Is Your B2B Brand Delivering On Digital?
•
3 likes•577 views
B2B buyers are changing the way they buy. Recent B2B Marketing research shows they use a wide range of digital channels to thoroughly research their purchases. So B2B brands need to ensure their most important ‘shop window’ – their website and digital channels – do more to feed the need for information. Marketers need to ensure all channels such as mobile and social are integrated and also start to see digital as a major source of future sales revenue. Tom Head, director at Lab, shares his experience of helping B2B brands to take advantage of this new B2B buying landscape, and how brands can devise and implement strategies to increase sales.
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (16)
Similar to Is Your B2B Brand Delivering On Digital?
Similar to Is Your B2B Brand Delivering On Digital? (20)
More from Lab
More from Lab (10)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Is Your B2B Brand Delivering On Digital?
- 3. Is your brand delivering on digital?
- 4. What? 1. B2B the opportunity 2. Brand, content & storytelling 3. Who’s doing it well in B2B? 4. Age of the customer 5. The future
- 5. B2B - The Opportunity 70% of respondents say their website is the main driver for prospects/customer to find out about their business 43% stated less than 20 per cent of sales leads come through their website Source: B2B Research – Digital Marketing and the new buying process
- 6. The New ABC of Sales
- 7. Then Buyers faced minimal choices Information asymmetry
- 8. Now Information is Abundant Enablement is key “43% of respondents in a recent B2B research paper said their prospects are ‘very well informed’ or ‘well informed’ when they first interact” Source: B2B Research – Digital Marketing and the new buying process
- 9. The New ABC • A – Attunement • B – Buoyancy • C – Clarity
- 11. Content Strategy If you don’t have one now is the time to put a plan in place…this is essential to building a focus and maintaining a centralised message.
- 12. Content Strategy Brand awareness and lead generation
- 13. Key Questions • Are you creating content around principal campaign and business goals (thought leadership, sales enablement, etc.)? • Do you have a clear understanding of your customer, and how content is meant to communicate a message to move them to the next stage of conversion?
- 14. Storytelling
- 17. The idea that you can genuinely link up multiple touch points to create a compelling story has become a reality. Creating habit through storytelling and multi- channel engagement should be a key focus for brands.
- 18. Create Stories that Engage http://internetofeverything.cisco.com/
- 22. The New Customer Journey Search on Google Purchase Google competitors Limited time offer Download/ view related content Conversations online around content Watch video I want to buy… How do I decide? Visit website Read 3rd party review Receive email offer Orchestrated Marketing Based on keywords, make Recommendations, Show relevant images Email based on areas of interest from last web visit Recommend Links or content in follow-up email Visit Facebook page and Like 30 day e-coupon To increase urgency Ask peers Share and like content – not necessarily around core product/service
- 23. Story Telling Not story yelling!
- 24. Key Content Pointers • More visual and easy-to-consume (infographics, short animated videos) • Creation of more interactive content, using tactics such as gamification or an interactive microsite • More engaging by including a human element (webinars, podcasts, or video interviews)
- 27. Who’s doing it well in B2B?
- 28. Deliver Content of Value
- 29. Improve the user experience
- 30. Going Viral
- 31. Social Less than 10% claim their website and social media integration is ‘excellent’
- 32. Age of the customer
- 33. Where are we now?
- 34. Data
- 35. Source: AllTwitter - http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/data-never-
- 36. Source: IBM - http://www-
- 37. Everything that can be digitised WILL be digitised
- 38. 66% say that CRM data is the main source of customer intelligence used by their sales teams, followed by their website and then social data Source: B2B Research – Digital Marketing and the new buying process
- 40. Econsultancy report 85% of respondents said it is fundamental to their future business success to provide experiences that are responsive to customers based on real-time behaviours. Furthermore, those that are currently implementing real- time marketing reported a 26% uplift in their conversion rate on average.
- 41. The Future - Contextual Personalisation “The circumstances that form the settings for a user which then enable relevant information to be delivered enhancing experience.”
- 42. Relevant content driven by data –Recorded/provided –Behavioural –Location based sensors –Social
- 43. Trust is the currency
- 44. Location & Event Data
- 45. Where will you take your business?
- 46. Interested in a free site audit or Sitecore online demo? Email: hello@lab.co.uk
- 47. @LabDigitalUK
Editor's Notes
- 45 minutes Run through some of the key areas where we see opportunity within the B2B digital sector You will no doubt know some of this but hopefully you’ll get a few insights that you can take away and action
- We have an imbalance B2B sites are providing information but not driving leads…why? Hopefully I’ll be able to provide some insights that you can go and use
- But what’s the old ABC of sales I hear you ask?? This short clip from Glenn Garry Glen Ross will demonstrate
- When you had fewer place to go to buy that product When the seller had more information than the customer Now the customer quite often has more information than the seller
- This is backed up by various other research, according to Foster Research, up to 90 per cent of the buying process in B2B is done before a business makes a sales call, so advertising and brand story matter. That is researching solutions, ranking options, setting requirements, benchmarking pricing, and so on.
- Attunement – really understanding what your customers want, what they are talking about, how they talk about it Buoyancy – creating experiences and conversations online that are two way and across all my devices Clarity – stripping back and simplifying your message so that it gets through to me with all this noise
- Glue that links all these personalised journeys and conversations together So important when you think that this message is now conveyed across website, social, email, mobile, CRM, events etc What are your values? What makes you different? Who is your product for?
- It’s about outlining the type of content and you want to create to reach your target audience It’s about making sure that content sits within your brand (values, tone of voice etc) AND then deciding how you are going to deliver that content (blog articles, newsletters, white papers, social etc)
- Second piece of advice would be to think of ways you can communicate your message using storytelling Why?
- We’ve telling stories since the beginning of time
- I’m sure we can all recount times when we thought of the next chapter in our lives, or our family or our kids
- Cisco he best content marketing often involves storytelling that engages the audience, and Cisco shows off its storytelling chops in various ways. It continually publishes new stories on its content platform: The Network. The company also produces an endless stream of engaging videos, including a web documentary series titled “The Network Effect,” which focuses on the inventors who built the telecom network and its corresponding impact on the world. More recently, Cisco launched “The Internet of Everything,” a content platform covering a $19 trillion global opportunity. The company’s YouTube channel is filled with storytelling examples, as well, including everything from client case studies to entertaining deep-dives about the ways in which technology touches niche industries such as the same-day delivery market. They tell stories really well, and provide content of real value to their audience.
- These are what prompts interaction, a conversation, a share This is what successful brand storytelling is about
- What’s changed with digital? One of the big things is interaction As consumers we’ve gone from passive to active We’re now interacting, we’re commenting, liking, sharing and contributing We’re want to be part of the experience Last year the phrase “digital detox”, to take a break from electronic equipment, was added to the Oxford dictionary but ironically only the online version
- You decide where to start Shorter attention span, huge amounts of data being created We want content across sites and devices We are part of the conversation and want to be spoken TO not at It’s constantly evolving
- Being able to provide relevant content and conversations at each of these stages is the challenge
- Just because you can now contact me across all these channels it doesn’t mean I want to be sold to on every single one!! This mass market approach has changed dramatically due to the amount of data available, consumers want personalised easily accessible content
- Video is a key point here, it’s growing at a huge rate but there is lack of traction in the B2B sector – big opportunity
- US Center for Disease Control and Prevention Novelty approach by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention in educating the general public about disaster-preparedness. The organization launched “zombie apocalypse” campaign, that practically teach US citizen on how to prepare for disasters – like zombie attacks. The premise: When you are able to deal with zombie pandemic, you are able to deal with just anything. The premise seems to work well with the cloud adoption. Moving your business apps (or even your entire business) to the cloud requires you to prepare for any possible cloud disasters (yes, the cloud, although powerful, is not unbreakable.) The infographic below attempts to relate the measures needed to be taken to successfully surviving a zombie attack, as well as successfully migrating to the cloud. It seems that the steps for both are very similar, indeed! Infographic takes you to a landing page where you can request more information – capturing people’s interest in a clever way, straight into capturing leads. The zombie themed effort resulted in exceeding download rates by 300%, a 5.7% email open rate and 20+ leads.
- The best approach? We are in a position now where data is driving creativity, and creativity is driving more data AND this goes round in a virtuous circle The brands that get this right are the ones that continue this while putting the customer at the centre
- Bird and Bird This site from international law firm Bird and Bird is a great example of demonstrating the professionalism and personal service that the law firm gives to its clients – transferred to digital. Using Sitecore’s Experience Platform, Bird and Bird has a single platform for its 15 international content contributors to use, with the site automatically showing content in the right language for the location of the client, and delivering content relevant to the client’s interests. The site has a fully responsive design, adapting for mobile, tablet as well as PC. As a result of these changes, the site has also geared up to generate more sales enquiries, with enquiries doubling year-on-year.
- City and Guilds 2 million students take a City and Guilds course each year, at 10,000 approved centres across the globe. Linking City and Guilds course content managers, with the course and exam booking, and centre location systems has delivered an integrated web site where students can manage their courses online. Each student builds their own profile, with personalised content delivered to match their profile – in its first month of launch, sales lead value and volume doubled.
- Volvo From the start, ‘The Epic Split’ had everything it needed to go viral. It is: spectacular: the stunt fires up the imagination authentic: the entire clip seems to be recorded in one take beautiful: the images, the music and the assembly are beautiful But perhaps more importantly, the video is: relevant: it shows some of the power of the new Volvo Trucks smart: it casts Jean-Claude van Damme in the main role, not the trucks The end result is that people will refer to the clip as “that video where Jean-Claude van Damme stands on the side mirrors of 2 (Volvo) trucks”. This is a much more powerful message, and will be shared more often than “that video which demonstrates the steering support of two (Volvo) trucks”. The action hero status of Jean-Claude van Damme is used particularly well to illustrate the hero status of Volvo trucks. Clever marketing from start to finish. ‘Boring’ content can be made ‘sexy’. You just have to be creative. Authenticity is important. Promote your product with someone else in the lead (a ballerina, a hamster, bulls, a CEO, an engineer or an actor, for example). Thereby you do not put yourself on a pedestal, making the message even stronger. Don’t promote your product, but communicatie your confidence in your own product. Just think of it: what is more powerful than a CEO and an engineer who prove their confidence in their own trucks with a daredevil stunt?
- Social isn’t about pushing your product and service across all sites available – that’s the big mistake especially with B2B It’s about understanding who your target market is, what they look like and what they are interested in So you can become part of the conversation a lot earlier What’s your ultimate aim on the social channels – it’s to provoke a reaction, an interaction
- Customer centric approach
- Customers now have information in abundance It’s about creating clear easy pathways to that The age of the customer is about putting them at the centre, It’s about a much deeper understanding of your customers
- Customer centric approach
- 90% of ALL DATA created in the last 2 years!!! This is on an upwards trajectory We now have watches, cars, glasses that are creating data at phenomenal rate Engage in a fast way to keep up with this – MUST
- Generation Z Whatever market you are in the growth will come from the next generations – even if that is long term I was round at a friends house recently, two young kids (3 & 5), we were having a conversation and the TV was on, I looked over at one point and the 5 year old was trying to zoom on a TV like you would an iPad then looking confused when it didn’t work! Got to remember while we may still struggle with this concept the next generation and the one after that will not. Where a magazine on the floor is broken iPad Means more and more data will be created In an exciting time for marketers, it means the work you are doing now will have a significant impact on whether your business grows or dies
- This growth in data represents great opportunity when we start making use of it Connecting the data dots to make new discoveries is what is driving evolution The real challenge is combining these different data sources to provide a single view that can be used to gather insights from This also allows you to deliver more relevant personalised content to your customer base – the segmentation of customers and then delivering personalisation is what will really differentiate the top players within the B2B sector over the next 12 months
- World is changing Delivering experiences that are customer centric is now hugely important
- Privacy discussion point – value exchange for information AND trust that you will use it in the right way
- Spotify earlier where a good example of a brand staring to use contextual personalisation by delivering Playlists based on my music tastes and my location
- As I said at the start the opportunity within B2B is huge and it’s an exciting time of change There’s a lot of responsibility for all of us working within it as the decisions made now will have a major impact Digital is only going to become more important and investment in digital channels is happening now across the board within B2B to enable businesses to convert more customers through their websites and deliver ROI In your individual roles you will play a major part in deciding whether this change is embraced and it’s used it to drive your company forward
- Feel free to tweet throughout!