Posted by JasonB on August 28, 2009
Good B2B lead generation relies on a dedicated resource to contact, qualify and verify key decision makers. During prospecting, this dedicated resource focuses on unknown targets (cold leads) in the hopes of uncovering new opportunities for the sales department. The sales department in turn can focus their time/effort on qualified leads and closing business. This division of duties (sales & prospecting) makes each more efficient and effective at what they do. What about using this same principle for cross-selling to existing clients?
The process used to generate new leads can be applied to selling current customers new goods and services. Any sale begins with a customer’s awareness of your product or service. But don’t assume that your current customers are aware of the breadth of products or services that your company has to offer. It may not be that your sales resources are dropping the ball, but they might not be aware of the diversity of needs each customer has.
A structured series of communications (just like when contacting new prospects, but now designed to keep current customers aware of everything your company has to offer) ensures that your entire portfolio of products or services is top of mind with your customer base. Remember, just as you never know where new prospects look for information, you don’t know where your current clients look for information for their day-to-day needs. Consequently, you must communicate in a variety of methods such as email, direct mail, blogs, video and even phone calls.
Social media is used in B2B lead generation to attract prospects that are looking for useful, peer-to-peer information that they can use daily. Prospects that are not currently in a buying cycle frequent social websites to receive industry information and peer input, thus the reason for your company to have a presence on websites like YouTube and Facebook. Similarly, your client may not be in the buying cycle for your other services. However, by providing your client with a steady stream of useful information (example: blog posts), they become more receptive to your messages. Once receptive, it’s only a matter of time before they (1) enter a buying cycle and (2) gain exposure to your additional offerings.
The result – your customers can self select the products or services they need to meet a specific need when they need it.
Again, I’m not implying your sales force is not capable of cross-selling. But by nature, the sales department is geared toward finding and closing new business. They simply don’t have visibility into every functional area or department within a customer’s organization to determine where each opportunity lies. A well mapped out communications plan using a dedicated resource to cross-sell existing clients can help broaden the coverage of your existing sales resources and provide a higher rate of return on your investment in them.
I hope this post sheds some light on useful methods to cross-sell. As usual, if you need any help, we’ll be standing by. Please subscribe to our blog for future posts on generating new business for your business.
Posted by JasonB on August 21, 2009
Positioning your organization as a “Thought Leader” in your industry is instrumental in generating B2B leads via the internet. Today, the web allows companies to dispense large amounts of information across vast networks. How do you appear as a leader amongst the clutter, and how does this translate to generating B2B leads? Let’s take a look:
Defining a “Thought Leader”:
A “Thought Leader” is someone who creates, promotes and discusses innovative ideas within an industry. They are passionate experts who dispense their knowledge asking little in return. Often, they announce their ideas with confidence, as almost “self-endorsed, ready-to-use problem-solving solutions”. As time passes, and Thought Leaders build their reputation, their audience grows.
Steps to Becoming a Thought Leader:
1. Follow Before You Lead
To become a leader, you have to identify how high the bar is already set. To accomplish this, you must implement social media monitoring…a critical step in beginning any social media campaign.
By “listening” to social networks, you will observe what messages and media formats are attracting visitors. You will also glean what your competition is using successfully by the number of viewers reading (or following) their messaging. In other words, if a company has placed a video on YouTube discussing reducing costs in your industry, and the video has been viewed hundreds of times, then it would follow that the “cost savings” message is popular among industry participants.
The data gathered during your monitoring process should provide the framework for your Thought Leadership strategy.
2. Plan Your Delivery
Thought leadership relies on consistent, innovative and exciting communication. To achieve this, you must design a content distribution plan that outlines how often your company can publish content, and where that content will be distributed.
Viewers are more inclined to view or follow your organizations’ message if they have the promise of more information in the future. Creating a schedule that publishes a “series” of ideas or thoughts should prompt readers to stay tuned to your message.
Be generous with your gray-matter. The goal of being a thought leader is to gain a reputation. With a good reputation comes an audience. From an audience come B2B leads.
3. Become Visible
One of the primary concepts behind social media is getting your organizations’ message off of your website and in front of decision makers on social sites they are visiting. As mentioned in early posts, decision makers are now using social network sites MORE than corporate web sites to gather vendor information prior to a buying decision. This means that you must have a presence on these sites to have a chance at getting exposure during this sensitive buying cycle phase (that of gathering vendor information).
To cast your net wide and become visible to prospects, move your message off of your corporate site and onto sites like Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. These sites get hundreds of thousands of visits daily by people looking for information. For example, Google now displays video results for searches, and because video has become the #1 tool in social media, many companies are placing their message on YouTube.
People expect a true Thought Leader to be seen AND followed on the World Wide Web…being visible within social networks will promote your ideas to peers and begin generating attention.
4. Set Up Easy Ways for People to Follow (a bread crumb trail back to your company)
A Thought Leader must be easily accessible to develop an audience. Below are some simple, straight forward tactics for increasing your accessibility to prospects:
-Your Blog: Ensure your blog allows visitors to subscribe to posts or comments in a variety of ways (email, RSS, etc). Also provide visitors with the ability to “share” your blog post using “sharing tools” like Digg, Delicious and Twitter.
-YouTube: Create a YouTube channel for your organization. This provides your company with a high-traffic venue to host videos, and allows visitors to subscribe for future video posts.
-Facebook: A corporate Facebook page allows visitors to become a “fan” of your organization. This means they will receive future messages from your company. Even better, their Facebook “friends” will receive messages from your company.
-LinkedIn: LinkedIn not only provides contact information, it hosts forums for discussions and a Question & Answer area. Join these discussions and share your ideas. If visitors find your input useful, they should visit your LinkedIn page or corporate site.
Converting Conversations into New Business
Sales 101 teaches to “ask for the sale”. However, applying this concept to social media, or Thought Leadership, is a bit tricky. Social media, by nature, takes a more conversational peer-to-peer approach to communicating with prospects. That being said, if you never “ask for the business”, you probably won’t get it.
We suggest posting a call-to-action on most of your social media content. This can be as simple as a link saying “click here for more information”. Your call-to-action should, however, take a distant second place in visibility to your primary Thought Leadership message. An aggressive sales message such as “Contact Us Now To Receive X% Off” will quickly detract from your primary message and suggest to viewers that you are NOT a Thought Leader, but instead an organization trying to use a good idea to sell something. Visitors will enthusiastically follow (and perhaps eventually contact) a true Thought Leader, as by their nature they dispense good advice at no charge.
I hope the information in this post will help your company consider its ability to become a Thought Leader. As usual (here’s our call-to-action!), let us know if we can help in any way.
Please subscribe to our blog for future posts on generating new business for your business.
Posted by JasonB on August 10, 2009
Knowing who is talking about the need for your product or service, where they’re talking about it, and what terms they’re using is over half the battle in generating leads for your business online. The fact is, social media changes at the “speed of conversation”, so the only way to stay in the conversation is to have the ability to follow it.
I get asked all the time “Should we be on Twitter?” or “Do we need a Facebook page?” My response always consists of two questions; “Does your target audience look for information there?” and “Do your competitors use it?”
Starting your web marketing strategy with monitoring social communities allows you to better understand where conversations are taking place, by whom, and the topics being discussed. Learn more about your customers’ needs, wants, issues and frustrations. Also observe how many people are visiting AND participating on each site.
By monitoring your competition’s social network activity, you can gain an understanding of what they’re using, AND what’s working for them. For example, if your competitor publishes a blog, but upon review you notice they have very few subscribers and/or no comments on their posts, then their blog has missed the mark and their target audience is finding useful information elsewhere. Alternatively, if you see a competitors’ video on YouTube and it’s been viewed hundreds or thousands of times, it would follow that (1) participants in that industry are using video as a source of information and (2) your competitor’s message in that video has been well received.
The data gathered during your initial monitoring coupled with information gleaned from its analysis should give you the foundation and benchmarks to begin your web marketing program. If you’ve monitored properly, you should now understand what terms are being used by your target audience (now your potential keywords), what websites they are visiting (where you should place your content), and what tactics your competitors are using to achieve their search engine rankings (where they’re getting their message viewed and links to their site).
However, as mentioned above, conversations occurring online change their location and topics quickly. There are no “crystal balls” when it comes to B2B lead generation online. After you’ve launched your web marketing program, you MUST monitor again to see what’s working and what’s not. Monitor the traffic to your site and where it came from. See if your social media tactics and tools are driving traffic, and make adjustments accordingly.
Continue to keep an eye on your competitors’ tactics. One strategically launched press release from a competitor can quickly change rankings on search engines, so frequent observation of their activities is key in out-maneuvering them online.
Your web marketing strategy should not just include monitoring, it should revolve around it. Because monitoring social networks will tell you where to focus your effort, you shouldn’t be spending resources on social media tools that your target market isn’t viewing.
As usual, let us know if you have questions or comments, or if we can help. And please subscribe to receive future posts on B2B lead generation, both online and off.
