by Yoon Cannon | Leads, Management-Leadership, Success Mindset
Whether you’re a chiropractor, own a SaaS company, or run a law firm, B2B and B2C companies vary widely in their business models. Yet, the things they have in common are the desire to generate leads and drive business growth.
Though achieving these goals through marketing can be time-consuming, this article will present the top growth methods for successful marketing execution. Here you will learn how to accomplish three ways to help you become a better marketer:
- Create multifaceted content
- Build customer relationships
- Adapt to new tools
Plus, you’ll know how to implement each method by utilizing the top tactics below. Here are the top three approaches you should consider implementing today.
Creating Multifaceted Content
Content marketing isn’t just for B2C brands. B2B companies are also making a significant jump in this marketing realm by creating a strategic content marketing strategy.
Yet, when it comes to helping entrepreneurs become better marketers, they must focus on creating content for more than one channel. This approach uses well-rounded subject matter to attract new leads and convert prospects by focusing on audience pain points in different areas of the internet.
Here are a few tips to help you implement a multifaceted content strategy.
1. Create Buyer Personas
When developing different content, understanding who the content is reaching is important. You should have a clearly defined audience, known as a buyer persona.
A buyer persona gives you a picture of an ideal customer. The details of a buyer persona include demographics such as age, income, location, etc. In addition, you should describe the buyer’s personality, interests, goals, wants, and needs.
2. Align Content to the Sales Funnel
Once you create your buyer personas, you can add an extra layer to your content marketing strategy by mapping the buyer’s journey. In essence, it helps to create “evergreen” content that addresses customer issues at each stage of the sales funnel.
A sales funnel’s purpose is to nurture the prospects at each stage, helping them move closer to sales. The process works like this:
- Awareness: This is the top of the funnel where prospects are looking for information to help them articulate their problem. Content at this stage should focus on the buyer’s pain points rather than the product or service. Examples include informative blogs, ebooks, guides, infographics, etc.
- Consideration: The buyer at this stage understands their problem and is now ready to find solutions. Consider creating content focusing on specific solutions to solve the buyer’s problem. Examples include webinars, product features, and comparison blogs.
- Decision: The buyer is ready to compile a list of solutions. You can create brand-specific content at this point, focusing on the benefits of your company’s offerings. Examples include case studies, reviews, and demos.
3. Measure Return on Investment
Once you start creating content to maximize traffic and convert leads, you must understand the results of your content marketing campaigns by analyzing data. Based on your goals and timelines, consider using metrics to measure your results, including:
- Total leads such as email subscribers, purchases, and free-trial sign-ups.
- Total impressions from Google Analytics.
- Traffic from the content you publish.
- Changes in bounce rates.
Once you analyze your results, you can use this information to maximize future content marketing strategies for success.
Establish Customer Relationships
One method of helping entrepreneurs become better marketers is forming organic relationships with customers. Customers are savvier than ever and don’t want you to bombard them with sales pitches or advertisements.
Instead, they prefer to get to know you first. That way, you understand them better and can create products that cater to their needs. One way you can start building customer relationships is through social media.
You can use social media to post customer reviews or user-generated content to attract new buyers and increase your customer base. Engaging prospects and providing valuable content your customers find share-worthy across various platforms is also useful. Additionally, you can gain regular feedback and distribute content that fosters engagement and drives website traffic.
Here are some tips to help you get started on social media and form relationships.
1. Choose the Right Platforms
Not all social networking sites were created equal. That’s why it’s important to consider which platforms you’ll use for your business carefully. The best way to decide is to look at your target audience’s demographics and determine where they spend their time on social media.
B2B businesses mostly rely on LinkedIn or Facebook to reach their target audience. For example, a broker might be interested in connecting with users to gain qualified leads for buyers interested in purchasing a home. Meanwhile, B2C companies might use Instagram or TikTok to engage users since their target audiences are mainly on these platforms.
2. Think Creatively
Avoid being afraid to create fun content. Social media is a place to develop personal connections. So whether you’re a B2B or B2B brand, it’s important to show the human who’s behind the other side of that screen.
Consider putting yourself in your audience’s shoes and what they might find interesting. How can you mix intriguing and easy information for your audience to consume?
Making an additional effort like this can help you connect with your audience and stand out from the competition.
Adapt to New Tools
Marketing is constantly evolving. There will always be new trends and directions to explore. While it’s not necessary to master all things at once, you can still become a specialist in an area or possess multiple technologies.
One example is discovering how to make video content for marketing.
Video content is one of the most powerful tools for marketing today. Hubspot Blog Research found that 88% of B2B and B2C brands have an entire team dedicated to creating video content.
Yet, why is video such a staple of marketing? It helps raise brand awareness, increase revenue and advertise products.
If you’re considering going in a new direction with video, here are some tips to help you get started.
1. Focus on Stories Instead of Sales
If you want more people to watch your videos, create value for them instead of focusing on your brand. The best video content shares stories that connect with the viewer’s emotions.
For example, suppose you’re a doctor specializing in sports medicine. In that case, you could tell a story about how your business changes clients’ lives. Essentially, you can develop a story about how you’re making a difference in your community.
2. Be Strategic in the First Few Seconds
Attention spans are short these days. Therefore, a successful video provides clarity and gives viewers confidence that what they’re watching is worth their time.
Consider grabbing attention with a hook, such as a quick preview of what’s coming in the video. You can also attract more viewers by creating a high-quality thumbnail. The best thumbnails are clear and begin to tell viewers what they’ll gain from watching your content.
3. Create a Call to Action
Always include a call to action that aligns with your marketing goals. Do you want them to visit your website or share the video on social media?
You can easily instruct your viewers to take action by asking them in the video through someone speaking or using text.
Either way, adding a call to action is easy and can create results you wouldn’t have without one.
Use These Top Methods to Become a Better Marketer
You can ultimately reach your business goals using these methods to become a better marketer. Without these strategies, you won’t be able to collectively produce results such as obtaining leads, increasing revenue, and scaling your business growth.
The marketing space is crowded. Therefore, these tactics will allow you to distinguish yourself from those with similar offerings.
What other methods can you share that have helped you to become a better marketer?
Eleanor Hecks is the founder and managing editor of Designerly Magazine.
She’s also a web design consultant with a focus on customer experience and
user interface. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and dogs, Bear and
Lucy. Connect with her about marketing, design, and/or tea on LinkedIn!
by Managing Editor Yoon Cannon | Attract More Customers, Business Growth Tips Blog, General, Leads, Marketing and Sales Blog Posts, Success Mindset
by Managing Editor Yoon Cannon | Business Growth Tips Blog
Thinking of a good business idea is tough. Do you want to start a business, but have no idea what you would enjoy doing that’s also profitable? When it comes to running a profitable business, you want to come up with a great product or service idea that solves a problem a lot of people have whether it’s a big or small problem.
At the same time, you’ll also want to consider what kinds of things you are good at and what kinds of things you enjoy for your long-term happiness with your day-to-day life. There’s no sense diving into a fruitful endeavor if it’s going to make you miserable. You’d end up procrastinating because it won’t feel like fun, but drudgery.
Here are 4 tips to help you in figuring out a good business idea and how to meet in the middle of career satisfaction and reliable profit margins.
1. Undergo Self Evaluation
With the goal being to start a business idea that you don’t find cumbersome, you’ll need to begin with a look inward. This isn’t a process you have to do blindly either. Don’t be afraid to explore personality quizzes, strength quizzes, career tests, or other kinds of assessments to get third-party input. This way, with the more information you collect about yourself, you should start to get a very clear picture of the kinds of things that you’d find suitable in a day-to-day role or even what industries you’d excel in.
For example, CliftonStrengths is a personality quiz that helps you identify which of the 34 identified personality traits are your strongest top 5. Once they’ve discovered these, they share explanations of the strengths, as well as what kind of work or industry goes best with it. The descriptions go on to include other personality traits that you’d work well within others. This could really come in handy when you get to the stage of hiring people to work with you.
Compare the results of the assessment against your previous work or educational experiences to brainstorm possible industries you’re interested in, compatible with, and of course the tasks you know you’ve enjoyed in the past. This will put together a baseline of good business ideas before you start to narrow in on your future business.
RELATED BLOG ARTICLE: Are Your Thoughts Boosting or Killing Your Sales?
2. Identify Problems In Your Day
Now that you have a little direction, you’ll want to find a more specific space in the marketplace that you can corner. When business owners are assessing their value proposition, what they are really asking is: how well am I able to solve my target audiences’ problem?
To reverse engineer a value proposition, you could consider the biggest pain points in your day and think about how they could be improved or solved altogether. For Gopuff co-founder Yakir Gola, who was the only car-owner in his college friend group, that one problem sparked an industry-disrupting innovation. Who wants to constantly be called on by all your friends when they need to buy groceries or run down to the convenience store? It led to the question, what if the convenience store could come to you? Now for people without vehicles or those short on time, it can.
Finding a very specific need like this for a business idea ensures that people will buy into your product or service. It will be up to you to keep your customers coming back. Solve their problems well and brand loyalty will create a long-lasting revenue stream over time.
RELATED BLOG ARTICLE: Surprisingly Easy Way to Get More Referrals
3. Ask Friends and Family
If it’s not your own experiences you draw from, perhaps your friends or family have been through situations that can spark a business idea. Not only will this give you a place to finally jump off from, but it can provide you with a group of people to test out your business on.
Going this route, you know you have customers that trust you right from the inception, and they likely would be happy serving as guinea pigs if it means they get to watch and share in your success.
This kind of early and immediate buy-in can be a huge help to launching the business and creating marketable materials to pitch the value proposition to others in need of your company.
4. Understand Local Niches
Another source of business ideas and inspiration can be your local environment. What are the needs within your immediate community? Is there any tourism-related business that can be tapped into? Are you a small town with one busy road running through it that might be able to break up long trips for drivers who need a rest stop? Or maybe the problem is that there isn’t much to do in your town at all and people need something entertaining to do.
Cross-evaluate these possible opportunities with what you’ve learned about yourself from the self-reflection stage and you might just find a point where they intersect. This is a very important step because any of those businesses could or would work but you want to also get fulfillment out of the work you’re setting yourself up for.
All of this advice is not to say the process won’t produce its challenges. You may start feeling absolutely certain of one idea only to end up going in a completely different direction. That’s normal and part of the process.
RELATED BLOG ARTICLE: Stepping off the Ground: Your Next StartUp Biz Step
You need to be able to know when to push or when to pivot. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, just bring it all back to the center of the Venn diagram and simplify things for yourself. What problem would you enjoy solving for other people for years to come? If you can identify that answer quickly, trust your gut and take the plunge. Starting your business will be the most worthwhile endeavor.
QUESTION:
Where specifically do you get stuck in trying to come up with a great business idea you can start?
Share your comments and questions below.
by Managing Editor Yoon Cannon | Attract More Customers, General, Leads
The B2B market has irrevocably changed in the last few years. Customers are better informed and expect a different, more personalized type of service. Strategies that worked even a few years ago are becoming outdated, leading CEOs and VPs of Sales to seek new ways to generate leads.
Our 2021 Ultimate Guide to Lead Generation for B2B Service Businesses will teach you how to update your strategy.
How to get more B2B leads in 2021?
While the question for many businesses is “How can I get more B2B leads?” the real question should be, “How can I get more qualified B2B leads?”. Quality over quantity.
So, we’ll focus on how to get well-qualified leads.
How To Implement the Right Lead Generation Strategy
Choosing the right strategy depends on several factors, including:
#1. What is Your Product or Service?
When customers buy your product or service, they are fundamentally purchasing a solution to a problem. A good product addresses a specific pain point. It could be that you save them time, money or offer them a solution that’s not on the market. Whatever it is, make sure that your marketing materials demonstrate the value of your solution.
#2. Who is Your Target?
Understanding who you are trying to sell to requires deep research. What are the demographics, what don’t they like about competitor’s solutions, how can you make life easy for them? Etc.
#3. What is Your Business Revenue Model?
Different revenue models require different lead generation strategies. One-off purchases, scaled pricing, and subscription prices require their own considerations and knowledge of various consumer personas.
#4. Where Do Your Customers Hang Out?
Specific platforms have distinct demographics. If your B2B consumer persona is serious business people, try LinkedIn. If they are Millennials, Instagram could be the right place.
Tips to Plan Your B2B Strategy:
- Understand your customer persona
- Underline the value of your product or service in your marketing materials
- Understand that different business models need their own approach
- Concentrate your efforts in the places your personas congregate.
Five Channels for B2B Lead Generation
#1. Inbound Marketing
Inbound marketing is all about content and solid SEO (Search Engine Optimization). It is still one of the most effective ways to get site traffic — and leads — to your site.
Capturing leads can be done with this process:
1) Write helpful content that targets keywords and questions relevant to your product.
2) Valuable content will help you rank and appear in the SERP when your target market is searching for solutions.
3) Once your leads visit your site, you need to find a way to get their details.
4) Use gated content that requires them to leave their name, phone number, and email address.
Which Gated Content Can Act as a Lead Magnet?
This content will depend on your product, service, and target audience. But some of the types of content that attracts leads are:
- White papers or ebooks
- Webinars
- Research
- Demos
- Email series
In short, offer your prospects valuable content, and they’ll arrive.
The thing to remember when using inbound content as a strategy is that it takes time to bear fruit. So keep at it. It can take as long as 6 to 12 months.
#2. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC)
If you need something quicker than inbound marketing via SEO, PPC advertisement is a solid strategy.
This process involves paying for site traffic. There are several pros and cons here.
Pros:
-Lots of traffic
-Potential to target your demographic
Cons:
-Expensive
-Can get expensive
-Not all traffic is verified
Additionally, there are lots of options available in the ad space. Banner ads and ads that target demographics via social media (for example, Facebook) are good. Additionally, Google offers a wide range of services to get your product or service in front of the right eyes.
Native ads are another appealing option. These are the ads that appear like native content on a news feed or other digital publication.
#3. Social Marketing
Having a social media presence is crucial for most products or services. Creating brand awareness and establishing expertise and credibility in your field are great ways to get attention.
However, to turn your social media into a lead-generating machine, here are two great tips.
1) Make social media posts that are interesting, helpful, and include your CTA. However, it’s not always time for the hard sell. Most of your interactions will be with people in the awareness stage of the sales funnel, so a gentle approach is the most effective.
2) Use social media to drive traffic to your site or landing page. You can use content like blog posts, videos, or other values to achieve this. Once you’ve got them there, you can try and capture their details.
How to Generate Lead Through LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a fantastic resource for B2B leads. This platform is where most prospects are.
Here is a proven lead generation strategy for LinkedIn:
1) Make a solid profile.
2) Be active with posts and in relevant groups. Make connections.
3) Engage, make connections, be helpful, demonstrate how your solution can help.
4) Collect relevant details and contacts, which by now should be warm leads
#4. Influencer Marketing
Millennials have become skeptical and untrusting of traditional advertising. For this reason, influencer marketing took off because it offered something similar to trust and word of mouth.
However, while marketers generally used it for B2C products, influencer marketing has become popular for B2B recently.
Depending on your niche, this can be very effective. And not necessarily by using well-known names. Micro or nano influencers can be very effective, with the bonus of locking down on very tight demographics they serve.
#5. Outsource Lead Generation
While the above tactics are effective, outbound lead generation still gets the best results. However, many businesses struggle to generate enough leads for their sales people.
By outsourcing cold calling and appointment setting, you can let your reps focus on their core competency: closing deals.
With the assistance of a B2B lead generation service, you can make sure each prospect is fully qualified and warmed up already, leading to higher conversions for your sales team.
Conclusion
B2B lead generation costs time and money. Formulating strategies that work for your market and your target audience is vital. Using a combination of inbound and outbound marketing, you can make sure your lead pipeline is full of quality prospects interested in your product.
Author’s bio: John Dubay is the Managing Partner at Leads at Scale, an outsourced sales support company that helps B2B companies generate well-qualified leads at scale, ready to be closed.
Content marketing isn’t just for B2C brands. B2B companies are also making a significant jump in this marketing realm by creating a strategic content marketing strategy.
With the goal being to start a business idea that you don’t find cumbersome, you’ll need to begin with a look inward. This isn’t a process you have to do blindly either. Don’t be afraid to explore personality quizzes, strength quizzes, career tests, or other kinds of assessments to get third-party input. This way, with the more information you collect about yourself, you should start to get a very clear picture of the kinds of things that you’d find suitable in a day-to-day role or even what industries you’d excel in. 
Now that you have a little direction, you’ll want to find a more specific space in the marketplace that you can corner. When business owners are assessing their value proposition, what they are really asking is: how well am I able to solve my target audiences’ problem? 
If it’s not your own experiences you draw from, perhaps your friends or family have been through situations that can spark a business idea. Not only will this give you a place to finally jump off from, but it can provide you with a group of people to test out your business on. 
Another source of business ideas and inspiration can be your local environment. What are the needs within your immediate community? Is there any tourism-related business that can be tapped into? Are you a small town with one busy road running through it that might be able to break up long trips for drivers who need a rest stop? Or maybe the problem is that there isn’t much to do in your town at all and people need something entertaining to do. 
Author’s bio: 
