses on conversions. You cannot expect conversions if your marketing plan is demand-driving only and vice versa.  Must Read: 15+ Demand Generation Statistics that Every Business Should Know 3. Lead Nurturing, Segmentation and Tailored Communication There are three absolute essentials to any demand generation plans: Lead nurturing, segmentation and tailored communications. But, for any of this to happen, you will need to start with a buyer persona. Use data to extract relevant information and understand your target audience (their preference, likes, dislikes, pain points, etc). Once you have demand generation aligned with the right persona, the quality of leads will drastically improve. A buyer persona will also help you tailor communications in a way that talks directly to your audience. Did you know that personalized experience converts 1.5 times better? We have carried out demand generation for several businesses and we have seen success in narrowing our focus and increasing personalization at every single step. For personalization to work in your favor, you will also need to segment your audience. Narrowing your targets will help you understand their specific situation leading to tailored communications which will help you achieve higher conversions. If you send the same message to all your audience, you will reach no one. All of this put together is the best recipe for lead nurturing. Remember, a poor lead nurturing and demand generation strategies will waste valuable leads.  4. Campaign Analysis and Feedback Just admit it. You cannot get the perfect demand strategy in your first attempt.  How would you know it? By campaign analysis and feedback. You need to set up KPIs and performance tools before you start implementing any strategy. Measuring revenue influence against budget investments is important. Other metrics would have a cost per acquisition, lifetime value of customers, time taken to convert, percentage to convert (SQL, MQL, SAL, Buyer), etc. Do not mistake vanity metrics (social clicks, likes, follow, page views) as a measurement for success.  5. Qualifying Leads If you want to increase customer acquisition with demand generation strategies, you must qualify leads the right way. Incorporate a detailed lead scoring system in your strategy that can help you target the quality leads in your funnel. With lead scoring in place, the sales team can touch upon hottest leads and improve sales.  Must Read: Boost your Engagement with Email Personalization in Your ABM Strategy 6. User friendly UI/UX Websites are the best way to generate demand. You can use multiple tactics on it: Landing pages, lead magnets, free tools, free resources, etc. It is imperative that you are invested in the designing of your website and ensure that it is attractive, user-friendly, mobile-friendly and at the same time takes up the least amount of resources and loads fast. 7. Social Media Interactions Social media platforms are the best way to engage with potential buyers today. Be active and comment, like, share, tweet, etc. The classic example is the Xbox. They have assigned a dedicated Twitter account for customer support and 27 people to manage it. An active social media presence can help you generate demand, build credibility and establish you as a thought leader.  8. Branding Consistency Just ask yourself, Can your target audience distinguish your graphics, pictures, feature images, logo, in short branding, just by looking at it?    If your answer is no, you are missing out on generating demand and building loyalty.  Check out Melyssagriffin.com 9. Partner or Outsource This is the mistake we all are guilty of! Partnerships, collaborations with similar businesses and outsourcing to expert demand generation companies/agencies go a long way in managing and creating demand generation that leads to higher customer acquisition.    10. Clarify Goals Don’t shoot in the dark. You can analyze the performance of a campaign only if you know what you were trying to achieve from it. Without goals, it is difficult to optimize and make decisions on what to change and what to keep. For example, if my goal is 300 sign-ups in a month, how does my campaign work to fulfil it? 11. Have Clean

15+ Demand Generation Statistics that Every Business Should Know

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Demand generation is significant for every business. When you begin, your target buyer does not know you exist and you need to work on generating awareness for your product/services. Demand generations are these set of strategies that help you expand awareness about your brand and drive demand for your product/service. Let’s analyze 15 demand generation statistics that every demand marketer should know.  1. Marketers who document strategy are 538% more likely to report success than those who don’t and Marketers who document process are 466% more likely to report success than those who don’t. Key takeaway: You must have a documented demand generation plan which fits into the bigger realm of your marketing plan. This helps in understanding what part of the strategy is resulting into a roadblock or deviation from prescribed goals. Bringing sales and marketing team together to draw a strategy that aligns with your sales funnel, demand generation funnel, lead nurturing strategy, and customer journey is quintessential.  2. Successful marketers are 242% more likely to report conducting audience research at least once per quarter and 56% of our study’s most elite marketers conduct research once or more per month. Key takeaway: You should conduct customer research at regular intervals and update buyer persona to maximize ROI by staying relevant to your audience in all your campaigns. What does your target audience want to read? Are you making a quality contribution? etc are important questions that are clarified by research.  3. 75% of small business owners see internet marketing as an or tool to attract new customer. Key takeaway: Internet marketing includes a bunch of tactics including email marketing, social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), content marketing etc. You need to research your audience (the point above) to see what works best for them. Having the right mix of demand generation ideas will help you achieve the best results.   4. Email marketing has an average return rate of $38 for every $1 spent (EmailMonday) Key takeaway: Emails remain the most favorite tool to generate leads for your product/services and staying on top of your audience’s mind.  5. More than 79% of the leads don’t convert into sales. The absence of lead nurturing is the leading cause of that. (MarketingSherpa via HubSpot) Key takeaway: Demand Generation marketers should aim to create content that not only aligns with business goals (like, brand visibility and lead generation) but also nurtures the buyers. Businesses that can provide useful content along the buyer’s journey will always have an edge over others who cannot.  6. Recipients are about 14% more likely to open an email if it’s a part of a segmented campaign vs. traditional email. (Mailchimp) 7. About 49% of marketers are learning to drive content to align with the buyer’s journey. (LookBookHQ) Key takeaway: It is important that content created is strategic (keeping in mind what your target audience wants to read) and fits into a lead nurturing scheme to convert maximum qualified leads (Marketing qualified or Sales qualified) into customers. According to Neil Patel, If brands can develop an effective strategy for creating content based on proper understanding of their target audience, they’ll not only drive leads but will also increase sales.  Must Read: Top Advantages of B2B Marketing Plan 8. 74% of companies that weren’t exceeding revenue goals did not know their visitor, lead, MQL, or sales opportunities. (Hubspot) Key takeaway: For effective demand generation, you need to get the basics right and have relevant metrics, lead scoring systems or KPIs which define leads and success at every step (MQL, SQL, SAL).  9. Converting leads to customers is the top marketing priority for 70 percent of organizations in 2017 (HubSpot, State of Inbound) Key takeaway: Success for demand marketers is no longer defined in terms of quantity of leads but terms of conversion of leads into customers. Marketers should take the responsibility to augment buyers journey through alignment with sales and customer support/success teams.  10. Improving the ability to measure and analyze marketing impact was a top demand generation priority for 61% of organizations in 2017 (Demand Gen Report) Key takeaway: Any strategy without a performance review program will not fetch the desired results. Demand generation strategies should include smarter technology, KPIs and metrics which align with business goals. This will help you analyze the results and make necessary amends to the strategy 11. According to Dragon Search Marketing, 61% of consumers are influenced by custom content. 12. 47% of buyers viewed 3-5 pieces of content before engaging with a sales rep. (Hubspot) 13. Conversion rates are nearly 6x higher for content marketing adopters than non-adopters (2.9% vs 0.5%). (Aberdeen) Key takeaway: Content is the king. You need to make content marketing a part of your demand generation strategy to achieve maximum ROI. Just like The Truckers Report, a forum for professional truck drivers. With great content, they were able to increase landing page conversions by 79.3%, leading to over 1,000,000 visits per month and over 4.5 million page views. Similarly content syndication can drive desired results as well. Neil Patel, when talking about content syndication, says – when we started republishing content from the Kissmetrics blog on sites like Entrepreneur and Search Engine Journal, we saw the referral traffic pick up (we got almost 9,492 visitors a month).  14. Video will make up 80% of consumer online traffic by 2020 (Animoto) 15. 71% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase based on a social media reference (Alist daily) 16. 48% of marketers planned to increase their influencer marketing budgets in 2017  (Linqua) Quality demand generation which effectively merges with the lead generation goals remains a challenge for B2B marketers at every stage. These demand generation statistics give us an overview of the market and help us focus on areas that require our attention. Let us know if we have missed any important demand generation statistics. Comment below and let’s talk about it.

Steps to Reintroduce BANT in Modern B2B Sales Cycle

Posted on By Ameet Bhinganiya

Countless organizations, in the past, used to follow the BANT methodology for qualifying the leads (Marketing qualified or Sales qualified). This is essential in today’s complex B2B sales cycle that a company’s marketing and sales team build a clearly defined definition of a qualified lead that both have agreed upon. If you are able to identify distinctly where the lead handoff takes place, it can act as a first step towards creating a seamless transmission between marketing and sales. What is BANT? BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline, which was developed by IBM as a method of identifying new opportunities. The question you need to ask for implementing the BANT strategy will be: Budget: What is the budget of your prospects and how much are they willing to spend? Authority: Who is the key decision-maker? Need: Can you fulfil the need or solve the problem of your prospect? Timeline: Do they have time to purchase or need your solution immediately? This method is used to identify more information about your prospect for each of the above categories. You can determine a quality prospect for your business through this strategy. This helps you decide if the effort you put in the long working hours is worth it. This way, it saves a lot of your time in the end. Questions for BANT Lead Qualifications Instead of creating a checklist and making the prospects feel like you are interrogating them, ask questions that are more tactful. While doing so, make sure it is a two-way conversation so that you can discover what you need for each category without affecting a sale. Must Read: BANT VS MEDDIC Budget It gets easier for you to quote on a value-based system when you know the budget parameters of your prospects. Instead of simply going around asking what their budget is, consider the following alternative questions: How much will it cost you to solve the problem internally? How much are you spending on the problem? What kind of ROI do you want to achieve? How much will you lose if the problem sticks around for 5 years? Authority Identifying the people who are behind the decisions and then targeting them correctly can be beneficial to your business. It makes the tone of the voice, research and finding the pain points a little easier. However, instead of asking who makes the decisions outright, try asking the following questions: Who will be using your product or service? Tell me about the decision making process if you have used a similar product? Who all will be included in the decision to take our product? Need You cannot serve a prospect who doesn’t need your product or service. Therefore, finding the need for your prospects will help you decide whether you want to pursue the lead it may be a quality lead or submit a proposal in any way. For example, if you ask how long a prospect has had the problem, their answer can reveal quite a bit about their situation. You need to be mindful about the question you ask in this situation and ensure to reveal the value that you offer which they cannot receive without your help. How long are you having this problem? What will happen if you don’t solve the problem? Is your problem on priority right now? Have you tried to address these problems internally? Timeline The saying ‘timing is everything’ stands true in a lot of aspects of life including business.  Obviously, the more important their need will be the more urgently they’ll require your solution. Depending upon your delivering capacity, you can determine the least time that you can solve their problems. Must Read: 5 Ways to Implement MQL Marketing Tactics It may also happen that they need your solution only for the next year. These people may take your solution once and forget about you in a few days or months down the line. You need to use all your sales skills to push the urgency of such a problem so that they don’t forget about you. The least you can do is to prepare for a long term client acquisition process. You can ask the following questions: What are your goals and how not solving the problem will affect your goals? Do you have a deadline for solving your problem? BANT Process As we have mentioned earlier, having a ham-fist approach for your BANT process will not do your business any good. Subtle and polite conversations will help you get the required information without pushing off the prospect. Your first contact will be to secure the time of your prospect, after which, it is up to BANT to decide how to move ahead. When you apply BANT carefully, be it emails, calls or face-to-face, you will save a lot of time. Face-to-face identification is recommended followed by a phone call but in case you get only an email conversation, try to make the best out of it. This provides you will all the time you need to formulate your BANT questions. The way people qualify B2B sales lead has changed a lot since BANT was introduced. Multiple Decision Makers For medium, to large business, we have already adopted the ‘Authority’ part of our BANT formula. You no longer have to find the decision-maker, you have to instead seek them out. Here you may have to deal with more than one person and as long as you are aware of this, the formula for BANT remains unchanged. Is Budget Still Your Problem? A lot of businesses offer a subscription model these days and if you are running this model you need not worry about the client’s budget. Many businesses can afford 100 USD a month and by this method, you can earn easy ROI. If you are this business, stop worrying about the budget and spend time on finding out if your solutions are a good fit for them. To use BANT you need to adapt it

How to Generate More Demands in 4 Easy Steps

Posted on By Vikas Bhatt

What takes for a customer to choose one product/service over the other? Loyalty to any particular product is not a mental act, its an emotional one. In addition to that customers are more likely to buy the product they previously used and they might continue to ignore the one they previously did (Study by Journal of Consumer Research). I would like to discuss with you one more scenario. A few marketers invest in demand generation when the market hasn’t gained least maturity required and hence their efforts results into nothing much. If you don’t want to do that, you need to assess the following things before you start your demand generation activities.   As listed by MartechAdvisor, Have decided on your marketing category or you are jumping between 2 different categories? How much have influencers and analysts have covered your market? Is it future-talk, something nonexistent? Or have they come up with best practices? Do you already have customers who actively participate in a press release, social media (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook), videos, etc? Have you already tailored your content for trigger moments after which your customers decide to choose your products? Do you care to do the analysis first before you jump on the decision to invest in demand generation? If yes, you are doing right and if yes, what Demand Generation ideas will work for you best so that your prospects choose you over others?   Make them choose you. We are listing below 4 easy steps to demand generation. 1. Produce stellar content Whether its an Ebook, whitepapers, or blogs your content is going have greater impact as it addresses customers pain points. If you are posting blog posts regularly then think of making them more educational and valuable. Make sure to incorporate your research data into it rather than just the same things as others do. You also need to have a social media calendar, otherwise, you will randomly create articles. As we said earlier, sharing quality content is important. Social media calendars allow you to plan and schedule posts for months together. You can make out which posts resonates and then also decide about the frequency of your posts.   Below I am sharing guideline on the frequency of the posts per week    Facebook: 3-10 times Twitter: at least 5 times a day LinkedIn: 2-5 times Google+: 3-10 times Pinterest: 5-10 times a day Always create original content and make your headlines strong because 80% of visitors only read your headlines and rest others only will read the content. In the end, whatever content you are providing, make sure that you are answering your prospects questions which they ask through search engines. If you are able to do this, it will generate more demand for you. Must Read: Quick Guide: Retain Customers with Demand Generation Strategies 2. Feature testimonials Trust is crucial to your customers and you can gain the trust of your customers through testimonials. Yes, trust cannot be brought but has to be earned. Your customer was once a potential buyer and was deciding which product to choose, comparing prices, etc and finally he becomes your customer. Now, the testimonials of such ones help the others to choose your product/services as they deepen their trust in you. Thus, it is very crucial for businesses to site testimonials on their websites.   You can use testimonials even in your AdWords and other places like landing pages, product and pricing pages, and marketing campaigns. How can you make your own testimonial pages?   You can use various types of testimonials.   One of them is social media interaction which is also very organic, giving a natural feel. These testimonials are captured by social media or reproduced as they are without any formatting or editing.   Industry Insider Testimonial  These testimonials are opinions from Industry thought leaders and they are ideal for any B2B company.   3. Offer a Free Report At first, giving away your stuff for free sounds counterproductive but in reality that is the key to creating more demand. It would be great if you could create a tool that creates reports as this will make the users want to see for themselves how to run all these reports. You can offer them a free social media report. So people will visit your page, fill the contact information, grant access to their Twitter page and this way you can generate a report. This was just an example for those in the B2B marketing industry. If you create any report and the visitors are downloading them, then they are considered to be qualified leads ( Sales qualified or Marketing qualified ). This is the way you can increase your leads using demand generation by creating free reports. 4. Make webinars part of your demand generation strategy According to InsideSales.com, nearly 50% of marketers find it challenging to generate quality leads and next to that it is difficult to convert these leads into customers. One way you can generate more leads is to help prospects with webinars so that they come to the decision of buying. According to the Benchmark Email sales manager, with webinars, you can achieve more than a 50% conversion rate. Everyone might not get the same results but 70% of the sales & marketing leaders find it effective in generating more leads. So, why not think of webinars as they can be produced at a low cost?   Must Read: MQL to SQL conversion rate If you are going to make webinars as a part of your demand generation strategies, then you have to pair with your industry superstars. Doing so will increase your reputation in the society. In the beginning, though, you might not be able to do it with the speaker you want but slowly over time you will have your relationship established and when you get the chance do your best to give away best tips, strategies during the webinars themselves.   Webinars can go for 30-60 minutes and that’s all you have time for building rapport and during this

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