Wp how to get better at b2b lead generation in 2017

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How To B2B Get Better at Lead Generation In 2016

Table of Contents Executive Summary

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Limitations of Inbound Marketing

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Important Statistics

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Outbound Lead Generation

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Conclusion : Looking Ahead

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ExecutiveSummary The advent of the internet completely changed the face of customer experience in the buying process. The internet allowed customers greater control in the journey for information. They could research the products and services they were interested in, on their own terms. Search engines provided not only related information but also expert and user reviews that gave social validation to the products. This customer independence (of sorts) forced marketers to change their approach towards audience engagement and suddenly Inbound Marketing became vital to businesses everywhere. Marketers now needed to ensure that the brand content or information being published on the internet facilitated the customers, to help them make their choice, not to coerce them into buying the product.

It is hubris to expect that potential customers will always come knocking at your door

This tactic has served marketers and customers well for over a decade, and it is still doing well. But Inbound Marketing has caused businesses to be in a constant state of war – the battle of content! The web is now ooded with so much content that it is beginning to overwhelm consumers. Due to this content avalanche, the customer temperament is changing again. Consumers are now coming back around to the age old mantra, “People buy from People!” They want a human connection. Even with the benets of social media, the online buying process has become impersonal and robotic to them.

This is particularly true in the B2B industry. With such large purchases on the line, B2B customers want a more personal touch now. B2B decision makers prefer to research a company's product or service after they have been made aware of it rather than search for the product and then research it. This is the reason why Outbound Marketing, erroneously labeled 'interruption marketing', which has been held till date as a pejorative service, is now making a comeback! Marketers are now realizing that it is hubris to expect that potential customers will always come knocking at your door.

Outbound B2B Lead generation is inevitable because it cuts through the din of content created for inbound marketing.

B2B Marketers in 2016 are abandoning the Sales Funnels and adopting Sales Pipelines wherein there is a constant contact between the prospect and the company. The trend in consumer behavior predicted for 2016 shows that consumers want the best of both worlds, Outbound and Inbound Marketing. They want to be wooed and it is our responsibility as marketers to carefully nudge the prospect towards their purchase!

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Limitationsof Inbound Marketing To improve the existing B2B Lead Generation strategy, businesses have to evaluate the status of the current strategy and understand why it does not yield the desired results. Most companies rely wholly on Inbound Marketing. Unfortunately, that strategy can only take them so far.

Marketers have touted Inbound Marketing as godsend to businesses (both B2C and B2B) as the internet grew to become the primary marketplace for global trade. Inbound marketing has indeed proven itself to be powerful revenue generating tactic for marketers but it isn't the miracle marketing formula many would like to believe. It undoubtedly drives a lot of new business towards the company but all articles and other content on the subject are hopelessly remiss in declaring some of its blaring and inherent pitfalls. It is crucial to face the fact that these limitations are greatly accented in B2B businesses.

Law of Diminishing Returns The most important limitation of Inbound Marketing is the law of diminishing returns.

There is a point to which inbound marketing is very successful. Once you reach this point the entire process plateaus because the content and landing pages have squeezed just about all the information from the prospect as they can. In fact, the relentless squeezing can also begin to annoy prospects the way interruption marketing does. At this stage, there are fewer leads coming in for the amount of effort being put in.

About 96% of website visitors are not ready to buy.

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Fickleness of Best Practices Inbound Marketing is in a state of ux. With the changing Social Media landscape and evolving Search Engine algorithms, what was being done yesterday may not be valid today. In fact, in some cases the practices being followed only a few months ago could even hurt your efforts. Brilliant back-linking techniques of today can quickly become the worst technical mistakes in a matter of weeks. Even staying up to date with keyword strategies is extremely complex.

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*Source: Marketo

Limitationsof Inbound Marketing Quality of Inbound Leads Inbound marketing promises and delivers a large number of leads. Yet these leads do not necessarily meet the quality requirements of the B2B process. For B2B companies, a lead is more than just a eeting interest from anyone in a whitepaper or eBook but inbound marketing cannot pledge more than that. One might argue that even with a eeting interest conversions are possible, but for this strategy to pan out one is required to nurture the prospect and in many cases time and energy is spent nurturing contacts that were never true prospects. Aside from this, there is also the matter of 'Fake Data'! Fake data is the information provided by people just trying to avail your freebies. (Fake Data particularly includes fake names, job titles and email ids.)

Takeaway

For B2B businesses, even though Inbound Marketing can be very productive, it is still lacking in many important aspects. For the marketing of any company to be truly effective it has to take on a multi-channel approach. Companies need to realize that putting all their eggs in one basket is not a reliable strategy.

88% of users leave wrong information when filling out an online form

*Source: Mintingo

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ImportantStatistics

According to various surveys and reports, marketers have quantied the biggest B2B Lead Generation challenges they have faced in 2015. These statistics are used by marketers to get a denitive idea about what is lacking in their efforts and to nd an effective solution for the future. Some such stats are mentioned here.

Slightly Effective Generating High Quality Leads

59%

Not At All Effective

26% 2% Extremely Effective

Converting Leads into Customers

42% 37%

Delivering Effective Lead Nurturing Program

37%

Generating a High Volume of Leads

4%

Somewhat Effective

14%

Very Effective

54%

These are the biggest problems plaguing B2B marketing teams in 2015. While generating high quality leads is always going to be considered the biggest challenge, the rest of the challenges can be countered with better lead generation strategies.

When marketers were asked how satised they were with their current Lead Generation Strategies most participants were far from satised. This chart shows the overall effectiveness of marketing strategies.

Source: Crowd Research Partners

Source: Crowd Research Partners

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ImportantStatistics Generating Leads

39% 37%

Driving Brand Awareness

29%

This graph shows the effectiveness of the various lead generation methods that marketers use.

27% 22% 16%

17% 10%

10%

5%

Outbound Methods like Telemarketing/Inside Sales 26% and Events are far more effective that traditional and Inbound Methods at both generating leads and driving brand awareness.

Source: Inside Sales.com

Online

Events

Outbound Telemarketing

Social Media

Traditional

Statistics like these prove beyond doubt that Outbound Methods have great value when it comes to B2B lead Generation. These methods do not discount Inbound but there are a number of beneď€ ts to using outbound methods, discussed later in the whitepaper, which can be very useful to most businesses. In fact, to help with sales even B2C businesses allocate portions of their marketing budget for Telemarketing as well as Email Marketing.

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Outbound Lead Generation The Buyer Journey is not a linear path anymore. It's more about being ready with the content that prospects need when they are making a decision.

Dillon Allie, VP Client Services, HDMZ

To diversify a company's marketing strategy one needs to look towards what other tools and channels are available. For B2B marketing, Outbound Lead Generation is a tried and true technique with proven results. Over the past decade, this technique has attracted a lot of criticism and has been branded as “interruption marketing”. To a certain extent this may have been true for B2C businesses but when it comes to the B2B industry, it has remained an unsung hero; working quietly in the background helping businesses to grow and upscale. B2B decision makers also maintain that telephonic and email conversations with vendors are welcome during the buying process.

Outbound lead generation has undisputed benets and is therefore one of the best tools to help bolster a company's inbound marketing campaigns. Its greatest advantage is that it creates demand in the right circles and at the right time.

Here are some more benets of Outbound Lead Generation that most are completely unaware of.

Building a Human Connection

Prospects respond differently when engaging with content provided by outbound efforts as opposed to inbound. This is particularly true in the case of telemarketing where the prospects, those who are so inclined, can give feedback or raise concerns that the company may not have considered initially. In fact, non-verbal cues that are discerned during calls can also be extremely useful and insightful. Another surprising effect is that once the company distributes content via outbound channels in new environments, it can sometimes come across new buyer personas that it was not aware of before.

84% of Demand Metrics’ Inbound Marketing Effectiveness Study participants agree that a combination of inbound & outbound marketing tactics is best to drive business.

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Outbound Lead Generation Repurposing Content Companies spend a large chunk of their marketing budget preparing powerful content to help in their inbound activities. This content can be easily repurposed and distributed using outbound marketing channels thus increasing the impact of content and the value of the company/brand.

Providing New Perspective and Insights on Target Audiences Prospects respond differently when engaging with content provided by outbound efforts as opposed to inbound. This is particularly true in the case of telemarketing where the prospects, those who are so inclined, can give feedback or raise concerns that the company may not have considered initially. In fact, non-verbal cues that are discerned during calls can also be extremely useful and insightful. Another surprising effect is that once the company distributes content via outbound channels in new environments, it can sometimes come across new buyer personas that it was not aware of before.

Qualifying Leads EfďŹ ciently Qualiď€ ed leads have a much higher conversion rate. If the marketing team can effectively qualify a lead before passing it on to the sales rep, the sales team will be more productive because they waste less time and energy trying to convert leads that have no intention of purchasing the products. Outbound lead generation allows the marketing team to be in constant contact with the prospects until the point at which they are ready to make a purchase and only then do they pass the information on to the sales team. This, far and away, is the greatest beneď€ t of outbound marketing because this also helps to bridge the gap between the sales and marketing teams in the company, making the buyer journey better for both the customer as well as the company.

78% of Decision Makers polled have attended an event or taken an appointment that came from an email or cold call.

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Outbound Lead Generation

Verifying and Cleaning Data

As it has been previously established, inbound marketing can create a lot of fake, incorrect, incomplete and useless data. Marketing databases are often replete with data that either has no merit or that which belongs to 'lookie loos' who have no intention of buying the products or services. Using existing databases for outbound activities can help clean out and verify the contact data so that the company's marketing database is true and contains only prospects or leads which have a better chance at conversions.

Extending the Reach

Outbound marketing is excellent for extending the reach of a company. This is particularly useful when inbound marketing has plateau-ed. Before one starts to actively market, one has to collect a list of prospects to contact. The search begins with structuring the parameters of the target audience so when the resource engages in prospecting, the company's reach extends to new contacts that are exactly within the speciď€ cations of the company's buyer personas.

Takeaway

Outbound Lead Generation is a vital part of the marketing strategy for B2B Businesses. It can enrich the quality of the leads and it positively impacts the growth and scalability of the company. B2B customers are usually more informed as compared to B2C customers. It is important to have continuous contact with them throughout the education phase of the buying process so that the right content reaches them in the right time. Outbound marketing is the only means to make that possible.

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ConclusionLooking Ahead 2016 is going to see a lot of 'Disruption' and a lot of changing trends. This is going to seriously impact the way companies do business. But, there are always some things that never change. Marketing techniques evolve as the consumers evolve. Marketing is a contest for people's attention and marketers must do what is necessary to get their voice across. The typical consumer, be it B2B or B2C, is constantly connected to the internet. Notably, consumers are connected via different channels. It is therefore inevitable for marketers to An integrated marketing be on all the different channels so that no prospect gets left behind. An strategy – using both integrated marketing strategy – using both inbound and outbound tactics inbound and outbound - leaves no stone unturned thus making it more effective and efcient than the others. tactics - leaves no stone unturned thus making it The unfortunate fall out of having such a strategy is that the company's more effective and efcient marketing team will be required to know the nitty-gritties of each discipline than the others and also keep itself updated with the new trends. This might become very difcult for the team and expensive for the company as well because it will need to train its team accordingly. But there is a silver lining. Companies can always decide to outsource a part of their marketing. Outsourcing the work means that the company can have a marketing partner that is completely trained and fully equipped from the start and at a fraction of the cost of setting up an in-house team. The relationship is extremely benecial because the company gets a team that is trained and efcient and is contractually bound to deliver excellence.

Whichever way you decide to go, you must remember that at the end results are what matters so you can mix it up in your marketing strategy in the way it benets your business the most. But the way marketing is shaping up in 2016, you will have to do more than what you are doing now!

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AboutOnly B2B

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