DIGITAL MARKETING FOR BETTER DEMAND GENERATION

Majority of marketing and sales team members will agree that internet has changed the buying behavior and pattern of businesses as well as end consumers.

The main trigger for this change in buying behavior has been the easy access to information access. Today’s buyer is faster, wired, energetic, independent, distracted and in few cases confused.The rise of the social media, blogs and online literature has resulted in buyers making well-informed purchase decisions. It is being increasingly seen that the buyers have become less reliant on live conversations with vendors during the buying process; making it more difficult for vendors to directly impact their final purchase decision.

Marketers need to understand the different dynamics of the buying process and align their content and messaging to the unique needs of each such buyer. Suddenly the business leaders have begun to realize that the old sales model no longer appears to be effective. The emergence of social networks specially LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook has made the customers well informed about various alternatives vailable to resolve issues and enable them to nearly freeze their buying decision even before engaging with the vendor. An effective digital marketing strategy cannot ignore social media.

Buying Strategy
For companies planning to use digital marketing effectively for better demand generation and increased sales, it is important to understand the target company’s buying strategy. Certain facts about buying in most companies are:

The number of people involved in the buying process can vary based on the company size and type of purchase

Individuals involved in short listing purchase decisions do not necessarily have senior titles

Information required to aid the purchases is collected from a range of information sources, many of which are not owned or controlled by vendors

Content is consumed across the entire buying process and through a variety of media types

Comparative content is key for lesser-known vendors to influence purchase decisions

Well-informed buyers expect consultative, technically focused engagements from sales representatives

In a typical buying process there are three key stakeholders who will be involved: the decision maker (senior management),decision influencer (mid-management) and consumer (linestaff).If the vendor from whom the service is being bought is a previously-purchased vendor then the role of senior management in purchase decision diminishes compared to when it is a firsttime vendor. The way buyer does research on the product or solution they want to buy has also drastically changed in the last five years. Typical process followed by buyer is:

Designing digital marketing campaigns
While designing digital marketing campaigns it is essential to design content to meet requirement of each stake holder in the buyer team; the decision maker, decision enabler and end user. Trying to understand prospective customers’ pain points, challenges and then creating content addressing those concerns will be very useful so as to resonate with that of the buyer. Also understanding the device the buyer will use to access information becomes critical

Buyers while short listing vendors, use public domain to search for

Technical details and product functionality

Comparative products and vendors

Expert insight and guidance on the product

Success stories of the users of the product through white papers

Demo videos and webcasts where applicable

Buyers prefer information to seep in primarily from the manufacturers and third-party publications. For initial short-listing, product literature or white paper should be as crisp as possible, perhaps not more than couple of pages so as to create interest in the buyers. Digital content has to be meaningful, relevant and able to initiate conversation with target customers by delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time along the buyer’s journey.

Typically, mid-management and line staff involved in the purchase decision use laptops or desktops to view content, watch videos and web casts if available and vendor demos if required. Decision makers generally view the content on hand-held device and in some cases save the content that cannot be viewed in mobile in their laptop for viewing later.

There is no denying that investments in digital capabilities consume a significant amount of time and money, and no B2B leader would like to be responsible for making an investment that fails to deliver sufficient ROI. For vendors who are new in the market, content strength that compares the vendor solution with the competitors in terms of product capability and price would be useful for the buyer. Content should also ideally showcase the leadership of the vendor so as to inspire confidence in many cases.

Challenges faced in implementing digital marketing
The lack of a clear strategy and organizational inertia are two of the most difficult hurdles B2B leaders face in transforming their digital teams, processes, practices and technologies. Often considerable time is spent by sales and marketing team in debating and deciding the digital capabilities their organizations really need – and to build consensus across functions on digital strategy, priorities and investments.

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Leading hurdles to success of digital marketing are:

Limited organizational buy-in

Complexity of integrating technologies

Inadequate budget/resources

Inefficient processes and workflow

Inconsistent data across technologies

Inadequate technical knowledge

Poor data quality/accuracy

Aim of digital marketing campaign

The digital marketing campaign targeting the buyer should be able to:

Generate sufficient number of quality leads

Identify and qualify prospects by need

Know prospect company’s buying organization structure

Identify and qualify prospects by time to close the purchase cycle

Identify and qualify prospects by budget

Key takeaways

To summarize, a successful digital marketing campaign needs to have a dynamic content strategy, interactive platform to constantly engage with the customers, deployable across multiple platforms.

Key aspects of digital marketing:

Customized content to the purchase team: decision maker, decision influencer and the consumer

Emphasizing content strategy that addresses the buyers’ needs for technical and comparative information

A large content portfolio featuring a variety of content types in order to guide buyers through each stage

Producing content that showcases how seller’s products/solutions are better alternatives to existing vendors

Not relying only on inbound environments; several buyers leverage variety of information sources prior to a buy

Developing a fair balance of inbound and outbound marketing efforts to influence the buying team throughout the process

Liberal approach in deploying marketing messaging; transmit it via all possible media type

Aggressive positioning against the competition, if you are a lesser-known vendor

Monitoring the content activities of buying teams to see if you are among those being considered

Prioritizing mobile content strategies

To conclude no single digital approach works for every company. Based on each company’s unique characteristics, B2B leaders should develop a digital marketing strategy that brings in more customers.